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Did you know that "Classical Music is Inherently Racist?"

83K views 690 replies 66 participants last post by  Dan Ante 
#1 ·
I came across this gem in my google feed last night:

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/its-time-to-let-classical-music-die/

"Western classical music is not about culture. It's about whiteness. It's a combination of European traditions which serve the specious belief that whiteness has a culture-one that is superior to all others. Its main purpose is to be a cultural anchor for the myth of white supremacy. In that regard, people of color can never truly be pioneers of Western classical music. The best we can be are exotic guests: entertainment for the white audiences and an example of how Western classical music is more elite than the cultures of people of color."
:rolleyes:
 
#120 ·
It may be impossible to accurately disentangle from one another pseudoscientific theories of racial gradation from the more immediate and base exploitation of the power of one group over another. In contrast to notions of African virility were Buffon's assertions that native American peoples "have small organs of generation" and "little sexual capacity" in part due to the supposed unfinished state and "unprolific land" of the Western Hemisphere. Buffon never crossed the Atlantic to see for himself. But one can understand how some might acquire a racist mindset removed in time and/or space from the scene of current or future practice of racial oppression by reading such nonsense. One can also understand how useful such nonsense would be in justifying ex post facto any such oppression.
Chicken/egg conundrum in at least some cases.
 
#121 ·
Of course, the author here, the son of Lebanese immigrants, is countering what he sees as racist propaganda of the type you mention with some racist propaganda of his own. As he is also an award-winning, formally western-trained composer, standing on the shoulders of those he would tear down, I wonder if his article wasn't written at least in part ironically. After all, doesn't he belong to the generation that created The Onion?
 
#127 · (Edited)
What does "merely a prejudice" mean? What's "mere" about prejudice?
I'm not using "merely" in a sense that would diminish the harmfulness of non-racist prejudice. Prejudices can still be exceedingly harmful and wicked without being racist.

Hatred for and mistreatment of people of a different physical characteristics may be based on nothing more than fear, revulsion and custom.
Of course, but I would still argue that unless those hatreds be directly or indirectly influenced by pseudo-scientific theories of racial hierarchy they are not, strictly speaking, racist. They would instead be a more generalized form of xenophobia or tribalism. They might be wicked and harmful in either case.

The psychology of prejudice is simple human nature and is the basis of racial theory more than the result of it.
Yes, that's precisely what I've been getting at.

All it takes for great numbers of people to justify these is a few Bible verses, and often not even that. No "pseudoscience" needed.
I agree. Pseudoscience plays no part in most forms of prejudice. Nevertheless, racism is a pseudoscience, and that is largely what differentiates it from other forms of pre-enlightenment prejudice.
 
#129 · (Edited)
I would still argue that unless those hatreds be directly or indirectly influenced by pseudo-scientific theories of racial hierarchy they are not, strictly speaking, racist. They would instead be a more generalized form of xenophobia or tribalism.
You want to make this simpler than it is. The concept of "race" is not simple; the term can be and has been conceived in different ways, and prejudicial, discriminatory attitudes and behaviors toward racial groups have been justified (if at all) by reference to characteristics other than those which theorists of biological race have identified as defining race. There is no evidence I can see for your contention that the work of such theorists underlies the introduction of racism into society, or that it's necessary for racism's perpetuation.

Pseudoscience plays no part in most forms of prejudice. Nevertheless, racism is a pseudoscience, and that is largely what differentiates it from other forms of pre-enlightenment prejudice.
So you think the term "racism" should be used in a certain narrow sense. Well, I see no justification for that, either in historical practice or in common usage. Racism in practice is bigger and more complicated than the notions of post-Enlightenment scientific (or pseudoscientific) race theorists. Neither they nor you hold a lexical monopoly on the term. As they say, "haters gonna hate," and they don't need pseudoscientists or lexicographers to help them.
 
#128 · (Edited)
"Many use the term "racism" to refer to more general phenomena, such as xenophobia and ethnocentrism, although scholars attempt to clearly distinguish those phenomena from racism as an ideology or from scientific racism, which has little to do with ordinary xenophobia. Others conflate recent forms of racism with earlier forms of ethnic and national conflict."

This is a little excerpt from the wikipedia article on racism. Wikipedia is by no means an infallible source but I find that this sentence accurately describes the bone of contention in this conversation. I'm trying to preserve the scholarly distinction between racism proper and ordinary xenophobia that is lost in the popular usage of the term.

Here are some key sentences from the Encyclopedia Britannica article on racism that support my assertion that race (in the modern sense) and racism were 18th century inventions:

"The idea of race was invented to magnify the differences between people of European origin and those of African descent whose ancestors had been involuntarily enslaved and transported to the Americas."


"The contradiction between slavery and the ideology of human equality, accompanying a philosophy of human freedom and dignity, seemed to demand the dehumanization of those enslaved."

This last sentence is particularly interesting because it testifies to the fact that racism is symptomatic of a rising moral conscience rather than a declining one. In an earlier, more primitive state of European morals there would have been no need for any theory of justification such as racism. Before notions of human freedom and political equality had taken root, the power to enslave was its own justification. The very existence of highly elaborated racist thought itself shows feelings of guilt over slavery and exploitation that were unknown in earlier periods.
 
