First, the claim is incredibly unusual compared to standard political irrationality. The last time this claim occurred was against Chester Arthur (US president 1881) - and John McCain (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone, outside the sovereign territory of the US) received no challenges to his eligibility for office.
Second, the ratio of intensity to plausibility is much higher that most American political irrationality—the long form has been released, after all. This suggests there’s more than ordinary political mindkiller at play.
Why isn’t “Politics is the mindkiller” sufficient for people to believe Obama is a space alien? Or for people to believe that John McCain isn’t a natural born citizen, particularly given that he wasn’t born in the US? “Politics is the mindkiller” isn’t and shouldn’t be able to account for just any negative belief that people hold about a candidate they don’t believe in.
Also, I find the birther controversy weird because I think some laws matter a great deal more than others, and the natural born citizen rule doesn’t serve any important purpose that I can see.
I asked a birther what he expected to happen if it turned out that Obama was proven to have been born in Kenya, and he hadn’t even thought about the question, which probably implied that few if any birthers had thought about it either, or they would have been discussing it. I’m not sure this proves anything about racism, but it’s evidence that there was something weird going on.
Why isn’t “politics is the mindkiller” sufficient?
There’s a danger in this being too broad an explanation, such that it doesn’t actually explain anything. In this context, some ideas are so extreme, that simply using that explanation seems potentially insufficient. That said, while racism may be in play, there’s some evidence otherwise that what is going on here is a combination of politics is the mindkiller with people who are already less connected to reality than others. Thus, for example, this probably explains why Alan Keyes was a birther (racism seems like it isn’t likely to be relevant given that Keyes is black).
But at the same time, there’s definite evidence for something other than just politics as the mindkiller. In particular, although some on the left did pick up on the birtherism early on (for example Phillip Berg), it didn’t spread to the left-wing opponents of Obama in any substantial fashion, like it did to those on the right. In that context, the fact that Republicans in general are more racist seems robust. (For example, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to have a negative opinion of interracial marriage or think it should be outlawed 1). And the possibility of a causal relationship has to be at minimum a located hypothesis. On the other hand, there are other possible hypotheses, such as the tendencies in the last few years for self-identified conservatives and Republicans to turn to their own news sources. While this occurs on both ends of the American political spectrum, it seems especially in the context of the last election and the response to people like Nate Silver and Sam Wang, that in the last two years it has occurred more on the right-wing. Moreover, it doesn’t actually need to be more prominent on either side of the political spectrum to have had this sort of effect.
Overall, politics as mindkiller seems unsatisfactory in this context, but racism is definitely not the only possible other causal factor at work here. It seems likely that a variety of different factors are at play, and deciding how strong any given one of them is may be very tough.
There’s a danger in this being too broad an explanation, such that it doesn’t actually explain anything. In this context, some ideas are so extreme, that simply using that explanation seems potentially insufficient. That said, while racism may be in play, there’s some evidence otherwise that what is going on here is a combination of politics is the mindkiller with people who are already less connected to reality than others. Thus, for example, this probably explains why Alan Keyes was a birther (racism seems like it isn’t likely to be relevant given that Keyes is black).
I think xenophobia is at least as likely a motivation as racism, considering that his father wasn’t a U.S. national, and he spent some of his formative years in Indonesia. People accuse him of not being a natural born citizen because they’re specifically afraid that he’s too foreign.
People may easily regard people of different races from their own country as being part of their cultural in-group, where people of different countries, particularly ones like Kenya and Indonesia which aren’t Western first-world nations, are cultural outgroup members.
I feel like we are having an unintentional definitional dispute. In the US political realm, the essence of the accusation of “racism” is unjustly treating others as cultural outgroup.
I think that’s an inappropriate inflation of the term, since under that definition a person could easily be “racist” against members of their own race who have different cultural backgrounds, but not against ones who don’t. Racism is a basis for unjustly treating others as outgroup members, but it can only lower the quality of our discourse if we describe all cases of unjustly treating others as outgroup members as racism.
