User talk:JCarriker/Wikipedia: Race and Ethnicity

Scope
Please do not edit this page unless you were invited to participate, you will most likely be reverted. Thanks. -JCarriker 20:16, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Purpose
We've had some pretty serious conflicts in Wikipedia related to race and ethnicity. Some of these have been over article content and how race and ethnicity are discussed, but there have also been serious problems over racial and ethnic insults, or perceived racial and ethnic insults, on talk pages, in RFCs, etc. JCarriker and I have have some back-and-forth on this and, at his suggestion, we have pulled together initially a small group to start some discussion of this, with the intention of widening the discussion later. We are using the wiki mechanism to make our discussion publicly visible, but keeping this in user talk space because it is not, at this time, an open discussion.

Although participation is currently limited, this is not expected to be a mutual admiration society. Within the initial invited group are some people who have come into conflict with one another in the past over their approach to this matter, although (to the best of my knowledge) none where that conflict has threatened to explode. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:12, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

The first thing...
That should be addressed is whatever is going on with Deeceevoice. Crap that people like User:Wareware have said is usually ignored, while people like DCV have been pointed out as the devil since they have been here. ε γκυκλοπ  αίδεια  *  05:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)


 * What's happening with her is the "acute" version. It's closely related to the "chronic" version reflected in pseudoscientific racism as seen in this diff at Talk:Race and intelligence. Both behaviors are bad and insidious -- and the reinforce each other. BCorr | Брайен 05:55, 22 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that Encyclopedist offers an excellent illustration of the double standard. I think that is what many of us who have supported Deecee have been getting at. It's not that we think she never crosses the line or attacks people acting in good faith from time to time, but that she's unfairly singled out for it, while others who behave in the same way get a free pass. Enter the old specter of systemic bias; Deeceevoice receives a knee-jerk reaction because when she says something even mildly pejorative it is offensive to the demographic met by a majority wikipedians. As a result, she's single out while the comments of others, such as the one in the link provided by Bcorr, go unchallenged.


 * Also, While the Deeceevoice/Justforasecond conflict is what led to the initiation of this discussion, the discussion should not be about it alone. So we can get at the heart of the problem, please remember to share your own personal experiences with the problem as well as your interpretations of the experiences of others. -JCarriker 06:35, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with JCarriker, especially about Deeceevoice being singled out and how there is a double standard. Yes, Deeceevoice went over the line sometimes but what ticked me off is that I see users here do that all the time but they are not singled out like she was.

That said, I have also encountered among a number of users here a tendency to call any mention of race or ethnicity "racism." Justforasecond did this when he was jokingly refered to as a "whiteboy." There is a difference between this and true racism but many users here don't see that.--Alabamaboy 17:51, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Which leads me to one of my main related themes, which I will take up below at. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:30, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Race awareness, race prejudice, and racism
I think it is absolutely crucial to distinguish between race awareness, race prejudice, and racism. I suppose that my definitions here may be subject to debate (especially race awareness, which may be a near-neologism, but I don't have a better term), but I think my point should be clear. Throughout, similar remarks could be made about ethnicity, and probably sexual orientation.

Race awareness is simply being aware that race sometimes matters. I personally don't believe that race is primarily a matter of biology (I think it is largely a social construct), but I think that it is an important lens through which many people see society, and it can't be wished away by just saying "we'll just be colorblind." In the U.S., where I live, much of the well-intentioned 1960s policy of racial integration quickly turned into a process of racial assimilation, where a color-blind American was supposed to be (to paraphrase Musil on the term "Austro-Hungarian"), a white person, plus a black person, minus the black person. Sort of like a "Judaeo-Christian", which is often a Christian, plus a Jew, minus the Jew. I happen to think that being consciously aware of race is a positive thing. Given that it will in any event, for most of us, be at least lingering unconsciously, we can only deal with it rationally by first bringing it to consciousness.

Race prejudice or racial stereotyping is a matter of individual habits of mind. Prejudices are not always about unfavorable views of another race: as a Jew, it makes me almost as uncomfortable when someone says, "I've always admired you people" as when they say the opposite. Almost. I'll admit that if I have to choose, I'd rather be irrationally admired than irrationally despised, but typically the same person who irrationally admires one race or ethnicity irrationally despises another. And making occasional exceptions for individuals does not mean one is unprejudiced.

