racism
Out of context: Reply #83
- Started
- Last post
- 86 Responses
- lowimpakt0
some stuff that I read a while ago on racism. It doesn't directly relate to the particular dudes outburst but it makes me think about some stuff that gets bandied about here and everywhere. The less obvious stuff.... p.s. Zizek is Slavoj Zizek - he's high on my respect list
"Zizek contends that today racism is just as reflexive as every other part of postmodern life. It is not the product of ignorance in the way it used to be. So, whereas racism used to involve a claim that another ethnic group is inherently inferior to our own, racism is now articulated in terms of a respect for another’s culture. If racists once said, ‘My culture is better than yours’ postmodern or reflexive racism centres around the assertion that, ‘My culture is different than yours’. As an example of this Zizek asks ‘was not the official argument for apartheid in the old South Africa that black culture should be preserved in its uniqueness, not dissipated in the Western melting pot?’.
What is at stake here, according to Zizek, is the fetishist disapproval of cynicism: ‘I know very well that all ethnic cultures are equal, yet, nevertheless, I will act as if mine is superior’. The split evident here between the subject of enunciated (The ‘I know very well....’) and the subject of the enunciation (the ‘nevertheless I act as if I didn’t...’) is even preserved when racists are asked to explain the reasons for their racist behaviour. Typically a racist will blame his or her socio-economic environment, poor childhood, peer group pressure, and so on in such a way as to suggest to Zizek that he or she cannot help being a racist, but is merely a victim of circumstances. Thus postmodern racists are fully able to rationalize their behaviour in a way that belies the traditional image of racism as the vocation of the ignorant."