unpacking the major inconsistency of the 21st Century Left
I'm curious why drag is OK but blackface, brownface, or yellowface are not. It is OK to temporarily portray yourself as being a different gender, but not OK to temporarily portray yourself as being another race. This sort of cultural inconsistency fascinates me, especially when I know that both race and gender are cultural constructs.
In human biology, variations in skin color resulted from how much sunlight the local tribes of humans encountered, all around the world. Lots of sunlight = dark skin to defend against skin cancer. Little sunlight = light skin to absorb more Vitamin D. These variations in skin color helped local tribes of humans to adapt, to survive and produce offspring, because it is important to defend against skin cancer, and important to absorb Vitamin D.
When human transportation consisted of only walking and horseback riding, it was unusual to encounter humans whose skin color variations were different from your own. This changed once reliable ocean transportation was developed.
Skin color is, for better or worse, one of the first things we notice about each other when it varies. In a way, racism was a byproduct of ocean transportation. It didn't have the opportunity to exist prior to that invention.
But along with ocean transportation came colonization, which embedded skin color into imperial caste systems, because white Europeans were the first to do the colonization, and their victims were nonwhite. Racism was instituted during the second half of the last millennium as white humans built global empires upon global transportation networks.
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Now we have a global communications network, the Internet, that dumps all the world's skin color variations into the same big virtual room. Meanwhile, many former colonies populated by nonwhite people have developed into competitive capitalist economies, complete with their own nonwhite rich people.
If you want your products to reach the greatest number of global consumers, you have to avoid the perception that your products are racist. You can't mock large sections of the global population. For a white person to temporarily color their skin is viewed as mockery.
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Still, what about males who temporarily dress as females? Why is drag culture not viewed as gender mockery? Why is gender mockery still permissible? Why is it still viewed as comic relief?
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Meanwhile, there has been a strong movement to mainstream transgender people, and people who reject the gender binary. Why is there no similar movement to mainstream transracial people, and people who reject the racial binary of POC vs. non-POC?
It seems that racial identities have become more essential in the Age of the Internet, while gender identities have become less essential. But sex characteristics are far more important, from a human biology point of view, than skin color characteristics. Skin color only affects how much your epidermis interacts with sunlight. Sex characteristics govern whether you can bear children, what kinds of sexual organs you have, your weight, height, and body fat, your vocal frequencies, sex hormone production, and even lifespan.
And patriarchy is older than racism, patriarchy existed before global transportation was invented. It was terribly rare for women to lead agriculture-based societies. Women were generally treated as property -- like slaves -- apart from whether any general system of slavery existed within a society.
Women have every reason to be offended by men pretending to be women, if black people have every reason to be offended by white people pretending to be black.
So ... why the difference?
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There are feminists who are against transgender rights. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists -- TERFs.
TERFs are generally despised by the rest of the Left. But, if I can generalize, TERFs believe there is something essential about sex, about being female, and reject attempts by males to transition into female spaces. They view male-to-female transgender people as using male privilege to invade and control female territory.
So, there are people who don't want men dressing up as women.
But on the Left, in the 21st Century, it is OK to cross the gender barrier or to deconstruct the gender barrier, but it is NOT OK to cross the racial barrier or to deconstruct the racial barrier.
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I don't think that political coalitions necessarily have to resolve their logical inconsistencies.
I think if you look at the political coalition making up the Left, then this inconsistency makes perfect sense.
The Left is made up of (generally):
Racial & religious minorities, people who violate gender norms (either via sexual orientation or gender identity), and liberal whites.
If you identify as a racial or religious minority, you don't want to join a political coalition that denies your distinct identity. So, the Left must maintain the fiction of race, to attract racial minorities, and the Left must maintain the fiction of religion, to attract religious minorities.
People who violate gender norms are fundamentally different from racial minorities, in that they behave differently from the norm. To attract these people to the Left coalition, the Left must violate the fiction of gender.
And liberal whites -- they just feel guilty for the privileges they have over racial minorities and gender nonconformists -- so, they sympathize with both groups, as well as with the poor, and non-human species.
That's our 21st Century Left. Proud of its racial diversity. Proud of its gender nonconformity. Proud of its sympathy for the less privileged.
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To understand the 21st Century Right, just think about the logical inconsistencies of the Left.
The Left makes a huge deal about cultivating racial diversity, when skin color doesn't or at least shouldn't matter anymore -- we spend most of our lives indoors and have both Vitamin D supplements and SPF 30 sunblock. The Left trivializes gender differences, when one gender has a penis and the other can bear children. And the Left is home to a bunch of privileged white people who can't stand how privileged they are -- who literally hate themselves (and other white people) for being so fortunate.
So the Right attracts people who don't want to act like race is the most important thing ever, who take pride in their masculinity or femininity, and who don't hate themselves for being white and/or prosperous.
Yes, the Right attracts bigots also. But, the dirty secret of the 21st Century is that we're all bigots. The Left tries so hard to believe that the Left is free of bigotry, and feels so superior to the Right because people on the Right are bigots. But if you aren't blinded by partisanship, you see that people on the Left say and do bigoted things all the time.