If I understand your distinction correctly, the irrational hostility of the Californians to Oklahomans during the 1930s Great Depression is xenophobia and not racism. I guess I’m having difficulty coming up with examples of irrational / hostile racism that isn’t xenophobic. What exactly is the goal of the distinction you are making?
Well, the narrower definition of xenophobia is a fear of people from other countries. If one interprets “a fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange” broadly enough, then all racism is xenophobia, but all xenophobia is certainly not racism.
The point of the distinction I’m making is to set out a class wherein people could be expected to mistrust Obama for having a Kenyan father and having spent a number of his childhood years in Indonesia, but not to mistrust or be unwilling to vote for a person of the same racial heritage who was born and raised in their own neighborhood to parents who were both American citizens.
For a broad enough definition of racism, I don’t doubt that most birthers are racists; the Implicit Association Test suggests that most people have some degree of racial bias. But I do think that the fact that Obama is half Kenyan and spent some of his time growing up in Indonesia has much more explanatory power with respect to the birther controversy than the fact that he falls into the demographic category of African American.
To clarify, I don’t think we are currently having a substantive disagreement. That is, I think we both agree that the continued strength of the birther movement is an expression of some people’s belief that Obama is outgroup and the predictable irrationality that follows from that conclusion.
That’s what most people in the US mean when they talk about the problems of racism. If I could persuade everyone to just call this process “Othering” without specific reference to race or sex or nationality or whatever, I’d consider it.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to show that colloquial usage is misleading. Better definitions can often lead to clearer analysis. You are suggesting that mis-usage of racism is confusing the analysis, but I don’t see how. Some of that impression comes from my sense that the birthers wouldn’t vote for Obama even if he were born and raised in Chicago.
“Othering” is broad enough to encapsulate the phenomenon, but also broad enough that it doesn’t narrow down the prejudice under discussion. I’ll admit to also having a kneejerk dislike of any use of the term, since I’ve read and have an abysmally low opinion of the work of the author who popularized it
I don’t doubt that birthers mostly wouldn’t vote for Obama even if he were born and raised in Chicago, but that’s because I suspect that there’s an extremely strong overlap between that level of xenophobia and people who’re socially conservative enough to not want to vote for him on a policy basis.
Birthers are probably mostly racist, by broad enough definitions of racism, and they are certainly almost all conservative, but that doesn’t mean that their racism or their conservatism are the best explanations for their being birthers.
If a person opposes a specific government policy, and another person argues “this person just opposes the policy because they’re rich,” when the person who opposes it is a rich libertarian, and the policy is opposed by almost all libertarians, but mostly not by rich people who’re not also libertarians, then “opposes the policy because they’re rich” is a bad explanation.
If a person opposes a specific government policy, and another person argues “this person just opposes the policy because they’re rich,” when the person who opposes it is a rich libertarian, and the policy is opposed by almost all libertarians, but mostly not by rich people who’re not also libertarians, then “opposes the policy because they’re rich” is a bad explanation.
I agree with all of that. I just don’t understand what non-othering irrational racism is.
Edit: Due to insufficient background, I can neither defend nor attack Said, but my sense is that Othering and irrational outgroupism are essentially the same phenomena. At the very least, irrational outgroupism is a very good steelman of Othering.
I’m not arguing that there is non-othering irrational racism, and even if there is I wouldn’t be arguing that it’s relevant to the issue under discussion (now that I think of it, there probably is in the form of self-hating racism, where the group one is prejudiced against is “us”,) but there are also non-racism forms of othering, or outgrouping, and I think that racism is not the most salient issue of prejudice in this matter.
Fair enough. I think some of the problem is that colloquial language lacks the technical vocabulary to communicate the issue precisely. For example, I think the common usage of xenophobia and racism is not a natural kind, and othering captures the insight that colloquial usage is generally aiming for when it says “racism.” Given that, I think “birtherism is racism” is about as accurate a colloquial phrase as we are likely to meet—as intended, that phrase doesn’t agree with your point, despite its imprecision.