#130 · (Edited)
The concept of "race" is not simple; the term can be and has been conceived in different ways, and prejudicial, discriminatory attitudes and behaviors toward racial groups have been justified (if at all) by reference to characteristics other than those which theorists of biological race have identified as defining race.
Yes, we all know that in popular culture and colloquial speech "racism" has the inexact layman's meaning of "a generalized xenophobic act or impulse," but as the sources I cited demonstrate, this not how scholars who study the history of racism use the term. I'm much more inclined to give priority to their usage rather than that of the man on the street. They preserve this distinction because no one really has any idea what is meant by "racism" in the popular sense, besides being a buzzword for some kind of vague hostility between different human groups. It conveys no distinct idea and gives more smoke than light.
 
#136 · (Edited)
You're ignoring the context of the partial quotation you're responding to. You make it seem as if I think the idea of racism is some completely arbitrary creation of the "man on the street.". That shows either a failure to comprehend my objection to your narrow view, or a wish to misrepresent it.

The centuries-long history of bigotry shows that the phenomenon can exist without reference to the particular, rather modern theoretical context you've claimed is necessary to "real" racism. This doesn't mean racism has become, or ever was, a mere "buzzword for some kind of vague hostility between different human groups." There are plenty of hostilities and prejudices which no one would confuse with racism. Most men on the street don't confuse hostilities between Turks and Kurds, or Christians and Muslims, or bosses and workers, or rich and poor, or Californians and Oklahomans, with racism, although we may see racism as a component of some such hostities. Racism normally fixates on some combination of physical, behavioral and cultural traits, real or imaginary, but not just any such traits; ask an Orthodox Jew why he doesn't want his daughter marrying a black or a Christian, and he'll almost certainly give a different answer in each case. Most people will see racism in the first case, but not necessarily in the second. Why? Because blackness is inherent in a person's nature, while a religion is chosen.

If I were to define racism, I'd say that what's really essential is not some specific scientific notion of what constitutes a "race," but rather the practice of racializing: the practice of looking at certain groups of people as possessing some undesirable quality, not by accident of birthplace or by choice, but by nature. It's essentially a practice of "subhumanization" - those people are lesser beings than ourselves - and it's been practiced since ancient times. Modern racial theories, concocted to justify the subhumanization of others, are only recent, elaborated excuses for it.
 
#131 ·
I have been biting my tongue for a while, but must at long last observe: Humans, all of us, are inherently racist. That's the way Darwin planned us. We are exceedingly good at generalizing on the basis of observable physical characteristics, and often hostilely so.

In the US we are obsessed with race (yes, even liberals!) but talk endlessly about how fair-minded we are, and often how racial differences don't really exist at all. But we are happy to build many of our governmental policies on the basis of race, and race-based information is tirelessly collected by the government.

Meanwhile, in the political and other areas, much is made of race. Kamela Harris, Democrat candidate for president, goes on and on about how she is the only black female in the field. However, she is 50% Tamil and much less than 50% black. So why is she black? Tiger Woods, the golfer, similarly is trotted out as a "black golfer" but is really 50% Thai, and some lesser percent of sub-Saharan ancestry. So why is he "black"?

Well, historically any perceptible trace of ******* characteristics makes a person "black," as if it were a kind of pollutant. Look up the "pencil test"! How any of us can claim to be non-racist given this situation, which prevails in America and which we readily accept, goes quite beyond my understanding.
 
#132 · (Edited)
Unless I am sadly mistaken--very sadly mistaken indeed--I think we are in broad agreement on the general principle that tribalism is sufficient to account, by itself, for every sort of horror and atrocity occurring between peoples. I also think we agree on the notion that racism is very largely a phenomenon of fairly recent origin invented to give a (pseudoscientific) sheen of intellectual or biblical respectability to those tribal impulses.

Regarding Ken's observation, we do not need to invoke race to "explain" the love lost between the Serbs and the Croats, for example. And we do have the historians' considered opinion on the racial cosmopolitanism of past multiracial hegemonies. The USA and also Brazil (for different reasons) stand good long-term prospects, through intermarriage/interbreeding, of evolving into race-blind societies, given a lack of other stressors like environmental collapse or continued/growing wealth inequality.
 
#133 · (Edited)
It would surprise me if prejudices based on appearance had no evolutionary basis. It's hard for any person in contemporary Western society to legitimately claim to be altogether free of racial prejudice.

Unless I am sadly mistaken--very sadly mistaken indeed--I think we are broad agreement on the general principle that tribalism is sufficient to account, by itself, for every sort of horror and atrocity occurring between peoples. I also think we agree on the notion that racism is very largely a phenomenon of fairly recent origin invented to give a (pseudoscientific) sheen of intellectual or biblical respectability to those tribal impulses.
I'd concur with that.
 
#134 ·
It would surprise me if prejudices based on appearance had no evolutionary basis. It's hard for any person in contemporary Western society to legitimately claim to be altogether free of racial prejudice.
I affirm that I am awash with cultural prejudices, but I also affirm to the best of my knowledge (self-knowledge) that I am free of racial (color) prejudice.
 
