Is Anti-Racist Liberal Hatchet-Man Warren Kinsella Racist?

Obviously Kinsella has some issues he hasn't quite worked through. Any "anti-racist" who would brazenly tell Buddy Hackett-era Chinese waiter jokes cannot have ever seriously thought through the race issue and is desperately in need of sensitivity training. Hell, most racists these days won't tell Chinese waiter gags because they know better.

It's incidents like this that lead me to believe Kinsella's anti-racism doesn't procede from "first principles".  What does it come from then?

My guesses are a kind of "noblesse oblige", maybe a narcissistic superhero complex, or even fetishization of the targets of racism.

It's obvious this is what prevents a supposed "anti-racist" from seeing the apartheid setup in the West Bank and Gaza.

It took several days (and possibly intervention from Iggy's office) before Kinsella apologized so I'm not sure I'd give him any credit. His initial response was to attack his critics.

I agree with Michelle, I don't think that just because someone tells a joke that they ought to know better than to tell - it makes them "racist". There is a difference (to say the least) between kidding about cat meat being served in Chinese restaurants and wearing white hoods and taking part in lynchings.

China there are regions of the country where civet cat is actually considered a delicacy and where live cats are kept in cages before being cooked to order. In Korea and Vietnam, dog is a delicacy. There is a town in Cambodia where a local specialty is grilled tarantula (eek!). Apparently a lot of people in China think that we in the west are revolting because take milk and let it rot and ferment to such an extent that it solidifies and smells like dirty socks and then we consider it a delicacy called "cheese"

Completely unscrupulous, middling intelligence, dubiously relevant, and worst of all desperate for "cool" cred. Most of his cock ups come from trying too hard to impress his sophomoric friends. Kinsella is nothing but a poseur who has made a career out of disingenuously manufacturing controversy for petty partisan purposes. Canadian Observer beautifully punked the punk poseur. Still one of my favourite blog posts of all time. Click!

This said, if this were an isolated incident of stupidity, I'd be inclined to let it slide, but as part of pattern that includes a sexist attack on women in politics, charges of blood libel against an NDP staffer for signing the above mentioned petition, scurrilous charges against politicians whose grave error was to not be running for the Liberals, with the stench of the sponsorship scandal on him, I don't think so. 

Stockholm, you don't really agree with me.  Just for the record.  I don't agree with most of your post.

Jokes about cat meat are mean-spirited and insensitive, but don't you think you're overstating things a bit to say that "excludes Chinese people from social life"???

Anyways, my point is that people inadvertently say things that are racist - but that doesn't make that person "a racist". On the other hand, there are probably plenty of people who actually are racist to the core - who are also smart enough not to say things that get them into trouble - but they are still totaly racist.

A friend of mine who is just about the most hyper-politically correct person i know and who doesn't have a racist bone in his body got accused of racism because he gave a lecture where he described some issue about farm subsidies in the EU as being "not a black and white issue" and someone claimed that by saying this he had to be racist against Blacks!

If we understand racism to be the internalizing, externalizing and institutionalizing of racist thoughts, ideas practices and actions, and that racism is the acting out of such thoughts, ideas practices and actions through institutions, systems and individuals, then anyone raised in such a society is racist.

My hope as an educator, and as a human, is that more and more of us can get on the project of spending some time, much of our lives, actually, unlearning racism (and other oppressions that are also imbedded in Canadian culture) and learning to become allies across various sites of oppression.

If we understand racism to be the extreme acts of a wacky white minority (KKK for eg.), then we will never attack the roots of racism, which is, in the Canadian context, Canadian culture itself. We will always view racism as "in the other, not in me".

Kinsella is a total asshole and so it gives me some satisfaction to see him hoisted on his own petard - but in response to the OP's question. Is he a racist? I don't think so...not unless you think that EVERYONE is a racist to at least some extent.

A few important points

1) His initial "apology" wasn't even remotely sincere and he only apologized again after a week of bad press. This looks a lot more like saving your career than genuine regret.

2) This isn't the first time he's made a stupid comment and only apologized after being ordered to by the people who hold his leash. Remember this?

3) He hasn't hesitated to jump down the throats of other people for making similar gaffes.

4) His "anti-racist" work is largely self-promotional as far as I can tell. It's Geraldo Rivera-style sensationalism about how powerful the neo-Nazi movement is and their links to Libya. He took public potshots at ARA to boot (because they're too violent).

