Flannery O'Connor and the Cheap Grace of "Anti-Racism"

I was reading an article on Flannery O'Connor in Jezebel:

http://jezebel.com/5192628/judging-flannery-can-you-love-the-work-and-not-the-author

If you are not familiar with Flannery O'Connor, she was born in Georgia in 1925, died in Georgia (from Lupus) in 1964, was a professing Roman Catholic, and wrote some of the best works of fiction in the English language in the 20th Century.

However, it turns out from her biography that she committed two sins against political correctness:

1.)  When a friend of hers was kicked out of the army for engaging in a lesbian affair, Ms. O'Connor sent her friend private letters, not rejecting her friend, but condemning her for her immoral actions.

2.)  She also sent a friend who was very active in the civil rights movement a number of racist jokes in private correspondence.

But her real sin before the God of Political Correctness--please sit down before you read this--was her "zeal, sanctimony, and intolerance" which were "insufferable."  Political Correctness is a jealous and tolerant God, and will lash out in anger at the infidels who turn away to bow before the God of Israel.

What struck me about all this dithering about O'Connor's racism is the following:  has the author of the piece not, at some point, told a racist joke in her life?  Has anyone not told a racist joke at some time in their lives, excepting those, of course, who lack any sense of humor?  Moreover, isn't telling racist jokes a feature of, say, human existence?  Human beings break up into little arbitrary groups, and they tell jokes about the outgroups, and sometimes repeat jokes about themselves?  For example, people tell lawyer jokes that circulate stereotypes about lawyers--are these bad people?

Of course, this gets to the liberal theory of conflict, that conflicts occur because of irrational prejudice against outgroups.  I have tried to suggest the opposite in this blog--it is completely rational, in the absence of the rule of law, to fear outgroups.  Without a central government, the outgroup will kill or enslave you, unless you are more powerful than the outgroup, in which case you will probably kill or enslave the outgroup.  (One only has to study ancient history to see this pattern writ large in the world.)  The real irrational behavior is the trust of fellow members of the ingroup.

For example, if we look at the North and the South in the 1950's, we find lynchings in the South, and no lynchings in the North.  Why?  First and foremost, because the Southern States would not prosecute lynchings, and Southern juries would not typically convict white men for lynchings when the Federal Government attempted to prosecute.  That is to say, lynchings happen when a group can lynch people they don't like and get away with it.  But are we really to believe that the differences between the North and the South can be explained by the prevalence of racist jokes in that time period?  If you want to stop group-on-group violence, it is far more productive to develop a universal sense of respect for citizenship and the rule of law, than to try and root out nasty jokes.  The first goal can sometimes be attained, the second is an anthropological chimera.  You need to start over with a new species that has a different evolutionary history if you hope to succeed.  Perhaps a mollusk?      

If we look at Flannery O'Connor's politics, she was supportive of the civil rights movement, a minority position for mid-Twentieth Century white people in Georgia.  We find, that despite the fact that she told racist jokes, in public, she actively supported bringing an end to racial segregation in the South.  I would further suppose, albeit without evidence, that she opposed vigilante justice, especially if directed against ethnic minorities.  Last, I suspect that if I had the opportunity to sit down for tea with Ms. O'Connor, I highly doubt that her "zeal, sanctimony and intolerance" could hold a candle to our average social justice warrior.

Which leads me to another characteristic of Flannery O'Connor, which distinguishes her from the "zeal, sanctimony and intolerance" of the present moment.  Flannery O'Connor understood, in her heart, that human redemption is always purchased in blood.  Innocents will always have to die, their blood will have to cry out from the Earth, before an evil can be corrected.  If we accept redemption in blood, then we can understand that ugly jokes can neither impede nor foreshorten justice and redemption.  Today's social justice warrior is not willing to pay the true cost for justice, nor are they willing to accept its currency from those who have paid it forward.  They reject the true redemption in blood for a cheap grace founded in superficiality and hypocrisy.