The Pernicious Prevalence of Race in American Discourse
In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case.
— Justice John Marshall Harlan, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Harlan’s opinion was, of course, the correct one. As the lone voice of dissent in what remains one of the more odious Supreme Court decisions, it serves as a cautionary reminder that majority opinions are not always the correct ones. Plessy may not have touched off a civil war, but by legitimizing segregation, it exacerbated the deep-rooted divisions that sundered this country for too much of its history.
The case itself was not without its ironies. In the now-antiquated parlance of the time, Homer Plessy was an octoroon whose want of racial “purity” never would have been noticed had he not brought it to the attention of the train conductor who came to collect his ticket. Plessy’s disclosure was the key to a larger plan devised by the Citizens Committee to test the constitutionality of the Separate Car Law, whose name hardly could do more to announce its purpose. Though succeeding in testing the law’s constitutionality, the test ultimately failed. As the Court opined, “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”
It was a strange place to locate the underlying fallacy, seeing that there was an all-too-flagrant fallacy in the very notion of a separate equality that was imposed on the other. A more considerate court might have, at the very least, suggested that in the future, Plessy not reveal his racial heritage so that he could enjoy the equality reserved for whites rather than suffer the one reserved for blacks. That the seven-eighths white Plessy had the abrogation of his rights upheld by seven-eighths of the Court that day, that the one-eighth of the Court that found that abrogation opprobrious was a former slave-owner, and that the last name of the justice who delivered the majority opinion was Brown were further ironies that apparently were lost on the eminent tribunal that day.
Of course, irony does nothing to mitigate the odium of the decision. If Plessy marks one of those indelible stains on the fabric of American history, one can find consolation in the fact that that age has been transcended and the perverse logic that sanctioned something as execrable as the “separate but equal” doctrine has been refuted. Yet it is precisely because such progress has been made that the prevailing inclination to judge a person according to his racial composition is that much more disheartening.
Of late, nowhere has this atavistic tendency been more on display than with respect to the Tiger Woods scandal. From radio shows to the blogosphere to the editorial pages, one has encountered a rather wayward way of thinking that would seem to belong to an age more myopic than this one.
How amusing it is to see Blacks accuse Tiger Woods of being a racist because he only cheated with WHITE women when the same blacks voted OVERWHELMING in a RACIST way for the RACIST Liar Obama.
My perspective on this is I think a bit different. Think about it for a minute from my perspective. A man is half-African-American, and half-Thai. He has a blonde wife from Scandinavia, and all of his girlfriends are white (and most blonde) also. I think it very weird that the Black community makes such a big deal of the fact that he doesn’t date Black women, but the Asian community doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t date Asian women. It would have been really funny if he’d dated Asian women (I suspect the Black community would still be upset). The point here is that Woods himself refuses to call himself Black, or African-American, because his ancestry is so varied. His father no doubt was part Caucasian, part African, and perhaps part American Indian. His mother is Asian. He chose to date Caucasian women. Note that he’s part-Caucasian himself. But in the Black community’s thinking, he needs to ignore every part of himself, *except* the Black part. He’s partially Black, so they own him. He needs to date only Black women…you can guess the rest. It’s frankly insulting to Woods, and annoying to anyone else who thinks about this. Imagine what the Asian community thinks (not that I’ve heard anything from anyone).
1. Pragmatist:
blacks voted OVERWHELMING in a RACIST way for the RACIST Liar Obama.
What does that mean?
#3 Mr. Scuzneck, I believe Prag is saying that some percentage, perhaps 44%, of the 90% who voted for Obama, voted for him because they wanted to see a black man become President of the U.S. Not just any black man, like, oh, Marion Barry of DC, but a seemingly solid black citizen. Of course since he has been elected it turns out that he sure looks like a stone liar. He won’t be the only President who turned out to be a liar, though. No, he isn’t the only one.
I hope this helps.
