It’s a difference in definition. A shift to a different meaning of “racism” that is self-consistent but doesn’t match what most people think of when they hear “racism” (because it deals with social power dynamics and society at large, and is meant to differentiate racism from prejudice). This is, in my opinion, a very stupid move, because this shift is typically made without explaining that it has been made, or what the new definition is, so it leads to confusion, and people saying, “Hey wait, what about that time Jamal told me, ‘Fuck off, white boy’? What are you talking about? That’s stupid and racist.” It doesn’t help the conversation move forward and is indeed a stupid SJW idea. Or at least it would be, if “SJW” had any fucking meaning as a term.
I think it’s a stupid shift, too. We already have terms for it that are widely understood (institutional or systemic racism, for example) and those terms have the virtue of not requiring 3/4 of people to redefine a word they’ve seen and used their entire lives.
I’m not a fan of the term “ableist” either, especially as it’s currently used. It implies there’s a conscious choice to actively and maliciously disregard the issues disabled people face, which I don’t believe is actually a viewpoint many people hold.
Also, while it’s entirely possible for someone to not know any LGBTQI or ethnic folks, pretty much everyone knows someone with a disability, so there’s a much greater awareness of things like access issues etc generally.
I’ve already talked about the reclaiming issue, and didn’t see any need to bring it up again.
Doing it as you did, without any extra information, made it seem like you were refuting what I said, rather than just adding irrelevant side information. (Irrelevant in the sense that it didn’t affect my point.)
Pejoratives are reclaimed all the time. It doesn’t mean they are legitimate. Just that we’re fighting back. And, yes, we. I proudly reclaim the term when necessary, too.
In fact, knowing it’s a just a perjorative also means I can deliberately avoid using it. “Not to sound like an SJW or anything” and such. Since I know the term has no actual meaning, I can use or not use it when I feel like it.
Sort of like the regressives claiming “it’s only *ceremonial *deism” when they want the government to endorse Christianity, huh?
Nivea Pulls ‘White Is Purity’ Ad because it’s “insensitive” and some white supremacists liked it.
Yes, the special snowflakes whining about a dumb slogan being criticized and pulled really are little whiny babies. Sorry snowflakes, but slogans similar to “white power!” really are dumb, and are probably going to be criticized.
It’s not just that people have to change the definition of the word. They would also have to use different words for the same thing depending on whom they’re talking about. So, if a black man and a white man do or say exactly the same thing, the white is racist (very bad) while the black is only prejudiced (not as bad).
That’s plainly Newspeak.
Here’s a fresh stupid social justice warrior–“non-binary” person working at an office, insists on calling everyone else in the office by “gender-neutral” pronouns such as ze, hir, and mx. None of the coworkers complain except for one woman that wants to be referred to as she/her. Person wants to report coworker to HR for being a bigot. (Letter number 3 here.)
I think that a large part of that is explained in the second sentence there.
Young, full of ideas and ideals, and not a lick of actual experience.
Not a warrior, just a misguided fledgling.
And I think the “Manager” nails the advice to hir. Ze will come around.
I’ll acknowledge that point. Actually, it reminds me of the post that led me to discovering that site in the first place. A post that “went viral” about a former intern writing in. She and her fellow interns didn’t like that they had a dress code at the company they were interning at, complained to management. Management told them to suck it up, buttercup. So the interns wrote up a petition requesting that the company drop their dress code, all but one intern signs it. Company tells all but one of the interns that their services are no longer needed, and don’t let the door hit them on the asses as they leave. Not exactly social justice warriors, but they came from a culture where they were led to believe that a petition was a good way to effect change, and were so deeply naive as to believe that would transfer to a corporate culture.
Well, you should refer to people by their preferred pronouns, correct?
Some of us are old enough to remember when “Retarded” was used officially–to describe the kids who went to special classes. Or stayed home. Or were institutionalized. Nowadays, they may have Developmental Issues, Autism, etc.
There are plenty of words with long-obsolete clinical meanings. Idiot, Moron, Imbecile–all can be used freely. But usually not for those with real problems–except for choosing to remain pig-ignorant.
While I disagree that “prejudiced” is not as bad as “racist” (the latter is just a subset of the former, just as it would be of “bigot”), I agree with your larger point that it’s goofy to try to get people to use different terms for prejudice, depending on what race is doing the pre-judging.
I agree the non-explanation of the change, or assumption the listener should have sought it out and agree with it, is a problem. However the change itself is a problem in another basic thing it assumes. Which is a predominant uniformity in the position of whites in society (say US society, as perhaps the most common example). It might be argued that’s still true in some sense, but it relies more and more on classifying people by group and ignoring individual circumstances, as compared to say in the Jim Crow era.
I don’t see why some people have trouble understanding why it infuriates (perhaps downwardly mobile) blue collar whites to be told they are part of a ‘privileged group’ even as contrasted to the kids of the black elite. Just because whiteness of the kids of the white elite might still be in some situations a benefit to them over their black elite counterparts, it doesn’t make the general categorization on race seem reasonable to whites far down the social scale. It seems to them a negative (against their interest) unfair generalization based on race…racist.
The ‘definition’ of racism where ‘only whites can be racist’ is crystal clearly socially counterproductive at this point and I think people using it should consider that foremost and stop arguing how they are right, even if in some limited sense they are.
Technically not, but in practice it’s much worse to be called “racist” than “prejudiced”, and people will also take more offense at being called the former than the later.
here’s a good one: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2017/04/04/vegans-must-feed-everyone-not-just-wealthy-white-people
eh, nm