This is just the latest version of this vomit-inducing argument I’ve seen on the boards (and elsewhere). It generally works like this:
Person A does or says something with racially charged implications.
Person B points out that Person A’s position conveniently ignores the experiences of a demographic of people.
Person A says, "Ah ha! You mentioned demographic X as being separate from the rest of the people. That makes YOU THE RACIST!!!
I don’t even know what to say about it to make this a thorough pitting. These days, so many supposed arguments are based on non-sequitur name-calling that it’s hard to know where to begin in refuting this kind of vacuous nonsense. I mean: “identifying Asian Americans as a demographic that might at times have a unique experience relative to everyone else” should never be a position that needs defending, but according to some, it makes you racist.
Yes, the poster Magiver was responding to compared Asian Americans to white Americans, lumping everyone who is non-Asian into the “white” category, which was imprecise and a bit lazy. But it’s clear what the intent of their argument was, as it’s clear that Magiver is himself looking for any excuse to justify ignoring the Asian American experience. In this case it’s a bizarro combination of “you didn’t specify enough diversity in your statement, which is racist” along with “reporting that Asian Americans experienced specific and targeted economic impacts means you’re ignoring everyone else, you racist!”
To me this is like those people who say “I’m so not racist that I don’t even see colors and everyone who does is racist”.
The opposite of racism isn’t blindness, willful ignorance, or stupidity. You don’t have to be racist to talk about race.
Yes, race is a social construct. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You aren’t being a racist for talking about it, and ignoring race doesn’t make the issue go away.
I don’t think we gave his plan to fight Covid by airdropping millions of gallons of hand sanitizer on Manhattan and then parachuting doctors on motorcycles into the hot, but wet, zone enough of a chance.
It coulda worked!
Well, “I’m not racist” is a contradictory assertion. It is like saying “I’m very smart”: these are not assessments one can legitimately make about oneself but can only demonstrate for others to see.
Nitpick: There is a sense in which “I’m not racist” is a statement of ideological position rather than an attempt at factual assessment. Just as one can say “I’m not Christian” to mean that they consciously disbelieve in the divinity of Jesus or other tenets of Christian doctrine, one can say “I’m not racist” to mean that they consciously disbelieve in claims of white racial superiority or other such racist positions.
Of course, whether the professed non-racist actually manages to live up to their claims of non-racism in their own behavior and reasoning is, as you note, a matter on which other people may disagree with them.
You cannot refute that which is not an argument, merely a vacuous assertion.
All you can do is laugh in their face and walk away shaking your head.
Back the Ye Ancient Dayes of Olden vBulletine we had someone here whose sig line went something about “The only response to arguments like that is scorn”.
I’ve utterly butchered the quote, but “scorn” was the payoff word. With luck somebody, ideally that poster, will recognize what I’m talking about and fill it in rightly.
More evidence of Magiver’s absolute, brutish, numbskull idiocy is on display on this thread about creating a deadly hazard to mailbox vandals, with the bullheaded assertion that laying a deadly trap is fine, so long as it is an “inactive” object, whatever that means.
He won’t listen to anyone’s explanation of how liability and intent actually works, of course, just repeating his position.
What drives me nuts is that I sometimes get Magiver and Martin_Hyde confused. They are both conservative, but Martin_Hyde is reasonable, intelligent, thoughtful and has a brain. Magiver, uh, isn’t, isn’t, isn’t, and doesn’t.
Plus, if you put out a mailbox with solid concrete, I thought you were required, by law, to have a way of having your mail delivered. Wouldn’t that get you in trouble with the USPS?
I don’t know how widely the term is used, but I call this “Schrödinger’s Racism”. It’s the premise that the racism only exists in an indeterminate state until someone actually mentions it, and then it’s that person’s fault for collapsing the waveform. If you hadn’t said anything, there wouldn’t be any racism, and therefore you’re the real racist here!
The idea that racism doesn’t exist unless you explicitly say it out loud is bizarre and stupid, but then people espousing racism and pretending it’s not racism are not exactly scrupulous in establishing the validity of their arguments. For example, Jim Crow laws may not have always been explicitly racist in their drafting, but their intent and execution sure as fuck were.