Speaking of stone liars, did anybody else catch Press Secretary Gibbs on Fox News Sunday? Gibbs said something like Plouffe is being brought on board Obama’s team to help Obama keep an eye on how Congressional elections are going for the Dems for 2010.
A question: Who will be paying for Plouffe’s participation in doing this 100% political work? It had better not be we taxpayers, because I believe it is illegal for government workers to participate in politics on government time.
For too long, race has been used to stifle or shutdown debate on behavior. We need to fight back against the race hustlers and focus on the behavior and lack of progress from the minority community. Lofty speeches about opportunity and doing more cannot hide the fact that a lot of people of all ethnic stripes are just plain lazy or have found that the drug trade provides better rewards than hard work and achievement.
Well most of these professional athletes actually prefer “GRINGAS or LATINAS” itz a closed door fact:)
ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz….huh??….wazzat???
Have you people not learned anything in the New Age? Only Christian white males can be racist. Just ask Rev. White, and BLT followers.
You bunch of white demons.
skeeziks:
Not sure if you really didn’t understand or you are in fact that dense.
He is saying the ones calling people racist are the ones who are in fact the most racist, and they voted for a person who attended a ravenously racist church for years without objection.
Tiger is the one who evaluates a person’s value based on the color of their skin, doncha think? HE’S the racist.
Irony of ironies – over a hundred years later, with the half white and half black parentage the President selects the black identity because of all the PERKS. Look at Hollywood and the music industry. How many have similar parentage but choose to “go black”? The worm certainly has turned. Now the “drop of black blood” is the drop that sanctifies and the white portion is downplayed. The racists in this country are the ones accusing everyone else of being what THEY are.
This new president has changed everything. OBAMA is a strong leader, with strong Christian/Family values. Strangely, some people do not like him for that or find his faith very difficult to accept. Bush claimed to be a Christian and people respected his faith yet he cared deeply for his middle east oil friends and big business..but very little for poor, working people. OBAMA is the opposite, but some give him little respect for being a Christian and supporting policies that help people. Strange indeed. But hey, whoever said that practicing real Christianity would be popular …only in America eh?
It is obvious that minorities are not exactly loved by many people that comment in PJM. However, I think it also reflects lots of mis-understanding(s) within our communities across our great country. People just do not know, or want to know and understand “other cultures”. Yet, our country is based on many cultures that come together to create a single dynamic…we call democracy. Hence the “e-pluribus unum” many of us know so well. I know its not easy to understand, but once you give it a “try”, it has a potential to change people forever. Good Luck !
Poor Citizen,
We have a Constitutional Republic. Some want you to believe it is a democracy.
BLT is not what Christ preached. End of story.
However, I do get the impression you have compassion for living, and let live. To me, we are all green. Some of us are light green, and some of us are dark green. In between there are different shades of green.
There is no room for BLT, LA Raza, the Black Panthers, or skin heads. Men must respect, and live together. It is hard when a lot of people want to live on the sugar tit, wear their pants down to their feet, and boom rap over town.
Here is the bottom line.
Who f*ing cares?
The guy is who he is with out the rest of the world attaching self serving agendas.
The rest…. well, it’s none of anyone elses damn concern except for those involved.
Keep in mind, behavior and race have nothing to do with each other. One is what you come in with until you leave, the other is what you choose.
I have enough to worry about with the choices I’ve made to ever concern myself with anothers actions THAT HAVE ZERO BEARING ON ANYONE ELSES LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!
idiots.
David,
You missed the bigger question. If somebody has a problem with Tiger just picking pretty white girls, they have a problem with 99% of the
African American and Latin professional football and basketball players.
Maybe there’s a racial component to this, but whatever the reason for the white girl preference, I don’t think it matters a hill
of beans. As a society, I think, racially, we’re not cowards like Eric Holder says. We’re moving out of the darkness of prejudice
into the light of goodness. Dr. King wanted people to be judged by the content of their character. That’s plenty good enough for me.
Don’t forget. We elected Barack Obama. That was a mile stone for this country.
