In commenting upon my entry on Michael Richards’ tirade, a reader asked whether or not I would deem Richards a racist if, as in the case of Mel Gibson with respect to his antisemitic tirade, Richards had gone into a racist diatribe owing to having become totally inebriated. As the reader observed: “. . . sometimes drugs or alcohol act as a “truth serum”. The commentator has raised an extremely important question in general, namely: What is it that makes a person a racist or antisemitic? I want to answer this question; and, as shall become evident, I hold that anyone of any ethnic group can be racist or antisemitic. In answering this question, I hope also to say something about the particular question that the commentator posed regarding the difference between Richards and Gibson.
My first observation in this regard is that if the only time any of us would merit a clean moral bill of health is when it is true that we would never utter anything morally despicable about a group when we are entirely inebriated, then I am afraid most of would come up short. In fact, I am pretty sure that I would fail that test; and I am rather confident that I am better than most in this regard.
Most of us, I am afraid, have some prejudice or the other that we manage to keep in check. Or, to put the point another way, while there may be individuals here and there who are entirely free of any horrific misconceptions regarding some ethnic group or the other. It is simply false that ethnicity as such gives one immunity in this regard.
While it has become fashionable to say that blacks cannot be racist, this is just plain silly. Even if we should concede for the sake of argument that blacks cannot be racist towards whites, blacks most certainly can be racists towards other ethnic groups: Asians or Native Americans or Arabs. And so on.
But when Farrakhan claims that all whites are devils or when some blacks claim that whites have spread the AIDS virus among blacks, surely what we have is a most despicable mindset on the part of the blacks in question, whether or not that mindset is characterized as racist.
What makes a person a racist/antisemitic (and, as I said at the outset, I assume that any person can be a racist/antisemitic)? The answer is not simply that a person has an inappropriate set of feelings about people of some ethnic group. For it is possible to have such feelings and to recognize that they are inappropriate and, moreover, to be committed to eliminating those feelings and, in any case, making sure that these feelings do not manifest themselves in one’s dealings with members of the group in question.
To be sure, it would certainly be better not to have inappropriate feelings with respect to one ethnic group or another. But surely the next best thing is to be committed to overcoming and not acting upon such feelings if in fact one has them.
The antisemite/racist, by contrast, does not just have inappropriate feelings, but she or he indulges those feelings, and so has no commitment whatsoever to overcoming them. Indeed, the antisemite/racist will explain evidence that goes against what she or he believes. The KKK person, for instance, thinks that blacks are inferior to whites and Jews are morally bankrupt; and it simply does not much matter how wonderful any given black or Jew turns out to be. Never mind that the world has no shortage of whites who are intellectually slow or morally bankrupt. The KKK person is absolutely committed to the superiority of whites regardless.
So antisemitism/racism admits of a continuum, with the KKK person at one end and others at various points along the way towards the other end. As I have said, perhaps some are entirely at the other end. But that would surprise me. Moreover, from the fact that a person is superb in one area, it does not follow that she or he is also superb in every area with respect to not being antisemitic/racist.
And being a victim of oppression does not give one any immunity. To move beyond the black-white-Jewish spectrum: Muslim Arabs at this point in time may be the object of considerable racism. Alas, I know for a fact that many Muslim Arabs are quite prejudiced against blacks on at least two accounts. Blacks are deemed, by many Arabs, to be morally loose and intellectually bankrupt. Painfully, many Muslim Arabs have no intentions of overcoming their racism. Quite the contrary, they indulge their racism with regard to blacks.*
Now, I agree with the commentator that what we say when we are drunk can be revealing but a lot depends on the context, this brings me to the case of Mel Gibson versus Michael Richards.
As far as I am concerned, the problem is not just that Gibson went on a rant about Jews when he was drunk. Rather, it is that he did this in the in the context of being stopped by a police officer. That is what makes his antisemitic tirade so terribly stunning. Whenever I have been pulled over by a police officer for driving with enthusiasm, the people towards whom I have biases do not leap quickly to mind. If all it takes for a person to lambaste Jews is that he gets a flat tire or he misses a flight or he is stopped by an officer for driving while intoxicated, then that is surely a very good sign that the person is indeed antisemitic.
