[Post this on Facebook yesterday. Copied it here so I won’t lose it. It’s as close to profundity as I come.]
Here’s what few people understand when looking at (or for) racism in America:
Most of the “racist” content you find — the kind that peppers the threads on cesspools like 4chan, for instance — is people trying to get your goat. They’re TRYING to be offensive for its own sake. And why shouldn’t they? Pop culture and their cultural betters have spent decades trumpeting being “transgressive” as something to celebrate. When everyone from pop stars to novelists to actors to politicians to academicians have inculcated them with the idea that “good taste” is just patriarchal hegemony keeping them down, why wouldn’t they feel that it’s good to be bad?
I mean, just because these people aren’t transgressing against the “right” limits — they’re not confining themselves to Christianity, or heteronormativity, or any of the approved “safe” targets — is that any reason not to applaud their bravery and iconoclasm? [Yes, that’s the sound of my eyes rolling.]
I’m just saying, it’s hard to posit “trangressivism” as an absolute good and then clutch your pearls and demand penitent soul-searching when you actually discover that there are some boundaries you don’t want crossed.