Comparing racism from different eras: If only Tucker Carlson had been around in the 1950s he could’ve been a New York Intellectual.

TV commentator Carlson in 2018 recently raised a stir by saying that immigration makes the United States “poorer, and dirtier, and more divided,” which reminded me of this rant from literary critic Alfred Kazin in 1957:

Screen Shot 2013-03-16 at 6.12.03 PM

Kazin put it in his diary and Carlson broadcast it on TV, so not quite the same thing.

But this juxtaposition made me think of Keith Ellis’s comment that “there’s much less difference between conservatives and progressives than most people think. Maybe one or two generations of majority opinion, at most.”

When people situate themselves on political issues, I wonder how much of this is on the absolute scale and how much is relative to current policies or the sense of the prevailing opinion. Is Tucker Carlson more racist than Alfred Kazin? Does this question even make sense? Maybe it’s like comparing baseball players from different eras, e.g. Mike Trout vs. Babe Ruth as hitters. Or, since we’re on the topic of racism, Ty Cobb vs. John Rocker.

52 thoughts on “Comparing racism from different eras: If only Tucker Carlson had been around in the 1950s he could’ve been a New York Intellectual.

  1. I have to defend Mr. Cobb: the stories about his racism were made up by a drunk to sell his book and then codified into the entirely fictional movie. There’s a good newer biography that blows this stuff away. Cobb was in favor of integrating baseball and had no problems playing exhibitions with black players. He had issues with violence in general, what they used to call hot-tempered – but not especially toward black people. Typical is a story of him fighting with an elevator operator and watchman at a hotel because they were black … except they were actually white.

    As to racism, there are, as I’m sure you know, many examples of Jewish intellectuals complaining about the shrillness and mannerisms of immigrant and lower-class Jews. One can say some of that may be shame, but mostly it seems to be more class issues like any culture has, same as Poles, etc. I have spent time listening to Irish guys making fun of Irish guys from the Irish equivalent of the sticks.

    And private thoughts are not the same as how you treat people. My dad would take me to the hospital every weekend and he would at times warn me that I’d see every single stereotype about black people – it was a Detroit inner city hospital – but that it was important to treat every person with respect. These days some people would say my father was a racist because he could identify black stereotypes, as though the fact that I would see him carefully treat people as individual human beings was not the actual point. The rules of civil society are not about thought control but about conduct.

    • Gene:

      No, I don’t think “immigrant” names a race. It just happens that Carlson and Kazin were trash-talking immigrants who were of different races than them. Racism and xenophobia sometimes go together but they’re not the same thing.

      • Agreed. “Immigrant” is not a race per se, but it often is used as a stand-in for a race. There is some good research showing, for instance, that people do not react the same to identical scenarios of Mexican vs. Canadian immigrants:

        Mukherjee, S., Molina, L.E., & Adams, G. (2013). “Reasonable suspicion” about tough immigration legislation: Enforcing laws or ethnocentric exclusion? Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 19 (3), 320- 331.

        Mukherjee, S., Molina, L. E., & Adams, G. (2012). National Identity and immigration policy: Concern for legality or ethnocentric exclusion? Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 12(1), 21-32.

        Moreover, race itself is a social construct, so one could define “immigrant” in a racialized way. Debating whether or not a given category is a “race” is going to be somewhat quixotic, because our understanding of race changes over time and depending on the situation.

        • Curiously when I visited Duke in 2007 I was initially unable to rent an apartment as the landlord’s rental policies had nothing about renting to Canadians – many other nationalities but not Canadians. One landlord’s agent managed to game me in by suggesting I just omit having a faculty appointment at Duke and simply state that I was _studying_ there. All the foreign students were, on paper, being treated equally.

        • There are many reasons to treat Canadian and Mexican immigrants differently, and most of them have nothing to do with race. Mexican immigrants are poorer, and more likely to require services. There is a reasonable equilibrium with Canadian immigration, with some Americans moving to Canada. We have had a huge influx of Mexicans, which is arguably beyond what we can absorb. Canadian immigrants speak English.

