re: #281 prairiefire

But there is the white flash power of American opinion that can be very powerful. “That ain’t right. Was anybody hurt?” Guaranteed those sentiments will carry far here.

I agree, and I hope they continue carrying far.

What’s spooky, though, is that it’s always under contest: there are people trying very hard to “other” some group so that they’re acceptable targets, so that the general public are less concerned or have rationalizations available when someone gets hurt.

[ETA: look at the people who downplay the victim status of bullied gay kids. Case in point.]

It’s sounds weird and a bit counter-intuitive, but it takes effort and work to build and sustain bigotry as a society-wide phenomenon, particularly in a modern world where ethnicity or race isn’t alien just by virtue of being elsewhere/little seen.

What freaks me out is that you can still see it work: Rwanda and Burundi should be pants-shitting terrifying to the world, because contrary to the reportage, “Hutu” and “Tutsi” were fast-and-loose ethnic categories belied by generations of intermarriage and shared space. That ugliness was something kept smoldering by French understanding of race science back in the colonial days, then fanned into insane, conspiracy-theory frenzy by a government-run radio show.