"You Lie": Racism as a Social Form

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2 Responses

  1. kiyallsmith says:

    Bringing context into the conversation is one of sociology’s great strengths. Your post on the context of Wilson’s remarks is a fresh take on this news item. Thanks!

    Keri

  2. enteringthewhirlpool says:

    When the comment is isolated and individualized as it has been, it is disembedded from the racialized society in which it takes form.

    Absolutely, but this works both ways. By isolating and individualizing the comment one helps to deracialize society. By looking at everything in a racial context society is racialized (sure, also in a racialized society people look at things in a racial context but this is a chicken and egg situation – causality runs both ways).

    _________
    From a political POV it beggars belief how almost any criticism of a mixed race president is sieved for racial prejudice when for years the media and academia has happily looked at the floor and whistled whilst the most outrageous race-based slurs were directed at Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Bobby Jindal.

    Given that there is more in President Carter’s background to suggest implicit racism than in Joe Wilson’s, it might be more fruitful for people to seek the motivation for his comments rather than for Joe Wilson’s intemperate and rude outburst.

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