        • C’mon, Roger; you’ve got it absolutely wrong. Who washes the dishes in the restaurants you frequent; who trims the bushes and cuts the grass in the houses you pass by; who picks the strawberries you put on your cereal? YOU are more likely to require services than the hard-working Mexican immigrants who come to the US — to work.

        • He probably means different kinds of services (and I think you know that):

          Obfuscating the Immigrant-Welfare Debate
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          By Jason Richwine on May 16, 2018

          A few years ago I noted that “the amnesty movement has turned the political numbers game into an art form, systematically obscuring the trade-offs inherent in immigration policy.” The movement has reached new heights of obfuscation with Alex Nowrasteh and Robert Orr’s Cato Institute study, “Immigration and the Welfare State.”

          Before diving in to that study, keep in mind that on a conceptual level, today’s immigrants are likely to consume more welfare than natives. This is not because immigrants are “lazy” — they actually have impressive employment rates — but because they are poorer and have more children to support. Empirically, the most comprehensive dataset shows that about half of immigrant households are on some form of welfare, versus less than one third of native households. Average benefits received by immigrant households are about 40 percent greater than what native households receive.
          https://cis.org/Oped/Obfuscating-ImmigrantWelfare-Debate

          Non-immigrants do the same:

          https://cis.org/Report/63-NonCitizen-Households-Access-Welfare-Programs

          Massive low-skill immigrations is hurting American Blacks:
          https://cis.org/Oped/Liberals-say-immigration-enforcement-racist-group-most-likely-benefit-it-black-men

    • [Andrew is] not Catullus, you know,
      To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. [Andrew is] far
      From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
      Political hatreds.

      And no. The question does not even make sense.

  2. Plenty of people say that immigration makes the USA better. If it is racist to say worse, then it is also racist to say better. In other words, everyone who has an opinion on immigration is a racist.

    • Logically the statement like “immigration makes the USA better/worse” does not necessarily imply any judgment on other races, as the effect could merely come from more diverse, but essentially equally-qualified populations.

      If I am allowed to think deeper, xenophobia is a statement of Convexity (of one’s utility function), while racism tells Monotonicity — kinda independent.

  3. Prejudice is heightened during periods of war. Certain national security prerogatives kick in that makes suspicion more acute. We’ve been at cold and hot war for much of the 50 years minimum. Tucker Carlson and other media celebrities favor some minorities over others. And the strategies are easily discernible in this regard.

    In some of my volunteer appointments, I saw that minorities themselves are implicated in racial and ethnic stereotyping.

  4. How about adding this to the mix? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken

    “The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered, they lack many of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.”

    “Mencken repeatedly identified mathematics with metaphysics and theology.”

    “Elsewhere he spoke of the nonsense of higher mathematics and “probability” theory,”

    “Mencken primarily contrasts what real scientists do, which is to simply directly look at the existence of “shapes and forces” confronting them instead of (such as in statistics) attempting to speculate and use mathematical models.”

    “There is no need for statistics in scientific physics, since one should simply look at the facts while statistics attempts to construct mathematical models.”

    “Addition, subtraction, multiplication, fractions, division, that’s what real mathematics is. The rest is baloney.”

    • Here’s Nietzsche with some more anti-mathematical, anti-religious bluster:

      what magnificent instruments
      of observation we possess in our
      senses! This nose, for example, of
      which no philosopher has yet spoken with
      reverence and gratitude, is actua
      lly the most delicate instrume
      nt so far at our disposal:
      it is able to detect tiny chemical concentra
      tions that even elude a spectroscope. Today
      we possess science precisely to the extent
      to which we have decided to accept the
      testimony of the senses — to the extent to
      which we sharpen them further, arm them,
      and have learned to think them through. The
      rest is miscarriage and not-yet-science —
      in other words, metaphysics, theolog
      y, psychology, epistemology — or formal
      science, a doctrine of signs, such as logi
      c and that applied lo
      gic which is called
      mathematics. In them reality is not encountered at all, not even as a problem — no
      more than the question of the value
      of such a sign-convention as logic.

