or… Does the victim make the criminal?
I feel uneasy when I read in the newspapers this morning that since Obama has been elected President of the United States, racist and anti-gay movements are more present in the US, voicing their concerns or even committing criminal acts more often. My uncertainty comes from the fact that it sounds as if the President, being black, was the cause of, if not responsible for, the rise of racism in his country. The newspaper says: “with the election of a black leader, racists feel invaded by non-white”. I wonder how we would react if we were to read the same thing, just put in the other way round: “with the previous white presidents, (and for the sake of being nastily balanced, since it is about one black president that the argument is built, let us add: ‘especially the previous one’) racists and anti-gay felt at home in their country.” Most of us would feel that it is grossly unfair (even if the leftists among us might play laughingly with the idea). But in all logics, it has exactly the same meaning: with black president, racists are not happy and feel it; with white presidents, racists are happy and feel it. If we fail to recognize such a phrasing as what we mean, we only suggest that we say something else, such as: “it is not racism, but something about the president (ie. the fact that he is black) that is the cause of the new visibility of hate movements.”
Paralleling the election of a black president and racism is exactly doing the same as paralleling rape and the right of women to walk freely in the streets: it is taking the problem the wrong way, and leading to very unpleasant (though, hopefully unwanted) consequences, such as: women should not walk freely in the streets, African Americans should not seek election.
A far fairer writing of the analysis of hate-movements in the US under a black president would be: “racists express themselves more openly and violently to fight the historical event of the election of the first American black president.”
