{"id":1889,"date":"2018-06-01T15:40:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T19:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1889"},"modified":"2018-06-01T15:59:38","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T19:59:38","slug":"roseanne-barr-racism-industrial-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/06\/roseanne-barr-racism-industrial-complex.html","title":{"rendered":"Roseanne Barr and the Racism-Industrial-Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roseanne, <\/em>one of the most popular series of all time and the most highly rated show at the present moment, has been unceremoniously cancelled by ABC because of a single tweet\u2014a \u201cracist\u201d tweet, according to everyone in Big Media, including and tellingly Big Conservative media\u2014fired off by its leading lady.<\/p>\n

Roseanne Barr tweeted on Tuesday that Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to Barack Obama, looked like the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and The Planet of the Apes. <\/em><\/p>\n

Jarrett, as it turns out (and this was news to some of us) has some African ancestry. Thus, Barr\u2019s ape reference in connection with Jarrett has been ruled by Respectable Society as an act of\u2014what else?\u2014racism!<\/p>\n

Not only is this an act of racism, it is an unequivocal <\/em>act of racism. It\u2019s racist-\u201chate!\u201d<\/p>\n

Those in Big Conservative media are busy complaining (as usual) about \u201cthe double standards\u201d of their leftist counterparts.\u00a0 Yet they have been just as tenacious in condemning Barr for her \u201cracist\u201d tweet as the latter.<\/p>\n

Some thoughts:<\/p>\n

First, there is a vast, omnipresent industry in this country that few people are willing to recognize for what it is: the Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC).\u00a0 The agents and profiteers of RIC absolutely need <\/em>to further the perception that what they call \u201cracism\u201d is an incorrigible, \u201csystemic,\u201d \u201cstructural,\u201d or \u201cinstitutional\u201d feature of daily American life.\u00a0 The term \u201cracism,\u201d though spoken of as if it had a unitary, self-evident meaning, is used in wildly disparate contexts: From Nazis to the Klan to Paula Deen and, now, Roseanne Barr, apparently, a racist is a racist is a racist.<\/p>\n

Obviously, however, a term that\u2019s been made this elastic has been divested of meaning. A definition is in order.\u00a0 But this is exactly the point:<\/p>\n

The Titans of RIC\u2014activists, academics, Diversity consultants, politicians, and a whole lot of other folks\u2014cannot permit closer inspection of \u201cracism.\u201d\u00a0 The term must remain chameleonic. Its value derives precisely from its abstract character, its readiness to be enlisted in the service of the cause of the day.<\/p>\n

We cannot approach this controversy within which Barr has embroiled herself without understanding it in the light of RIC, an industry more immense than any other and from which untold numbers of people regularly reap benefits of every conceivable sort.<\/p>\n

Second, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Barr\u2019s tweet was not obviously racially-charged, let alone \u201cracist.\u201d<\/p>\n

For starters, she remarked on Wednesday that she didn\u2019t even know that Jarrett was black.\u00a0 This is eminently credible, for neither did I know that Jarret is (partially) black.\u00a0 In any event, it\u2019s far from clear that she is of any African ancestry. This being said, if it\u2019s not \u201cracist\u201d to liken Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump to monkeys, since they are not black, then shouldn\u2019t it follow that neither is the same kind of remark aimed at a person who is believed to be non-black \u201cracist?\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, let\u2019s suppose that Barr knew <\/em>that Jarrett was black.\u00a0 So what?\u00a0 Unlike \u201cnigger,\u201d which has a history explicitly, uniquely peculiar to blacks, derogatory monkey references to humans have no such history.\u00a0 It could\u2019ve easily been the case that Barr likened to an ape, not a black woman<\/em>, but a woman who happened to be black<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In calling Jarrett, who in no clear way possesses any Afro-centric features, the offspring of apes Barr could\u2019ve intended to call attention to what she took to be Jarrett\u2019s unattractiveness, or maybe her incompetence or idiocy. That is, she could\u2019ve been motivated by the same sorts of considerations that animate the critics of Reagan, Bush, Trump, and other whites to mock them <\/em>through ape analogies.<\/p>\n

Third, the readiness with which the elites of Respectable Society, in one voice, convicted Barr of the worst of offenses of which a white person can be convicted in today\u2019s world, requires either an inability or an unwillingness to think through this issue all of the two minutes that it takes.\u00a0 Doubtless, many talkers and scribblers are not especially bright.\u00a0 Others, though, are driven first and foremost by their aching desire to be accepted by the Politically Correct Master Class, that Respectable Society of which they consider themselves members.<\/p>\n

Fourth, the speed with which Roseanne Barr, <\/em>of all people, is being reduced to persona non grata over this one incident is a revealing commentary on the times.\u00a0 She is among the most famous living people, a female Jewish Democrat who infamously grabbed her crotch during the playing of the national anthem decades ago. She is no conservative and but a qualified Trump-supporter whose new show is hardly the reactionary statement that her right-leaning admirers have made it out to be.<\/p>\n

And everyone knows it.<\/p>\n

To prove that they are not simply trying to ingratiate themselves to the agents of RIC, that they aren\u2019t virtue-signaling, all of those who are now trying to distance themselves from Barr should forego every penny that she ever made them.\u00a0 Those at ABC, as well as her fellow cast members and those who worked behind the scenes for her show, should pledge to return every penny of the blood money that they earned courtesy of this frothing-at-the-mouth Racist!<\/p>\n

For the record, I\u2019ve never been a fan of Roseanne Barr, and I\u2019ve never been among Roseanne\u2019s <\/em>viewers.\u00a0 But the truth is the truth, and the truth is that the Racism-Industrial-Complex is a juggernaut that never sleeps.<\/p>\n

Roseanne is just the latest one of its prey. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roseanne, one of the most popular series of all time and the most highly rated show at the present moment, has been unceremoniously cancelled by ABC because of a single tweet\u2014a \u201cracist\u201d tweet, according to everyone in Big Media, including and tellingly Big Conservative media\u2014fired off by its leading lady. Roseanne Barr tweeted on Tuesday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRoseanne Barr and the Racism-Industrial-Complex<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/06\/roseanne-barr-racism-industrial-complex.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Roseanne Barr and the Racism-Industrial-Complex\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Roseanne, one of the most popular series of all time and the most highly rated show at the present moment, has been unceremoniously cancelled by ABC because of a single tweet\u2014a \u201cracist\u201d tweet, according to everyone in Big Media, including and tellingly Big Conservative media\u2014fired off by its leading lady. 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I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jackkerwick.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/author\/jkerwick"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1890,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions\/1890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}