Hipster racism and plain old racism

Last week there was a furor over whether the cover of the New Yorker was satirical or racist. Many people went with satirical, because it’s not as comfortable to vote for racist. Or, because they genuinely thought it was funny. The one person that I know who thought it was funny is a loyal reader and perhaps had some insight that the rest of us in the general populace do not regarding the New Yorker’s brand of humor.

[In case you missed it, here’s the cover. In case anyone hasn’t thought about or read about this and didn’t get it immediately like I didn’t, the “satirical” aspect is that the lefty New Yorker is poking fun at conservatives’ fears of Mr and Mrs Obama successfully winning the White House. I haven’t been trolling around conservative blogs enough for this point to be so painfully obvious to me.]

But AJPlaid has a different take on it: this cover is an example of hipster racism.

I define hipster racism (I’m borrowing the phrase from Carmen Van Kerckhove) as ideas, speech, and action meant to denigrate another’s person race or ethnicity under the guise of being urbane, witty (meaning “ironic” nowadays), educated, liberal, and/or trendy.

….perhaps, Remnick and Co, thought they’d get a pass on the cover because they did good by Obama with the articles and thought people would catch the wink and nudge of the visual joke because, hey, they’re all on the right side anyway.

There is a whole lot of this type of commentary flying around lately, and for good reason. Another current example is that of the grad student in NYC who wore a shirt around emblazoned with the phrase, “Obama is my slave.” I am sure that many more people are walking around with the same shirt, but we heard about her because she was shoved and spat upon, and turned around and threatened to sue the designer because of the treatment she received. For some reason, she thought everyone would be in on the joke?? Again from AJPlaid:

And that’s the ultimate rub about hipster racism: as much as the people like to think they’re above it because they got degrees and live in the big city and befriend/sex up/marry people of color, these folks really aren’t above it.

It’s apparent from the comments to a post in LiveJournal’s NewYorker community about the t-shirt incident that many people are not hipster racists, but plain old racists, hiding behind thinly veiled and often inaccurate academic rhetoric or arguments built out of semantic objections. All of these arguments are built on a faulty understanding of where racism comes from and why. Many still subscribe to the idea that it’s “human nature.” Many don’t think the joke on the t-shirt is offensive at all – mainly because they are white and can’t conceive of a family history that includes slavery, with all its cruelty and dehumanization. And extremely few connect it to capitalism or economic gain, which is the reason that it was institutionalized with the rise of the slave trade (though the groundwork was laid long before).

“Final period”

Several days ago, the New York Times published an op-ed about a new form of birth control marketed by Wyeth called Lybrel with the above title. The fourth paragraph is a sarcastic listing of all the arguments for a pill that will allow women to never menstruate:

After all, periods and their mood swings are bad for family values (who wants to have a stay-at-home mom when she’s so darn cranky?), bad for women’s health (women were never meant to menstruate so much; natural selection designed their bodies for back-to-back pregnancies and breast-feeding), bad for the fashion industry (how can beige be the new black if women won’t wear it all month?) and bad for the economy (everybody knows women take to their beds at the merest whisper of “cramps,” fueling the nation’s employee-absentee rate). Western civilization, it seems, hinges on our ability to wrangle our messy cycles to the ground and stomp ’em out once and for all.

The op-ed focuses on the idea that marketing such a pill counts on emphasizing the concept of menstruation as something that weakens women and makes them unsuitable for some activities. The author traces trends going back a century and a half, indicating that during WWII efforts, when it wasn’t convenient for menstruation to get in the way of sending women to work anymore, there was a retraction of the “research” that said it prevented women from higher education, hard work, or holding public office.

And now – menstruation isn’t a reason for women to miss work or stay out of school or not run for office any longer. But it is emphasized as a large inconvenience that requires loads of products to manage, and symptoms that require the intercession of the drug companies. PMS has Midol et al., and now Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder has its drugs as well. Women are taught to believe that they have a monthly disease that requires treating. Some symptoms, when severe enough, have even been treated with birth control pills.

But now – Lybrel can control birth AND menstruation. I am for choice in many domains, but I’m not for paying money to big pharma for a drug that will eliminate a normal cycle. Women spend years on hormones that don’t allow them to get to know their body, control hormonal levels and processes, and now are being presented with one more way to give over control to a corporation and to consumerize a process that probably doesn’t need to be managed to this extent.

My fear is that the further women get from understanding how their body works and from going through a normal process, the more agency they give away to the medical and pharmaceutical industry. As well, as the author of the op-ed points out, there are no studies yet on (therefore unknown) effects of longterm menstrual suppression. I’m fairly certain they won’t all outweigh the convenience factor.

While I recognize that all medical and pharmaceutical developments take time and many turn out to be beneficial, I think if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The perception of what is “broke” apparently differs according to whether you ask me or Wyeth’s therapeutic director for women’s health.

In any case, the op-ed’s last line is the advice I plan to take regarding Lybrel: “… just don’t buy it.” Period.