Prejudice and bigotry are human nature. We have to work hard to partially reverse its effects, and this work will never end. But being anti-racist doesn't mean you aren't racist. You are. I am. We all are. And the failure of the Left to admit that, yes, we too, are racist, is one of its biggest problems. Yes, we too are sexist. Yes, we too judge people by their sexual orientation. We are classist. We are ageist. We judge people based on how much schooling they have or where they went to school. We judge people based on which country they were born in. We judge people based on their accents, or their physical disabilities, or their religion, their marital status, their dress code.
The Left pretends that bigotry can be banished, so it takes an unforgiving stance on individual acts of bigotry. But then ... inevitably ... the Left finds examples of bigotry in its own leaders. And then what. Yes, 30 years ago, the Leader of the Left did something racist. Oops. The Leader must go!
And the quest to banish bigotry creates an impossibly long list of rules. Things you can't say, things you must say. Behaviors you must avoid. Behaviors you must perform.
It is impossible. We're all bigots, but we can try to be less bigoted.
But the slogan "Toward a less bigoted world," is not as exciting as "End Racism!"
But ending racism is impossible when your coalition depends on the continuing existence of racial identity. Because the only way to end racism is by ending race and racial identity -- as social constructs. And you can't end race so long as you believe that transcending race mocks a group's racial identity.
If there's something important about being POC, or non-POC, if this categorization matters at all to you, then you are perpetuating racism.
In other words, we can't end racism until your skin color is completely unremarkable. At which point ... wearing blackface would be completely unremarkable. Racism endures until it doesn't matter which color your skin might be, or which color I choose for my skin.
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I hear people say, it isn't just the color of my skin, it is my culture, it is how I was raised, it is how I've been treated by others my entire life, you don't know -- as a white man -- what it was like to grow up as a black woman.
Yes. That's the definition of a cultural construct. Because we all believe skin color matters, it matters.
But we can't get rid of racism until it doesn't matter.
Racial diversity is not the solution to racism. Abolishing race as a cultural construct is the solution. Treating everybody the same regardless of skin color is the solution. And if you're really going to treat everybody the same regardless of skin color, then it shouldn't matter whether Justin Trudeau put some brown makeup on his face once upon a time to change his skin color. It just shouldn't matter.
Leave the cultural construct behind. Stop acting like it is important.
And if you can't leave it behind, then why do you expect others to leave it behind? Either race is something that informs who you are -- in which case you can be judged accordingly by others because of your race -- or it isn't.
You can't celebrate your difference on one day, and then condemn somebody for treating you differently the next day. But this is the definition of the 21st Century Left.
You can't have pride for being black, and then condemn somebody else for having pride in being white. But this is the definition of the 21st Century Left.
In human biology, variations in skin color resulted from how much sunlight the local tribes of humans encountered, all around the world. Lots of sunlight = dark skin to defend against skin cancer. Little sunlight = light skin to absorb more Vitamin D. These variations in skin color helped local tribes of humans to adapt, to survive and produce offspring, because it is important to defend against skin cancer, and important to absorb Vitamin D.
When human transportation consisted of only walking and horseback riding, it was unusual to encounter humans whose skin color variations were different from your own. This changed once reliable ocean transportation was developed.
Skin color is, for better or worse, one of the first things we notice about each other when it varies. In a way, racism was a byproduct of ocean transportation. It didn't have the opportunity to exist prior to that invention.
But along with ocean transportation came colonization, which embedded skin color into imperial caste systems, because white Europeans were the first to do the colonization, and their victims were nonwhite. Racism was instituted during the second half of the last millennium as white humans built global empires upon global transportation networks.
-----
Now we have a global communications network, the Internet, that dumps all the world's skin color variations into the same big virtual room. Meanwhile, many former colonies populated by nonwhite people have developed into competitive capitalist economies, complete with their own nonwhite rich people.
If you want your products to reach the greatest number of global consumers, you have to avoid the perception that your products are racist. You can't mock large sections of the global population. For a white person to temporarily color their skin is viewed as mockery.
-----
Still, what about males who temporarily dress as females? Why is drag culture not viewed as gender mockery? Why is gender mockery still permissible? Why is it still viewed as comic relief?
-----
Meanwhile, there has been a strong movement to mainstream transgender people, and people who reject the gender binary. Why is there no similar movement to mainstream transracial people, and people who reject the racial binary of POC vs. non-POC?
It seems that racial identities have become more essential in the Age of the Internet, while gender identities have become less essential. But sex characteristics are far more important, from a human biology point of view, than skin color characteristics. Skin color only affects how much your epidermis interacts with sunlight. Sex characteristics govern whether you can bear children, what kinds of sexual organs you have, your weight, height, and body fat, your vocal frequencies, sex hormone production, and even lifespan.
And patriarchy is older than racism, patriarchy existed before global transportation was invented. It was terribly rare for women to lead agriculture-based societies. Women were generally treated as property -- like slaves -- apart from whether any general system of slavery existed within a society.
Women have every reason to be offended by men pretending to be women, if black people have every reason to be offended by white people pretending to be black.
So ... why the difference?
