You’re Not Supposed to Notice
1st July 2012
John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, is always worth reading.
If you have been born and raised in the USA, race is never far from your mind. Native Americans—people like my kids—have a mental Race Buzzer that goes off in a thousand different contexts and whose purpose is to drown out certain kinds of thoughts. The darn thing’s on a hair trigger. If you were raised in some other place where race was a thing people hardly ever thought about, this is really hard to get used to. Trust me on this.
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The rule here, the rule I met when it was too late to internalize it, is that you’re not supposed to notice. He’s black, she’s yellow, they’re Jewish. We all know it, but for goodness’ sake don’t mention it.
That’s why all those reports about mobs, gangs, and riots in Philadelphia, Chicago, Peoria, and DC are telling us about “youths,” “teens,” or “thugs.” In the age of cell-phone cameras and YouTube uploads we can all perfectly well see that the perps are black, but it would be a gross breach of etiquette (one I just committed, I guess) to let on that you’d noticed. I just watched a segment of the O’Reilly show titled “Violent Teen Mobs Causing Chaos Across Country.” In the entire 6:15 segment, neither Laura Ingraham nor either of her two guests used any of the terms “black,” “African American,” or “colored.”