      • Sorry, didn’t realize the indentation would be preserved:

        what magnificent instruments of observation we possess in our senses! This nose, for example, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with reverence and gratitude, is actually the most delicate instrument so far at our disposal: it is able to detect tiny chemical concentrations that even elude a spectroscope. Today we possess science precisely to the extent to which we have decided to accept the testimony of the senses — to the extent to which we sharpen them further, arm them, and have learned to think them through. The rest is miscarriage and not-yet-science — in other words, metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology — or formal science, a doctrine of signs, such as logic and that applied logic which is called mathematics. In them reality is not encountered at all, not even as a problem — no more than the question of the value of such a sign-convention as logic.

  5. I’m old enough to remember what real progressives thought in the 1950s, and the weren’t bashing immigrants. For example, my uncle was active in the Midwest Comnmittee for Protection of Foreign Born. There was also the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress for Racial Equality, etc. Please don’t confuse New York intellectuals with progressives.

    • As a child, I met academic circles associated with Gordon Allport, Erik Erikson, Gunnar Myrdal, Joseph Campbell, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Amb. Andrew Young. Each did much to address racial and ethnic prejudice. I never met Jerome Bruner, whose Minding the Law is a classic in deconstructing the Supreme Court opinions subsequent Brown vs. Board of Education However some of their colleagues patently favored this or that ethnicity or racial groups. I won’t name them at this time. I have continued to see this this in terms of ME, Iran, and South Asia policies. Favoring either Iranians or Arabians was standard practice. We see this same division in current international relations and foreign policies. Therefore I thought it was the sociology of expertise that needed more attention. The dynamics among these experts were fascinating. I might write a longer account. I have hesitated due to the fact that it will surprise people what I had gleaned over the course of my teen life.

    • Growing up in Detroit in the 40’s and 50’s, most kids my age had grandparents who were immigrants — so immigrant bashing just wasn’t the done thing. Indeed, cultural backgrounds were celebrated.

      • Martha:

        The funny thing is, Alfred Kazin was the son of immigrants, as I think were most of his friends, and he wrote a lot about the immigrant experience. But, from that diary entry, it seems he was not so favorably disposed toward later immigrants. At least, these were his personal thoughts; I don’t have knowledge of any actions he did to oppose immigrants.

  6. “I wonder how much of this is on the absolute scale and how much is relative to current policies or the sense of the prevailing opinion”

    A cooperator/defector model works here. Folks prone to cooperation just see immigrants as potential co-cooperators. Defectors more or less automatically see them as “others” to defect from. The point here is that you can predict other political leanings from specific questions about racial attitudes if those questions focus on cooperation. That has not changed.

  7. I was in a convenience store the other day around 6 in the evening buying some soda pop. Ahead of me in line was a tired looking man wearing grimy clothes who paid for a few candy bars with crumpled dollars. He spoke heavily accented English. Thank you, Mr. Hardworking immigrant, for being poor and dirty so that I don’t have to be!

  8. From an outsider view it does seem like homogeneous cities are cleaner. May have to do with levels of public trust in the vein of Putnam. Would be interesting to study empirically.

  9. Actually, Tucker Carlson did refer to the possibility of immigration making us “more divided”. And logically, he was referring to the opinions of others. Here is what he said:

    “It’s obvious that we need more scientists and skilled engineers, but that’s not what we’re getting. Instead, we’re getting waves of people with high school educations or less. Nice people. No one doubts that. But as an economic matter, this is insane. It’s indefensible, so nobody even tries to defend it. Instead, our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, dirtier and more divided.”

