Q&A: The Nature of Our Revulsion Toward a Racist
The Nature of Our Revulsion Toward a Racist
Question
Happy festival days, Rabbi.
For quite a long time I’ve been struggling to understand satisfactorily how to define our revulsion toward discrimination and racism, or in other words: what exactly is the wrongdoing we accuse a person of when he behaves or speaks in a racist and discriminatory way.
For example, if someone claims that women are stupid / inferior to men, what is the accusation we level at him?
I see two possibilities, and neither seems sufficient to me:
1. The first possibility is that we assume the racist person is aware that he is talking nonsense. That is, it is clear to us that he too knows that women are not inferior to men, not stupid, and so on, and nevertheless he continues to speak this way and even act according to that outlook. According to this possibility, the problem with racism is “wickedness” — that is, distorting obvious facts that are clearly known even to the racist, in order to achieve vile goals such as dominating women and the like.
2. The second possibility is that we assume the racist person really believes what he says, and if so, his sin is not “wickedness” but “stupidity.”
I can’t find a third independent possibility, only some combination of these two, which I still haven’t managed to define well enough. And now I’ll explain why these two possibilities do not seem sufficient to me:
1. The “wickedness” option doesn’t seem to express perfectly our revulsion toward the racist, because we usually relate to him as a benighted and stupid person, not just as a wicked one. If we saw someone claiming that French people are stupid, and he declared to us that he of course doesn’t believe this nonsense, and is only saying it in order to keep them from being accepted into workplaces so that positions will open up for him, would we feel toward that person the same feelings we feel toward the classic racist? I don’t think so.
2. The “stupidity” option also doesn’t seem to express the revulsion perfectly, because if he really believes that French people are stupid, why should we feel revulsion toward him? At most we should help him understand that he is mistaken, and of course there is no reason to be angry at him. We should discuss it with him gently and calmly, exactly as one discusses things with someone who doesn’t understand how to solve an exponential equation. Maybe one could be “bummed out” by the very existence of such ignorance, but that doesn’t seem to me to be what we feel toward the racist.
Perhaps one should say that there is a third possibility that combines the two: the racist really believes what he claims, but he himself caused that. That is, the person’s “wickedness” leads him to “stupidity,” and then we accuse him of the “wickedness” and hold him responsible for the stupidity as well. This is an idea I still need to develop and I haven’t thought about it enough, so I’d be happy to hear the Rabbi’s opinion.
P.S. Of course, everything I said assumes that the racist claim is false. If it is a true claim, then of course the “stupidity” option falls away, and we are left only with the possibility that we accuse the racist of publicly proclaiming the painful truth (“wickedness” somewhat different from the previous kind), and even that, in my opinion, does not capture our revulsion toward the racist.
All the best.
Answer
Hello,
An excellent question. I touched on it a bit in Column 10: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9E%D7%94%D7%99-%D7%92%D7%96%D7%A2%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A8-10/
I think I wrote about it in other places too, but I haven’t checked right now (you can try searching the site).
In general, in my opinion racism as a negative value is not a worldview but acting on the basis of a worldview. To think that all women are stupid or all blacks are retarded is not racism but either a mistake or demagoguery. But actually treating blacks by that standard — for example, not admitting a black student to a university because he is black — that is racism. You are deciding about him according to criteria that are not connected to him and were not examined in his specific case, but rather according to a stereotype (even if it is justified, at least in your opinion).
Even on the level of worldview, you can call someone a racist if he does not really think that all X are Y, but publicly preaches this in order to incite the public to think that way and behave that way. He is playing on racist strings hidden within all of us and inflaming them.
Discussion on Answer
That is not a philosophical mistake, because if the stereotype is correct then he is not mistaken. This is a mode of action that is ethically distorted (not philosophically distorted). That person does not give the person in front of him the treatment due to him, but judges him according to a stereotype.
It’s like saying that theft also has no problem, because that person is only making a philosophical mistake in thinking the other person’s money belongs to him.
What do you mean by stereotype? That all women, every single one, are stupid? If I think so, then why is it problematic to treat an individual according to that stereotype? After all, without checking I know that the woman is stupid. Why is that ethically distorted?
Or do you mean by stereotype that I think most women are stupid? And then the offense is a kind of “laziness” and unwillingness to examine each individual on his or her own merits?
The second. If you think they are all stupid, then that is indeed not racism but a mistake. Although sometimes the mistake also stems from latent racism that prevents you from examining the matter.
Regarding the first possibility: “You are deciding about him according to criteria that are not connected to him and were not examined in his specific case, but rather according to a stereotype” — so in fact a racist could also be someone who holds that all people in the world are completely equal, and only maintains as a matter of principle that if hypothetically there were a people who were on average more stupid than other nations, then according to that (correct) stereotype it would be justified not to admit an individual from that group to the university?
According to this, the definition of racism is basically: “treating an individual according to the average traits of the people he belongs to, without individual examination”? According to this definition, racism is basically a mistaken philosophical view, and again this resembles the definition that someone who thinks all women are stupid is a racist — which was exactly the definition we wanted to avoid. Or am I missing something?