It is rumored that in 1950, the late Florida Democratic Senator, Dan Smathers once told an audience of bumpkins that incumbent Claude Pepper was “a known extrovert,” practiced “celibacy” before marriage, practiced “nepotism” with his sister-in-law, “matriculated” with women in college, that his sister was “a thespian” and his brother “a practicing homo sapien.” 1
It’s 2019 and yet, that anecdote is still talked about.
What do these terms actually mean?
As I understand them, A homo sapien is considered a fully evolved human person, a modern person.
The term extrovert means someone who is sociable, well-able to get with other people, and interact comfortably with them.
Nepotism means favoritism toward a member of one’s group or a family member.
To matriculate is to sign up or enroll in an institution like a college. A thespian is an avid theatregoer, someone who likes to go see plays in a theatre.
Celibacy is someone who avoids having sexual relations, a sexually abstinent person.
If you were to look them up in the dictionary, the only ethically questionable accusation is the nepotism one.
All others are totally meaningless in either qualifying or disqualifying someone from occupying a public position.
And yet, in 1950, it’s said that this speech cost the late former Senator and later US Congressman for Florida, Claude Pepper his election as a US Senator which he had held before then.
What does the above anecdote and analysis have to do with the term racist?
I’ve read stories that the current sensationalistic congresswoman for New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tends to use that term, racist, to label any and all persons who voice disagreement with her on any political point or subject. Moreover, she calls them also white supremacist.
She uses such labeling tactics to silence opponents of hers as if an opponent would be cowed or shamed into silence in fear of being socially ostracized, branded a racist or bigot or white supremacist by this congresswoman.
If you read the top paragraph in which the late Claude Pepper was subject to a number of labels which today mean nothing that would cause him a harmful consequence, you could that the overuse on the part of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the term “racist” will eventually render that term “racist” insignificant if all that a racist is, is a person who harbors conservative views and disagrees with a politically leftist person.
Back in the past, being labeled a racist was cognitively tarred and feathered with a shameful label.
I remember seeing, in an issue of Life Magazine, a series of horrendous photograph of an African-American man who was chained to some tree trunks and tortured with the flames coming from a blow torch before being killed. I also saw photographs of African Americans who were lynched in the Deep South.
Then in the year 2000, there was the trial of a certain racist Caucasian man who, with help of other racist white men tied the feet of an African American man with a rope and the other end of the rope, they hitched to the back of a motor vehicle. Then they drove vehicle forward and the African American victim ended up both dead and mutilated.
The main racist guilty of that atrocity was tried, condemned to death, and executed by Texas authorities. And rightly so.
Thus, if you wanted an accurate description of what a racist was, you’d end up with someone who harbors harmful, animosity, resentment, hatred, bitterness toward someone of another race.
But if you stop there, many countless persons harbor such sentiments. That would make them merely prejudiced or bigoted. The fictional character Archie Bunker of All in the Family, was certainly prejudiced or bigoted against African Americans.
Racist however, though it includes that, goes further. For someone to cross the line from being merely bigoted or prejudiced, the factor there has to be “the power to do someone about it, the ability to enforce the prejudice at the expense of the person prejudiced against in some forceful way such as beatings, lynching, violence, or some other type of enforcement such as depriving the victim of some needed thing, some benefit, etc.
If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continues eroding the original meaning of the term racist, those who hear her say it or being subjected to be called “racist” will probably eventually simply shrug.
The term “racist” will cease to bring forth images of police dogs being sicced on African-American protesters against Jim Crow, or the water hoses being pointed on them and sprayed them with jet streams of water, it will cease to mean the dynamiting of churches, the lynching of African Americans accused falsely of horrific vile crimes.
In many ways, Holocaust survivors, their descendants protest loudly – and rightly so, when the term “holocaust” is used any other victim of some major institutionalized mistreatment because this horrific criminal campaign of mass murder, the Nazi Holocaust against persons of Jewish descent or those whose faith was a one of a kind, especially diabolical, systematic murder pogrom, an inquisition against them.
African Americans should object loudly and publicly and protest vigorously against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trivializing that term, “racist.”
Racist and racism are terms that denote a shameful, horrid, brutal series of actions carried out to dehumanize, mistreat, and subjugate a whole race of persons. It should not be used as a term like the cuties or some meaningless, silly word that really means nothing.
This writing merely reflects my observations of this trend and I behold how a term which originally meant something now has been degenerated by abusive repetitive use of it to mean something that originally was totally foreign to it.
Summarily, I seriously doubt that the late Martin Luther King Jr., or the late Malcolm X, if either lived today, would remain silent if he observed Alexandria Ocasio Cortez abuse that term as she has been doing.
Roberto Eduardo Fiad
References:
1 “The Slandering Of Claude Pepper (“Homo Sapien/Thespian”). UL Or All Fact? [Archive] – Straight Dope Message Board”. 2003. Boards.Straightdope.Com. Accessed September 2, 2019. https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-155203.html.
Education: Exposing History Lies 