A Racist Was Here – or – Edward Carson Was Here

Do you want to learn more about our ill informed little visitor and perhaps a little about racism as well? Probably not - discovering how backwards the world is is really depressing. Yes, you are probably thinking, “But racists come here all the time" (see transformers comments). This is true but that’s usually in an anonymous capacity. A few days ago Edward Carson’s tiny little head appeared on our Bloglog. It’s not hard to guess how he found his way here.

I was catching up with the comments on an article at capetownnews.co.za when I came across Ed’s comments. Here is a disturbing extract:

In a perfect world, kaffirs would not be so resistant to civilisation; they would embrace it and become part of it, and in time would acquire some of the human characteristics that us whites take for granted. In a perfect world. It doesn’t take rocket science to realise that we live in an imperfect world. So my friend, put aside your utopianism and guilt associated with our inability to get the blacks to transcend their sub-human nature, and wake up to the real world.

Very poetic. For non-South African’s, the ‘k’ word he uses at the start of the quote is a derogatory word for a black person, similar to the ‘n’ word, but if you’ve heard it spoken in South Africa you would understand that it is a hell of a lot worse. After reading this comment, out of curiosity, I went to his site and he obviously followed the link from his Bloglog.

Anyway Mr. Carson is one of the few racists out there I’ve seen who is brave enough to put his real identity on the line. He peddles his Hitler babble on his blog which features the old South African flag in the title. I am fairly certain this guy thinks Lamborghini’s are sexy.

Anyway there are few positives to discuss about Ed (other than freedom of expression and the fact that he is open about his bigotry). And a list of negatives would be a far too time consuming list of the obvious.

Instead let me rather present to you a theory of racism. I would like to bring up the work of Geoff Lakoff and Mark Johnson , specifically Metaphors We Live By. This is a sort of misleading title since the book deals with metaphors and metonyms but Metaphors and Metonyms We Live By just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Johnson and Lakoff believe that metaphor and metonym (along with their weaker versions simile and synecdoche)are important parts of our conceptual systems that guide our existence. Here’s a quote:

Metaphors have entailments through which they highlight and make coherent certain aspects of our experience. A given metaphor may be the only way to highlight and coherently organize exactly those aspects of our experience.

Metaphors may create realities for us, especially social realities.

Metonym, or more precisely synecdoche, proves to be particularly useful to help explain sheet wearing hoodlums such as Eddy. For those who can’t remember grade 11 English a Metonym is a relationship based on two things through association (ie. Referring to ‘the springboks’ to represent the South African Rugby team).

The weaker form, synecdoche, is when a part is taken for the whole, like when the stereotypical construction worker refers to a woman as “legs”. This particular form is what a lot of racists, and in particular Ed, do. For instance Ed groups all black people in the same category even though I highly doubt he has proof that this is the case for all black people.

So yes most of the violent crime in South Africa is being committed by blacks but it is not being committed by all the blacks. This is where Ed is having his problems - he is letting personal experience ("I did not have a gun. I did not believe in violence. I was not a ‘racist piece of shit’. But none of that could save me from black hatred and violence.") rather than logic guide his thoughts. If all black people were out there killing whites there would be no more white people left in South Africa.

In closing before people go off to Ed’s badly decorated blog just remember what Voltaire said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” Ed has the right to say what he wants (well technically in SA you can’t say hate speech) and we have the right to tell him that what he says is a load of crap. Oh and Ed if you read this why not write a post about Dina Rodrigues on your blog (oh and here is a little something you might find interesting).