Beorn
02-08-2009, 11:43 PM
February 05, 2009
Is Carol Thatcher racist?
http://timesonline.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/02/05/carol_thatcher.jpg (http://timesonline.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/02/05/carol_thatcher.jpg)
A couple of years back, following a series of "racist outburst" controversies in the US (Michael Richards from Seinfeld and Mel Gibson were the two best known) the journalist Malcolm Gladwell wrote what I still regard as the definitive post on the topic (http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/12/defining_a_raci.html).
He proposed three criteria be used to judge whether the remark and the person making it should be labelled racist.
So using Gladwell's criteria, what should we make of Carol Thatcher and her "golliwog" ? Has the BBC got it right?
First, content:
What is said clearly makes a difference. I think, for example, that hate speech is more hateful the more specific it is. To call someone a nigger is not as a bad as arguing that black people have lower intelligence than whites. To make a targeted claim is worse than calling a name. Similarly, I think it matters how much a stereotype deviates from a legitimate generalisation. For instance, (and this is, admittedly, not a great example) I think it's worse for someone to say that Jews are money-grubbers than it is to make a joke about how Orthodox Jews have large families.
We do not know the exact content of Carol Thatcher's remark. Golliwog is a stupid, horrible, insensitive term to use to describe a black person. It clearly falls at the bottom end of Gladwell's spectrum, if it was not accompanied by a derogatory description.
Which brings one on to Gladwell's second point.
Intention:
Was the remark intended to wound, or intended to perpetuate some social wrong? Was it malicious? I remember sitting in church, as a child, while our Presbyterian minister made jokes about how "cheap" Presbyterians were. If non-Presbyterians make that joke, it might be offensive. But a Presbyterian making jokes about Presbyterians with the intention of making Presbyterians laugh is fine, because there is a complete absence of malice in the comment. I think that Richard Pryor or Dave Chappelle's use of the word "nigger," or the Jewish jokes told by Jewish comics fall into the same category.
There is a dispute as to whether Carol Thatcher intended it as a wounding insult. She says it was a joke, a BBC spokesman says that others who heard it did not hear it like that.
However, while the remark may not have been intentionally wounding, it certainly intentionally perpetuated a wounding stereotype. And it did this even if it were a joke. I think it comes about half way on Gladwell's scale.
Then there is Gladwell's third criterion - conviction
Does the statement represent the individual's considered opinion? This to me is the trickiest of the three criterion. In Blink, I wrote a great deal about unconscious racism - how powerful and how prevalent it is. All of us, in our unconscious, harbour prejudicial thoughts. (If you don't believe me, I urge you to take the tests at www. i-a-t.org.) What is of greatest concern, I think, are not instances where those kinds of buried feelings leak out, but cases where hate speech appears to have been the product of considered, conscious deliberation.
Almost certainly Ms Thatcher's comments were not her considered conviction. Again, they come near the bottom of the scale.
So does this judgement on the Gladwell criteria mean that the BBC has been too harsh? No. I think it has got it exactly right.
First, these were not entirely private comments. They were made in an office environment, and might make a disciplinary offence in any workplace. It is true that such remarks often do not result in any action, because no one complains.
But if you make such a remark in front of strangers, some of whom may be offended, you leave yourself open to a complaint.
Second, the BBC has said that it will still use Ms Thatcher but not on the One show. This is a good distinction. It suggests that the BBC judges that her behaviour on this show was inappropriate, unacceptable and deserved sanction. But they also believe that she is not an unacceptable and inappropriate person.
The Gladwell criteria show that this is a sage judgement. It is surely indisputable that remarking that a black person looks like a golliwog is dreadful. But to conclude that this means that Ms Thatcher herself is beyond the pale would be too harsh.
Source (http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2009/02/a-couple-of-yea.html)
Is Carol Thatcher racist?
http://timesonline.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/02/05/carol_thatcher.jpg (http://timesonline.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/02/05/carol_thatcher.jpg)
A couple of years back, following a series of "racist outburst" controversies in the US (Michael Richards from Seinfeld and Mel Gibson were the two best known) the journalist Malcolm Gladwell wrote what I still regard as the definitive post on the topic (http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/12/defining_a_raci.html).
He proposed three criteria be used to judge whether the remark and the person making it should be labelled racist.
So using Gladwell's criteria, what should we make of Carol Thatcher and her "golliwog" ? Has the BBC got it right?
First, content:
What is said clearly makes a difference. I think, for example, that hate speech is more hateful the more specific it is. To call someone a nigger is not as a bad as arguing that black people have lower intelligence than whites. To make a targeted claim is worse than calling a name. Similarly, I think it matters how much a stereotype deviates from a legitimate generalisation. For instance, (and this is, admittedly, not a great example) I think it's worse for someone to say that Jews are money-grubbers than it is to make a joke about how Orthodox Jews have large families.
We do not know the exact content of Carol Thatcher's remark. Golliwog is a stupid, horrible, insensitive term to use to describe a black person. It clearly falls at the bottom end of Gladwell's spectrum, if it was not accompanied by a derogatory description.
Which brings one on to Gladwell's second point.
Intention:
Was the remark intended to wound, or intended to perpetuate some social wrong? Was it malicious? I remember sitting in church, as a child, while our Presbyterian minister made jokes about how "cheap" Presbyterians were. If non-Presbyterians make that joke, it might be offensive. But a Presbyterian making jokes about Presbyterians with the intention of making Presbyterians laugh is fine, because there is a complete absence of malice in the comment. I think that Richard Pryor or Dave Chappelle's use of the word "nigger," or the Jewish jokes told by Jewish comics fall into the same category.
There is a dispute as to whether Carol Thatcher intended it as a wounding insult. She says it was a joke, a BBC spokesman says that others who heard it did not hear it like that.
However, while the remark may not have been intentionally wounding, it certainly intentionally perpetuated a wounding stereotype. And it did this even if it were a joke. I think it comes about half way on Gladwell's scale.
Then there is Gladwell's third criterion - conviction
Does the statement represent the individual's considered opinion? This to me is the trickiest of the three criterion. In Blink, I wrote a great deal about unconscious racism - how powerful and how prevalent it is. All of us, in our unconscious, harbour prejudicial thoughts. (If you don't believe me, I urge you to take the tests at www. i-a-t.org.) What is of greatest concern, I think, are not instances where those kinds of buried feelings leak out, but cases where hate speech appears to have been the product of considered, conscious deliberation.
Almost certainly Ms Thatcher's comments were not her considered conviction. Again, they come near the bottom of the scale.
So does this judgement on the Gladwell criteria mean that the BBC has been too harsh? No. I think it has got it exactly right.
First, these were not entirely private comments. They were made in an office environment, and might make a disciplinary offence in any workplace. It is true that such remarks often do not result in any action, because no one complains.
But if you make such a remark in front of strangers, some of whom may be offended, you leave yourself open to a complaint.
Second, the BBC has said that it will still use Ms Thatcher but not on the One show. This is a good distinction. It suggests that the BBC judges that her behaviour on this show was inappropriate, unacceptable and deserved sanction. But they also believe that she is not an unacceptable and inappropriate person.
The Gladwell criteria show that this is a sage judgement. It is surely indisputable that remarking that a black person looks like a golliwog is dreadful. But to conclude that this means that Ms Thatcher herself is beyond the pale would be too harsh.
Source (http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2009/02/a-couple-of-yea.html)