Are Sarcastic and Ironic Racism Still Racism?
Readers may want to refer to this previous article
I don’t know when I first encountered the idea but it was some years ago, at first it was just presented as “ironic racism is still racism”.
I was a little bit taken aback about that, because I am by nature pretty ironical. I don’t think I’ve ever been ironically racist but I suppose it could happen some time. As a personality trait irony often represents a state of distrust of ones own good intentions, as a misanthrope I don’t trust myself any more than I trust the rest of you scum. More about that in a bit.
It seems a suspect idea, after all I don’t think one would say ironic feminism was still feminism or ironic communism was still communism — but what if you said someone was being ironically capitalist — would that still be capitalism? After all we live in a capitalist society, you are probably performing capitalist actions as part of that society all the time, if you are ironic about that while you perform them I suppose you may still be behaving in a capitalist manner.
What about rape? If you were an ironic rapist, I would absolutely say you are still a rapist and no amount of irony can change that. And this is where we get to the rather obvious point, you can’t be ironic about actions in the same way you can about communication.
But in the case of communication is ironic racism necessarily racism? Assuming we are in a racist society does an ironic racist statement function as the practice of racism in the same way as the ironic capitalist statement might function as the practice of capitalism.
This probably needs some sort of scenario of what an ironic capitalism might look like, because the phrase (even though it is my own invention) does not inspire me with feelings of “Oh I know what that is”
But if I were to imagine ironic capitalism I might look at Late Stage Capitalism and a couple of the examples it cites
Luxury retailer Nordstrom sold jeans with fake mud on them.
Big money to be made with international shipping routes through the Arctic as the ice caps melt.
And now I am stuck, I cannot think of a way to make an ironic capitalist statement — I can think of being an artist and pretending to sell jeans with fake mud on them but as soon as I sell them I engaging in some sort of capitalistic behavior even as I critique it, just as the ironic rapist as soon as they rape are being a rapist — the thing does not even exist without the action, and the action nullifies the “irony”.
An Ironic X that is Not X
Perhaps to be sure it exists let us construct an ironic communication that is not the thing it purports to be. This is also difficult but let me go through why — as I said before
irony often represents a state of distrust of ones own good intentions
I tend to distrust emotional, emotional commitment, and desire. So let’s go for that.
Some examples — one time I was on a significant amount of psychedelics, at a club where a band was playing, a girl was standing near the stage and emotionally distraught, crying. A part of my mind thought someone should check on her, she seemed upset, at which point a cynical voice in my head said “yeah, you just want sex, you hypocrite” (which really that internal voice was more sarcastic than ironic)
Here is where some distrust comes in, I’m not sure I didn’t just want to get laid — on the other hand I was on a lot of psychedelics and it was not really putting me in a sex mood.
Another time I was out with a girl that I was hoping would want to hang out with me but she had a previous engagement, I don’t mean I wanted sex, I was just hoping to walk around and kiss her good night and know that someone I liked the looks of and thought was funny and smart liked me enough to walk around with me and kiss me good night. In short I was hoping for a romantic movie trope when the viewer feels hey these two are clearly meant for each other.
When I got home that night a friend crashing at my house asked me how I was doing as I guess I seemed a bit depressed, I replied something to the effect — “Not great, I Didn’t get laid”
While I felt what I wanted was romantic in nature, my cynical turn worried it was all bullshit, a facade — that beneath it all we’re all animals and what we want is to get laid and that’s it. An ironic view is often not just full of self-distrust, but also self-loathing.
At least, from these two examples it seems to me that a communication of ironic sexism is not necessarily sexism, although it can be interpreted as such by the receiver of the communication.
Constructiing An Ironic Racist Statement
Can we construct an ironic racist statement? How’s this — a white man has just been awarded a prestigious position, he is very qualified for it, there were two other people in the running — both non-white. Someone congratulates him on all his hard work paying off and he says “Lucky I was white.”
I would say there is not enough context to know if that is meant ironically or not, but assuming it was, is it also racist? In essence he could be expressing a worry that despite his hard work he might have gotten the position due to systemic racism. Surely worrying that one might have benefited from a racist system cannot be racist in itself, or it’s going to be very difficult to change the system.
Perhaps if he definitely thought one of the non-white applicants was better qualified then it would not be an ironic statement, it would seem more a thankful statement that he was benefiting from racism.
Irony needs to have that worrisome ambiguity about it.
If he was black man with albinism and he said “Lucky I’m white” it might also be considered ironic, but probably not ironic racism. If however he has that ambiguous feeling that maybe he did not deserve what he tells himself he did deserve and that everyone else seems to think he deserved, he contemptuously directs an insult at himself.
I think that just barely squeezes in as ironic racism that is not racist, but lets say he expounds on how lucky he was and it is good the system keeps non-white people out. The more he ironically defines himself as a beneficiary of racism the more it becomes a support of a racist system that is set up to benefit him. Too much irony edges into cynicism, the contempt stops being inner directed and turns outward.
