Racist & Conservative Not Synonyms; Racist & Liberal Not Antonyms

Wake me when it’s over.

It’s not racism to make uncomfortable, vague, partly false, or even politically insensitive comments like, “asians are good at math.”  It’s racism to say “asians are good at math because they are asian.”  At least, that’s what a psychoanalyst would say.

RACISM AND FANTASY

The Window of Fantasy
For Zizek, racism is produced by a clash of fantasies rather than by a clash of symbols vying for supremacy. There are several distinguishing features of fantasy:
1. Fantasies are produced as a defence against the desire of the Other manifest in “What do you want from me?” - which is what the Other, in its incosnsistency, really wants from me.
2. Fantasies provide a framework through which we see reality. They are anamorphic in that they presuppose a point of view, denying us an objective account of the world.
3. Fantasise are the one unique thing about us. They are what make us individuals, allowing a subjective view of reality. As such, our fantasies are extremely sensitive to the intrusion of others.
4. Fantasies are the way in which we organize and domesticate our jouissance.

Postmodern Racism
Zizek contends that today’s racism is just as reflexive as every other part of postmodern life. It is not the product of ignorance in the way it used to be. So, whereas racism used to involve a claim that another ethnic group is inherently inferior to our own, racism is now articulated in terms of a respect for another’s culture. Instead of “My culture is better than yours”, postmodern or reflexive racism will argue that “My culture is different from yours”. As an example of this Zizek asks “was not the official argument for apartheid in the old South Africa that black culture should be preserved in its uniqueness, not dissipated in the Western melting-pot? (The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For) For him, what is at stake here is the fethishistic disawoval of cynicism: “I know very well that all ethnic cultures are equal in value, yet, nevertheless, I will act as if mine is superior”. The split here between the subject of enunciated (“I know very well…”) and the subject of the enunciation (”...nevertheless I act as if I didn’t”) is even preserved when racists are asked to explain the reasons for their behavior. A racist will blame his socio-economic environment, poor childhood, peer group pressure, and so on, in such a way as to suggest to Zizek that he cannot help being racist, but is merely a victim of circumstances. Thus postmodern racists are fully able to rationalize their behavior in a way that belies the traditional image of racism as the vocation of the ignorant.

The Ethnic Fantasy
If “ethnic tension” is a conflict of fantasies, what is then the racist fantasy? For Zizek there are two basic racist fantasies. The first type centers around the apprehension that the “ethnic other” desires our jouissance. “They” want to steal our enjoyment from “us” and rob us of the specificity of our fantasy. The second type proceeds from an uneasiness that the “ethnic other” has access to some strange jouissance. “They” do not things like “us”. The way :they” enjoy themselves is alien and unfamiliar. What both these fantasies are predicated upon is that the “other” enjoys in a different way than “us”:

In short, what really gets on our nerves, what really bothers us about the “other”, is the peculiar way he organizes his jouissance (the smell of his food, his noisy songs and dances, his strange manners, his attitude to work - in the racist perspective, the “other” is either a workaholic stealing our jobs or an idler living on our labor. ( Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture)

So ethnic tension is caused by a conflict of fantasies if we regard fantasy as a way of organizing jouissance. The specificity of “their: fantasy conflicts with the specificity of “our” fantasy”.
For Zizek, the perception of a threat, by “them” as well as by “us”, remains strong. The last two decades have witnessed a marked rise in racial tension and ethnic nationalism. Following Lacan and Marx, Zizek ascribes this rise to the process of globalization. This process refers to the way in which capitalism has spread across the world. displaceing local companies in favor of multinational ones. The effects of this process are nor necessarily just commercial, for what is at stake are the national cultures and politics bodies which underpin, and are supported by, resident industries. When McDonald’s opens up in Bombay, for example, it is not just another business, but represents a specifically American approach to food, culture and social organization. The more capitalism spreads, the more it works to dissolve the efficacy of national domains, dissipating local traditions and values in favor of universal ones.
The only way to offset this increased homogeneity and to assert the worth of the particular against the global is to cling to our specific ethnic fantasy, the point of view which makes us Indians, British or Germans. And if we try to avoid being dissolved in the multicultural mix of globalization by sticking to the way we organize jouissance, we will court the risk of succumbing to a racist paranoia. Even if we attempt to institute a form of equality between the ways in which we aorganize enjoyment, unfortunately, as Zizek points out, “fantasies cannot coexist peacefully” (Looking Awry)

