Ken was my mother's sister's husband. Now long gone, in my youth and early adulthood he was a constant presence -- whose chief form of amusement around the holidays was to get belligerently drunk and talk through his hat. He railed against lawyers, politicians, Jews, Catholics, grocery clerks who put the eggs on the bottom of the bag, and various other social groups he had no use for. At his drunkest and most furious, he would say "They ought to be stood up against the wall and shot."
Then it happened. A squirrel got into his birdfeeder and he tried to frighten it off with an air rifle, but he killed it instead and was sick for a week. That was my first inkling that Ken was a paper tiger. How many times had he said the god damned squirrels should be wiped from the face of the earth? And those were squirrels, not people.
Ken was an outspoken racialist as well as a bigot about almost everything else he gave a moment's thought to. This was not all that uncommon in the fifties and early sixties, but it scandalized my deeply humane and sensitive mother and my intellectually superior, enlightened young self. When a few "cullert fellas" came to work in his division at the plant, however, they were suddenly the best of friends. By that time I knew him for the harmless blathering good hearted drunk that he was, but still it was hard to hide my contempt for his mind. Now I wish I had been more tolerant, because I like Uncle Ken in retrospect a good deal more than I like some of the people I've encountered on the internet -- people who know how to profess humane ideals but not how to be charitable or kind or fair to the real human beings they deal with every day.
Did I ever tell you tha I hate left handed people? Sure do, they hold me back in this life. I dare say that I'm downright against them, well except all the ones that I know and never have a problem with.
And that right there is racism in a nutshell. The whole "I'm superior to a class of people but not it's individuals that I know who are just peachy" mindset. It happens as a combonation of arrogance and poorly formed sterotypical characterization, which is inevitably proven wrong when individual meet.
It's the stupidest human concept to surface in recorded hstory, with the possible exception of "the clapper."
Posted by: Rob B. | November 30, 2006 at 10:43 AM
thoughtful, interesting post ... i'm guessing that this relates somewhat to michael richards?
Posted by: paul | November 30, 2006 at 10:45 AM
I wasn't thinking of Michael Richards. I was thinking of some of the Guardian readers who came over here the other day to abuse me because I disapproved of Malachi Ritscher's professed desire to murder Donald Rumsfeld. They claim to be humane and liberal, but in fact they are personally abusive to people who disagree with them even on matters of interpretation and personally bloody minded toward political opponents. They love humanity; it's people they can't stand. If people have to hate at all, I'd rather they hate humanity and love people than the other way around.
Posted by: gail | November 30, 2006 at 10:50 AM
Add to that one other element, the internet emboldens people to make thoughtless and hateful comments because they believe that they are consequence free. It's the same thing that causes road rage. You have a person you don't know in a position that can't touch you and you find offensive so you feel that you don't have to show any consideration. Of course, face to face it's doubtful that they'd express their feeling with the same attitude because suddenly you are in reach and you can be effected by the consequences of what you say.
It's the false power of anonimity becuase as we all know, everyone is accessable at some level and if a person is driven enough they will find you. They're just lucky that Gail is a good person who actually values thinking, even if it differs with her opinions, as opposed to someone like me who's into petty vindictivness carried beyond rational limits. She also speels better but that's ok, I've found more oil so to each his, or her, own.
Posted by: Rob B. | November 30, 2006 at 12:04 PM
Rob, you speel just fine.
Posted by: gail | November 30, 2006 at 12:09 PM
Yeah, but if I don't get it togather, since I'm in school, John Kerry says i might get stuck in Iraq. I'm not sure that I want that because being fair skinned, I'm so prone to sunburn and Iraq to Dallas is a bad school commute.
Posted by: Rob B. | November 30, 2006 at 02:00 PM
Off topic, but Rob's comment reminded me of working construction in Dallas in the summer. Being the only non-black or non-Hispanic, and because of a play on my name, I was dubbed "da white boy." Two days later my nickname was changed to "da red boy."
Posted by: ken (a different one!) | November 30, 2006 at 02:17 PM
Oh, and as to the original topic, my first thought was that the posters and your uncle share the common thread of hatred through anonymity. Looks like your uncle could overcome that through knowing someone he thought he hated. I'm not sure of the posters you mention. (Yeah, Rob probably covered this better too)
Posted by: ken | November 30, 2006 at 02:20 PM