Labeling people still popular among bigots

Yes, we’ve been lax.  We knew Matt and Crank took Monday off, but none of us bothered to listen to the show anyway.  We even took a vacation yesterday.  This morning, two of our critics shared a ride and decided to tune in.  They listened to two segments and tuned out.

The first segment, however, illustrates perfectly what we reviewed (Labeling people a sure sign of bigotry). They started the segment talking about Oregon’s Representative David Wu and the allegations of improper sexual advances made against him.  Matt made it a point to clarify that the representative he was talking about was the “Asian representative”.  During the course of the conversation, Matt and Crank talked about several other members of Congress who were caught in a sex scandal, but not once did they mention any of those political figures as the “European” or “White “ guys.

In all fairness to Matt and Crank, we acknowledge that their mode of thinking is so entrenched in classifying groups of people by categories, describing people by their ethnicity or minority group status comes naturally for them.  There are people and then there are the Asians, Mexicans, Blacks, Muslims, atheists, gays, lesbians, and the list goes on.  When talking about people, Matt and Crank feel there is no need to describe White of Western European decent, heterosexual, Christian males because people are people so those descriptions mean nothing when telling a story.  For everyone else, their religion, color of skin, ethnicity, race, sex, sexual orientation, and disability are very important traits to mention when making fun of the person. 

Out of the list of several politicians recently caught in a sex scandal that Matt and Crank rattled off, all of them must be White of Western European decent since Matt nor Crank hadn’t felt it necessary to tell us their race.  We’re wondering why it was necessary for them to tell us Mr. Wu’s race with a classification, we’re sure, he probably would object to.  He’s American of Chinese decent.  Talk to someone of Chinese decent and someone of Japanese decent and get back with us as to whether they consider themselves of the same race, Asian.  Throw in the mix a Korean, Vietnamese, Phillpino, and a Russian.  And let’s not forget a Pakistani or Indian (from the country of India so the bigots reading this don’t get them confused with our Native Americans).  And let’s really shake it up and throw in an Inuit.

Yes, race is an arbitrary description that means something only to bigots.