People keep bringing up Michael Richards and his racist rant. First it made me wonder about our future in general, where everything is caught on video and posted within the hour. I wondered what road we are heading down, where we don’t need “Big Brother,” because we are our own Big Brother… with all it’s nasty implications.
But that’s not what impresses me most about the reaction to Michael Richards. What impresses me is other people reacting to it. How easy it becomes to look at Richards’ actions and say, “for shame.” When we look at him we see an unabashed racist and we can draw a line between him and our society and ourselves. I imagine many people would like to imagine those lines looking something like: racist, growing tolerance, enlightened. We can say that, “there is him and then me, we’re nothing alike.” When a Michael Richards comes along we can talk about how wrong he is and how much different we are from him, and that makes us feel all content inside. I don’t know though. Does not screaming bad words at a black person make us enlightened, tolerant, or even “not a racist”?
This whole thing got me thinking about all the bad “—isms” and the rate of progress we as a society and as individuals have slowed to. Most of us would like to present to the world a vision of a tolerant woman or man who believes in equality and all that jazz. When we see a Michael Richards we present him to the world and proudly say, “not me.” But I don’t think that is enough anymore. I wonder what kind of great achievement it is to not be screaming n–ger at someone. I also wonder if that hurts us because of how content we feel. If our prejudices aren’t overt, abusive, or confrontational are they any better?
I think it might be time to re-evaluate our criteria for being a good person. Tolerance is such a cheap word, “I’m afraid of you, and I won’t help you if you need it, but I’ll tolerate your existence” doesn’t seem like it is good enough. I think maybe it is time for the tie between hate and the bad “—isms” to be challenged. You don’t have to hate black people, or asian people, or any other people to be a racist. Just like you don’t have to be a misogynist to be a sexist. You can have a black woman as a friend and co-worker and still have racist and sexist views. Racists, sexists, homophobes and the like aren’t just people with banners and rallies, they are all of us. If you have ever locked your door because you are in a black neighborhood, if you have ever felt a little uncomfortable when the gay guy at work walks into the bathroom at the same time as you, if you ever doubted a woman’s view because she is just getting emotional then you are committing acts of racism, homophobia, or sexism. Does that make you a terrible person? I don’t think so. Is it something we should be happy about doing? Probably not. Do we deny those feelings, those thoughts? To ourselves, to others? What can we do? Is it a product of our upbringing? Can we change? Do we even want to? For everyone it will be different, but I don’t know if a lot of us are really even asking ourselves the questions in the first place. I don’t even know if the people who think they are actually are. Doesn’t it feel good to say you are regularly introspective?
I think that maybe what we really get by focusing on the Michael Richards’ or the Mel Gibson’s or the loud “—ist” next door is a reason to not change, a reason to not take a hard look at ourselves and our actions and think about how we might make things better by trying to change our view of things. Calling ourselves out is hard, calling others out is easy. Maybe that’s what we all need to start doing more of.
