A few weeks ago the New York Post got itself in trouble for printing a cartoon that made an unwitting comparison of President Obama to a monkey. Understandably, groups like the NAACP were outraged and demanded an apology, which they duly got.
Rather than apologising properly, however, it claimed the inference was unintentional and apologised that others took offence.
For many this may seem enough: no explicit racist intent, clear up and move on. Stop crying. This is a position I would have subscribed to were it not for an event a few years ago where an acquaintance described me as living in a “Jewish palace”. This, ignoring the fact that the residence in question was owned by a Presbyterian and had been decorated by an assortment of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Roman Catholics. It wasn’t even in North London.
The problem is that at the heart of the matter the most damaging sorts of racism are precisely those that are unintentional.
Most people are relatively aware that the man shouting “nigger” or “kike” is not to be listened to. We recognise and rightly abhor his prejudices and hatred. It’s easy to spot and thus to ignore. The difficulty comes in that when a respectable person says something with a racial overtone without any particularly hostile motive, the damage is greater as their words will be listened to and absorbed. That will go on to form others’ perceptions and prejudices, and do far more damage in the long term, albeit at a low level.
The musical Avenue Q manages to raise the issue in a rather amusing way with the song Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist. Humans are inherently prejudiced. We have to make assumptions in order to act in a world of limited cognitive capability. The problem comes when it factors in the matter of racial prejudice. It may even come from the most benevolent of motives. The problem is that any such assumptions on the basis of race rob people of their individuality and skew the distortion of them. It’s one thing to make a snap judgement about an individual, quite another to do so for a group of human beings lumped together on largely arbitrary criteria.
This may sound like a PC whinge but it’s not. In fact, much of what we dismiss as “PC gone mad” is precisely the sort of thing I am talking about. Banning christmas decorations and other Christian symbols is based not on a genuine sensitivity to the situation and sensibilities of minorities, but a prejudiced view of what they want, usually based off poor stereotypes. Racism does not need to be intentional or hostile. That does not stop it from being malign: the more a stereotype is perpetuated, the more people conform with it and match align their expectations with it.
The biggest problem with unintentional racism is, for reasons similar to those outlined above, that it has racist effect without enough awareness to effectively deal with it. The originator ducks responsibility for his actions by taking the logically false position that they are not responsible for their actions when their intentions are pure. Though this may be true to some extent, after warning it ceases to be the case. Such warnings, however, are difficult. “Racism” is such a serious accusation that it’s difficult for people to accept that they might be just a little bit themselves. The problem is thus left to fester and all the little cases of minor racism aggregate into a problem far greater than its constituent parts.
The very fact that the New York Post did not believe it had have any racist intention is precisely why it needs to apologise fully. The cartoon was racist in effect, and perpetuated a negative stereotype. It didn’t matter that there was no explcit or hostile racism. The absence of such made it all the worse because it sneaks under the mainstream’s anti-racist radar. The New York Post should have apologised fully to remind people of this.
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