The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent when the pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced on the continent, the slaves were black. Color was everything.
– Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
The American obsession with race still thrives, as the death of Kurt Vonnegut has been obscured by a media frenzy over a petty racial incident. While the BBC devoted a full segment to Vonnegut on 12 April, ABC omitted coverage in favor of the ongoing cause celebre of an aging disc jockey who referred to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos,” a term so offensive that it is repeatedly broadcast and printed in major media without censorship. Even conceding that the term is racist and that coarse discourse should be banned from the airwaves, we are a long way from accounting for the disproportionate magnitude of the reaction, stoked in part by career race-baiters such as Al Sharpton.
Vonnegut’s observation, “Color was everything,” remains poignant today, despite efforts to create similar obsessions over gender, ethnicity, and sexual behavior. Sharpton actually lamented that not enough feminist groups had mobilized against the sexist aspect of the deejay’s comment, apparently not realizing that even career feminists can’t possibly muster enough outrage to challenge every instance of the word “ho” used in public discourse. Recently, Hispanic groups have sought a share of the spotlight, demanding that a WWII documentary place special focus on Hispanic veterans, a pure example of special pleading taking precedent over scholarly analysis. For many historical questions, ethnic distinctions are simply not relevant, which of course is what no advocacy group wants to hear. Despite their numbers, non-racial advocacy groups can scarcely summon the hysterical shock that follows a single racial slur.
Race remains the ultimate taboo, a topic to be approached only at grave peril. A torrent of blasphemies against God is protected free speech, and our society even takes pride in its liberal tolerance of such discourse, but thou shalt not blaspheme against race, for that is “hate speech”. Our culture worships the gods of racial identity, these mysterious essences of social groups.
The racial pantheon is subordinate to a chief god, “America,” considered as a pseudo-racial identity. “America is the greatest country in the world,” is not a mere patriotic boast, but a conviction of theological certitude, not to be challenged even by those from other lands. A stark example of the supremacy of this cult can be found in the astonishingly racist attitudes of many urban black Americans toward blacks from outside the U.S. Ironically, the historically oppressed groups tend to be the most acutely race-conscious of all.
The cults of racial identity make it impossible to discuss race candidly, as a simple anthropological fact. Our American obsession with color exposes itself at the most importune times, transforming a simple rape allegation into a racial crisis, as was the case with the railroaded Duke University lacrosse team last year. The usual suspects, African-American studies, women’s studies, and English professors (beneficiaries, in some cases, of an academic ideology that favors social identity over qualifications), signed onto an advertisement that was clearly sympathetic to the alleged victim and not to the accused, yet they speciously argued they had not prejudged the case. They did not explain how they could regard the allegation as a sign of “social disaster” unless the rape actually occurred. Given that much of their profession is devoted to subverting academic inquiry to emotional causes, we should not be surprised by this insult to our intelligence.
The best remedy I can see for this self-righteous hypersensitivity is to gently mock these taboos so they are taken less seriously. There are ample opportunities to poke fun at these pseudo-intellectuals and media hos, but for now I’m fagged out.