Andrew Sullivan thinks he has caught Juan Williams being racist. He notes that Juan Williams offers distinctly different explanations for his comments to Bill O'Reilly about Muslims and past comments he made about people with dark skin.
Notice that Williams uses facts and evidence to make these judgments [about his reaction to dark skinned people.] Yet the facts and evidence in the case he was discussing on Fox News prove that there is no statistical reason whatever to get nervous around those in Muslim garb on airplanes - since no terror attacks in America have been conducted by people in that attire. Yet that factor - and that alone - is what he invokes to justify his fear. This is anti-religious bigotry in its purest, clearest form.
In stark contrast, in the case of generalizing about nervousness and suspicion of thievery toward African-American men, Williams is far more circumspect. He takes statistical evidence into account; he looks for aspects in a human being that, independent of their race, might make one suspicious. He rules out judgment based on their clothing or their "acting nervously". But when it comes to Muslims in traditional garb, he feels nervous because of that fact alone, and associates them immediately with a terror suspect involving Islam in general - not radical Jihadism - as at war with the West.
So generalized nervousness around people wearing Muslim garb (who statistically have committed zero acts of terrorism in the US) is not bigotry; but generalized nervousness and suspicion around young black men (who statistically were much more likely to commit the crimes in question in the thought experiment in the colloquium) is racism.
By all means, read the whole thing and while you do, keep in mind that Andrew Sullivan, whose entire political orientation revolved around a single, highly emotionally charged issue, completely fails to either furnish the exculpatory remarks that Juan Williams added and the distinction that Juan made between an emotional reaction and one's cognitive evaluation of that reaction. Allow me to elucidate further.
Our brains are the most finely tuned pattern recognition systems ever devised (by Nature or a Creator, take your pick.) We begin making differentiations and distinctions, starting with the difference between Self and Other, from the earliest moments of life. Our sense of Self emerges from an undifferentiated state of union with the Mother, progresses to a clear and stable differentiation between Self and Mother versus all Others and gradually expands the category of Self/Like-Self versus Other/Like-Other. Eight month old infants, when picked up by unfamiliar people, tend to cry ; this reaction is so ubiquitous as to have gained a well known appellation, "Stranger Anxiety."
Since our brains are designed to heighten and highlight differences, people will have an almost reflex reaction to the sight of a recognizably "Other" person. Dark skin, easily differentiated, has traditionally been a marker for Other and has a historical negative valence, even among blacks. It is no coincidence that in South America there is an inverse relationship between dark skin and status/economic success. For reasons that are poorly understood, a great many people will have a visceral, ie pre-rational, emotional, negative reaction to very dark skin, just as people tend to have a more positive, near instantaneous, ie pre-conscious and pre-rational, response to white skin. It is what people do with such reactions that determines whether or not they are racist.
Some people use their rational minds to reinforce their subliminal response; they find reasons to hate the Other. There are still (mostly white but also Arab, Chinese, Indian, Black, et al) troglodytes who express racist sentiments, just as there are people who demonize white people for nothing more than the shade of their skin. Most people, however, use their reason to combat their initial "racial" responses.
Where does this leave the discussion of Andrew Sullivan's condemnation of Juan Williams imagined racism? An important point is that Muslims have not always been associated with negative stereotypes in the West. I suspect that if one were to have done the requisite neurological testing of Americans after the first Indiana Jones movie, most of the responses would have been positive or neutral. However, for the last 30 years, Muslims have allowed themselves to be represented by those who are the most racist, anti-Semitic, hate filled members of their religion. Countless atrocities have been committed in the name of Islam. Over time the association of Muslim and terrorist has been strengthened by each incident as well as by every official PC attempt to hide the association. As a result, images of Muslims is no longer going to elicit a neutral or positive pre-conscious reaction from those in the West who have been targeted.
Again, it is what we do with such reactions that determines whether or not we are "Islamophobic". Juan Williams unnecessarily noted, as have many others, that most Muslims are not terrorists. There have been few terrorist attacks in the West (though many in the Muslim world) by Muslims wearing traditional garb. However, rationality cannot change unconscious reactions but can only temper them, dampen them, and channel them, or in many cases, completely deny them.
If Andrew Sullivan (and NOR) is now proposing to punish people for the contents of their unconscious minds, they are truly setting the stage for totalitarianism.
We cannot be held responsible for the contents of our unconscious minds; we can only be held responsible for our actions.
Jay Adler, coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum, offers his take here, with the wonderfully titled The High Spark of the Low Heels, Boys (extra credit for anyone under the age of 40 who can identify the reference); once you get past his obligatory anti-Conservative snark, he has some very worthwhile comments.
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