Really

To call someone a nigger is not as bad as arguing that black people have lower intelligence than whites.

This assertion is not mine; it comes from Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the scathing expose The Tipping Point and the thriller Blink. He made it a few days ago here, in an essay dealing with the Michael Richards scandal. He asks

[I]f there is in fact a hierarchy to hate speech, on what basis should comments be judged?

...

1. Content. What is said clearly makes a difference. ...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 targetted claim is worse than calling a name. ...[I]t matters how much a stereotype deviates from a legitimate generalization. ....All hate speech is hurtful. But racism crosses the line and becomes dangerous when it encourages false belief about a targetted group.

Gladwell’s proposed new spelling of the word “targeted” demonstrates a refreshing indifference to the orthography imposed by the oppressor.

2. Intention.  Was the remark intended to wound, or intended to perpetuate some social wrong? Was it malicious? ...[A] 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 Chapelle’s use of the word “nigger,” or the Jewish jokes told by Jewish comics fall into the same category.

Noted.

3. Conviction. Does the statement represent the individual’s considered opinion? This to me is the trickiest of the three criterion. ...All of us, in our unconscious, harbor prejudicial thoughts. What is of greatest concern...[are] cases where hate speech appears to have been the product of considered, conscious deliberation.  Comments made in writing, then, ought to be taken more seriously and judged more harshly than comments made in speech; comments made soberly are worse than those made in anger or jest. Comments made in the absence of emotional or chemical duress are worse than those made drunk, or in some stressful context.

A charitable reader will credit Gladwell with having intended to type “criterions”.

Posted by Søren Renner on Saturday, December 9, 2006 at 04:32 PM in
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Comments:

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 09, 2006, 07:03 PM | #

Peter Hitchens’ younger and far-less-endowed-with-common-sense brother Christopher comments here on the more general topic touched on, in his typical principle-mixed-with-degenerateness style (or, principle-in-the-service-of-degenerateness? — something like that ...).

Posted by Malcolm in the Middle on December 09, 2006, 07:30 PM | #

The following is a quote by Malcolm Gladwell, which, by shining light on his ancestry, makes his asinine comments on “hate speech” more clear, with respect to his own interests:

“I never feel my whiteness more than when I’m around West Indians, and I never feel my West Indianness more than when I’m with whites… . My parents conquered difference, and we would all like to think that sort of accomplishment is something that could be passed down from generation to generation. That’s why we’re all, in theory, so excited by the idea of miscegenation: because if we mix the races, presumably, we create a new generation of people to whom existing racial categories do not exist. I don’t think it’s that easy, though. If you mix black and white, you don’t obliterate those categories: you merely create a third category...Racial intermarriage solves one problem in the first generation, only to create another in the next--a generation that cannot ignore difference the way their parents did.”

Posted by Steven Palese on December 09, 2006, 07:55 PM | #

Actually the logic of hate speech and political correctness is quite simple. It’s a straight function of the relative victimological values among participants.

For example, if a Jewish person offends a black person, is that hate speech?

Let’s conduct a quick victimological analysis and find out -

Jews are born with a higher innate victimological worth than blacks, as expressed in the formula:

Holocaust > Slavery = Jews > Blacks

Therefore, in any conflict between Jews and blacks, Jews are always right, as expressed in the formula:

Jews > Blacks = Jews always right

Therefore, if a Jewish person offends a black person it is not hate speech.

Finally, if you disagree you are insensitive. Report to sensitivity training and do not return until you agree.

Posted by Alex Zeka on December 09, 2006, 08:23 PM | #

Ergo, something is more hateful because it expresses a more demonstratable proposition? Sounds almost like what they object to is clarity.

Posted by Bo Sears on December 09, 2006, 08:26 PM | #

Steven Palese is quite correct in his analysis that victim status (applies equally to ethnicity status) is hierarchically ordered. We devoted attention to this phenomenon in our on-line syllabus, and you can see our four tests to determine who is dominant over whom at:

http://www.resistingdefamation.org/sub/g4.htm

Thre is another angle to consider about all this and that is the active pulling down of symbols and histories of ethnic groups besides those of the white American demographic. A recent survey was carried out about the top ten well known events in American history.

The top event, but just barely, was American independence, July 4th, etc.

Coming in at second was the Holocaust, not even an American event.

The Atlantic Crossing as it related to African-Americans was pushed down to number ten, and the Atlantic Crossing as it related to famished Irish-Americans was excluded altogether.

Columbus was way down the list, too.

Under the reign of the neocons, African-American historical consciousness is taking quite a beating, notwithstanding what it looks like. Japanese-Americans who claim to have been interned in concentration camps during WWII are regularly chastised by New York, and have now settled for “internment camps” leaving the use of “concentration camps” for their betters.

American Indians are being pushed out of the history texts for the most part, and other ethnic groups just disappear from American history during the textbook seven year cycle. (We hear more about wrongs done to American Indians from Germans in Germany than any one else.)

So it’s not just hegemony that is demanded, it is the monopolization of all public spaces by one of the great Semitic nations. It’s quite breath-taking in its scope when you take a good look at how it is done...textbook reviews are reshaped every seven years in California, newspaper focus shifts ever closer to the sufferings & accomplishments of only one group, and the drama of African-American sufferings is being disappeared as we speak. Left over bits attract media attention, but the overall story has been sunk beneath the narrative about the miraculous sufferings in Europe & successes in Southwest Asia of our special friends.

Most of us feel it applies only to Euro man because that’s what we notice, but Afro man is taking one hell of a beating in the USA at this time, too. The neocons have not lost sight that The Rambam was the founder of scientific racism.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 09, 2006, 10:43 PM | #

Kwa is a Nguni prefix meaning “place of...”.  The Zulus of South Africa speak Nguni apparently, so this meaning of kwa may explain the word KwaZulu, the name given to the semi-independent Zulu tribal homeland in the former South Africa. 

The satirical term Amerikwa strikes me as an appropriate coinage.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on December 10, 2006, 02:08 AM | #

Ergo, something is more hateful because it expresses a more demonstratable proposition? Sounds almost like what they object to is clarity.

Yes.  “I hate me sum nigras” fits into the liberal narrative; “I can prove egalitarianism is a lie, via proving blacks are less intelligent than whites” does not.  What he objects to is being challenged, I suppose.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 10, 2006, 10:55 PM | #

Blogger Udolpho offers an opinion:

“I will restate it:  words cannot be taboo.  It is impossible, or impossible among rational, civilized men.  Only savages think that way, and we are not savages.  If you want people to go around saying ‘the N-word,’ itself a cowardly monument to the actual word, then you have missed the point as completely as a fool can.”

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