The direction of Sarcasm
Sarcasm of course is outward directed, I am also a pretty sarcastic person. I don’t expect I would ever do ironic racism, because as I said irony is about your distrust of self, and I trust I am not racist but I suppose I might do sarcastic racism at times, or satirical racism, because those are forms of attack. Attacking others is always nicer than attacking one’s self and I’m so darn good at it!
There are generally two kinds of sarcastic racism — one in which a person has been accused in some way of racism and they counterattack sarcastically and the second in which a person has noticed someone else doing something they consider racist and they attack with sarcastic racism to highlight the perceived racism.
In the first the sarcasm disputes that one could be racist, which, as we’ve noted it may be true that a person is not a racist ( as in they do not actively try to bring about and strengthen a racist society) but it can certainly be true that they have been infected with a racist idea and have unthinkingly spread it, a strong sarcastic reaction against this smacks a bit of self-doubt and the need to defend the bulwarks of self-image. Sarcastic self-defense against accusations of racism almost always comes off as being racist.
In the second using sarcasm to point out the racism of others we do not often consider that to be racist in itself, which is why Charlie Don’t Surf by The Clash is considered an anti-racist song.
It’s the Internet’s Fault!
Isn’t it always? But facetiousness aside, the origin of the idea that sarcastic X and ironic Y are always true representations of X and Y is I think trying to handle the problem of global communication. When people first started communicating with people all over the world of various classes, regions, and levels of understanding it soon became apparent that communication that was not always to the point, that did not mean what it said and never said what it meant while maybe possessed of a long intellectual history was apt to create misunderstandings and friction at internet scale.
Who can’t say what they mean
Don’t mean what they say
This led to such innovations as ending comments with /s because even the broadest, most obvious statement could be misunderstood and suddenly you were getting piled on.
People who were probably thought of as funny and quirky in their social circle could become instant worldwide pariahs by saying something not very clever the point of which seemed blindingly obvious and trite but which was interpreted in the worst way possible
I just said worst way possible, although in an American context racists and homophobes have such a strong overlap it seems weird to assume that a racist would ever think white people couldn’t get AIDS, so it’s really a way that, prior to the internet proving me wrong, I would have said was an impossible interpretation.
With the understanding that the failure mode of clever is asshole — planet-wide, irony and sarcasm fell out of favor as general strategies of communication even as the source of meaning for what one said was given over to whoever heard what was said.
At this point someone who is ironic or sarcastic has probably a personality issue that makes them communicate in these manners, and can’t help themselves, or is just claiming to be ironic or sarcastic when caught out saying a bad thing they shouldn’t have.
And this really brings me long way about to the main point of this article which is the people who say Sarcastic X and Ironic Y are always just X and Y suck ass, and the death of satire.
The Death Of Satire
I’m going to have to strawman a lot here because one of my worst failings as a person is I don’t keep extensive enough notes and quotes of things people say and do online in hopes of writing up a mean article on them years later, and Google is shit.
I often encounter people online who decry the death of satire, because satire would be incapable of keeping up with the world as it is, these people often also seem to think that sarcastic X is still X and is thus bad.
The thing is that Satire must partake of the nature of the thing is satirizes, that is to say Satirical racism must still be recognizable as racism and must at internet scale reach a significant number of people who see it as racism.
There is really a sort of general misunderstanding of satire among people crying tears at its funeral, they think that because they recognize A Modest Proposal is satire that satire is something immediately recognizable as such and that the satire that is not immediately recognizable as satire has failed artistically.
( God, why do I not keep better notes on the idiots I encounter online — hopefully one of them will read this and have enough self knowledge to blush but I doubt it.)
The problem with this exemplary model system of literature is that art which is too much constrained by what it is allowed cannot be of much interest, and that it doesn’t take into account the really smart people all over the internet who never seem to understand anything at all oblique.
At any rate irony and sarcasm are bulwarks of satire, and if they are not allowed to be used in its construction then the satire would not be of much use. In short if ironic racism is racism then one cannot satirize racism, and if racism is a signature quality of a society then that society is protected from satire.
Satire may not really be dead, but damn if these idiots don’t do their best to kill it, all while daubing their eyes and whining over its mortality.
This article was written by IG Agent 84.
Here I should probably make an addendum — earlier I claimed
At this point someone who is ironic or sarcastic… is just claiming to be ironic or sarcastic when caught out saying a bad thing they shouldn’t have.
Which is often the cause of the ironic racism debate. The last defense against a charge of a racism is irony, but instead of saying no you weren’t being ironic you were being racist, the whole attack seems to accept that they were being ironic — succeeding in making irony the culprit. It’s weird to make inappropriate a form of human expression when what is wanted is to attack the content of that expression but that seems to be the way of it.