The fact that Obama wants to spend millions paying for lawyers to defend terrors rather than millions on weapons systems to kill them before
they kill our children speaks to the content of Obama’s character, not the color of his skin. The fact that Obama is a pathological
narcissistic liar and socialist America hater has nothing to do with his skin color.
I’d vote for a woman of color in a New York second if I thought she was the best person for the job. Obama’s failure as President
should not attach itself to other men and women of color. We cannot let it. We shall not permit it.
So, blacks want to enforce the ‘one drop rule’ now?
Good gravy! *shakes head in dismay*
Anyway, I’d think any self-respecting woman no matter the amount of melanin in her skin would most definitely NOT want to be known as one of Tiger’s ‘skanks’.
ICK
If you all can get off Tigers race(s) for one moment and think about this.
These are people who are disappointed that Tiger didn’t go whoring with black girls.
What kind of mentality is that!
If you all can get off Tigers race(s) for one moment and think about this.
These are people who are disappointed that Tiger didn’t go whoring with black girls.
What kind of mentality is that!
rachel peepers:
“If somebody has a problem with Tiger just picking pretty white girls, they have a problem with 99% of the
African American and Latin professional football and basketball players.”
That’s probably not true. The whole interracial dating thing is exaggerated by everybody a bit too much. Sure it’s happening, but not at the rate people think that it is.
I don’t care if Tiger dated a poka dot princess from Pluto!!!
He disgraced his children, period.
He did not honor their being.
Instead of “wow!! your dad is Tiger Woods the great golfer?”
…it will be…”hahahahahaha yo daddy did the nasty with a bunch of loose women and left yo mama at home”….and bunches of other crappy stuff.
Maybe he doesn’t associate with the black community, get over it.
I notice that the only comments being posted are the ones who support the author’s handwringing angst about that “pernicious” discourse about race. Which explains the standard of the majority of comments here (one of which at least shows some self-awareness in its signature, “idiots”. Or was that not the signature?).
If you censor any substantive comments on the article or its subject, you lose any possibility of ever being taken seriously. You are irrelevant to the debate.
Tiger Woods bores me. Watching men play golf bores me. Having said that, my experience has been that conservatives are for the most part color-blind and object to racial distinctions in law.
Laws giving preferences to blacks are insulated from today’s reality by claims that their legitimacy are based on curing historical inequities.
Racial paranoia among blacks is the engine that keeps the democratic party viable. Liberals have an insurmountable dis-incentive to engage in honest dialogue about race. Their very existence depends on convincing blacks that repubicans are racist.
I have noted in blogs, and in some black writers, that martin luther king’s “I have a dream” speech, with its vision of colorblindness as the ultimate goal, is very disturbing to them, as conservatives keep throwing it in their face when they seek racial distinctions. The rationale I hear for ignoring King’s colorblind vision in favor of racial preferences is that “I have a dream” was transitional and that King determined this was the wrong vision and grew to embrace the more confrontational quest for racial preferences in the last years of his life. Whether this is true or not, I cannot say, but I find it instructive as it demonstrates that today’s civil right’s leaders are invested in fanning the flames of racism, not ending it.
In conversation with liberals, a conservative will be called a racist as soon as he objects to some governmental scheme that seeks to categorize people by race for the purpose of providing preference to designated victim classes. What we are seeing today, is that the race card has been over-played, and conservatives are increasingly willing to risk being labelled racist in the media as the result of advocating a racially neutral society.
23. AnalogMan:
If your reading comprehension matched your ability to whine, you would find the term ” IDIOTS” to be a more than kind, overly generous fitting discription, for you.
Try actually reading and then ( I know it’s painfull for you to do this sparky, you simple sanctimonious moron ) grasp the idea.
Then you can aplogize for being a buffoon, STF , and contribute something.
Or…anal log man, you can remove any doubts ever had about your new name, ‘Idiot’ being an earned title on this thread by opening your fat mouth before conecting it to your brain rather than your ‘ anal log ‘.
dh
Mr. Eisenberg,
You’d said Tiger is a ‘half African-American and Thai’.
