Prometheus 6   

Words

Interestingly enough, when I sat in front of the keyboard for the first time today I had no idea what I was going to write about. Turns out I wrote enough to flood LocalFeeds the first day I joined up.

Most of it was blogging, not writing but you know what I mean. I put a bunch of words on the site.

And I was just floating around the net and wound up at Dru Blood, reading a post that I'd run across in the thick of the Identity Blogging discussion. It was about that bake sale thing, so I didn't link it, but Tonio said in the comments

and I flashed back to a semi-humorous post at Open Source Politics, caled Conservative-Sounding Policy Initiative:

and this light bulb flashes on in my head. Maybe we should call affirmative action "African-American Legacy Programs." We can call them ALPs sp everyone thinks we're talking about Swiss people, and no one would dare suggest we get rid of legacy programs, right?

Word play.

Which reminded me to get back to a post by The Everlasting Phelps wherein he makes a right-angle turn from the Identity Blogging discussion, pivoting on my explanation of why I deal in race in binary fashion when I know that's not strictly accurate. He's wrong in thinking I don't agree with him (well, at least to the degree that he agrees with me), and right in thinking it doesn't matter between us anyway…as well as in saying it's a broader issue than the conversation we are holding.

Now, there's actually a whole hell of a lot of specifics I could take issue with in his post. In fact, let's get it out of the way:

1. In the past, a lot of the words we use had very hard, specific meanings. The best example is the root of this discussion: "racism". At one time, not so long ago, this word had a very specific meaning:
   The belief that one race has a genetic superiority over another race.

   The original meaning of racism was the belief in the genetic superiority of American white people over American Black people.
2. When you want to find a Classical Racist -- someone who believes in the genetic superiority of one race over another -- you have to go far, far off into the wings of society. In a way, these people aren't really much of a part of society, in that they tend to have very little influence. They aren't a significant economic power. They don't hold any social pull outside of their own enclaves. They don't even have any redeeming cultural contributions. Aside from the people that they impact directly through violence, they simply don't matter. The DO matter because as he says later: Even though the racists are gone, they didn't take the word with them. Instead, the word was broadened to encompass more. What was once called bigotry is now racism. No one says "bigot" anymore -- the bigot is now lumped in with the racist, and this makes it harder to discuss things. The bigot is lumped in with a greater evil, and the racist is allowed to hide within the ranks of the bigots.
   and
   Ethnicity and race are used interchangeably

   Whenever you hear people talking about the inferiority of Black culture as though every Black person either belongs to or escaped from it, you're hearing the the transmission of the "Classical Racist" mindset, hidden within the bigot's speech. A wolf in fox's clothing, as it were.

By now you're wondering why I said I agree with him, I bet.

I agree because it's the weakening of meaning that allows the racist to get away with it, until you can't tell a wolf from a fox from a dog.

Phelps suggests a tightening of definitions, what Confucious used to call a rectification of names to fix this…but that only works in a unitary culture. And regardless of what some believe there has never been such a culture on this continent. Europeans of a nations, Amerinds and Africans formed the initial mix and there have been constant influxes from all three major groups ever since. Nailing down common definitions is much like nailing jello cubes to the incoming tide.

The alternative may be more difficult, though.

The fact that we can adopt the definitions others use means we are capable of distinguishing between that which is being indicated and that which we indicate with. The fact that we get twisted by twisted words means we don't. As is said in Zen, It is like pointing at the moon and paying attention to the finger. And trying to solve problems of indication by refining our language is like studying the moon from a reflection in a bowl of water.

In this society, we hardly EVER see the moon. We get commercials, speeches, lectures, spin, spin, spin…all reflections in bowls containing water of varying levels of clarity.

If we don't understand that understanding (connections between things perceived) rather than thought (verbalizations of perceptions) is what intelligence must operate on, we will live under the tyranny of words forever. If we do, we can be their master. And until we are their master, our ability to think will always be limited to the concepts current to society.