As recent events have shown, there's a lot of White people who are still plenty crazy. The whole birther nonsense is nothing but crazy White people. The "Obama is a Muslim" meme is nothing but the craziness of White people. Seriously, all those racists that were about in 1975 didn't just disappear. They just got old and started demanding the "Muslim, Kenyan, anti-colonialist" president keep government hands off their Medicare.

I really think he hit the nail on the head, I just wish he chose a word other than crazy. Technically, I'm not sane, but my mental disorder has never gave me the impression that one race is better than another. In fact, before I was on meds, I remember arguing with emotionally regulated over why their perception on race was tired and nonsensical.

Again, I know exactly what he means, and I'm behind him on it. Still, I wish he used a word convaying that sense of manifest destiny, eugenics, and that old idea that ethnic physical attributes determin how evolved one is.

I, and many others have a hard enough time battling the idea that having a mental disorder is a matter of weak will, and something to be ashamed of.

I fucking love the sentiments he expresses, but I agree with Jenn93: he really could have expressed them better. In fact, he could have said exactly what he meant, which is that "white people have gotten less racist." Instead, he equated mental illness with racism, which is helpful to exactly no one.

Really, though, I'm not going to criticize Chris Rock for using a really common if really ableist term. I'm just shocked that this site didn't even mention it.

There is also the idea that a collection of ethnic groups can all inhearently crazy is a bit dehumanizing in itself. I know what he meant, and it wasnt that all white people are crazy. I just think that people in general still have a few ideas to challenge, inclusing the idea of crazy=stupid.

Right LORI A. Chris Rock has got it right. The idea of progress suggests that black people were inhearently deserving of what they endured. He's just using a term that is so common and seldomly challenged, and so, I can't blame him for it. Just means people with mental illness have to step up to the plate, and call people on using those words intelligently.

Ditto on the word "retarded." I think he made a good point, though I agree the language was incredibly problematic. I think the problem with words like "irrational" though, is that it doesn't really convey the level of screwed up that certain ways of thinking actually are. I think that we are, in a way, comforted by the idea that people who think a certain way must not be in their right mind, or in full possession of all of their faculties, but that's not only ableist, it's flat wrong. We need a word that means "deliberately, maliciously clinging to privilege by way of oppressing another." And it needs to sound like the insult that it is.

I think another good word for what he means by "crazy" is "extreme" or "extremist." Because there's certainly still plenty of racism, but white people no longer go to the extremes of segregation, eugenics, etc. I'm not sure whether it's because they no longer feel that their actual feelings about african-americans, etc have gotten less extreme, or only that they no longer feel safe or justified translating their thinking into those kinds of actions.

You can't say crazy or retarded, how about stupid? Is that ableist against uneducated people?

There is a difference between ignorant, and willfully ignorant. Some people insist on holding on to false ideas even when presented with evidence to the contrary. Many ignorant people have no problem learning new information. In any regard, everyone is ignorant about something or another. I'm not against calling people stupid when they are stubbornly clinging to stupid ideas.

the point is that I don't have a choice about having a mnetal illness. People use it as an excuse to treat you really badly when they think you can just "try harder" or "think your way out of it." There are plenty of people who used to hold onto racist ideas, and then changed their views. I can't change my neurology.

Just sayin'

Blacks have made progress. White people are still crazy.

There's still plenty of institutionalized racism in the world. Look at the so-called "drug war", which disproportionally targets minorities. Generations of black youth "disappear" to spend their lives in prison for selling or using substances that have been associated with "those evil criminal minorities".

racism makes me crazy -- that is to say, my mental health issues are inextricably linked to being a brown immigrant woman in a racist, sexist, and able-ist society.

note that i am NOT saying i attribute *the cause* of my mental health issues to racism. yet i am convinced that my feelings of low-self worth and apparent inability to "fit in" are as positively correlated with the constantly demanding, in small ways and large, that my humanity be recognized, as they are with my genetic predispositions.

"Get over it" Now there isn't something I'm told to do as having an illness.
One of the things that I've had to teach myself is that people will dismiss your argument as meaningless in the grand scale of things, and yet I feel it none the less.

I really appreciate what he has to say. Saying "Black people have made progress" (or "People of color have made progress") still makes white people out to be the default. It's like checking to make sure you are far enough behind the car ahead of you on the freeway by picking a motionless object on the side of the road, then counting the amount of time between when the car ahead passes it and when you do. "Black people have made progress" assumes that white people are the motionless object, but the truth is that white people are the car in front of you. When you haven't been able to even get next to that car because everytime you can get up the nerve and speed to try, they swerve to block you, it's not YOUR fault that you can't pass them; it's their fault for being irrational a-holes.

Nice to know I'm 'less crazy' even though I am not and have never been a racist.

I thought the comments might be filled with discussion about his use of the word "crazy". I think he's correct in his assessment, though obviously his language is othering and devaluing.

