“Alleged dictionary”? Well, that’s what the cover says, but I admit I never considered the possibility that it could be just a clever disguise. Tell you what,** Liberal**: if there’s anybody who thinks you have enough credibility left to warrant taking the trouble, they can read my posts (#61 and #64) and decide for themselves if anybody’s lying about anything.
This is wrong twice: I didn’t say that, and it wouldn’t be true if I had. Since any Caucasian has skin, a nationality, language, etc., it’s certainly possible for them to experience racism on one or more grounds.
The most troubling thing about this, actually, is not the fact that it’s doubly untrue – I’m becoming used to that. The troubling thing is that with no justification you’ve dragged in a stock accusation that is an absolute favorite of the National Association for the Advancement of White People and certain other groups, who like its implication that efforts to protect people from racist acts somehow discriminate against* them*. Some of these groups contain some fairly nasty people. I think you should drop this line (it’s untrue anyhow), if only to avoid the taint of association with them.
Regarding differences in defining racist(adj.) vs. racist(noun), I’d think you had seen enough counter-examples by now to question your interpretation. I’ll try one more: “doctor” as a verb means to try to cure, fix, or tamper with, or adulterate something; “doctor” as a noun means someone with an M.D., Ph.D., or the equivalent. You see how the word we apply to people is much more restrictive than the one applied to actions. Aronoff is not a grammarian, exactly: his field is morphology, a process by which new words are formed. As such, he has little to say about how the meanings of words may evolve once they are born. If he (or anyone else)* did * try to prescribe rules like that, I doubt he’d have much luck. And there are still all the non-lexical reasons to restrict the use of the label as much as possible.
The issue of the things people do vs. the labels we give them reminds me of a joke:
A bartender says to his customer, “You look down in the dumps. What’s wrong?” His customer replies:“You know, once I wrote a book, but does anyone call me Joe the Novelist? No. Once I gave a speech; does anyone call me Joe the Orator? No. Once I won a chess tournament; does anyone call me Joe the Chess Champion? No…BUT…fuck JUST ONE goat…”
A respectful nod to Larry Borgia: You’re absolutely right. I tried to address something I thought was a problem and only ended up becoming a part of it. I know better now. Anyway, I’ve said my piece. Someone else can have the last word.