#137 · (Edited)
I've heard many colloquial uses of "racism" to describe conflicts that are of a primarily based in nationalist, religious, or cultural differences, as opposed to a difference of physical appearance. This is due to the confusion between the scholarly use of the term and that which prevails in popular culture, the latter taking no account of the origin or specific motivation of the hostility. I think that the overwhelming consensus of historians is that the "racialization" simply did not occur before the Enlightenment. As the Enc. Britannica states, "race" is an 18th century invention. This is by no means an original conclusion. Sometimes behaviors and thought patterns that resemble racism before that period are sometimes called "proto-racism."

Here is a passage in "The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity" published by Princeton University Press that summarizes well the scholarly consensus as to when racism proper emerged:

Less than a century ago nobody would write or wish to read a book about racism. Indeed nobody was aware that such a thing existed, for the word does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) of 1910. The term racialism has been around a little longer: It first appeared in print in 1907. Does this mean that racism did not exist before the twentieth century? In fact there is a consensus that it originated in the nineteenth century and has its intellectual roots in that century, although some scholars give it a somewhat longer history. Most of those who have expressed an opinion on the subject claim that racism, more precisely described as "scientific racism," was an offshoot of the ideas about evolution that developed in the nineteenth century. Since racism is thought not to be attested earlier, conventional wisdom usually denies that there was any race hatred in the ancient world. The prejudices that existed, so it is believed, were ethnic or cultural, not racial. In this book I shall argue that early forms of racism, to be called proto-racism, were common in the Graeco-Roman world. My second point in this connection is that those early forms served as prototype for modern racism which developed in the eighteenth century.

The author's own thesis, that there was some form of "proto-racism" in ancient times is, by his own admission, so unusual that he has to present his views in explicit opposition to the more generally accepted conclusion. Not to mention that he continually hedges throughout the book, stressing the key conceptual differences between this ancient "racism" and modern scientific racism:

On the other hand, I certainly do not claim that we are dealing here with the specific form of scientific racism which was a product of the nineteenth century.

As has been mentioned, the received historical opinion is that pre-Enlightenment civilizations showed little if any concept of racial hierarchies or categorizations. From "Empire, Race and Global Justice" published by Cambridge University Press: "The prevailing historical view is that race/racism is largely an invention of Western modernity..."

I'm not opposed to the recognition of proto-racism, so long as we bear in mind the distinction between it and racism. The trouble is that the use of the former term usually confuses those unfamiliar with historical literature, and leads them to project anachronisms into the past.
 
#139 · (Edited)
You, Logos, certainly find it easy to breeze past every objection to your insistence that you have the sole valid definition of racism! Here, having put yourself into a little academic box, you find some professor who gives you a possible out by introducing the fine-sounding notion of "proto-racism." It looks like you might get to have your cake and eat it too!

So - what is this proto-racism, the existence of which you'll accept as long as it isn't confused with actual racism, which of course can only be the "correct" form of racism formulated in the 18th and 19th centuries? Your professor says: "early forms of racism, to be called proto-racism, were common in the Graeco-Roman world. My second point in this connection is that those early forms served as prototype for modern racism which developed in the eighteenth century."

What could this mean in concrete terms? What does it mean to call proto-racism a FORM of racism? What does it mean to "serve as prototype"? Are racism and proto-racism different in actual practice? Is it possible that proto-racism could be exactly the same as racism, except that no one had yet invented the term "race"? What word did they use instead? More importantly, what human characteristics were the targets of "proto-racist" attitudes and practices? Were they different from those that inspired modern racists? Were they different from ones that might inspire non-racial prejudices? Did proto-racists treat people similarly or differently than do racists, and for what reasons?

At what point does it become absurd to quibble about the use of the word "racism"?
 
#140 · (Edited)
You, Logos, certainly find it easy to breeze past every objection to your insistence that you have the sole valid definition of racism! Here, having put yourself into a little academic box, you find some professor who gives you a possible out by introducing the fine-sounding notion of "proto-racism." It looks like you might get to have your cake and eat it too!
Proto-racism is a term I've been personally using for years, nor is it by any means unique to the author I cited. It's been used in historical and sociological literature since at least the mid-70s.

So - what is this proto-racism, the existence of which you'll accept as long as it isn't confused with actual racism, which of course can only be the "correct" form of racism formulated in the 18th and 19th centuries?
For purposes of discussion, I'd accept this wiktionary definition: proto-racism: attitudes and actions displaying prejudices and stereotypes analogous to those of racism which predate the modern biologically-based concept of race. Analogy is not identity however.

Proto-racism would have been primarily based on identification with much narrower groups (a specific gens or tribe, family, or city state, a group devoted to a particular deity) than modern racism is, the latter being organized around commonality between phenotypes in human morphology that might include millions up millions spanning whole continents. Another difference is the degree of systematization, and the types of psychological and moral justifications offered for proto-racism and racism. Proto-racism could be justified by myths, oral traditions, blood feuds, travelers' tales, prophecies, disputed possession of sacred lands, and genealogical legends in addition to the observation of superficial morphological differences. On the other hand, post-Enlightenment racism was justified by scientific observations and tests that not only systematized human morphology but sought to associate different phenotypes with varying levels of moral and intellectual sophistication. The degree of conscious rationalization is vastly greater in the later period.

