Juluis Youngerford,
Atlanta, GA.
Nobody can tell the truth about race, that is, what they think about their own race or other races, because nobody makes nice distinctions between race and class, or between the different types of racial prejudice and hatred, so they can’t say just what they don’t like about others, and they don’t have clear ideas about what they think constitutes their own race. I read recently that many “black people” don’t think that “black people” are a single “people” anymore because the black underclass seems irredeemable; on the other hand, it always amazes me how many black people think that they know just what “blackness” is, and that they are the moral conscience for all other black people. It seems obvious that what black people think makes them black did not make black people black 100 years ago, obvious also that a stubbornly superficial self-understanding drives our racial and “identity” politics. Since people don’t understand what “culture” is, they cherish the silliest folk customs as “authentic,” but of course embrace all the alienating social practices of this country–how “ethnic” or “racial” can you really be if you’re on Facebook?
How “diverse” can we be if most working-class people begun to take comedians, Valley Girls, surfer dudes, and rappers as our models in our speech, if they shop at Wal-Mart, etc.? All this nonsense about “celebrating” “other cultures” and “embracing” people of different races is meaningless–it requires one to overlook the things that the racial or ethnic “Other” does which are unjust, disgusting, intolerable, or otherwise incompatible with one’s own way of life.
