“Owning Slaves Doesn't Make You Racist”

[SteveG]

GOP state Rep. Werner Horn.
Not only did his area folks vote for this guy, but he won.

[Ted King]

Why would he take the time to think this through the way he did? I very much doubt it was just some random thought that popped into his head. What was the motive? Why would someone want to make the case that there is no necessary connection between slavery and racism? I don't believe for a second that he intended merely to make an abstract philosophical point. What end was he aiming at?

[Lemon Drop]

He was trying to defend our slave-owning early Presidents.


The conversation started when former state House member Dan Hynes ® wrote a post chastising HuffPost for reporting that a historian had classified Trump as tied for the most racist president in American history.

“[W]hat does that say about all of the other presidents who owned slaves?” wrote Hynes.

“Wait, owning slaves doesn’t make you racist…,” Horn replied to Hynes.


Hynes told HuffPost in an email that his response to Horn’s Facebook post was intended to be sarcastic and shouldn’t be cast as “support for either slavery or racism.” He has since taken down his comment.

[Ted King]

Lemon Drop wrote:
He was trying to defend our slave-owning early Presidents.


The conversation started when former state House member Dan Hynes ® wrote a post chastising HuffPost for reporting that a historian had classified Trump as tied for the most racist president in American history.

“[W]hat does that say about all of the other presidents who owned slaves?” wrote Hynes.

“Wait, owning slaves doesn’t make you racist…,” Horn replied to Hynes.


Hynes told HuffPost in an email that his response to Horn’s Facebook post was intended to be sarcastic and shouldn’t be cast as “support for either slavery or racism.” He has since taken down his comment.

Interesting. Thanks.

[rjmacs]

My question is: do we think that Horn knows better, or does he actually believe his denials of history? I don't think that intent should rule the day when we consider the impact of an action, but I think it is relevant for evaluating what a solution might be.

I've been ignorant before, and will be ignorant again. If I say something stupid and harmful because I've never really learned better, the solution might be centered on my education. If I say something stupid and harmful because despite what I know, I think my version of the truth is more important than history, the solution will require a different approach.

This is a big problem facing a lot of white people trying to contest racism within their ranks today - it's hard to know how much is ignorance and how much is ideological commitment, and where those line are, exactly.

[Sarcany]

rjmacs wrote:
My question is: do we think that Horn knows better, or does he actually believe his denials of history?

Racism is a spectrum-disorder diagnosed by observation of the patient's words and actions. Saying things that are racist make you a racist. Attacking people because of their ethnicity or skin color makes you a racist. Endorsing racist government policies makes you a racist. Trying to normalize, rationalize or intellectualize the behavior of a racist makes you a racist.

This does not mean that people can't change. Autistic kids often grow out of the worst of their symptoms. Racists often grow and evolve into something else, or sometimes into lesser-racists. Joe Biden was a racist when he was working for the DNC campaigning against busing, but it seems that he's managed to overcome most of it in the intervening years and now he's just occasionally inadvertently racist.

Right now, whether he believes what he's saying deep within his heart of hearts or is just being a "good soldier" for the RNC, that's not particularly meaningful to the racism label, and it doesn't make a difference in any practical terms. He's a racist and he's harming the country. Maybe in a couple of decades he'll be a better person, but for now, he's just a racist who is hurting people and we should deal with him as such.

[rjmacs]

Sarcany wrote:
[quote=rjmacs]
My question is: do we think that Horn knows better, or does he actually believe his denials of history?

Racism is a spectrum-disorder diagnosed by observation of the patient's words and actions. Saying things that are racist make you a racist. Attacking people because of their ethnicity or skin color makes you a racist. Endorsing racist government policies makes you a racist. Trying to normalize, rationalize or intellectualize the behavior of a racist makes you a racist.

This does not mean that people can't change. Autistic kids often grow out of the worst of their symptoms. Racists often grow and evolve into something else, or sometimes into lesser-racists. Joe Biden was a racist when he was working for the DNC campaigning against busing, but it seems that he's managed to overcome most of it in the intervening years and now he's just occasionally inadvertently racist.

Right now, whether he believes what he's saying deep within his heart of hearts or is just being a "good soldier" for the RNC, that's not particularly meaningful to the racism label, and it doesn't make a difference in any practical terms. He's a racist and he's harming the country. Maybe in a couple of decades he'll be a better person, but for now, he's just a racist who is hurting people and we should deal with him as such.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I also think it answers a different question than the one is asked.

I know what Horn said and thinks is racist no matter whether he believes it is true, or knows it is false. Whether something is racist is connected to its impact, not the intention of the speaker or actor. It might have been clearer to ask "When Horn says these racist things, do we think he is truly unaware of the necessity of race for American slavery to exist, or has our racist system actually denied him that knowledge, and obscured the necessity of its being known?"

[deckeda]

"When Horn says these racist things, do we think he is truly unaware of the necessity of race for American slavery to exist, or has our racist system actually denied him that knowledge, and obscured the necessity of its being known?"

They’re the same. We aren’t born racist, but taught to be by degrees. Responses will demand cognitive dissonance.

[rjmacs]

deckeda wrote:
"When Horn says these racist things, do we think he is truly unaware of the necessity of race for American slavery to exist, or has our racist system actually denied him that knowledge, and obscured the necessity of its being known?"

They’re the same. We aren’t born racist, but taught to be by degrees. Responses will demand cognitive dissonance.

Yet I can identify moments in my own life when I was noticeably and problematically ignorant about our nation's history in its specificity. It was after having being taught this that I realized the degree to which my education had been explicitly in service to the project of hiding white supremacy from view.

I''ve been trained to be racist, which means I know the white supremacy tropes backward and forward - it's just part of being in this culture from birth. I've always been a beneficiary of my racial privilege, but I wasn't really aware of how that happened until adulthood. As I've learned more, it's become clearer and clearer to me how racist practices and legacies shape everything around me, and a lot of confusing social phenomena have been made clear(er).

Because I'm well-versed in American racism, I can make the argument Horn makes as well as he can - I can quote the scripture of free-market capitalism chapter and verse to justify all manner of atrocities. In a former decade, maybe I'd have made some of those arguments from a self-centered and ignorant stance. But today, I know better - I know different. My brain, though washed, has been rinsed. It's not clean and clear of all racist residue, but I know things I didn't know before. It would feel worse to make that argument now, because I would know that it sits on top of the mutilation, torture, rape, and murder of millions of Black people.

My comment's ultimately not about Horn, obviously. It's about asking where white people who are acting racist are in their process of engaging their racism, as a person who is doing it himself.

If white people want to make meaningful change about race, we have to get better at dealing with the racists in our ranks. We need better reactions than flat condemnation and expulsion from the group. We need to stop pretending that just because some of us are recovering, that we were never sick ourselves, and practice some kind of empathy toward people just as damaged by white supremacy as we were.

You're right, deckeda - nobody is born racist. The mistake is thinking that somehow, along the way, some of us either escaped racism's influence or rose above white supremacy's effects on how people think and speak. We are all sick, and we all need to get better. White people, whose ancestors invented this form of inequality in order to favor their own and their descendants (us), own more of the responsibility to foster healing and repair the damage.