-----
There are feminists who are against transgender rights. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists -- TERFs.
TERFs are generally despised by the rest of the Left. But, if I can generalize, TERFs believe there is something essential about sex, about being female, and reject attempts by males to transition into female spaces. They view male-to-female transgender people as using male privilege to invade and control female territory.
So, there are people who don't want men dressing up as women.
But on the Left, in the 21st Century, it is OK to cross the gender barrier or to deconstruct the gender barrier, but it is NOT OK to cross the racial barrier or to deconstruct the racial barrier.
-----
I don't think that political coalitions necessarily have to resolve their logical inconsistencies.
I think if you look at the political coalition making up the Left, then this inconsistency makes perfect sense.
The Left is made up of (generally):
Racial & religious minorities, people who violate gender norms (either via sexual orientation or gender identity), and liberal whites.
If you identify as a racial or religious minority, you don't want to join a political coalition that denies your distinct identity. So, the Left must maintain the fiction of race, to attract racial minorities, and the Left must maintain the fiction of religion, to attract religious minorities.
People who violate gender norms are fundamentally different from racial minorities, in that they behave differently from the norm. To attract these people to the Left coalition, the Left must violate the fiction of gender.
And liberal whites -- they just feel guilty for the privileges they have over racial minorities and gender nonconformists -- so, they sympathize with both groups, as well as with the poor, and non-human species.
That's our 21st Century Left. Proud of its racial diversity. Proud of its gender nonconformity. Proud of its sympathy for the less privileged.
-----
To understand the 21st Century Right, just think about the logical inconsistencies of the Left.
The Left makes a huge deal about cultivating racial diversity, when skin color doesn't or at least shouldn't matter anymore -- we spend most of our lives indoors and have both Vitamin D supplements and SPF 30 sunblock. The Left trivializes gender differences, when one gender has a penis and the other can bear children. And the Left is home to a bunch of privileged white people who can't stand how privileged they are -- who literally hate themselves (and other white people) for being so fortunate.
So the Right attracts people who don't want to act like race is the most important thing ever, who take pride in their masculinity or femininity, and who don't hate themselves for being white and/or prosperous.
Yes, the Right attracts bigots also. But, the dirty secret of the 21st Century is that we're all bigots. The Left tries so hard to believe that the Left is free of bigotry, and feels so superior to the Right because people on the Right are bigots. But if you aren't blinded by partisanship, you see that people on the Left say and do bigoted things all the time.
Prejudice and bigotry are human nature. We have to work hard to partially reverse its effects, and this work will never end. But being anti-racist doesn't mean you aren't racist. You are. I am. We all are. And the failure of the Left to admit that, yes, we too, are racist, is one of its biggest problems. Yes, we too are sexist. Yes, we too judge people by their sexual orientation. We are classist. We are ageist. We judge people based on how much schooling they have or where they went to school. We judge people based on which country they were born in. We judge people based on their accents, or their physical disabilities, or their religion, their marital status, their dress code.
The Left pretends that bigotry can be banished, so it takes an unforgiving stance on individual acts of bigotry. But then ... inevitably ... the Left finds examples of bigotry in its own leaders. And then what. Yes, 30 years ago, the Leader of the Left did something racist. Oops. The Leader must go!
And the quest to banish bigotry creates an impossibly long list of rules. Things you can't say, things you must say. Behaviors you must avoid. Behaviors you must perform.
It is impossible. We're all bigots, but we can try to be less bigoted.
But the slogan "Toward a less bigoted world," is not as exciting as "End Racism!"
But ending racism is impossible when your coalition depends on the continuing existence of racial identity. Because the only way to end racism is by ending race and racial identity -- as social constructs. And you can't end race so long as you believe that transcending race mocks a group's racial identity.
If there's something important about being POC, or non-POC, if this categorization matters at all to you, then you are perpetuating racism.
In other words, we can't end racism until your skin color is completely unremarkable. At which point ... wearing blackface would be completely unremarkable. Racism endures until it doesn't matter which color your skin might be, or which color I choose for my skin.
-----
I hear people say, it isn't just the color of my skin, it is my culture, it is how I was raised, it is how I've been treated by others my entire life, you don't know -- as a white man -- what it was like to grow up as a black woman.
Yes. That's the definition of a cultural construct. Because we all believe skin color matters, it matters.
But we can't get rid of racism until it doesn't matter.
Racial diversity is not the solution to racism. Abolishing race as a cultural construct is the solution. Treating everybody the same regardless of skin color is the solution. And if you're really going to treat everybody the same regardless of skin color, then it shouldn't matter whether Justin Trudeau put some brown makeup on his face once upon a time to change his skin color. It just shouldn't matter.
Leave the cultural construct behind. Stop acting like it is important.
And if you can't leave it behind, then why do you expect others to leave it behind? Either race is something that informs who you are -- in which case you can be judged accordingly by others because of your race -- or it isn't.
You can't celebrate your difference on one day, and then condemn somebody for treating you differently the next day. But this is the definition of the 21st Century Left.
You can't have pride for being black, and then condemn somebody else for having pride in being white. But this is the definition of the 21st Century Left.