In his recent Slate review of B.R. Myers’ book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, English-born writer Christopher Hitchens refers to North Korea as a nation of racist dwarves. I’m not paraphrasing; the title of his article is A Nation of Racist Dwarves.
If you’re unfamiliar with Hitchens, he frequently contributes to Vanity Fair by waterboarding himself and declaring that women aren’t funny.
I’m not disagreeing that the regime in North Korea is one that is indoctrinating and killing its people, but I can’t help but think there’s some Western privilege at play by referring to North Koreans, the people, in such a pejorative way. Particularly since many of these “racist dwarves” are essentially prisoners in a country whose borders, government, and ideologies were not of their choosing. I also find the use of ‘dwarf’ to describe the malnourished to be wrong on multiple levels.
In stating his contempt for a cruel regime who, according to Myers, is utilizing a national racist ideology, Hitchens degrades an entire nation’s people and apparently fails to see the irony.
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You may attempt to protect our fellow brethrens in South Korea, but let’s face it. We are one of the most racist nation in the world. Hundreds of years of oppression at the hands of foreign powers have understandably left Korean xenophobic. But that’s no excuse for the way we were dressed in “African savage” costume and ran around in the field, or the way we were encouraged to pick on bi-racial Koreans at school.
I think Hitchens uses racist generalization to characterize the North Korean people more as bait to elicit attention to his article. In a larger way I read the article as just another example of depersonalizing North Korea. We in the west seem to have this strange desire to characterize the North Koreans and Kim Jong-il in particular as freaks. Why is this?
Caricaturing and demonizing people can be a form of reductionism, or describing
complex issues in terms of phenomena that are less complex than they actually are.
Why do that? Well if all of North Korea can be seen as a group of ‘racist dwarves’ who
are dangerous to the global community (as Hitchen’s hints) black and white lines
distinguishing ‘them as evil’ and ‘us as good’ are established.
Once you’ve subscribed to these moral distinctions, you can wage war with less difficulty.
It’s much easier to be an extremist and wield a Kalashnikov against ‘infidels’
than it is to be civil and empathetic when it comes settling human vs. human conflict.
Because the latter approach requires we take the time to understand all the different and difficult issues that spark and fuel human conflict, many of us opt for the quick and most apparent solution. War.
But they do so neglecting the myriad of factors involved which will probably better equip their quest for substantive and lasting solutions, war aside. These factors include but aren’t limited to socio-political issues, racial/ethnic issues, cultural issues, historical-cultural issues, and religious issues.
Sadly, men would rather make war than sweat for peace. At least it seems that way.
Extremist ideologies (and their cousins “caricaturing and demonizing”) present themselves as keys to armed conflict,
keys that our leaders are constantly wearing out.
This was a very helpful blog post, and I thought Stephen’s comment was also right on the mark. Thanks for taking the time.