“Bob Dylan sued for alleged racism”

Bob Dylan is being sued for alleged racism after he likened Croatians to Nazis and slave owners.

The legendary singer/songwriter is now facing a lawsuit filed by the Council of Croats in France (CRICCF) in relation to an interview he gave to French Rolling Stone in 2012.

Dylan, who was one of the public faces of the civil rights movement in the US during the 1960s, made the comments when asked how much he felt America had progressed since the Civil War in the 19th century.

“This country is just too f***** up about colour. It’s a distraction. People at each others’ throats just because they are of a different colour. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighbourhood back. Or any anything back,” Dylan said.

“Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”

OK with that? I’m not, but so damn what? The right to free speech means that I defend the right of anyone to say anything, whether I agree with it or not.

Dylan’s remark strikes me as a bit silly, but hardly racist. Surely, if blacks were able to sense slave-holding or Klan membership in a given white person or Jews could sense Nazi ancestry, these things could be proven in double blind experiments, and the scientific world (and everyone else) would be gaga in amazement. I do not believe that humans can “sense” the behavior of another human’s ancestor. Certain perceptive beings might be able to sense guilt over an ancestor’s behavior, though, and it would not surprise me if some descendants of Nazis and/or slaveholders display distinct signs of that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look when they know they are in the presence of people who would have been enslaved or gassed to death by their ancestors. But absent that, I don’t think there’s anything in the genes or in the physical appearance of the malefactors’ descendants that can be sensed.

A funny thing, though, is the way people succumb to almost magical thinking where it comes to groups they are supposed to hate on the basis of heredity. Years ago I had an employee from Northern Ireland who had emigrated to the United States. A nice hipster type kid, he was glad to be here and put all that 400+year old stuff they call “the Troubles” behind him, and although he admitted to being a Protestant, he was not religious and he was in no way political about it. Ever the curious type, I went drinking with him because I wanted to hear his version of the whole Protestant versus Catholic deal. He told me that he had been raised by hard core Orange activists, and that he had been a proud Orange drummer boy, even marching while beating his drum and wearing a bowler hat and orange sash.

“I don’t care about that stuff now,” he said.  And yet, without any questioning from me, he then said, “But I still hate the bloody Catholics!”

I pressed him for details, and he explained that he didn’t care about Catholics in this country, but only in Ireland. I pointed out that the two groups were racially identical and had lived side by side for years, and I was genuinely curious about how he would have been able to discern the religious views of his fellow countrymen even though they would have been total strangers.

“I can tell by the way they walk!” was his answer.

I didn’t press him any further, but how does a Catholic walk?

I’d love to know.

I would also love to know how any of these nutty speculations constitute racism.

(Actually I need to know, because I’m of Norwegian descent, and I have been known to crack ridiculous jokes about the Swedes…)