The usage I’m suggesting helps clarify the distinction between outgroupism and the personal issues embedded in “self-hating” racism. But it is technical vocabulary that has not yet spread into common usage. I don’t think the lack of technical vocabulary indicates an unusual level of confusion on this issue.
Most importantly, pushing the point masks fundamental agreement between you and others like JoshuaZ or TorqueDrifter.
Why isn’t “politics is the mindkiller” sufficient?
First, the claim is incredibly unusual compared to standard political irrationality. The last time this claim occurred was against Chester Arthur (US president 1881) - and John McCain (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone, outside the sovereign territory of the US) received no challenges to his eligibility for office.
Second, the ratio of intensity to plausibility is much higher that most American political irrationality—the long form has been released, after all. This suggests there’s more than ordinary political mindkiller at play.
Why isn’t “Politics is the mindkiller” sufficient for people to believe Obama is a space alien? Or for people to believe that John McCain isn’t a natural born citizen, particularly given that he wasn’t born in the US? “Politics is the mindkiller” isn’t and shouldn’t be able to account for just any negative belief that people hold about a candidate they don’t believe in.
Also, I find the birther controversy weird because I think some laws matter a great deal more than others, and the natural born citizen rule doesn’t serve any important purpose that I can see.
I asked a birther what he expected to happen if it turned out that Obama was proven to have been born in Kenya, and he hadn’t even thought about the question, which probably implied that few if any birthers had thought about it either, or they would have been discussing it. I’m not sure this proves anything about racism, but it’s evidence that there was something weird going on.
There’s a danger in this being too broad an explanation, such that it doesn’t actually explain anything. In this context, some ideas are so extreme, that simply using that explanation seems potentially insufficient. That said, while racism may be in play, there’s some evidence otherwise that what is going on here is a combination of politics is the mindkiller with people who are already less connected to reality than others. Thus, for example, this probably explains why Alan Keyes was a birther (racism seems like it isn’t likely to be relevant given that Keyes is black).
But at the same time, there’s definite evidence for something other than just politics as the mindkiller. In particular, although some on the left did pick up on the birtherism early on (for example Phillip Berg), it didn’t spread to the left-wing opponents of Obama in any substantial fashion, like it did to those on the right. In that context, the fact that Republicans in general are more racist seems robust. (For example, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to have a negative opinion of interracial marriage or think it should be outlawed 1). And the possibility of a causal relationship has to be at minimum a located hypothesis. On the other hand, there are other possible hypotheses, such as the tendencies in the last few years for self-identified conservatives and Republicans to turn to their own news sources. While this occurs on both ends of the American political spectrum, it seems especially in the context of the last election and the response to people like Nate Silver and Sam Wang, that in the last two years it has occurred more on the right-wing. Moreover, it doesn’t actually need to be more prominent on either side of the political spectrum to have had this sort of effect.
Overall, politics as mindkiller seems unsatisfactory in this context, but racism is definitely not the only possible other causal factor at work here. It seems likely that a variety of different factors are at play, and deciding how strong any given one of them is may be very tough.
I think xenophobia is at least as likely a motivation as racism, considering that his father wasn’t a U.S. national, and he spent some of his formative years in Indonesia. People accuse him of not being a natural born citizen because they’re specifically afraid that he’s too foreign.
What is the distinction you are attempting to draw between xenophobia and racism?
People may easily regard people of different races from their own country as being part of their cultural in-group, where people of different countries, particularly ones like Kenya and Indonesia which aren’t Western first-world nations, are cultural outgroup members.
I feel like we are having an unintentional definitional dispute. In the US political realm, the essence of the accusation of “racism” is unjustly treating others as cultural outgroup.
I think that’s an inappropriate inflation of the term, since under that definition a person could easily be “racist” against members of their own race who have different cultural backgrounds, but not against ones who don’t. Racism is a basis for unjustly treating others as outgroup members, but it can only lower the quality of our discourse if we describe all cases of unjustly treating others as outgroup members as racism.