    If you attack him, without defending what he says is “indefensible”, then you really just agreeing with his main point.

  10. Roger, I wrote this above, in response to a previous (similar) post you wrote on this thread, before you posted this, so I’m reposting it here:

    “C’mon, Roger; you’ve got it absolutely wrong. Who washes the dishes in the restaurants you frequent; who trims the bushes and cuts the grass in the houses you pass by; who picks the strawberries you put on your cereal? YOU are more likely to require services than the hard-working Mexican immigrants who come to the US — to work.”

    You have a myopic lens through you which you are looking.

  11. “Is Tucker Carlson more racist than Alfred Kazin?”

    You may be conflating racism with xenophobia / cultural chauvinism here. I don’t agree with Tucker’s view of immigrants, but I can see how someone could have a negative view of immigrants and believe that their purported vices are due to culture rather than genetic endowment.

    • Today, I lean to the use of the term ‘ethnocentrism’ rather than ‘bigotry and prejudice’, the latter too broad to begin with. There are degrees of ‘ethnocentrism’ even in non-white groups.

      The reality is that we can draw up a list of cultural/normative practices and rituals characterized as negative about nearly every. Immigration is now a hot topic. So disproportionate attention is on non-white communities.

      Some non white comedians are skilled in lampooning white culture Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy for example. It was a venue for whites to see how non-whites perceive them.

      We have cognitive dissonance over our own habits. And quick to judge others. We tend to initiate so many false dichotomies and legitimate them as contrasts/comparisons. You wonder why psychology, and other social sciences, is in such sad shape. Call it indulging in sloppy comparisons. I thought that Jerome Bruner was one of the most logical thinkers, a superb categorizer. We need more individuals with such talent in many fields.

  12. “there’s much less difference between conservatives and progressives than most people think. Maybe one or two generations of majority opinion, at most.”

    When this sort thing comes up I often think of Othello. Its treatment of race and prejudice feels far less jarring to me than the Kazin quote, despite its being written 400 years ago.

  13. One of the known side effects of being a famous writer is that you often go around the bend. For example, Alice Walker, the author of “The Color Purple,” is a strange anti-Semite; her views were featured the other day in the Washington Post:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/18/new-york-times-criticized-alice-walker-interview-touting-book-that-blames-jews-holocaust/?utm_term=.5fc47714ded0:
    —–
    “She once recommended a video of a conversation between Icke and Alex Jones, the conspiracy kingpin and founder of Infowars. “I like these two because they’re real,” she offered.”

    “Simply follow the trail of ‘The Talmud’ as its poison belatedly winds its way into our collective consciousness,” Walker wrote. The poem repeats a slew of anti-Semitic tropes, from the charge that Jews killed Christ to the notion that Jews view “Goyim (us)” as “sub-humans, animals.”
    —-
    Alex Jones is now a household item in the U.S. but David Icke is rather less known.

    “He claims to have had a psychic revelation nearly 20 years ago that led him to rebrand as “Son of the Godhead” and to promote the idea that a race of reptilian humanoids, widely viewed as a stand-in for Jews, is secretly running the world.”

    “I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War.” The Nazi extermination, he wrote, was “coldly calculated by the ‘Jewish’ elite.”

    And, for good measure, “Icke’s incendiary positions, which also include fearmongering about vaccines and the claim that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were the product of an inside job.”

    • I can why younger generations think why their parents’and peers ages are a bunch of kooks. Younger generations are far less prejudice than the baby boomers. I never heard of these dudes until I came to DC. There is a peculiar kind of parochialism even in liberal circles. I just don’t get it.

      Reality is that many have idiocyncratic views of different ethnicities.

    • Paul:

      Is it really an effect of being a famous writer? It seems to me likely to be a selection effect. Lots of people, including various obscure writers, believe all sorts of ridiculous things. It’s only when they’re famous that we hear about it.

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