One of my Facebook friends is a Boston-area business manager. A staple of his postings is decrying the racism, ignorance, and stupidity of Donald Trump supporters (none of whom, presumably, he has met in person). Here are a few examples:
At this point I have nothing more to say about Trump. The man is deranged and his views despicable and morally reprehensible. The open question now is whether Republicans, especially the leadership, will explicitly repudiate him or go down in history as moral cowards. [After this posting announcing “I have nothing more to say about Trump” the rate of postings regarding Donald Trump was unchanged.]
Not being complacent but I don’t think Trump will win. There are far far more stupid white males in the US than I had thought, but there are not enough.
Male Airhead. There are actually more of them. [reference to an article about Clint Eastwood]
It still amazes me that Trump is a serious contender for President. He has to be the most morally vile and disgusting human being I have come across in public or private life. [After this one I verified that he has not actually ever met Donald Trump.]
Hillary. You go Girl. [how does he know that Hillary Clinton continues to identify as female, much less as a “girl”?]
I Michelle Obama am very proud of ObamaCare. We are able to provide health care to everyone who needs it, including Donald Trump who is seriously mentally ill. [after changing his profile picture to one of a young-looking Michelle Obama.]
It is not enough to defeat Trump. He must be defeated resoundingly. Let this be our first and last flirtation with fascism. We have to show ourselves and the world that we have not forgotten the ideals that make us a great country and the envy of the world.
The Fuhrer appears. Sieg Heil. [during the Republican National Convention]
… When we have a cancer in our midst, pointing it out is not saying that all cells in our body are cancerous. #BlackLivesMatter protesters are not anti-cop. They are anti-cancer. Americans we have a serious problem. Let’s wake up and own it.
Why the strong reaction against Hillary? Is it because she is smart, eloquent, and tough as nails? We don’t like strong women, do we? [i.e., people who disagree with him regarding the merits of an Argentina-style election of the former leader’s spouse are sexist]
In other words, pretty much standard fare for any Facebook member with a Massachusetts academic connection (see “Haiku contest: Summarize your Facebook feed”). Yet here is a recent one that confused me:
Blacks are not supposed to be ballerinas: Misty Copeland. Blacks are not supposed to be swimmers: Simone Manuel. Blacks are not supposed to be gymnasts: Simone Biles. Amazing, Amazing Ladies.
If it is in fact other Americans who are racist, why is this righteous Hillary Clinton supporter even noticing the skin color of the Olympic athletes that he has seen on television? Have any of the athletes cited skin color as a factor in their training, performance, or competition? (This story says that “[Biles when questioned about her skin color] was kind of visibly annoyed” and “Biles resisted being tokenized for her race.”)
[And, separately, why the cisgender-normative assumption that “Misty”, “Simone”, and “Simone” continue to identify as “ladies”?]
Finally, why are we so thrilled when Americans win Olympic medals? So far in this summer’s games it looks like Australians are the best athletes. With a population of 23 million they’ve earned 17 medals. With a population of 320 million, Americans have earned 40 medals. In other words, per million population, we’ve collected medals at a rate of 0.125 while the Australians are at 0.74.
Readers: Have you watched the games? What have been the best parts as far as you’re concerned and is there any way to watch these parts online or on demand somehow? (In our household we decided to take an 18-year break from all of the television programs that we used to love…)
Maybe New Zealand? (1.34 = 6 medals for 4.47 mm population!)
Dovlatov, a great Soviet writer, documented the color blind approach of the radio at his time: “you can recognize the Polish sportsman by the blue ribbon on his uniform” (it was a match between a black boxer from the US and a white boxer from Poland.)
Canada’s govt tv has good coverage of the Olympics on their “CBC Sports” YouTube channel. NBC sports is good too, but the announcers are unbearable to listen to.
“Race” itself (here is a Forward article where “race” is used only in scarequotes: http://forward.com/news/national/347207/how-the-alt-right-manipulates-the-data-to-prove-the-existence-of-race/) does not actually exist – it is merely something that is culturally defined, like gender, so how is it meaningful to pigeonhole these athletes as belonging to some particular “race”?
Of course, it’s difficult to understand how “separate but equal” contests for “men” and for “women” are even allowed to exist anymore. We would never tolerate separate but equal swimming races for different “races” so why do we still permit them for the different “genders”? Except for one chromosome which carries very few genes (since (most) women have no Y chromosome at all, you can’t put anything critical on it, like the gene for hemoglobin or whatever), men and women have identical genomes (putting aside women who are XY) , even more identical than those of people of different “races”, so how can we continue to treat these two groups differently?
It’s not racist to point out that members of a historically oppressed group have achieved things that none or few members of their group have previously achieved. Your friend is also specifically noting that these athletes are disproving some old stereotypes. No person of good will would see any problem with such statements.
I recall that you wrote something about the Jewish background of the Olympic swimmer Dara Torres eight years ago. I doubt that anyone took offense to that either.
The statistical issue of relevance is that it is much easier to become an Olympic athlete in the first place if you hail from a small country. Athletes from small countries are less likely to win, but thanks to randomness, only enough to erase part of advantage of easier qualification in the first place.
Throw in the venue shopping, where talented athletes seek national identities based on heredity or imagination, and many athletes find an easier path than rising through the USA Olympic system.
Perhaps many of these athletes are just lawyers in training, focused on choosing the correct venue and adopting whichever identity is convenient.
Just state of Maryland would be #3 on the olympic list of gold medalists.
Vince: http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2008/08/20/41-year-old-jewish-mother-in-the-olympics/ was not based on the assumption that being Jewish would prevent a young person from being a good athlete.
Jackie – Race continues to exist for many, as long as there is something to gain or lose based on its continued existence. Separate but equal between the sexes will similarly continue to exist as long as there is something to gain from it.
Jackie and Sam:
There is ample genetic evidence that race certainly does exist and is not just a social construct. See for example Nicholas Wade’s book: “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History”. The article you cite says that the data do show that race exists independent of social constructs but then just baldly asserts that the difference is ‘small.’ We do not know how to measure magnitudes of genetic differences. How about the often made statement that that humans and apes share a large fraction of their genome?
There is also non-genetic evidence of racial differences. Crime scene investigators routinely classify bones as to race. Any radiologist can tell you a patient’s race from his x-ray images.
See this recent article about how politically correct statements such as yours hinder the progress of science:
http://acsh.org/news/2016/08/11/political-correctness-prevents-advancement-of-science/
“[W]hen hypotheses are regarded as supporting certain moral values or desirable political goals, scientists often refuse to abandon them in the light of empirical evidence.”
Just ’cause somebody else is racist doesn’t mean you’re not racist too.