If I understand your distinction correctly, the irrational hostility of the Californians to Oklahomans during the 1930s Great Depression is xenophobia and not racism. I guess I’m having difficulty coming up with examples of irrational / hostile racism that isn’t xenophobic. What exactly is the goal of the distinction you are making?
Well, the narrower definition of xenophobia is a fear of people from other countries. If one interprets “a fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange” broadly enough, then all racism is xenophobia, but all xenophobia is certainly not racism.
The point of the distinction I’m making is to set out a class wherein people could be expected to mistrust Obama for having a Kenyan father and having spent a number of his childhood years in Indonesia, but not to mistrust or be unwilling to vote for a person of the same racial heritage who was born and raised in their own neighborhood to parents who were both American citizens.
For a broad enough definition of racism, I don’t doubt that most birthers are racists; the Implicit Association Test suggests that most people have some degree of racial bias. But I do think that the fact that Obama is half Kenyan and spent some of his time growing up in Indonesia has much more explanatory power with respect to the birther controversy than the fact that he falls into the demographic category of African American.
To clarify, I don’t think we are currently having a substantive disagreement. That is, I think we both agree that the continued strength of the birther movement is an expression of some people’s belief that Obama is outgroup and the predictable irrationality that follows from that conclusion.
That’s what most people in the US mean when they talk about the problems of racism. If I could persuade everyone to just call this process “Othering” without specific reference to race or sex or nationality or whatever, I’d consider it.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to show that colloquial usage is misleading. Better definitions can often lead to clearer analysis. You are suggesting that mis-usage of racism is confusing the analysis, but I don’t see how. Some of that impression comes from my sense that the birthers wouldn’t vote for Obama even if he were born and raised in Chicago.
“Othering” is broad enough to encapsulate the phenomenon, but also broad enough that it doesn’t narrow down the prejudice under discussion. I’ll admit to also having a kneejerk dislike of any use of the term, since I’ve read and have an abysmally low opinion of the work of the author who popularized it
I don’t doubt that birthers mostly wouldn’t vote for Obama even if he were born and raised in Chicago, but that’s because I suspect that there’s an extremely strong overlap between that level of xenophobia and people who’re socially conservative enough to not want to vote for him on a policy basis.
Birthers are probably mostly racist, by broad enough definitions of racism, and they are certainly almost all conservative, but that doesn’t mean that their racism or their conservatism are the best explanations for their being birthers.
If a person opposes a specific government policy, and another person argues “this person just opposes the policy because they’re rich,” when the person who opposes it is a rich libertarian, and the policy is opposed by almost all libertarians, but mostly not by rich people who’re not also libertarians, then “opposes the policy because they’re rich” is a bad explanation.
I agree with all of that. I just don’t understand what non-othering irrational racism is.
Edit: Due to insufficient background, I can neither defend nor attack Said, but my sense is that Othering and irrational outgroupism are essentially the same phenomena. At the very least, irrational outgroupism is a very good steelman of Othering.
I’m not arguing that there is non-othering irrational racism, and even if there is I wouldn’t be arguing that it’s relevant to the issue under discussion (now that I think of it, there probably is in the form of self-hating racism, where the group one is prejudiced against is “us”,) but there are also non-racism forms of othering, or outgrouping, and I think that racism is not the most salient issue of prejudice in this matter.
Fair enough. I think some of the problem is that colloquial language lacks the technical vocabulary to communicate the issue precisely. For example, I think the common usage of xenophobia and racism is not a natural kind, and othering captures the insight that colloquial usage is generally aiming for when it says “racism.” Given that, I think “birtherism is racism” is about as accurate a colloquial phrase as we are likely to meet—as intended, that phrase doesn’t agree with your point, despite its imprecision.
The usage I’m suggesting helps clarify the distinction between outgroupism and the personal issues embedded in “self-hating” racism. But it is technical vocabulary that has not yet spread into common usage. I don’t think the lack of technical vocabulary indicates an unusual level of confusion on this issue.
Most importantly, pushing the point masks fundamental agreement between you and others like JoshuaZ or TorqueDrifter.