5) He's an uncritical supporter of Israel and he's written extensively about how the Palestinian children who dies brought it on themselves. This, to me, is way more offensive.

He's not a "racist" in the way that say, Wolfgang Droege's a racist - but he's definitely a Powerful Arrogant Asshole kind of racist, IMHO.

I'm with Michelle (although in my wholly objective and dispassionate assessment Kinsella is a raving arsehole).

I lived in an African village for two years and a bit.  I was the only white person ever to live in that village or any village that neighboured it. It was hard at first, and one of the hardest aspects was being on the receiving end of some brutal stereotypes that people just assumed I would be fine with. In Michelle's terms, they just didn't get it. 

I couldn't imagine how that was possible at first, but eventually I recognized some of it mirrored in my own responses to unfamiliar situations. I was shocked when I realized it. I learned a few things about the limits of my own sensitivity. I learned a lot about how uncomfortable and excluded that kind of thing can make a person feel without anybody ever intending to be unkind.

I've been thinking about Kinsella's outburst some more.

I wonder if it has something to do with his uncritical support of the Gaza massacre (which happened just before he made this statement). 

At some level, maybe not even consciously, Kinsella has accepted apartheid in the occupied territories, the second class status of Arabs in Israel, the genocidal attacks on the Palestinians.  Once he has done that, it seems but a short step to start cracking ethnic jokes about Canadians.

Not only is the occupation corrupting Israel, but it corrupts men like Kinsella:  from anti-racist to racist.

Michelle wrote:

Does that make me "racist"? Yeah. I guess it does. I guess we all are, really. But people who are open to admitting it and learning from it, and apologizing when they fuck up are at least doing something that the majority of white people don't do when they say or do something racist.

the majority of "white people" don't do when they say or do something rascist sounds a whole lot rascist to me. 

 I recall during the 80s and 90s  that the JDL and the ARA use to make common cause against neo-Nazis both here and in the United States.

 Here is an interesting take as found in Ken McVay's FTP Shofar:

"White Separatists Drive Zionists and Communists from Bandshell    
                           The Hoffman Wire
                               3 Jul 99

COEUR d-ALENE, Idaho -- Approximately 100 white separatists who are
here to attend the Aryan Nations World Congress in Hayden Lake,
escorted their leader, 82 year old Richard Butler to the Coeur d¹Alene
Lakeside Park today, and rushed the stage of the municipal bandshell,
which had been occupied by approximately 200 members of the United
Front Against Fascism, ARA and Jewish Defense League (JDL), who were
intent on denying the Aryans a forum.

Before the white separatists had arrived, the day had begun about noon
with a confrontation between JDL leader Irv Rubin and a half-dozen of
his followers from Los Angeles, and Michael A. Hoffman II, a
revisionist author and local resident."

 http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/ftp.py?people//b/bjurling.vera/VB.990706

What is interesting is that this report also notes that the subject of the attack by the JDL and ARA, Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi, Michael Hofmann 111, defended himself by confronting JDL leader Irv Rubin with the JDL's anti-Arab protests. Nonetheless the ARA worked in common cause with the JDL. We saw similar examples of ARA and JDL working together here in Toronto against the Heritage Front at around the same time.

Would it also be fair to say that anyone pal-ing around with the JDL during these times had lost any anti-racist cred they once had?

I seem to remember that Weinstein was in Alberta during the 80's and that the anti-Heritage Front campaign was led by the ARA, Rodney Bobiwash's Klan Busters with support from Bernie Farber and the CJC. Front line action was all almost all ARA, and Klan Buster's while Bernie and the CJC did background legal stuff.

Were you there?

AKA Mycroft,I'm not sure I made an argument. Seems I more asked a question. Calling it specious is a bit too precious.

Cueball, I wasn't there at the time I only read about it in Kinsella's book "Web of Hate" and a few articles I found online.

The only reason I would be concerned about having the JDL at an anti-Nazi event would be the fact that I have observed that they go off discipline and sometimes instigate, or participate in shouting matches and shoving matches with the opposite side. That is bad for business. In principle I (personally) would not have a problem with them in an anti-Nazi protest, since they would not likely cause problems like that within the demonstration.

On the other side of the fence, it is hard to tell if they are going "off" discipline when trying to start stuff with pro-Palestinian demonstrators, or if that is policy. Fortunately, the Palestine House people usually run the security at those events and they have rock solid discipline and usually are able to keep their people in check.