I understand that many Jews think that his film, The Passion of the Christ, was antisemitic. Suppose, then, that he was pulled over for driving while intoxicated by a police officer wearing a specially designed yarmulke for Jewish police officers to wear and the officer says: “In addition to producing an antisemitic film, you have the audacity to drive drunk”. Well, this amounts to a provocation and that changes everything. It might not make Gibson less antisemtic, but it would give us an explanation for an antisemitic remark on Gibson’s part—and explanation that we do not have in the actual case.
Now, Michael Richards did not walk on the stage and proceed to denounce blacks by repeatedly using the word “nigger”. Had he done that, then we have a problem whatever his state of mind might have been. Rather, his tirade with the repeated utterances of the word “nigger” came in the context of being heckled by a few blacks in the audience. This does not justify what he did. However, it does give us quite a difference between the Gibson case and the Richards case. We get a difference if both were drunk or using mind-altering drugs. We get a difference if neither was.
Suppose that during a cross-Atlantic flight, there is a 15 minute period of horrific turbulence. If a person started denouncing gays or women or Jews or blacks or Arabs or whomever, we would think that quite telling, whether the person was drunk or not. By contrast, if more than three-quarters of the passengers on the plane begin denouncing that person in some way or the other and all or nearly all these individuals are of a given ethnicity, it is easy enough to see how that person might say something racist about the members of that group. Here, too, it would not much matter whether the person is drunk or not.
Most of us have moral blemishes. Under normal circumstances, we manage to live without those blemishes being brutally scratched. But my suspicion is that if a deep enough scratch occurs, most of us would lack the self-command it takes not to say something woefully inappropriate. I have seen how vicious people can get simply when they are deeply hurt. The variable of race or ethnicity simply provides another vector along which people can hurt another.
In order to gain an advantage in court, women have accused the husband from whom they are divorcing of sexually abusing their children. It does not get much nastier than that. When people want to hurt others, they will often use anything at their disposal. At this point in time, it is just plain foolish to suppose that when ethnicity is involved, people will not avail themselves of it when they are absolutely vulnerable and hurt.
Mel Gibson’s rant about Jews at the time he was driving drunk had nothing whatsoever to do with being made vulnerable by Jews. For instance, far from losing money over The Passion of the Christ, owing to concerns voiced by the Jews that the film was antisemitic, Gibson’s net worth increase about 20 fold: from a mere 30 million dollars to near 600 million dollars.
By contrast, Richards was before a predominantly black audience some of whose members began heckling him. This may have produced a most profound vulnerability on his part. For when it comes to comedy, a predominantly black audience can be exceedingly demanding with respect to the genre of comedy that pleases it—especially when that comedy is coming from a white person. Thus, on this view Richards may have profoundly missed the mark and did not know how to recover from that.
For all I know, Richards may be racist. Just so we have a very real difference between his racism and Gibson’s antisemitism. That is, we have a qualitative difference between the way in which each revealed himself to be bias. And we should not overlook this truth, not because either is excusable, as I have not argued any such thing, but because we have difference that is real and fundamentally important between the two.
Gratuitous racial/antisemitic remarks are one thing. Those that come on the heels of having been rendered extremely vulnerable and provoked are quite another. I would prefer neither. But if had to live with one or the other, it is manifestly clear to me that it would imminently rational for me to prefer the latter. Those who insist that there is no moral difference between the two are either being more than a little naïve or way too disingenuous.**
In the famous words of George Orwell transposed to the moment: It may be that all biases are equal, but some are more equal than others.
*Between 1996 and 1999, I had the marvelous experience of informally working in a store located on the south-side owned by a member of the Syracuse Muslim community and to be invited to a few homes in that community.
**It is obvious, I trust, that the remarks of this essay apply equally to homophobia or sexism. I assume that in none of these areas does anyone qualify for sainthood. And if anyone should qualify for sainthood in one of these areas, I am absolutely certain that he does not qualify for sainthood in all of them. As I noted in the initial essay on Richards, the area of sexual desire strikes me as quite informative here. It is, of course, preferable not to have inappropriate sexual desires. But if we miss that mark, the fall-back is that of not acting on the inappropriate desires that we might have. And there is no gainsaying the reality that this fall back is of the utmost moral significance. Yet, if a person is inebriated, she or he might not have the self-command in this area that she or he would otherwise have. And if the person became inebriated because someone spiked her or his drink as a cruel joke, then the drunken person’s salacious behavior might even be morally excusable.