The Ethics of Fantasy
For Zizek is the state that should act as a buffer between the fantasies of different groups, mitigating the worst effects of thoses fantasies. If civil society were allowed to rule unrestrained, much of the world would succumb to racist violence. It is only the forces of the state which keep it in check.
In the long term, Zizek argues that in order to avoid a clash of fantasies we have to learn to “traverse the fantasy” (what lacan terms “traversing the fantôme). It means that we have to acknowledge that fantasy merely functions to screen the abyss or inconsistency in the Other. In “traversing” or “going through” the fantasy “all we have to do is experience how there is nothing ‘behind’ it, and how fantasy masks precisely this ‘nothing’”. (The Sublime Object of Ideology)
The subject of racism, be it a Jew, a Muslim, a Latino, an African-American, gay or lesbian, Chinese, is a fantasy figure, someone who embodies the void of the Other. The underlying argument of all racism is that “if only they weren’t here, ife would be perfect, and society will be haromious again”. However, what this argument misses is the fact that because the subject of racism is only a fantasy figure, it is only there to make us think that such a harmonious society is actually possible. In reality, society is always-already divided. The fantasy racist figure is just a way of covering up the impossibility of a whole society or an organic Symbolic Order complete unto itself:

What appears as the hindrance to society’s full identity with itself is actually its positive condition: by transposing onto the Jew the role of the foreign body which introduces in the social organism disintegration and antagonism, the fantasy-image of society qua consistent, harmonious whole is rendered possible. (Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Holliwood and Out)

Which is another way of saying that if the Jew qua fantasy figure was not there, we would have to invent it so as to maintain the illusion that we could have a perfect society. For all the fantasy figure does is to embody the existing impossibility of a complete society.

http://www.lacan.com/zizekchro1.htm

“Racist & Liberal Not Antonyms”

Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright being the ultimate proof of that.

Ahh, I didn’t meant to paste that whole quote.  Just the link.  Sorry.

Any way, I totally think that liberal racism is as real as conservative racism.  It’s just more subtle and condescending.  Just ask any black person who’s tired of seeing the civil rights struggle tied to gay marriage advocacy.

“The underlying argument of all racism is that ‘if only they weren’t here, life would be perfect, and society will be harmonious again’”. (from the piece cited in #2)

My problem with the liberals is that they keep saying “Perfection and harmony are when everybody is included,” then turn around and argue that perfection and harmony require us to throw out certain “types.”

#5.  That’s so annoying in church.  I mean who gives anyone the right to include people at a church?  The whole point is that the leaders are servants and no one has the right to exclude anyone.  I see the whole “inclusion” thing as “I am powerless to exclude anyone so I will abrogate the right to include people.”

Of course, the priest absolutely has the right to exclude penance for unrepentant sins or three men and a building from the sacrament of marriage, but that’s not his personal call; it’s the Church’s policy and definition of the sacrament going back to God.

With perverse inclusion it can all too easily become about the leader’s cutting personal favors.  “Hey, this isn’t really policy, but I’m going to include you.”  I used to go to a wealthy liberal TEC Church with a black woman, and I as a white man couldn’t leave her alone because well-meaning liberals were always going over to pat her on the head and beam with pride at including her.  She was like, “I’m just as baptized into the Episcopalian Church as you, so you should be glad I ‘include’ you.”

“With perverse inclusion it can all too easily become about the leader’s cutting personal favors.”

Bingo.  DC and interest groups.  TEC and favored factions. 

No shared standards, just insider and outsider relationships.  No stated rules or expectations, just unwritten rules of access based on the insiders’ feelings.

This story is sad but not surprising.

Back when I was growing up there were some elderly neighbors who were old-fashioned Southern segregationist “yellow dog” Democrats. It amazes me how much today’s Democrats, especially the more liberal ones, try to slap the “racist” label onto conservatives and conveniently forget their own sorry history.

#7 You got it.  Some people over-identify with God and then rain manna down on the chosen ones.  When the reality of imperfection threatens this idolatrous self-conception, they dissociate from their own feelings of failure and discomfort (“I am God and God never fails.”) and project them out onto scapegoats who must be expelled.  The war isn’t against jack booted thugs in the pews but one’s own exclusionary impulses.

In keeping with Matthew 7 above, I wonder how conservatives can go wrong?  I think it’s probably in some kind of paranoia rooted in ambivalence at upholding the law and consequences.  “I’m always playing cop, and everyone else gets to party.”  The trick is to realize that sinful parties are short-term fun and long-term painful.

How does “anti-racism training” work in TEC?  I know a university where they used to spend 55 minutes writing down hurtful stereotypes, “Black people are ABC..XYZ and white people are AB.”  Then at the last minute basically go, “so don’t bring any of this up.”

Any way, my friend was fine, but it did make her feel a little uncomfortable.

Liberals are true racists.  They are totaly concerned with skin color, ethnic origin and other surface characteristics.  Ideologically they insist on liberal orthodoxy.  Look at the hate they project to Justice Thomas or any other conservative minority.