Us mocking and ignoring the racist? 
I don’t feeling any obligation to consider a racist’s definition of racism.
Ah, so you have read Kendi.
In the 21st century, the work of Zurara has been re-examined for its foundational role in the development of modern racist ideology. Historian Ibram X. Kendi, in his 2016 book Stamped from the Beginning, argues that Zurara was the world’s first racist because his chronicle was the first to articulate a comprehensive defense of the African slave trade based on the concept of Black inferiority. Kendi posits that Zurara’s writing was not the cause of the Portuguese slave trade but rather a product of it; Prince Henry’s economic and political self-interest in the trade of enslaved Africans came first. Zurara was then tasked with creating a narrative to justify these policies. According to this view, Zurara’s chronicle established a powerful and enduring justification for racism by portraying enslaved Africans as savages who were being civilized and saved through their enslavement, thereby creating racist ideas to rationalize pre-existing racist policies.
Yeah, and they wrote that because the Church had banned enslaving Africans on the basis that they’re human like everybody else and must not be treated like animals. The Portuguese used their maneuver like a cheat code.
Maybe I’m missing something, but if Zurara was creating racist ideas to rationalize pre-existing racist policies, then how can Zurara be the “world’s first racist”?
Before that, Europeans were not sailing to Africa and enslaving Africans. In an Evil Civ, Racism would be something you’d need to research on the tech tree, but only after completing the prerequisites of Caravels and Gunpowder and then chattel slavery, for which you have to train a special Enslaver unit.
Sunni and Shia tribalism?
Jew and Christian tribalism?
These precede the trans-atlantic slave trade by a millennium. Also europeans learned about the african slave trade from arabs, who had been practicing it since the 7th century.
Also Africans willingly sold each other as slaves to Europeans, in large part due to tribalism. Tribes would conquer each other, and sell the losers to Europeans in exchange for guns to declare more wars on neighboring tribes.
If you are saying that the only forms of bigotry that are unacceptable or even worth mentioning are the ones that affect you personally, thats not very persuasive.
Bigotry and prejudice are built into the human race. Thats why they occur pretty much everywhere
The problem is that none of this centuries-old backstory matters a whit to today’s bigot. They know what the have been told by others of their ilk, and they will tell you that, even if everything you told them was correct (and they will probably smirk while saying this), the people back then were wise in finally realizing the “true worth” of them other folk. I know, because I grew up in northern Idaho, and I know the facts, and I know how they defensively react to those facts.
You…can’t be serious about this.
It’s a definition problem, revolving at base around racism as skin-color-based. The argument is that that modern racism is…well…modern and a result of modern chattel slavery. Ancient racism in an academic sense is more properly definitionally referred to as proto-racism. Contrary to the sensationalistic blurb (and arguably title) for this book, this is what researchers into racism like Benjamin Isaac are actually arguing. Ancient people were bigots who attributed all manner of failings to other peoples based on their birth. But skin color was not precisely a marker of that.
One form of modern racism is based on skin color and exists as a result of philosophical justifications retroactively crafted to give chattel slavery supposed moral grounding.
Plenty of other modern forms of racism have nothing to do with chattel slavery, though.
This whole thread has been very thought-provoking, but this I think stands out for me. It seems inherently counterproductive to say “You absolutely must do this thing, also you will miserably fail”.
A situation where you are told you must achieve a goal…but also a situation where no examples can be given of anybody else ever achieving that goal?
Sounds fair to me. 
It’s a specific Western centric view that defines racism as that and therefore, tautologically, even other skin-color-based discrimination not chattel based is not racism, be it modern or ancient. Colorism elsewhere in the world? Not racism. Oppression of various ethnicities in China by the Han? Not racism. In Japan? Not racism. Of Aboriginal groups in Australia? Of Indians by the British? Not chattel based so not racism. Even of Native Americans - not chattel based not racism. And FWIW skin color as the basis is not the case - see the one drop rule whatever color you were.
There is only one racism that has ever existed in this world’s history in that perspective and it has a birthday.
Academics can be very stupid.
Very much so. Note that I’m not arguing it’s a 100% correct viewpoint. It’s a bit hard to argue that the odd colorism in Western Sudan between the ‘Arab’ Baggara and Abbala Janjaweed and the ‘Black’ Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa of the Sudanese Liberation Movement can be described in Western terms. Lighter skin (not white skin) is preferred by the ruling elite, but it’s pretty much language and cultural economy (nomadic herders vs mostly sedentary farmers) as race and it’s pretty damn hard if not virtually impossible for an outsider to distinguish one side from another based on skin tone.
I’m just saying Johanna’s take is definitely a real if debated thing in modern academia, not plucked from their imagination. Since we are living in a Western society it sorta is the predominant argument for the here and now.
Most of you are. Myself, when I consider the subject of racism, I don’t think of it in the context of Black Americans.
Thank you @Tamerlane (plus @Exapno_Mapcase) for delivering the large piece missing from the OP.
Namely that this is an academically-inspired concern using terminology in a specific academic sense that’s some distance from ordinary usage.
I still think the definition is needlessly narrow and the prescription is uselessly absolute. But at least now I understand where, intellectually, it’s coming from. I don’t doubt for a moment the heartfelt sincerity of our OP in this.
There needs to be a racism argument equivalent of Godwin’s Law for this little nugget of bullshit that gets trotted out every time as if it countered any argument being made.
Yes, some African rulers and merchants sold captives to Europeans. But Europeans created and expanded a transatlantic system in which African ancestry became the basis for permanent hereditary chattel slavery across entire colonial societies. African participation in the trade doesn’t erase who built the racial system or the ideology that justified it.
We are?
I really don’t have anything to add to this.
Carry on.
I think we all are capable of being introspective enough to notice things about your internal monologue and decision making to identify times when racism is affecting you. You don’t need an anti-racist following you around documenting your every move to tell you.
Yet people still golf. Still try to fight child poverty, homelessness, hunger, violence, cancer and infirmity. They will fail, but they still try to make the world a better place.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here. Do you really mean there’s times we should accept our own bigotry?