What are meta-bigots?
by phil on Friday Nov 11, 2005 7:07 PM
I was at a party once and an Indian guy and a white guy were dissing each other with racial jokes. I was feeling uncomfortable, but everybody was laughing and going along with it because apparently they were making fun of the tension surrounding racism. These two guys were supposedly not racists. Rather they were a cooler post-racist, so unencumbered by the race issues of their forefathers.
I still felt uncomfortable. I'm not racist, nor am I particularly Politically Correct. However, this excerpt from Slate hits the nail on the head:
Through her stand-up, however, Silverman has become an important member of a guerrilla vanguard in the culture wars that we might call the "meta-bigots"—other members include the South Park kids, Sacha Baron Cohen's "Ali G", and the now-AWOL Dave Chappelle. The meta-bigots work at social problems indirectly; instead of discussing race, rape, abortion, incest, or mass starvation, they parody our discussions of them. They manipulate stereotypes about stereotypes. It's a dangerous game: If you're humorless, distracted, or even just inordinately history-conscious, meta-bigotry can look suspiciously like actual bigotry.
I don't think I'm humorless, distracted, or history-unconscious, and yet meta-bigotry often does look suspiciously like actual bigotry.
Comments
kern stalin said on November 12, 2005 12:39 AM:
yea if you're going to hate you might as well hate on da real tip and not just play footsies with those pansies that fake hate just to win a date with not even their future mate
