On Brittney Cooper: The motivation and effect of redefining "racism"

 Among dilettante linguists, we distinguish between two methods of ascribing meaning to words:  prescriptivism and descriptivism.  Prescriptivism is the school of thought that treats language as a formal construct, built around rules of grammar, syntax and formal definitions.  Descriptivism is the school of thought that treats language as an evolving social construct to be studied in its ever-changing process.  The use of a word or phrase in a certain way, when widely understood, has that meaning, which we can describe in an empirical way, regardless of what rectal-sticks say.  I am a prescriptivist (rectal-stick), not merely because it is the path of annoying pedantry, but because rules make sense.  Quite literally, rules create sense.  In the absence of rules, finding sense becomes challenging at best.  Prescriptivism is more appealing to those more mathematically inclined, generally speaking.  I realize, of course, that I am in the minority.

Yet there is another approach, gaining prominence.  We might call it Foucaultianism.  Derived from Michel Foucault's belief in the relationship between language and power-- not too far from Orwell's, really-- the Foucaultians believe that you can assert power by trying to change language through assertion.  X no longer means what it has meant, because we say so, and we will deride and berate you if you adhere to the existing definition of X.  Here is the new meaning of X.  We insist that you use it.

The Foucaultian change in language is neither descriptivist nor prescriptivist.  It is an attempt to re-write the dictionary, and thereby change thought, as an exercise in power.  It is not descriptivist because it ascribes meaning to a word contrary to existing usage, but nor is it prescriptivist because it ascribes meaning contrary to the existing formal definition.

Why does Foucaultianism work this way?  Because the purpose of language, for the Foucaultian, is not to communicate, but rather, to exercise power.  Everything, for Michel Foucault, is an exercise in power.  The idea is to force a change in language to force a change in thought.  Sapir-Whorf, in some sense?  I have been writing about that in my ongoing commentary on China Mieville's Embassytown, which is a fucking awesome novel, but Michel Foucault was full of shit, as are his followers.

And because they do not see language as primarily a tool for communication, they see it as a battleground for annoying shit.  Hence, they are willing to play language games that will infuriate the prescriptivists and descriptivists with equal vigor, unless some subset also happens to go along with their bullshit politics.

Racism.  Define it.  Both prescriptivists and descriptivists will provide similar definitions.  Racism is the ascription of negative traits or negative affect towards a race of people.  I could elaborate, but from that rather parsimonious definition, you could predict how I would elaborate, so why bother?  Just this once, I'll shut up and move on.

What about structural or systemic racism?  I differ with John McWhorter here.  I think that systemic racism is a useful term for an important concept, and I won't bother to rehash why, because I have other points to make here.  As a linguistic point, though, we preface "systemic racism" with the word, "systemic," just as we preface "veggie burger" with "veggie."  It's a different thing.  I'm not going to demand that we get rid of the phrase, "veggie burger," even though I'll never eat one.  It's a free market, and if you want to eat one, like some sick, goddamned psychopath, you traitor to America, that's on you, but the term should exist, with the word, "veggie," modifying, "burger," to indicate that "veggie burger" is different from "burger," and in fact, not part of a subset of items called "burgers."  It's just a different thing.

A sick, wrong, and evil thing, but a thing.

Similarly, systemic racism is a sick, wrong and evil thing, un-American, something we should seek to combat, but the term is an important term for the purposes of communication.  Yet we use the term, "systemic" to indicate that it is different from "racism."

Racism is the ascription of negative traits or negative affect towards a race.  Systemic racism occurs when a system or institution has subtle biases that negatively impact one race more than another, even if the rules are neutral on their face, because of hidden biases in political, economic or social processes.

That second thing is really different from the first, and it isn't a subset.  It's just a different thing.  Burgers and veggie burgers, except that while veggie burgers and systemic racism are both evil, actual burgers are awesome, so my analogy fell apart.  Oh, well.

Moving on.

The point is, if you try to redefine racism such that systemic racism is the real racism, you have a problem.  Have you seen people try that trick?  Call bullshit on it.  Besides, putting bullshit on a veggie burger won't make it taste any worse.  It's a goddamned veggie burger.

Yet what's worse is the following:  racism = prejudice + power.

Now that's some serious, Foucaultian redefinition.  One might ask how power is being defined here, and the answer is the inverted hierarchy of Kimberle Crenshaw.  Intersectionality could have been a useful observation from Crenshaw's article, "Mapping the Margins."  To be a woman and to be African-American is more than the additive sum of those components because of unique social issues.  As an analytic concept, there's a there there.

