In light of the incidents with Michael Richards and Mel Gibson, Malcolm Gladwell posits some criterion by which we could judge the severity of racism:
1. Content. What is said clearly makes a difference. I think, for example, that hate speech is more hateful the more specific it is. To call someone a nigger is not as a bad as arguing that black people have lower intelligence than whites. To make a targetted claim is worse than calling a name. Similarly, I think it matters how much a stereotype deviates from a legitimate generalization. For instance, (and this is, admittedly, not a great example) I think it's worse for someone to say that Jews are money-grubbers than it is to make a joke about how Orthodox Jews have large families. The first statement is groundless, and the second is at least statistically defensible. All hate speech is hurtful. But racism crosses the line and becomes dangerous when it encourages false belief about a targetted group. This much, I think, is fairly straightforward.
2. Intention. Was the remark intended to wound, or intended to perpetuate some social wrong? Was it malicious? I remember sitting in church, as a child, while our Presbyterian minister made jokes about how "cheap" Presbyterians were. If non-Presbyterians make that joke, it might be offensive. But a Presbyterian making jokes about Presbyterians with the intention of making Presbyterians laugh is fine, because there is a complete absence of malice in the comment. I think that Richard Pryor or Dave Chapelle's use of the word "nigger," or the Jewish jokes told by Jewish comics fall into the same category.3. Conviction. Does the statement represent the individual's considered opinion? This to me is the trickiest of the three criterion. In Blink, I wrote a great deal about unconscious racism--how powerful and how prevalent it is. All of us, in our unconscious, harbor prejudicial thoughts. (If you don't believe me, I urge you to take the tests at www. i-a-t.org.) What is of greatest concern, I think, are not instances where those kinds of buried feelings leak out, but cases where hate speech appears to have been the product of considered, conscious deliberation. Comments made in writing, then, ought to be taken more seriously and judged more harshly than comments made in speech; comments made soberly are worse than those made in anger or jest. Comments made in the absence of emotional or chemical duress are worse than those made drunk, or in some stressful context. When a teenager yells at her mother, "I wish you were dead," that's hate speech. It's malcious and its targetted (I wish YOU were dead, not all mothers.) But mothers forgive their children for shouting those words, because the speech fails the conviction test. When we are frustrated or angry, we say things we don't mean--and the world, properly, ought to make allowances for us when we do.
Read the whole thing. He talks about the individuals cases as well.
For my part, I think that the intention and conviction ones are inextricably linked. If you intend to wound, you will say something with more conviction than if you did not. If you don't, then it is difficult to fake the conviction that you would need to hurt people.
Other than that, however, I think it is an interesting discussion.
Hat-tip: Daily Zeitgeist.
UPDATE: Here is the YouTube videos of Michael Richards. Decide for yourself how severe you think it is:
- Log in to post comments
I think "nigger" is special word among racial insults and hurled, as it was by Michael Richards, with intent to hurt, demean, belittle, put someone "in their place", it is indeed severe hate speech. Everyone in that theater should have gotten up and walked out on him.
I'm a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell but I think he's wrong on the "conviction" point. I think comments people make under the influence of alcohol often reveal a person's true feelings, the things they wouldn't say when they feel more inhibited; alcohol removes those inhibitions and give free reign to their tongue. Out comes the invective they normally keep bottled up. Mel Gibson is a racist. He just doesn't normally say racial epithets in public. Unless he's drunk. His speech is just as ugly when he's drunk because it represents his true feeling. Just because when he's sober, he's smart enough not to say those things out loud, it doesn't make them less ugly when he does say them when he's drunk.
I like the criteria. The biggest problem with applying it is in #1. We are still, as a society, so uncomfortable with racial comments that the truth level of what was said is still deemed mostly irrelevant. For example, look at the resistence to the idea that Afrcans have a small edge in mean footspeed (with large variance as with any group) relative to Europeans, something taken as a given for anyone who plays sports. No, we are still told by otherwise intelligent people that 100%+ of the cornerbacks in the NFL (for you non-yanks, the position where speed matters most) are of West African ancestry because of some social bias.
Now if we can't handle a racial difference in a meaningless sporting event, how can we possibly be expected to deal with the bigger social friction that plagues us and that comes out in the performances of Messrs Richard and Gibson? For another example, I once saw, from a distance, a US map with the variable colorcoding illustrating intensities of some measure. The measure was most intense in the southeast, the west coast big cities, chicago, and the northeast where the big cities are. Perhaps you are thinking it was the proportion of blacks in the population. I did too, but as I took a closer look, I saw that wasn't it.
It was the murder rate. Try bringing that up in a sociology class and watch the namecalling start.
"To call someone a nigger is not as a bad as arguing that black people have lower intelligence than whites."
I think this is key. Even when used in a clearly derogatory sense, it doesn't necessarily infer racism, IMO. Ethnic and cultural lines often share a relationship
In this context, the use of the word may simply show a cultural bias. A bias against a culture commonly associated with a particular race.
Some years ago I stumbled upon a conversation wherein a co-worker(white) was talking about his two sons(black). The jist of the relevant comment was "yeah son1, he's black...blah, blah, praise, praise. Son2...now he's a nigger...gripe, gripe" I was floored. The guy was married to a black woman with two black children. Later in the conversation it became apparent that what he was refering to was the wannabe gangster culture that his second son was subscibing to. It had nothing to do with a belief in superior genetics. Lack of political correctness and cultural bias? Sure. Racism? I seriously doubt it.
For many, even blacks, "nigger" has taken on a meaning analogous to "white trash."
I'm not suggesting that this is the case with Michael Richards. He gave enough context to let us know where he was coming from. Being a fan of Lenny Bruce, at first I thought he might be working toward a point or punchline, sadly, one never came.