Paranoia and persecution complexes stem from feelings of helplessness and self-blame, which are then projected outward in an attempt to lessen the internal suffering. They create problems of their own, but are first born out of a genuine need for explanation that eases the burden on the self. The environment that can lead to clinical paranoia in one person doesn't always just influence one person. War, economic hardships, epidemics, etc can all create a paranoid environment on a large scale. If a scapegoat is found, this lightning rod for the fear, anger and uncertainty that the society experiences will then take on a life of its own. Those who are not suffering as acutely as others may adopt the paranoia as they accept the newly invented collective reality.

Paranoia and persecutory delusions are absolutely a form of mental illness. They may be environmentally triggered as a coping mechanism--similar to the appearance of PTSD after trauma in a previously healthy patient--but that does not lessen their reality. There is nothing noble in their illness and just as someone should not subject hirself to harmful behavior from someone with a more recognized delusion disorder people should not feel obligated to subject themselves to the harmful behavior of the racially delusional.

But to claim that racism is purely "willful ignorance" is to ignore the essential pathology of it. Yes, people who are racist can recover. So can people suffering from other persecutory delusions. But because their reality testing is compromised it is difficult to do so.

As this paranoid delusional state weakens its grip, reality testing can take place. People can open their eyes and see what racism really is, no longer blinded by the persecutory beliefs. In this sense, this particular societal illness has lessened.

I'm not to fond of the "downright profound" bit in the description - being a commedian doesn't mean that he can't be profoud and make intelligent observatioons, in fact I think he's managed to point out something that's a blind spot even to the people who are arguing for human rights. In every case of oppression, we manage to put the responsibility on the oppressed group, even though there is virtually nothing that you can do to change your situation if you don't have any power, save getting the attention from those who do. It's not the minority making progress, it's the majority - and even that is a bad phrasing for the reasons that Rock pointed out.

You guys know Chris Rock is a comedian, right?

A comedian who has a skit in which he points out the differences between a black man and a nigger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzFTLKWvfE0

I mean, Chris rock has progressed over the years. He went from using terms like nigger and is now using less cutting words "crazy."

I honestly don't know why a sociological blog posted a video of a comedian like this when they usually cater to third/fourth wave feminists.

One key point in semiotics is that words only mean what they mean in context. The context is a comedian making a common sense statement in common sense words as employed in everyday life by all sorts of folks. But even a word like "white" means nothing outside of that context. (It does not mean the same as Caucasian, for example.) Today there are all kinds of people who are considered "white" who were not considered white during the height of American slavery (e.g. Irish, Jews, almost everyone of Middle Eastern descent, Slavic people from Poland, Czech, etc.) I am pretty sure that Chris Rock is thinking mostly of the U.S. and not the world as a whole. In the U.S. the term "white" means something slightly different than it means in almost any other country in the world (e.g. India).

Segregation is the wrong path, as he says in so many words, but isn't he perpetuating that segregation by saying white people are less crazy? he's segregating white people from the crowd. People need to stop using white or black to describe people because skin color doesn't determine anything besides the color of their skin, people aren't stupider or crazier or inferior in any way because of a tiny thing like skin color. Is there any tests or studies that say otherwise?

Wow, I'm shocked to see how far from the actual point this conversation has wandered. Let me know when you all get back around to racism in America.

Here's a potential problem with the "white people got less crazy" explanation for ending segregation.

It ignores how that happened.

White America didn't wake up one day with a conscience and decide to change things. Change happened because of a movement that was largely black America standing up and demanding what was due and just.

I understand the problems with the "progress" argument, but we never want to remove agency from the explanation of how things changed.

To all you who can't seem to get over Chris Rock using "ableist" terms like "crazy" or "retarded," I give you the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0Tux6s7y_g

P.S. You're *still* crazy. You're seizing on his word choice so you don't have to fully accept the meaning of what he's saying. "That Chris Rock...he's so...crazy. But I don't really mean crazy. Just...irrational, nonsensical, and unable to talk about race using the terminology that I can accept without my own mind reacting in bizarre and unpredictable ways that I swear are totally outside my control."

I suppose that's better than calling for his lynching, huh? "Chris Rock has made progress!"

"P.S. You’re *still* crazy. You’re seizing on his word choice so you don’t have to fully accept the meaning of what he’s saying."

Um...no. I'm aknowledging what he said and the meaning of what he is saying, and using his word choises as an oppertunity to discuss how those words are commonly used in public.

Alos, most of the people on this site who commented on the use of the word, have also mentioned that they otherwise fully agree with Chris Rock. So while your saying things like ""P.S. You’re *still* crazy." and feeling all supirior to the rest of us, you might want to concider actually reading the comments so as not to come off like a moron.

He makes an interesting point - that terms like "progress" are loaded with meaning about who was responsible for previous situations and who's responsible for the change.

But, like some others here, I do wish he wouldn't use a word like "retarded" in a derogatory, non-clinical sense, especially when he's talking about segregation. People with disabilities, especially intellectual disabilities, are still miles away from real integration into education, housing, employment, etc. Then again, I recognize that this is Chris Rock, a comedian, not someone who's historically been overly concerned about the effects of language choices.