Pseudo-Post-Racial Era

A kind heart is dead. Goodness is useless...what can we do with goodness? Nothing. (Dostoevsky)

Altruism in its simplest, merest form is called low cost altruism. A marvelous example is picking up an newspaper for a person (regardless of age because I am not agist) who walks right by you is low cost because you don't lose anything except for a few seconds of your time if you value your time. However in my eyes, goodness does not come with self-cost or at the risk of self-interest. In fact, goodness should be automatic. When I see an elderly woman trying to cross the street and she is blind with no guide next to her, I will rush to hold her hand and guide him across the street safely. This should not be a calculation where I calculate what my losses and gains are. This should be immediate. This should be reflexive behavior. This is pure goodness without being restrictive or conscious of itself. Goodness should emerge in the face of alienation. However , the bystander apathy is most divisive and dangerous in New York City. My friend halted a train today (held it up for a good hour, I think) in order to signal the motorman that a woman had passed out on the train for some time. He was not only commended by a few, but he was harassed and chided by other straphangers who complained that they were late because of his actions. This is despicable because "it could have happened to anyone of them [the fainting]." This is similar with death: we deny and recite "I'm glad it's not me who is dead because I am very well alive" (Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy). We construct these statements because it assures ourselves of an entirely different, antithetical (black and white) reality. Goodness must be practiced if not celebrated.

Pseudo means false, fake, fraud. Post racial indicates the "race-blindedness" New Yorkers possibly carry around with them. This affects their moral proclivities...e.g.: perhaps to help a black person (they will be unaware of their race if they are seriously meaning what they say when they say they are color-blind/race-blind/gender-blind etc) who has previously collapsed on the floor and not think that they are a perpetually homeless, AIDS-carrying [just another] black person on the street (asserted stereotyped that are microaggressions, ingrained in us via pop culture media and murder/robbery rates). Post means after. It cynically implies a "I'm better than that, therefore I'm not that [racist]." Comedians use this method most insidiously: they make fun of stereotypical mental models by satirizing certain cultures, etc. But they do this with incredible receding --- they claim to step outside of racist tendencies because they preface every statement by stating "it's a joke...implying that my role as a jokester and joke teller or comedian is to be funny and in being funny includes being racist because it plays up what is real [stereotypes such as Chinese people sound like Ching Chong Magahai or Black people indulge in buckets and buckets of KFC)." Peter Chao on Youtube does this by speaking every line in an incredibly exaggerated Chinese accent which is interpreted as comedic value, intensely divided between racist and gimmick. Unfortunately those who call him a racist are oversensitive ("Can't you just take a (racist) joke?!" while those who call him hilarious superstar are being insensitive and indifferent. But both persons fall prey to postmodern cynicism: they believe that jokes preempt racist notions and prejudice. They believe that their imagined communities (Benedict Anderson's famous theory) in New York City ("My fellow Asian brothers"/My Latin brothers") are past racist beliefs and are fully accepting of all cultures and races black white yellow brown black red purple. They falsely believe that the generalized other (society) does not infer race when they come across other persons. This is ignorance of racist tendencies. This is self-induced ignorance and forced behavior to not see other as racist. This is not forced behavior to not see race. This is self-denial in that racism does not exist anymore after a black man has been instituted as President, and more minorities are being promoted in public/private sectors and in goverment roles. Unfortunately the reification of the word culture and race is most felonious here: we are not operationalizing the terms culture and race. We falsely believe that we accept all if not more "cultures," but when we come across something slightly "weird," we criticize it in our minds, but try so hard to stop the criticism at its beginning. We force ourselves to do this, or we just block out all information that we receive via eyeball and ear.