Over at Blackcommentator.com I read an article about a white man who didn’t know that February is Black History Month. (Amazing.) Brian Couzens booked Charles Knipp, a white drag queen that performs in black face under the stage name Shirley Q. Liquor, for a February 23rd performance. Couzens said that had he known about Black History Month he wouldn’t have booked Knipp. The author doesn’t accuse Couzens of being a full-blown racist. Instead she calls his condition “unconscious racism” and states that “Unconscious racism as one federal judge put it ‘can be found in the latent psyches of white Americans that were inundated for centuries with myths and fallacies of their superiority over the black race,’ and that a form of ‘benign neglect’ has replaced overt and intentional discrimination.”

What also comes to mind when folks try distinguish between unconscious racism and the KKK variety is what George Lipsitz refers to in his book The Possessive Investment in Whiteness as “’Referential’ racism (the snarling, sneering, cross-burning displays of antipathy toward minorities) and ‘inferential’ racism (a system of structured inequality that allows white people to remain self-satisfied and smug about their own innocence).”

Perhaps when all the myths and fallacies of white superiority are shattered; when the system of structured inequality is once and for all dismantled; when people become “fully human” and “reject a system that conditions [their] pleasure on someone else’s pain,” as my favorite ATR guest Robert Jensen says, perhaps then we will no longer have to read or hear about these insensitive and demeaning portrayals of non-white people.

How or when these social changes will ever evolve is anybody’s guess.

I found that really interesting as well and appreciated the in-depth look at why it was happening – ie the probable higher standard to even get considered for an assistant job let alone head coach. It marries itself with the interest in black quarterbacks and the intense focus on their performance. Even if it’s not overtly racist (”i won’t pick a black guy”) it becomes a case of not encouraging black footballers to develop into quarterbacks, instead they’re directed to other positions. I agree it lends itself to comparison to other arenas such as high performing asian students because, anecdotally at least, you hear minorities saying that they have to work twice as hard, be twice as good to get success that other ppl take for granted – and that’s drummed into them by parents, family, friends,etc. Coaches in the NFL are a high profile example of these issues at work.

Also I thought Sarita Malik was excellent and i really enjoyed hearing the international perspective. I know the podcast is american based, but as an international listener it’s nice to broaden out the conversation sometimes and hear someone as good as Sarita really break-down what was happening in britain.

and one other thing – more frequent appearance of sports stories in the podcast would be good

It is unclear to me why, in general, this observation isnt more widespread, but I’ll make it now:

If we pre-suppose that all ethnicities are equal in all capacities, and that no one removes themselves from the selection process, then we must accept that outperformance that occurs with high correlation to race must be a result of racial double standards.

The effect that is happening to black football coaches is also happening to asian college students and asian medical/law students.

I dont think, however, that underperformance is a result of the deliberate enforcement of racial quotas, i.e. affirmative action. Underperformance can be caused by many things other than racist double standards, and is a wholly separate (and very important) problem. I can only say that racial Overperformance is clearly from double standards.

Daniel

NYC

It’s almost mind boggling how the Asian mind works.