In practical application, the fact that modern racism propagated allegiances on the broadest possible grounds (race groups numbering in the millions) meant that the scale of the oppression it encouraged was larger than all but the most catastrophic instances of proto-racial and non-racial persecution. The unsystematic nature of proto-racism is also reflected in fact that its persecutions were likewise less systematic than those of racism proper. I hope the preceding gives at least a hasty outline of some of the ways that academics apply proto-racism to compare and contrast the forms that prejudices took in modern and premodern times.

At what point does it become absurd to quibble about the use of the word "racism"?
If the oceans of ink already spilled on the subject be any indication, it's safe to say that those interested in the history of race prejudice will continue their absurd quibbling for a few centuries to come.
 
#143 ·
For purposes of discussion, I'd accept this wiktionary definition: proto-racism: attitudes and actions displaying prejudices and stereotypes analogous to those of racism which predate the modern biologically-based concept of race.
Analogies are often a poor basis for analysis. Let's see about this one...

Proto-racism would have been primarily based on identification with much narrower groups (a specific gens or tribe, family, or city state, a group devoted to a particular deity)... modern racism is ...organized around commonality between phenotypes in human morphology that might include millions up millions spanning whole continents.
"Proto-racism" is a very poor term for an assortment of prejudices which fall pretty comfortably under the category "tribalism." Where such variously justified prejudice differs so fundamentally from "modern racism" (which is "organized around commonality between phenotypes in human morphology"), then it's hardly clarifying to posit something called proto-racism to describe it. As I said before, this looks like eating one's cake and having it too.

Another difference is the degree of systematization, and the types of psychological and moral justifications offered for proto-racism and racism.

Proto-racism could be justified by myths, oral traditions, blood feuds, travelers' tales, prophecies, disputed possession of sacred lands, and genealogical legends in addition to the observation of superficial morphological differences.

On the other hand, post-Enlightenment racism was justified by scientific observations and tests that not only systematized human morphology but sought to associate different phenotypes with varying levels of moral and intellectual sophistication.

The degree of conscious rationalization is vastly greater in the later period.
Racism can be, and is, justified by reference to all the things you call justifications for "proto-racism." It's simply a question of whether the justifying is done by ordinary people or by ivory-tower professors, of which you appear to be one. Racists may know and care little about about phenotypes; e. g., whites don't justify discrimination against blacks merely because they're the wrong color and have broad noses - people come in many shapes and colors, and attitudes toward different races differ - but because they're "lazy" or "they're sexually promiscuous" or "they'll bring down the neighborhood" or "they want to tax me so they can make babies and collect welfare and drive Cadillacs," etc. Or there may be very little "conscious rationalization" of racist sentiments and behavior. The "degree of rationalization" cannot be a defining feature of racism.

modern racism propagated allegiances on the broadest possible grounds (race groups numbering in the millions)...the scale of the oppression it encouraged was larger than all but the most catastrophic instances of proto-racial and non-racial persecution. The unsystematic nature of [proto-racism's] ...persecutions were...less systematic than those of racism proper.
Antisemitism was widespread and large-scale in ancient times, and the persecutions could be quite sytematic. Was ancient antisemitism racism? "Proto-racism"? Where is the dividing line?

I hope the preceding gives at least a hasty outline of some of the ways that academics apply proto-racism to compare and contrast the forms that prejudices took in modern and premodern times.
Your academic view has been clear all along. But I say that it doesn't fully explain or describe racism, now or in earlier times. The notion of "proto-racism" appears unnecessary and unhelpful.
 
#142 · (Edited)
I have to agree with the fundamental point Logos is making here, and not because I'm intimidated by his ambitious moniker. The Enlightenment not only brought scientific thinking to the forefront, but pseudo-scientific thinking as well. Where spurious ideas formerly were supported by religious doctrine (if often distorted and misused), myth, magic and unabashed fiction, a new strategy emerged of dressing them in the trappings of science. In our society, this approach became so prevalent in advertising it actually provoked the creation of laws to keep it in check.

In America, pseudo-scientific racism has seen heavy use. First, to justify the eradication of the indigenous people who occupied North America's arable land (though relatively sparsely) before any Europeans arrived. Second, to justify the enslavement of people imported from West Africa. Third, to justify the virtual enslavement and forced hard labor of immigrant laborers, many from China, who built many of the railroads, and beginning in the early 20th century from Mexico, which supplied farm laborers who replaced the freed slaves in the south who had eventually migrated north and west.

In 1924 the racists had their way and the US adopted an anti-immigration policy explicitly intended to preserve white European Protestant culture. But that proved not economically viable. First, a 'temporary' exception was carved out for those Mexican farm laborers that remained in effect in practice after it formally expired. Finally, economic necessity forced the abolition of the white European Protestants only immigration policy entirely in the 1960s, resulting in an influx of non-European, non-white people, and predictably, the steady resurgence of racist "theories". An anti-Arab movement has gained a lot of momentum in recent years, as the racists have seized the opportunity current events have given them.

None of this has anything to do with classical music, and not much more to do with history before North America was colonized by the English. The author of the article cited by the OP is Arab, though not Muslim (in fact, he is a Druze of Lebanese descent). Living in the US and following his artistic talent and inclination, he has become a formally-trained, western classical composer. Obviously, he feels conflicted about this, especially in the current climate in the US, and I interpret his article as a not very serious or carefully thought out riff on this feeling of conflict. Perhaps he should look to the example of Ramzi Aburedwan, a Palestinian composer and viola and buzuq player, or Simon Shaheen, an Arab Israeli composer and violin and oud player, who have combined Arab and western classical traditions. I attended one of Shaheen's concerts and was impressed.
 
#144 ·
We should be careful using the inaccurate term "antisemitism" in times and/or areas where peoples speaking Semitic languages but practicing different religions were in intimate contact and also conflict because of those religious differences. Semites cannot be antisemitic (unless they have a mental pathology); they can be anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish, anti- any number of things. Just not antisemitic.
 
#146 · (Edited)
In practice, anti-Semitism has never meant anything other than ill feeling toward Jews. The "semitism" in anti-Semitism has nothing to do with any other Semitic group. I suspect that this prohibition is really a political statement that seeks to protect Palestinians from the charge of being "racist" toward Israelis. In any case the phrase "Arab anti-Semitism" (meaning Arab hatred of Jews) is routinely found in scholarly publications:

German Colonialism: Race, the Holocaust, and Postwar Germany published by Colombia University Press: "...the regime expected to exploit Arab anti-Semitism and anti-Imperialism..."

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism in Historical Perspective published by Routledge: "The important common element behind these contradictory expressions of Arab anti-Semitism during the interwar period was the adoption of common European views of the Jew as universal solvent..."

Semites and Anti-Semites published by W. W. Norton: "The subsequent growth of Arab anti-Semitism to its present tidal proportions..."

The last book is by Bernard Lewis who was by most accounts the most celebrated and respected historian of the Islamic world in the last century. Even his rival, Edward Said, conceded that there was anti-Semitism in the Arab world.
 
#145 · (Edited)
"Proto-racism" is a very poor term for an assortment of prejudices which fall pretty comfortably under the category "tribalism."
For that very reason, I introduced it with the caveat that only some historians and sociologists use the term and that it remains controversial. I don't endorse it unequivocally and as I said, it sometimes causes confusion. My purpose in introducing was to concede that while racism proper is a comparatively recent phenomenon there were analogous phenomena in past times, although different in scale, motivation, justification, propagation, etc.

Racism can be, and is, justified by reference to all the things you call justifications for "proto-racism."
Certainly it can be, but unlike proto-racism, racism is also justified by systematized pseudoscience. That was the means that allowed it to spread so rapidly and dangerously throughout the educated classes of Europe.

Was ancient antisemitism racism? "Proto-racism"? Where is the dividing line?
The dividing line is the invention of the modern concept of race which did not come into existence till the 18th century. From "The Concept of Race in Natural and Social Science" published by Routledge:

Beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the first evidence began to emerge that the term "race" had come to be firmly associated with morphological traits and biological inheritance.

For example, historians distinguish between the anti-Semitism of Luther and that of the Nazis, the former being based on Jews' failure to accept Christ. In Nazism, religion per se was of secondary if not tertiary importance in comparison to race and cultural theories that interacted with it.
 
#148 · (Edited)
For that very reason, I introduced it with the caveat that only some historians and sociologists use the term and that it remains controversial. I don't endorse it unequivocally and as I said, it sometimes causes confusion. My purpose in introducing was to concede that while racism proper is a comparatively recent phenomenon there were analogous phenomena in past times, although different in scale, motivation, justification, propagation, etc.

Certainly it can be, but unlike proto-racism, racism is also justified by systematized pseudoscience. That was the means that allowed it to spread so rapidly and dangerously throughout the educated classes of Europe.

The dividing line is the invention of the modern concept of race which did not come into existence till the 18th century. From "The Concept of Race in Natural and Social Science" published by Routledge:

Beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the first evidence began to emerge that the term "race" had come to be firmly associated with morphological traits and biological inheritance.

For example, historians distinguish between the anti-Semitism of Luther and that of the Nazis, the former being based on Jews' failure to accept Christ. In Nazism, religion per se was of secondary if not tertiary importance in comparison to race and cultural theories that interacted with it.
I understand your view and sympathize with the desire to have precise definitions of terms. Whether or not we want to restrict the term "racism" in the way you suggest, it's certainly true that the precise content of human prejudice evolved. A little while back I had a conversation here about Wagner's antisemitism (and that of his time and place in general) in which I argued that his views, as expressed in his tract "Jewishness in Music," were not in the narrowest sense racist but cultural, having to do with religion and the position of Jews in society and in the arts. Wagner seems not to have considered the notion of biological race until late in life, when he had conversations with Count Gobineau about the latter's "Essay on the Inequality of Human Races." He found the idea of innate racial differences interesting but not really agreeable; he rejected the idea that the Germans were a "race," much less a "master race," and appealed to his brand of Christianity (which did include a vehement rejection of Judaism) to insist that salvation was available to all, regardless of "race." Wagner has been called a "proto-Nazi," and his operas have been parsed in search of premonitions of master-race ideology. But given that his last opera, Parsifal, was finished before the conversations with Gobineau took place, and that he was at least skeptical of the idea of innate racial characteristics, such interpretations of his thinking and work seem poorly grounded.

I mention Wagner only as an interesting example of the changing nature of racism during the critical period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when bigotry received a shot of adrenaline from pseudo-biology and the scientific world view.
 
#154 · (Edited)
From the Britannica article:

"Anti-Semitism, hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group. The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood. The term is especially inappropriate as a label for the anti-Jewish prejudices, statements, or actions of Arabs or other Semites. Nazi anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Holocaust, had a racist dimension in that it targeted Jews because of their supposed biological characteristics-even those who had themselves converted to other religions or whose parents were converts. This variety of anti-Jewish racism dates only to the emergence of so-called "scientific racism" in the 19th century and is different in nature from earlier anti-Jewish prejudices."

At least we can pinpoint Wilhelm Marr as the perpetrator of this relatively recent violation of simple clarity.....
 
#157 · (Edited)
I, too, noted that sentence in the Britannica article. It seems to me that the author is saying that the term has a regrettably vague form, not that it isn't the correct term to use today to describe Arab hatred of Jews. It is "inappropriate" in that one retroactively wishes it had not become the most prevalent term for what it describes, but not in the sense that it would be considered an actual solecism to use it to refer to Arab anti-Semitism. Likewise Catholicism should not mean only Roman Catholicism, but in practice it almost always does, and I don't think there's much we can do about it at this late date.
 
#159 · (Edited)
There was no single form or source of Nazi anti-Semitism. Even in the highest ranks of the party there was disagreement about exactly what its basis was. Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, and Goebbels all had differing notions as to anti-Semitism's exact relation to Christianity, paganism, biological science, German idealism, and to past manifestations of hostility towards Jews in German history. I find the notion that Hitler personally had to "invent" some form of anti-Semitism somewhat absurd. If one had to name the author whose anti-Semitic thinking most resembles Hitler's I suppose it would be Houston Stewart Chamberlain (Wagner's son-law), a man he personally knew and idolized, and whose books he devoured. His Foundations of the Nineteenth Century was one of the most important German books of its period and it was read and discussed by a large part of the educated German public, including the Kaiser himself. Even in the English speaking world it was praised as a great work, and by 1938 it had gone through twenty-four editions. Chamberlain was also a primary influence on Alfred Rosenberg. The very title of The Myth of the Twentieth Century shows that it was conceived as a kind of sequel to Chamberlain's masterpiece.
 
#160 ·
Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, and Goebbels all had differing notions as to anti-Semitism's exact relation to Christianity, paganism, biological science, German idealism, and to past manifestations of hostility towards Jews in German history.
That's because Nazi anti-semitism served a specific political purpose. Exactly what might be used to validate it, or create the pretense of validity, was less important. I've read that Goebbels strongly disagreed with Hitler on a number of these propaganda issues, but my guess is he had to be careful about how openly he disagreed with him. I see very little in all of that that has anything to do with Wagner.
 
#164 · (Edited)
Have you found any sympathy for militarism in Wagner's later thinking? I haven't, and without it "proto-fascist" wouldn't be an apt description (there's that nebulous "proto" prefix again).
It's nebulous because it's used to describe nebulous analogical resemblances rather than exact ones. I'm not sure what you chronologically consider Wagner's later thinking to be (The last 5, 15, 20 years of his life?), but as for militarism, I find in Ernest Newman's biography the following:

"From Cosima's diary we learn that he (Wagner) 'felt the war (The Franco-Prussian War) to be something holy and great'--for the Germans of course..."

"[Wagner] said that the French capital, the femme entretenue of the world, would be destroyed. As a young man he had not been able to understand how Bluecher could have desired this, and he had disapproved of him. Now he understood him. Wagner is then described as rejoicing in this prospective destruction of Paris as "the freeing of the world from everything that was bad."

"Richard wanted to write Bismarck and beg him to bombard Paris."

From Alan Walker's exhaustive biography of Liszt:

"For this he blamed Richard Wagner, whose public gloatings over each Prussian victory had become nauseating." Walker is describing how Liszt believed that Wagner's influence on Cosima had caused her to turn against France.

Newman likewise describes Wagner's offensive, triumphalist rejoicings and cruel jibes aimed at his French acquaintances in their humiliating defeat. He even wrote a farce about the Parisian surrender.

I haven't found anything clearly antisemitic in the operas, and elsewhere on the forum have pointed out flaws in nearly all the efforts to do so. There are a few possible Jewish references - the Flying Dutchman as Wandering Jew, Kundry as having laughed at Christ - but both of these characters are portrayed sympathetically, and there's no suggestion of racism, despite the bizarre theories of commentators such as Robert Gutman.
I don't find those efforts conclusive either, and the "Wandering Jew" figure is perhaps the most common character archetype in all of romantic literature (Manfred, Faust, Childe Harold, Melmoth, St. Leon, etc.) so it doesn't really testify to any particular obsession on Wagner's part.
 
#165 ·
It's nebulous because it's used to described nebulous analogical resemblances rather than exact ones. I'm not sure what you chronologically consider Wagner's later thinking to be (The last 5, 15, 20 years of his life?), but as for militarism, I find in Ernest Newman's biography the following:

"From Cosima's diary we learn that he (Wagner) 'felt the war (The Franco-Prussian War) to be something holy and great'--for the Germans of course..."

"[Wagner] said that the French capital, the femme entretenue of the world, would be destroyed. As a young man he had not been able to understand how Bluecher could have desired this, and he had disapproved of him. Now he understood him. Wagner is then described as rejoicing in this prospective destruction of Paris as "the freeing of the world from everything that was bad."

"Richard wanted to write Bismarck and beg him to bombard Paris."

From Alan Walker's exhaustive biography of Liszt:

"For this he blamed Richard Wagner, whose public gloatings over each Prussian victory had become nauseating." Walker is describing how Liszt believed that Wagner's influence on Cosima had caused her to turn against France.

Newman likewise describes Wagner's offensive, triumphalist rejoicings and cruel jibes aimed at his French acquaintances in their humiliating defeat. He even wrote a farce about the Parisian surrender.

I don't find those efforts conclusive either, and the "Wandering Jew" figure is perhaps the most common character archetype in all of romantic literature (Manfred, Faust, Childe Harold, Melmoth, St. Leon, etc.) so it doesn't really testify to any particular obsession on Wagner's part.
The Franco-Prussian War was in 1870, and Wagner lived until 1882. I was thinking of Wagner's late years, and of fascism in relation to racism and the militarism that came to express it.

Wagner was anything but consistent and systematic in his thinking over his lifetime. It's a good thing he was an artist rather than a politician.
 
#167 ·
Well, I can't entirely agree with you, Logos and Woodduck, about the antisemitic writers you mention. Based on what I have read of them, they were merely intellectual frauds, using a facade of intellectual pretense, or racist "pseudoscience" as Logos aptly called it, to advance their often petty and self-centered personal or political agendas. This very much includes Wagner. Wagner understood Mendelssohn was another great composer, more skilled in certain ways than he, and like Chopin's attacks of Liszt, wanted to argue for the advantages of his own ideas while unsuccessfully trying to cover more than a little professional jealousy. Wagner also understood Meyerbeer was a middling composer, and greatly resented his financial success and popularity. Two very different kinds of jealousy. Nebal Maysaud is an Arab-American composer who in my opinion is having a little fun in giving the white man a little of his own racist medicine.

But there is nothing even pseudo-intellectual about Hitler's "philosophy". He was purely a manipulative propagandist, seizing on whatever past writers may have said to help his propaganda campaigns, without worrying too much about whether he was characterizing or using their ideas correctly, which he generally wasn't. In fact, he relished his anti-intellectual stances, knowing the ordinary German wouldn't understand or care about most intellectual theories anyway.
 
#168 · (Edited)
But there is nothing even pseudo-intellectual about Hitler's "philosophy". He was purely a manipulative propagandist, seizing on whatever past writers may have said to help his propaganda campaigns, without worrying too much about whether he was characterizing or using their ideas correctly, which he generally wasn't. In fact, he relished his anti-intellectual stances, knowing the ordinary German wouldn't understand or care about most intellectual theories anyway.
Certainly it's difficult to know what Hitler's philosophy was since, in addition to being cruel tyrant, he was an inveterate liar. He lied in politics, he lied about his past, and he lied about his beliefs. From Becoming Hitler published by Oxford:

"Even though self-dramatization is the essence of politics, the degree to which Hitler lied about his own life in Mein Kampf is quite astonishing. His account is at times almost fictional in character. Yet this constant lying makes perfect sense, as his goal was to tell a version of his life that would allow him to draw from it political lessons that supported his political beliefs in 1924. Hitler thus ruthlessly reinvented his own past so as to tell politically expedient tales."

My point was simply that Nazism did not emerge out of nothing, but from a matrix of pre-existing German anti-Semitism, hero-worship, racist mysticism, nationalism, and Prussian/Bismarckian militarism. The authors mentioned are part of those traditions to various degrees.
 
#170 · (Edited)
Racism obviously exists, though based on pseudo-science. And non-Western peoples do appropriate it, but I don't see how that's related to a desire to "belong to the West." On the contrary, non-Western "racism" (I'm thinking of beliefs like those of the Nation of Islam, for example) is often wielded against the West.
 
G
#174 · (Edited)
Racism obviously exists, though based on pseudo-science. And non-Western peoples do appropriate it, but I don't see how that's related to a desire to "belong to the West." On the contrary, non-Western "racism" (I'm thinking of beliefs like those of the Nation of Islam, for example) is often wielded against the West.
I thought I was summarising your position. It's not mine. If I've made an error in my summary, my bad.

What still eludes me is how any of this analysis sheds light on whether classical music can be racist (as claimed in the article posted by the OP) and whether this analysis is nothing more than a diversionary tactic to avoid any proper consideration of discrimination arising from prejudice against others of different ethnic backgrounds.
 
#179 · (Edited)
I thought I was summarising your position. It's not mine. If I've made an error in my summary, my bad.

What still eludes me is how any of this analysis sheds light on whether classical music can be racist (as claimed in the article posted by the OP) and whether this analysis is nothing more than a diversionary tactic to avoid any proper consideration of discrimination arising from prejudice against others of different ethnic backgrounds.
I think that summary was based on an unfortunate conflation of unrelated statements broached in another thread with those in this one.

Can music in its narrowest sense (artfully arranged sound) be racist? I can't see how it can. Can composers, libretti, instrumentalists, and musical organizations be racist? Assuredly they can be, and some have been. But the author of this article extends his criticisms beyond that with the sweeping assertion that, "Western classical music is not about culture. It's about whiteness." Classical music is not about any one thing.

He says it is "specious" that whiteness has a culture. What does he mean by that? Apparently he would have us believe that white supremacy enforced by classical art is the culture of whiteness while at the same time maintaining that whiteness has no culture at all. He goes on to say that: "The best we can be are exotic guests: entertainment for the white audiences and an example of how Western classical music is more elite than the cultures of people of color." Are the cultures of people of color equally specious? Where does this speciousness end?
 
#171 ·
Beyond the writings of avowed "racists" or of those others generating the pseudo-science or biblical/religious underpinnings of such--almost always westerners--it is difficult to tease out racism separately and meaningfully from tribalism. The history of the Han Chinese alternates between (as most histories) periods of expansion and glory, and then those of defeat, humiliation, retrenchment. The Han in their zenith years and through much of their history have regarded themselves as superior to their scruffy, unkempt neighbors regardless of the "racial" aspects of said neighbors--all were equally contemptible. A pattern we see often in non-western history, and early western history also, where foreigners are often named as "babblers" or "those who are not truly human" (though we will have sex with their women, if it suits us). In the items found in Tutankhamen's tomb, we find figurines of both a black (Nubian) and a Mesopotamian depicted as underlings subject to Pharaoh's rule and discipline.
 
#175 ·
^^^^If the article linked in the OP is not a (cruel) hoax, then it is itself a ringing call to tribalism. It asserts that tribal loyalties (not clearly explained how these are identified and then validated) cannot be transcended without the individual becoming inauthentic as a member of the tribe. Art (such as CM) is doomed to be a member of a vast array of small impenetrable, impermeable boxes, each box inaccessible to members of another tribe. And to climb the wall and examine and then enjoy the contents of an alien box is to lose one's rightful place in the tribal group. A sad business, and a retrograde impulse.
 
#176 ·
Yes, but there is something else that is also sad, and that is the abuse and rejection this Arab-American (Druze and not Muslim, but not many Americans bother with such fine distinctions) self proclaimed "queer" man ("queer" is apparently the new term for bisexual, or something like it) probably absorbs on a daily basis simply for being who he is. Now he is turning the tables and rejecting us for being who we are, something some of us can hardly believe a sophisticated, well-educated composer of music in the western tradition could or would do.

I think he means to be taken seriously in one sense, but not another. Is he turning in the keys to his Toyota Prius and his membership in the Alexandria LA Fitness and going to the middle east to live in a tent in the desert? Probably not. But is he looking for a way to express himself as a composer with more artistic integrity given the isolation and rejection he no doubt feels in western society? Probably so.

Historically, many great artists have been outcasts or misfits in one way or another, so I for one can tolerate his rant.
 
#177 ·
^^^^We may be dealing with a pathology in the case of the article's author. Many other creative (and many non-creative) people with similar ethnic backgrounds get on well in today's increasingly diverse America. Where I live here in Nova Caesarea, we have a very diverse community, with many opportunities for minorities to gain public office, run businesses, do science, enter professions. Except for a certain segment of the population that cannot and will not accept that the demographics of America are changing, it is easier than ever now for people of heretofore very rarely met ethnicities to thrive. Our Attorney General here is a turbaned Sikh of formidable integrity and effectiveness.
 
#181 · (Edited)
You didn't answer my question. Never mind.
You didn't ask one. Observe the lack of a question mark in either of your posts on the previous page.

What still eludes me is how any of this analysis sheds light on whether classical music can be racist (as claimed in the article posted by the OP) and whether this analysis is nothing more than a diversionary tactic to avoid any proper consideration of discrimination arising from prejudice against others of different ethnic backgrounds.
What is a "proper consideration" of discrimination arising from prejudice? What would an improper consideration be? I have discussed the formation of racism (the form of prejudice at issue in this thread), its defining characteristics, its motivations, its history, etc. Is any of this improper? On the contrary, I should think it necessary.
 
#185 ·
That sounds to me like you haven't been around Chinese conservatories very much.

The same things go on here in Korea that go on in the west. There is more Korean music than you'd find in the west, but there is plenty of African, Southeast Asian, South American and so on music as well. The limitations in the curriculum are always criticized by people who want more inclusivity.

The idea that the west - the white man - is somehow under attack is just self-pity. The entire world is globalizing, lots of people are enthusiastic about it, and you can also find people everywhere whining that their culture is under attack.
 
#187 · (Edited)
The same things go on here in Korea that go on in the west. There is more Korean music than you'd find in the west, but there is plenty of African, Southeast Asian, South American and so on music as well. The limitations in the curriculum are always criticized by people who want more inclusivity.
That isn't quite the same thing as Koreans accusing each other of being racist for not having enough non-Korean music. Longing for greater cultural variety is not identical with ascribing moral turpitude to those who don't see the necessity of variety. It's also true that, due to its political history, South Korea has been much more profoundly influenced by the West than China. It's hard to argue that this kind of longing for diversity that you're describing is anything other than an American importation. It certainly isn't native to Korea, unless one is willing to believe that Korea spontaneously and coincidentally adopted Enlightenment values while being occupied and supervised by a post-Enlightenment nation. The overall American influence in Korea's modernization and democratization is hard to overstate.
 
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