Paper progress: 2 pages. I'm going to let it rest for today and try to get the next few half a page tomorrow. But ginmar talked about the noble/savage dichotomy, and that reminded me of the 'totally not a racist/Nazi" dichotomy . It annoys me because the Nazi and the totally not a racist guy are not two separate beings, but two points on a continuum. Like the totally not a racist guy, in practice, is probably racist. He may be racist in the sort of "well, I have to keep the peace so I won't call that guy out" or the "well, racism is all bad and stuff, but do you have to be so mad about it way", but that's still being racist.

The idea that racist is an on/off proposition, that if you are a racist, you're automatically this boogie man that basically is the racism of white folks all projected on one person, really flattens the discourse. It's like how I can be classist without being a hardline capitalist who declares, are there no prisons, are there no workhouses? Simply having a giant blindspot about it is keeping the system alive. I don't have to go and move into a shack or something(anyway, the class priv is more like the confidence I have from my experience as a middle class person, less the actual money I can draw on) nut I have to think "oh, is that really OK?" and if called on my classist ass, I don't have to fear the boogieman.

Don't worry about being 'evil'. Worry about doing good.