What happened to, ‘Thai-American’?
I’m just yanking your chain.
The ‘African-American’ moniker is so ridiculous. Divisive. And frankly, counterproductive to a united ‘Republic’.
Being an American of 2nd generation Italian ancestry I would NEVER append the hyphen to who/ what I am. Being an American is an honor and privilege that sadly many look more at the color of one’s skin than the content of their character.
With this type of moronic ‘progressive (anything but)thinking, MLK, Frederick Douglass and the like haven’t improved upon anything..
I read the Weekes article you linked, and the gist of it is that she, a black woman, felt like she SHOULD care that Tiger just wants white women but in the end she just DIDN’T care.
It isn’t a very good choice for you to illustrate your point, unless you were saying that black women felt some vague pressure to be offended at Tiger but really couldn’t care less.
I myself have not read much, if anything, about the race issue in his story. He obviously prefers white women, but I truly believe that only an insignificant number of Americans actually give a hoot about race in this. It’s about a disgusting man pretending to be a superior man, and losing control of the dual life.
It happens all the time, but most are not quite so wedged into the public eye.
Besides, Dave Chappelle’s show illustrated it best in the “racial draft” sports show. Tiger is one of the raceless, half black and half Thai and deliberately avoiding being tagged as anything other than a golfer.
Dark Hat, thanks for making my point. There IS no “idea”, there’s just name calling. Typical potty-mouth liberal discourse.
#21 interracial dating
Come to Toronto. The number of white men choosing Asian women to mate and marry has now led city officials to change the future demographic stats. By 2017, there will have to be a new category just to accommodate the white/asian offspring of these unions. That does not include black/white, indian/white, black/asian categories as well. It has become a rare event to see an actual white/white couple on the streets anymore.
#28.
You make your own bed here, again. The ideas are there. I have not the slightest clue as to why that has eluded you, nor do I care beyond this final reply, anal log.
Dim Headgear.
#27. He is not half Thai, he is half asian. His father was an asian from Thai. A race is not a place.
This entire episode is no one’s concern. No ones. He did not disgrace the highest office in the land, he did not lie under oath.
That is the entire point here. Every single person who concerns themselves with this in any way needs to pay attention to something that actually matters.
This is NOT news. It is perverted voyeurism.
Shame on every last one of you.
dh
It isn’t just black men who often have a preference for white women. I long ago observed tht many black women – especially the successful ones – prefer white men. My impression is that being with a white person is a matter of status. Which is twisted, but reality.
#30. Oh, I’m so ashamed…but also a bit curious. What does this mean?
“He is not half Thai, he is half asian. His father was an asian from Thai. A race is not a place.”
So Hans Clingenhoffer is not a German on his father’s side, A half German. He is an European or a Caucasian? So we’ll all have to reclassify everybody? Go fly a kite, Helmet, my most close friend.
#31 why do you think that being with a white person is for status reasons and twisted?? Whites are the only race that are visibly diverse, an attractive quality for non-whites whose features are all one colour. Generally speaking, whites are educated with an eclectic background and a wide-range of interests. I have never met any black and especially Asian person who has travelled as much as those of European background. I have spoken to a lot of black men who have told me that they would not date a black women, mainly due to their “attitude” (their words, not mine) Toronto is now 50% non-white, so it cannot be for status reasons anymore.
I thought Tiger’s mother was Thai, just as Obama’s mother was white. So why does African heritage take precedence over any other? It doesn’t sound much like MLK’s dream to me.
21 J
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Try to name three black professional baseball, football or basketball
athletes married to black women.
Can’t do it. Maybe next time you’ll engage your brain before opening your mouth.
Actually, you should heed your own advice!
I could name 4 men on ONE team (Boston Celtics) with black wives/girlfriends (of varying shades)
Kevin Garnett
Paul Pierce
Glen Davis
Nate Robinson
You can also look here: http://ballerwives.com/category/nba-ballers/
That 99% is a load tripe!