Even more important, it does not mean that one is not functionally racist. Focusing for a moment on the encyclopedic side, I've noticed several times on talk pages claims like "Ion Antonescu couldn't possibly have been anti-Semitic, his first wife was Jewish." 200,000 corpses beg to differ. Probably he did not have a visceral hatred of Jews, but he participated in a system of oppression and (in his case) genocide. In this matter, his personal prejudices or lack thereof are neither here nor there. Racism is a nastier beast than mere prejudice, and it is not (or not mainly) about individual attitudes, it is about systems of oppression. I'm sure there were some fine people at Harvard in the days it wouldn't admit any Blacks, and many Southern slaveowners who treated their slaves well (insofar as one person can deprive another of liberty and still "treat them well"). In this respect, though, it didn't matter: they were still functioning as part of a racist system.

Needless to say, I don't think we are in any danger of genocide on Wikipedia, but I do think we are in danger of a climate that is inherently hostile to certain racial and ethnic groups. There is a lot of nastiness around this sort of thing on Wikipedia. When there are roughly equal numbers of people here from both sides of a divide&mdash;the Germans and the Poles arguing over Gdańsk/Danzig, for example&mdash;it may be ugly, but each side generally gives as good as it gets, and it drives away only the thin-skinned. (Not to suggest that everybody on either side turned into a fighter on this issue, but several did, and not to suggest that driving away the thin-skinned is good, but it's less calamitous than driving away a racial or ethnic group.) But when it is White Americans of Black Americans, or heterosexuals on gays, or anything else where the numbers are all on one side, the dynamic is very different, and rather than just a rift, there is a rout, and the worst of us scent blood and go in for the kill. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:30, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Don't reason from Deeceevoice's case
I've been asked to contribute here by JCarriker. I don't edit articles related to race and ethnicity, nor do I (personally) really encounter the issue much on Wikipedia, with the exception of Deeceevoice. Therefore, I don't have much to add to this discussion. However, I don't believe the case of Deeceevoice to be very useful in evaluating whether Wikipedia is a particularly hostile or unequal environment for, say, African Americans. This is because Deeceevoice A) is not an easy person to get on with -- she "doesn't do nice", as she puts it; and B) she has broken policies with aplomb. Accordingly, it is difficult to discern the motives of Deeceevoice's opponents. Are they just offended by her brusqueness (and sometimes rudeness)? Are they simply keen on enforcing Wikipedia policies? Or are they racists? Difficult, and likely impossible, to tell, but it's unsafe to reason from a single, atypical example.

(I'd like point out that I've previously filed an RfC against a white and British user &mdash; not that it matters &mdash; for incivility and personal attacks: User:Irate). &mdash; Matt Crypto 19:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I wonder if there is a way to heal the issues and differences that DCV's arbitration has brought to the foreground? In some ways, this entire affair has been bad for racial relations here at Wikipedia. Those who don't like how DCV acts have said that their actions are solely in response to DCV not being "nice" (so to speak). Those who don't like what has happened to DCV (like me) see the affair as being driven by racism and bigotry. The funny thing is that there is overlap between the two sides. A number of those pushing to sanction DCV admit that some of actions against her have been wrong and haven't helped racial issues here (and that some of the users pushing the issue against her are doing so for possibly racist reasons). Almost all of us opposed to the actions against DCV admit that she is abrasive and has violated Wikipedia guidelines and should be more civil in her discussions here. What we see, though, is a double-standard at work, with users appearing to gang up against non-minority editors like DCV for being less than civil but not doing the same to white editors. Because this discussion to open to only invited individuals, I would encourage people to post their thoughts here on a special talk page I created. --Alabamaboy 21:34, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Ron Dellums
There's an ongoing battle over how much to emphasize Dellums's perceived hypocrisy and his son "the convicted murderer". It's both of immediate concern and an example of how the issues of race express themselves here.

BCorr | Брайен 12:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC)