why the term xenophobia makes more sense than a rascist.
Michael Richards sure added an unfortunate line to his obituary this year. I watched the footage of him screaming NIGGER at his audience in LA and let out a loud, anguished groan. I saw him once, here in Chicago shooting a film, from a little crowd watching the night time event. He was on Friday's at the time and kind of an underground hit. Michael came over to the crowd and chatted everyone up and I was impressed with him. This is the image I have had of him in the back of my mind since the incident, and when he was brought up, I was always quick to tell people that he treated normal folk cool and was a good guy on the set that night.
Now this shit... footage of the man screaming Nigger at black people. I have worked with black people, lived with them, loved them... from when I was an eighteen year old white boy fresh out of Indiana and living in the black ghetto in Dallas, Texas, where I was treated more decently than I had ever had been by white people. I was living in a flop house, a small dormitory where they gave us food and board for cheap. I was the only normal white guy there; the others were middle-aged drunks with sad long faces to go with their long, sad stories. The black guys were all fairly normal; one, a french black guy whose name I have spent damn good money driving out of my memory, gave me a tour my first day there. Showing me all the soup kitchens, day labor places, flop houses, etc... Invaluable knowledge to someone like me, who would go on to move from city to city without much more than busfare. Memories like that change one. I was humbled by the men I met down there; shown a gentle, caring side of the human. I needed that at the time. Before that I had been living in the little hell of Bowling Green, Ohio, where I was sort of ostracized/ignored for being new and kind of fat; this came after having been accepted and sort of popular my whole life; I was sixteen and my parents divorce and a subsequent move across state slapped me into the middle of the Reagen Revolution--a scary thing for a hippy/union raised kid. In fact, I left my family to move back to Garrett, in with my father, who at the time was suffering from the loss of his family in a way that brings to mind that George Jones song, He Stopped Loving Her Today.
After this, my major contact with blacks came when I drove cab for fifteen years, and picked up more blacks than whites, usually. Worked all sorts of neighborhoods, including the southside, which here is a mostly black zone where a lot of driver's unlawfully refuse to go. Not even when I was being robbed, or fighting someone who had robbed me, or ran down someone who was trying to skate on the fare, or got burned by a con man or just plain old not paid, did I call any of them Niggers. Period. I m beyond my xenophobia on this topic.
The night a black woman almost killed me with a butcher knife, another black woman saved my life by screaming at the woman to leave me alone... drawing enough attention to stop this chick from stabbing me in the back, as she was preparing to do (very hot crack whore who pretended she was my fare, got in and made trouble when she couldn't get my money with a blow job). How would it have looked if I had screamed Nigger at the one with a knife, huh? No, my mind just doesn't go there.
This is part of why people who are over a prejudice, think people who are not slightly mad. Mostly they just might not have the proper scientific context for their impulses, so they define them erroneously as 'gut feelings,' or 'common sense,' and it seems to confirm the darkest rascist rumours about whatever group ones particular mind tends to demonize.
Knowing all this sociobiology stuff, I saw Michael Richards unfortunate performance through my little microcosmic lense, of course.
A comedian got carried away by a moment of passion while doing his art, a guy known even among comedians as 'out there,' and an otherwise good guy added a dark footnote to his obituary. . . His antics went on to sell more DVD's for the last season than any previous releases. The irony, the irony...
Some people have xenophobia explained to them as Racism, some people as Anti-Semitism, some as ...
In all times and places, there is an us and them. At a football game, they can be people from a few miles apart. We used to have a rivalry that included people getting into fights -- between Garrett and Auburn Indiana, two towns no one who doesn't live there could tell apart.
Why? XENOPHOBIA.
I know a lot of young people read this blog, so I kind of feel responsible to explain terms like this... the rest of you can just fucking bear with me.... this is a term for an animalistic impulse that all primates have; you and me and the bonobo's, and a lot of other animals as well, are xenophobic. Basically, we fear things that are different. We do this because our survival instinct once required us to beware other tribes of chimps, because they would more than likely have killed us. That is they way it is in the animal kingdom, where Bambi will put a cap in your ass.
Humans sophisticate themselves beyond their most base impulses. We learn that we have to suppress our sexuality to be monogamous, work, etc... Xenophobia is a much milder impulse than this, and one that is much easier to get over. A person is only xenophobic from a distance. We naturally, as primates, get over this hysteria if we stay with the alien tribe. Meaning, obviously, that if you want to get over saying spic? Go live in Mexico and learn to love the people -- if you don't, it is your problem, not theirs. Same with blacks, Italians, etc...
Getting over one prejudice will not, however, stop you from being xenophobic, any more than being married stops a man from desiring other lovers. We will still have the impulse to distrust strangers, and as well we should, you know? This is why xenophobia is here to stay as long as we live in a criminalized world. If an alien species came here tomorrow and destroyed every criminal on the planet and set into place a system where every human is monitored and not allowed to do anything untoward without paying consequences and let it last a couple hundred thousand years, then, perhaps we could get over xenophobia?
Until then, humans are just going to have to learn to live with this troublesome survival impulse. Our basic urges are often troublesome, and we do have a hard time adjusting. Look at the problems associated with food? Sex? Violence? And then look at all the people who have control of their impulses, and only allow these parts of ourselves out in controlled environments, or the small doses needed to get through the day; they exercise and diet, play video games or watch movies that sate their appetite for violence without harming anyone, box, do bondage scenes, whatever...
Xenophobia would be much easier to deal with if the targets of the outrageous words like nigger understood he was just acting like the ape he is, and that by reacting back, they are as well, and that Michael did not necessarily meaning anything against them personally. He attacked people who attacked him, hecklers who were really saying mean shit about him. By doing so, he made an example of himself, and showed a lot of white people just how volatile this word is to blacks, as if they shouldn't know already. A couple comedians I like and write, Andy Dick and Pauly Shore, both managed to get themselves involved in the controversy by making fun of the whole thing, and finding that blacks were not about to let them 'make light,' of the situation. Both of these guys are way too cool and worldly to be mistaken for rascists. They are comedians, and this is how they interpret the world and create their art... so, I forgive them their trespasses, just like I want them to forgive mine.
To sum up this mess o' words -- it helps me deal with the world to know about xenophobia, and understand that this is a human trait... unlike rascism, which is a man made invention to explain misunderstood natural phenomenas, like all other mystical beliefs. So, repress your xenophobia when it rises, work through it, and get the benefit of enjoying a larger tribe that includes __INSERT YOUR LOCAL MINORITY___. . . .