To avoid getting sucked in the black hole of discussing “hipsters,” maybe we should call it “ironic racism.” It’s a distancing gesture, racism with the acknowledgment that I should know better and I don’t care. Assiduously casual, meant to demonstrate a kind of worldliness or edginess, “hipster racism” acts like a behavioral flannel jacket or a trucker cap, a rejection of perceived upper-middle-class values, still wrapped in enough layers of irony to create a distance from the mythical rednecks or hillbillies it’s thought to be emulating. Whether or not the hipster racist “actually believes” the bullshit he spouts (or thinks it’s some kind of sophisticated satire) is immaterial; it’s a posture, a performance, a middle finger to mom and dad and all the “McCarthyist hijackers” who won’t let Benjamin Leo say “nigger,” or whatever his beef is. (Sometimes, to be clear, it’s just cluelessness.) The deep-down beliefs of the hipster racist are also immaterial, it goes without saying, to the subjects of his invective.

Notes

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