Thursday, July 23

Obama and racial hypersensitivity

(meme) Commenting on the TPMMuckraker story, LGF calls this image "disgusting racism"...


Really? So if I say I think it's pretty funny, does that make me a disgusting racist?

I recently read about shamans, witch doctors, and other primitive "spiritual" medicine in the early chapters of Robert Wright's The Evolution of God. And it seems to me that painting parts of Obama's health reform (like the public option) as running the risk of stifling innovation and leading to more primitive outcomes for medicine should fall within the norm of political satire.

But wait, we can't do that because it might suggest African-Americans are primitive, because of Obama's part-African heritage? Sigh.

I think distributing images like this is a bad idea only because it has the misfortune of serving as bait for the anti-racism police. And dealing with them is more tedious than the ordinary PC brigade, because of how harshly "racism" is demonized (justly so, in the case of actual racism).

Growing up bilingual and as a cultural minority as I did, I think I can state with a fair amount confidence that I'm pretty far removed from being racist. I was the only white kid in grade schools I attended and had some painful (as well as nonphysical) altercations with bona fide anti-yankee racism. So I know first-hand what the real shit is like, and this ain't it.

At worst, this image is racially "insensitive". Due to the bubble they live in, there are plenty on the right who have a real lack of racial sensitivity—but this does not mean they're "disgusting racists". And while I know being racially—or more broadly, culturally—sensitive can be is helpful for avoiding misunderstandings, this is not to say that being a sensitivity troll is helpful. Shame on TPMMuckracker and LGF.

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