 Reverse racism is not a valid argument about anything.
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May. 17th, 2009 @ 12:19 pm 
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Man, there's a distinct flaw to having your entire music library on shuffle when catching up on Mammothfail reading: the cognitive dissonance caused when reading thoughtful race-related discussions when We're Gonna Have To Slap The Dirty Little Jap crops up from your collection of World War II music.
My possible future Ph.D. on the subject of popular music in war notwithstanding (still only vaguely conceptualised for a reason, and may be done for Honours instead: tentative title "How Vera Lynn Defeated Hitler: Music, Morale and the Home Front", although the stuff I have about the Home Front may end up being a different dissertation entirely), and the part where I appreciate the historical interest aspect of propagandist racism (hi, Superman!) also set aside... no, basically.
Some of my WW2 music I actually like. Lili Marlene? One of my favourite songs. I have several versions, in English and German. And some of the propaganda songs never fail to crack me up, like these:
When der Fuhrer says, he is the Master Race
Then we'll heil (thbbt!), heil (thbbt!) right in der Fuhrer's face!
and
Hitler has only got one ball
Goering has two but very small
Himmler has something similar
And Mister Goebbels has no balls at all
But that, right there, is part of what's so fascinating about propaganda, and war-era popular culture's role in it. Some of it is stuff that doesn't seem so bad, some of it is stuff that, after a few decades, seems really mindblowingly horrible.
And it puts an odd spin on the racism of old people. If someone grew up listening to that kind of thing, how much can you blame them if they have some persistent racism in their attitudes? Especially if they nonetheless endeavour to be nice to people of !ethnicity?
One of the most vitriolic racists I ever knew was an old man who, to the day he died, could not hear mention of anything that involved the Japanese without it triggering an expression of anti-Japanese hatred. I could never criticise him for it or think less of him for it, for one important reason: he'd been a prisoner of war of the Japanese during the Second World War.
Let's just say his experiences were not such as to dispose him kindly to the nation from which they hailed.
I could not, in conscience, try to persuade someone who'd been through the horrors he had, experiences more terrible than most of us can imagine, that he should try and forgive the Japanese people for the sins of their forebears. Neither I nor anyone else could have that right - he suffered, and blaming the Japanese for the deeds of the Japanese army is not exactly a stretch. He went to his grave hating Japan and the Japanese people, and I would vigorously defend his right to that hatred. (Possibly he could have got past it on its own had he had the PTSD counselling he needed, but without that? Nobody's call to make.)
A woman I know, who was a child in Italy during the Second World War, hates Germans and Americans. The Germans were bad; in her view, the Americans were worse, because the German officers kept a very strict discipline on their men, whereas Americans were often drunk in the streets, and set up a rape camp near her house. For some time she lived in fear that the Americans would take her for that.
She's 82 now. A kind and loving woman. Not racist at all, that I'm aware, to anyone but Germans and Americans - but she still thinks those are lesser peoples. I don't feel the right to tell her otherwise.
However.
There's a statute of limitations on that kind of thing. Someone of my generation, I feel, doesn't get to maintain a race-based prejudice on the grounds of crimes which are not ongoing. The English put my ancestors in concentration camps - okay, they had the right to hate all English people. The Anglo-South Africans (called English) tormented my father for being Afrikaaner throughout his childhood and adolescence - does he have the right to resent them? Well, yeah, kinda, actually. It's not the best thing for him, it might be healthier if he could get past it, but that's his journey to make.
But I don't. They're not my wounds, and maintaining the hate only perpetuates the evils of racial cruelty. The cycle has to stop. So I don't want to hold onto those hatreds, the bitterness of unrighted wrongs. (What can be done to make good the cruelty the English inflicted on my ancestors during the Second War of Independence - the one they call the Boer War?)
I can leave that all behind, because it doesn't affect me any more. I grew up a first-generation immigrant in another country, and my mother was the South African-born daughter of first-generation immigrant British parents. Culturally, I picked up a lot more from my mother and her Scottish mother than I did from my father's side of the family.
Whereas.
Injustice can only be surrendered once it's no longer causing active harm. The black and native populations of America are still being hurt by the legacies of the crimes against them, by institutionalised, all-pervading racism that has merely continued, modified, from the days of slavery and "nits make lice". Indigenous Australians have gone from bounties to the Stolen Generation to military intervention alongside active neglect - there is no basis for them to be obliged to let go of anger towards the white man. There may be cases where that's helpful, and it's always worth judging any individual you meet on their own merits... but until there is no systemic harm under way, it's just like the old man hating the Japanese. Wounds have to heal. His hadn't, they'd festered across decades - but that's understandable, for individuals. For others, the same wounds can't heal, when they're ripped open, again and again, by people poking them with sharp sticks.
This is why "reverse racism" doesn't exist. It just doesn't. The woman I encountered a few weeks ago, who accused me of moving away from her at the bus stop just because she was black and I was assuming she was going to try and rob me, when in fact - as I pointed out - I was moving away from her because she was smoking... yeah, she was being a jerk. But if she were white, she'd have been an asshole about that in a different way. Some people suck. Accept it and move on, don't use that as justification for how somehow black people are just as racist as white people.
Learned response is not the same as prejudice. If you had found, all your life, that almost every person you saw wearing a hat smacked you in the face, wouldn't you flinch when you saw a hat? Wouldn't you think that hat-wearers just sucked?
I'm not sure what else to say. It's time for lunch and meds, my brain ferrets are waking up.Current Music: Ipi Tombi - Emdudeni Uhlele
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I found your journal through a comment in ![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png) denise's journal, and after reading this entry I decided to subscribe to you. This was VERY well worded.
![[User Picture Icon]](https://v2.dreamwidth.org/3974986/75896) |
| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) sami |
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| Date: |
May 18th, 2009 04:20 am (UTC) |
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Thank you.
I hope you don't find other posts less entertaining - sometimes I'm just silly. But I do tend to process ideas like this, and post about it, so... hello and welcome, more or less. :)
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