In the on-going attempt to pry apart the stubborn clichés and stereotypes that are outdated and even mistaken from the beginning, I’m taking several approaches. One is that every stigma, race or assumption is a continuum rather than a binary, that the continuum is anchored by high prestige at one end and permission to abuse and even kill at the other. Vividly, a person who provides sex for money might be a consort of a king or the mistress of an international corporation CEO. This applies to males as well as females, and to ambiguous sexualities as ascribed to someone like Wallis Simpson.
Let’s look at skin color. Given the TV exposure of well-educated and well-spoken black people in popular drama series as well as in news segments about doctors, it appears from their grace and intelligence that they are far more naturally high status than some Republican senators. But away from these assimilated people are dark street people who are barely existing. No one knows quite what to do with the high prestige African personalities who remain colorful and energetic to the point of seeming garish and outré. Some love ‘em, some hate ‘em.
One moral narrative in this country is that immigrants and low income people can ascend the culture continuum through education and virtue. But it is challenged. For one thing, only the predominate highest class decides who IS educated and makes it easier for some to ascend.
The other major lever in prying apart such stigmas as race is the realization that global unity is rapidly erasing the reality and concept of “race.” Maybe we’ll all be beige. This complex and changing world has left many criteria behind. For instance, a delinquent kid may have educated himself to use the Internet to a far greater extent that professors and legislators. The gizmos are meant to allow self-teaching. This takes time and experience with the issue, but grown professionals with pressing jobs are not likely to have those “privileges”, those luxuries. At the same time "populism" is cheapening and coarsening our judges and representatives. From a rather Nordic white perspective.
In one way the internet is a great leveling force so that kids in China or Australia can theoretically talk to anyone anywhere unless their governments shut down the machinery, which they are not likely to do if they don’t know it’s happening. The internet grew up around porn — everyone doing it and no one admitting it — so secrecy and unexpectedness is built in, but so is “aggregation” as was described in “A Billion Wicked Thoughts”. A basic contributor to stigma is not having the facts because they have been suppressed to keep them from disturbing the status quo, particularly if someone loses profit or control.
But the “facts” are easily changed into damn lies by tinkering with obvious things like place of residence (gerrymandering) or shopping — or subtle hoaxes like shell companies. It’s interesting that that there’s so much revelation about shell companies, empty identities, but none of the outrage that accompanies traditional disguises like “noms de plume”. People are convinced that sex and romantically squalid identities make narratives more marketable if they are presented as real. This has been true since “Fanny Hill” and “Robinson Crusoe.” Combat and prison stories also tempt “shell identities”. But that doesn’t mean that “The Red Badge of Courage” is bogus. It’s still a good story.
Consider three stories edited and defended by one particular publisher who shall be nameless. One was Sherman Alexie whose audacity has finally gotten out of hand. Another was Alice Randall who wrote “The Wind Done Gone,” a Black counter-story to “Gone with the Wind”. That went to court. The third was Tim Barrus who sent a first-person fiction story about “Nasdijj” to Esquire magazine where it was taken by the “white boy” editors to be actual testimony, so that's the way they promoted it. But they knew that Nasdijj had no mailing address.
It is a great crime in America to jump ethnic groups. Barrus was not Navajo — he was Delaware, a tribe scattered by the States and then more recently regathered after being moved to Oklahoma. The Barrus line is named in order by the Miskawest people. The sequence of descent — nothing to do with blood quantum and everything to do with pedigree — was traced back individual by individual. So what are the consequences to the critics who accused Barrus of being non-native?
This European concern for who begat whom comes from the 19th century development of animal husbandry breeding but also, to some extent, from the Biblical begats that justify the pedigree of Jesus. Maybe that’s why it’s such a moral issue. Therefore, I was surprised when a respected female rancher/writer just accepted the media’s accusations without reading the book in question or even — as far as I know — the original story in Esquire. She was equally surprised that I would defend such a stigmatized person.
Sources and sequences are fascinating and even useful, but unreliable as moral indicators, unless you accept Trump’s use of “hoax” and “witchhunt” to exonerate his dubious actions. We are no longer reluctant to use the stigma of “mafia” against Trump — with proof.
Several stigmas are denials of privilege, like anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism. In this small town they are very often in play. Most disconcertingly, if one comes from a faster urban life, the idea of what an elite or an intellectual might be like is much different than what it is assumed to be where not many people go to college. Shouting and stubborn insistence are often confused with true knowledge, and a motivated ignoramus can take over an entire meeting.
Mayberry is often mentioned in comparison to Valier, but people forget how people in the story often went off on tangents — a little like white people’s Naapi stories, illustrations of stigma and mistaken assumptions. https://www.tribdem.com/news/bill-eggert-the-andy-griffith-show-turns-60/article_8a61d0e0-b82c-11ea-91e9-8f4232b1c52b.html
Experiments with birds (who, of course, have bird brains) show how deeply and biologically the exceptional individual, the white crow, is attacked in an effort to drive it off, even kill it. This is true of many humans, esp. if money or prestige are involved. Of course, authors take the brunt of accusations because no one knows much about publishers really. Unless they create a stir of controversy through "their authors", as above.
I’m not trying to defend any particular author. I’m just deploring that any individual is defined by color, provenance, or even things like stupidity, which may be very revealing and emotionally compelling stupidity. But it shouldn’t be judged without reading the work. Otherwise, where on the continuum of stupidity would one locate it? Holy fool or pain in the butt?
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