What intersectionality became, though, was a hierarchy of oppression, or as Latina feminist, Elizabeth Betita Martinez called it, the oppression olympics.  Critical theory reduces everything to an oppressor-oppressed dynamic, and intersectionality complicates that by asking how many "oppressor" boxes you check, and how many "oppressed" boxes you check.  Power, in this definition, is not about how much money or status or position you have in any concrete sense, but how many "oppressor" boxes you check in the hierarchy of intersectionality and critical theory.  If you belong to oppressor groups, then you have power, even if you are dirt-poor, uneducated, and nobody.  If you belong to oppressed groups, then you have no power, even if you are rich and famous.  Most importantly for this new definition of racism, "power" is defined by the oppressor/oppressed racial groups.

That means African-Americans are definitionally incapable of being racist.  And, if you assert by assumption that all people have prejudices and that all white people have power, then all white people are definitionally racist.

So.  Racism = prejudice + power.  Translation:  All white people are racist, and African-Americans cannot, by definition, be racist.  See?  You just needed your critical theory secret decoder ring.

With that in mind, let's have a listen to Professor Brittney Cooper, of Rutgers University.  This is actually an old clip, which has been making the rounds, and I am embedding an edited version, just for the sake of taking the most horrifying moments of what this woman thinks and has to say.

Yeah.  Professor Brittney Cooper, ladies and gentlemen, Brittney Cooper.  In all likelihood, you had never heard of her before, but dwelling as I do within the tower of tusk, I have known who she is, and what she is for some time.  I live in a gloriously diverse city that gets a bad reputation, and truth be told, it has its problems, many of which are empirically verifiable in the data, but there is a lot to be said for living in a diverse place, and part of that is that it helps to immunize you against stereotyping.

Unfortunately, Brittney Cooper is real, and I have no energy for responding to her vile racism, her insanity, her stupidity, nor pointing out what it says about academia that people like her are given a paycheck and feted within the academy.  It is, at least, a good thing when exposure is given to this kind of vile, racist rant.

Instead, let's address language.  Racism = prejudice + power, right?

Following from the Foucaultian redefinition of racism, Brittney Cooper cannot be racist, so that insane rant in which she momentarily fantasizes about anti-white genocide?  Yeah, not racist.  Sure, she is a tenured professor at Rutgers, and in no real way, oppressed, but she checks intersectional boxes, so she is more oppressed than poor, white people in Appalachia.  Power so-redefined, she escapes culpability, and you're not allowed to call her racist.

Worse, knowing that, she can go as far as she wants, it it will never count as racism.  When you take away a penalty for a particular offense which has any positive incentive, you are, yourself, incentivizing it.  Hence, the "racism = prejudice + power" construction incentivizes racism by providing a get-out-of-racism-free card.  Because that is the only way to listen to Brittney Cooper without recoiling from her racism.

And like I said, I've known about her for years.  And I've been listening to this kind of thing from her ilk for years.

When I was in grad school, staring down the terrifying barrel of the academic job market, I was given a gift.  A game.  It was called "Survival of the Witless:  Anti-Social Darwinism In The Academic World.  A Wild, No Holds Barred Game of Tenure Politics."  There was no attribution because whoever wrote the game was obviously a pissed-off, failed academic, working out some issues.

Anyway, it was a card game in which you tried to get enough "publication" cards for tenure, but it also depended on a tenure vote from the committee.  The game included bios from the department.  Let's consider.  I'm just going to quote the bio for "Jamal Leonkwa Shabazz, Jr."

A leading proponent of Afro-centrism, Jamal was on the verge of being fired when he gained tenure for his claim that all white people are repressed psycho-killers because the cold European climate has chilled their souls.  Cleopatra and Beethoven were both Afrikan, while Idi Amin was really white.  No one dares call Jamal an idiot, for fear of being labelled a racist, and no one is sure if even he believes the trash he spews.

I will note here that as batshit as this sounds, a few years ago, I participated in a forum in which one of these types made the claim that "Europeans" are intrinsically greedy because having come from a cold climate where growing things is hard, it became an intrinsic part of whiteness to try to acquire and not share, whereas because Africa is so fertile and growing crops is so easy, there's time for family and sharing, which is why African-Americans are so intrinsically family and friend-oriented.

Poe's law, except that Survival of the Witless wasn't on the internet.  I will not identify the racist nitwit who made that climate claim, but I will note that the room seemed to approve.

There's a reason that Brittney Cooper thrives in academia.  Survival of the Witless was released in 1997.  Jamal Leonkwa Shabazz, Jr. is everywhere now.  Why?

Jamal Leonkwa Shabazz, Jr. definitionally cannot be racist.  He can get as crazy as he wants, and I have actually heard the climate claim.  In real life.  In academia.  Brittney Cooper fantasizes about genocide, and stops herself, not because of murder, but because it would be damaging to her soul.  Seriously.

Racism = prejudice + power is worse than an escape hatch.  It is a permission structure.  It is permission to go full Brittney.

I hadn't seen this rant before, but when I heard about it, and I heard that it was Brittney Cooper, my reaction was, yeah, that tracks.  Stop incentivizing this shit with linguistic games.

toe, "past and language," from the book about my idle plot on a vague anxiety.