There are two sides to the argument that something “is not racist (or sexist, or homophobic, etc.) if it’s true.”
The one side argues that the **truth **of the content is what matters, saying that a statement cannot be classified as racist or sexist, etc., if it is technically true. If facts are facts, then isn’t it “shooting the messenger” to attack someone for expressing offensive but true facts? Should true facts be suppressed?
The other side argues that motive is also important, too. If someone went about circulating a long, lengthy list of derogatory-but-true facts about African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans (pertaining to crime, poverty, illiteracy, etc.,) and specifically targeted this group of people and no other, then he or she may very well be viewed as being racist, even if the facts were true - because the facts, despite being true, are clearly being promoted with an anti-African-American or anti-Hispanic agenda in mind.
Facts are not racist. However, often the things that people suggest are truths are not facts at all, but conclusions based on limited data interpretation.
Made-up Example:
Blacks are arrested at a much higher ratio than whites - Fact (assuming that this is true).
Blacks are more likely to commit crimes. Blacks pose more of a threat to lawful society. - Interpretation
More often than not, the things people declare as" truth" are not facts, but interpretations.
While a fact may be true, how a fact is used or misused could be for racist purposes. It’s in the same vein as “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure” and “Even the devil quotes the bible”.
On reading the name plate of a bank teller, a person might say, “Oh, look at that. What a surprise, yet another Jew is working for a bank.”
The statement might factually be true. If you read it as anything other than antisemitic, you’re something else.
It’s trivially easy to come up with similar factually-true statements about other cultural, ethnic, and racial groups that are nonetheless soggy with bigotry.
I would even say that “blacks are more likely to commit crimes,” in the case of your example, is racist even without the follow-up sentence. All that could be said as objective fact is that blacks are arrested at a higher rate, and that may be owing to multiple factors.
Context is important for deciding whether the speaker is racist.
“Black people are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system” is a true fact. But if that’s the first thing you lay on the table when I ask if you approve of your daughter dating a black guy, then I don’t know what else to call you but “racist”.
It’s kind of like if you’re describing the fender-bender you were in this morning, and the first thing you mention is the race of the person who hit you. It’s going to be real hard for me to ignore the insertion of this irrelevant detail, especially if you say it in an angry way.
I’m one of the few (as of this writing) that wrote “No” because I am coming from the mindset of breaking it down to its extreme microcircumstance and betting that whatever statement is being said is, in fact, true at the time…and therefoe the statement itself, in context, is not racist.
Your isms (race, sex, etc) are all based on assigning specific characteristics and actions to every single person in that group, which facts don’t apply to. However, in a vacuum, the fact can’t be racist because it is true to the situation in which it is being presented.
Sir T-Cups, with that level of parsing, it’s impossible for a statement to be racist, inasmuch as racism posits a state of mind, and statements lack minds. But I don’t think that’s a particularly helpful level of parsing.
Also, “isms” don’t necessarily assign characteristics to every single person in a group. There’s the famous “some of my best friends” dodge to accusations of racism, which convinces exactly nobody. A broad brush, even with exceptions, can certainly be racist.
I’m very, very close to this position. The messenger can be using the fact for a racist purpose or in a racist argument. They may be misapplying or misconstruing the basic fact. They might be using the fact to imply a larger and unsupported claim (which might be refuted by other facts that they ignore.) The fact itself is not racist though.
A simple example:
Having high levels of melanin, tends to associated with higher occurence of vitamin D deficiency. It’s a fact.
A doctor in Alaska with a black patient who references that fact when discussing possible Vitamin D supplementation is making a racially based but not racist point. That same patients neighbor who implies he shouldn’t live in Alaska but instead should move back somewhere with more sun because of it… racist as %&(!.
In neither case is the fact racist. Neither is the fact that my extra pasty, non-tanning, butt is at extra risk of developing and dying from melanoma compared to someone who’s dark skinned.
Thing is, every racist out there thinks that their racism is factual. So, while arguably true that facts aren’t racist, that information is useless in determining whether someone is being racist. A racist can stumble upon a true fact, but get there via racist reasoning.
It’s the underlying reasoning, not the use of facts, that determines whether whether a statement is racist. We just don’t always know what that reasoning is, and so have to guess based on other information.
Certain facts, when said in certain ways, are almost always racist. For example, if you say “Blacks are X.” it’s probably racist, if only because you use blacks as a noun and treat all black people as the same. Note, though, that doesn’t mean that reformatting it as “Black people tend to X” will remove the racism–it depends on what X is and the context in which you are saying it.
And, don’t forget, sometimes being racist is acceptable, particularly in the context where you are making fun of or critiquing racism.
If you wish to argue that this sort of thing means statements aren’t racist in and of themselves, fine. But, ultimately, then you will be arguing semantics. “Your statement is racist” is just a shorthand for “Your statement appears to come from racist reasoning” or “Your statement is being used to make a racist conclusion.”
I don’t think I have ever seen a demonstrable, cold, hard fact ever that applied to every single member of a group. But I have seen an awful lot of re-interpreting facts by removing them from highly pertinent context in order to paint an entire group with a broad racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. brush.
Absolutely there are tons of black men in prison. But drawing any conclusions about the character of black men while ignoring the context of systemic racism in our legal system (as well as issues of poverty, social mobility, opportunities for education, opportunities for jobs, etc. etc.) is a racist over-simplification of a complex problem.
This reminds me of a discussion I had once with an AIDS educator years ago and he admitted he could not talk openly about AIDS transmission (back when it was primarily a gay male disease) without being called homophobic.
There is no “back when” - AIDS in America is now, and has always been, primarily a disease of gay/bisexual men, IV drug abusers, and their sex partners.