Liberal, pardon my habit of addressing the group as a whole rather than you directly. I didn’t realize it offended your sense of decency, I just thought it was a more subtle way to irritate you than, say, descending to feckless speculation about your appearance. At any rate, now you’ve been motivated by whatever impetus to address some of your remarks to the topic at hand, so I’ll stop goading you. But first a note of concern: it is not normal for bags of shit to explode. You may want to modify your diet. Or reinforce your plumbing. Anyway, to business:
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I’m not concerned with anthropological definitions of race, and neither are most bigots I’ve met (though I imagine there’s a certain number who study the topic assiduously, if only to glean snippets of support for their beliefs). I’ll go with my dictionary, which permits defining it along national, cultural, religious, language or ethnic lines as well. Yep, that’s a broad definition, hypothetically permitting a man to have racist attitudes toward his identical twin. I don’t see that as a problem because
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We can recognize that racism is an inherently broad term, covering color bias, national chauvinism, religious bigotry and more, and realize that we can’t mean all of it at once any more than we do when using any other word with multiple definitions. It gets muddled some by the fact that few people who hate other groups different from them stop at just one. That means we must be concerned with specific actions and give up on simply labeling people as racist. This is a good idea for practical reasons also: label someone a racist and communication pretty much stops: you’ve excluded them from social norms and perversely freed them to do as they will. They’re also forced to find company only among the similarly excluded and your chance of persuading them is gone. I think success is more likely if we say “that was a stupid bigoted thing to do” rather than “you’re a racist.” The former holds the potential for redemption, the latter does not.
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We can recognize there are different degrees of racist acts, ranging from the woman who refuses to patronize certain minority-owned shops to the man who conspires to blow up a church. This frees us from the definitional trap of any-taint-of-racism-equals-you-are-a-racist-equals-you-are irredeemably-evil that is the basic problem with an expansive definition.
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Take these DJs. Were there actions racist? I think so. The abuse started when they learned the victim was Indian and included mocking her accent, use of the epithet “filthy rat-eater,” and telling her she wasn’t fit to enter certain transactions with white people. Are they racists? I have to say, I think probably not. I don’t think they subscribe to any particular theory of racism (other than “it’s okay to abuse people not like us”), and I think their motivation was to amuse their audience. But because I want to focus on actions, that doesn’t get them off the hook. “Be careful what you pretend to be,” because, I’d add, you’re still responsible for what you do. Dragging in motives and trying to determine an actor’s racial attitudes is something I’d try to avoid anyway. It’s too hard and it reminds me of why I’m not a fan of hate-crime legislation: it’s a big step toward punishing people for evil thoughts rather than evil deeds, which is poisonous to freedom (Hey, Liberal – I think I just said something you can agree with).
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If the concern over a broad definition of racism is that people will have to be more careful about they treat others, especially those different from them, I’ve got to say I’d need to see proof of the harm that would result. If the concern is that there would be a chilling effect on the freedom to say or do whatever we want to anybody, well there might be. But it would be a restriction imposed not by a government but by a sense of what effect our words and actions might have on others, which isn’t necessarily bad either. I used to be a big believer in the fundamental right to be a complete jerk within the boundaries of the law. As I grow older, not so much. Another concern is that broadening the definition enough would make enough nominal racists that the term would lose its stigma. That’s why I favor focussing on actions rather than labeling people. In short, I have a broad view of what can constitute a race, but I’d prefer the narrowest possible use of the term “racist.”
