Censorship and completely free speech aren’t the only two options. I think that harsh punishment of somebody for calling someone “hysterical” is unnecessary and ridiculous, but there’s no evidence that’s happening. On the other hand, if a group of non-black students followed a black student around calling them “nigger” and saying they should be lynched (even without threatening to do the lynching), it would be very reasonable to prevent that speech.
It’s funny, but I’ve used left handedness to explain privilege and how you don’t notice it unless you’re the unprivileged class. (It’s relatively non-controversial and there are several concrete examples of where lefties have to make accommodations to the right-handed world that righties never notice.) It’s clearly an example of how bias is built into the language we use as well.
I just see it as one part of the bigger issue, which is bigotry. Racism is bigotry applied to race. Racism might have been one of the worst forms of bigotry in the US over the years, but it’s bigotry nonetheless. If you want to confine racism to prejudice against blacks, you should come up a with a term that explicitly includes “black” as part of the term. Or, just use White Supremacy.
I’m not getting what the Malcolm X or SCA example is supposed to prove. Being not racists doesn’t mean not acknowledging race exists, it just means not assuming that people of a certain race have certain behavioral attributes.
Again, not seeing why that analogy is relevant, especially since I already said I didn’t consider AA to be racist. It could be, but it doesn’t have to be and, in fact, usually isn’t. Colleges aren’t recruiting black people because they think blacks are better than whites or other racial groups. They’re not recruiting black people because they think there isn’t enough rhythm on campus or not enough good dancers.
I actually wouldn’t have a problem with a non-black person playing Malcolm X, but it would seem to be going thru a lot of unnecessary hoops of making the non-black person look like a black person. If I was making a Biopic of Larry Byrd, I wouldn’t hire Peter Dinklage because it would be too much trouble to make him look like a basketball star. And it’s no more racist to check a black person for SCA than it is to check a woman for uterine cancer.
That’s a semantic argument. There’s nothing wrong with that. Having a discussion about the semantics of what we mean by “racist” is obviously a requirement based on how these conversations usually go.
The problem comes in where we don’t acknowledge that the semantic argument doesn’t even get to the question of whether something is good. You’ve got your own definition of racism and you presumably approach the question of whether affirmative action is racist using that definition. So, by your lights, eliminating all the Chinese candidates from the Malcolm X auditions is: not racist. Making distinctions about who is likely to have sickle-cell anemia: not racist. Affirmative action: not racist.
But then say we move on to the next issue - let’s say it’s racial profiling of criminal suspects. If you and me and Bone are talking about whether or not a particular police procedure is racist, and some of us say it is and some say it isn’t, that’s ostensibly a disagreement about whether there’s something wrong with it. But in practice, we don’t know if it’s a disagreement about that at all; we can only assume. In practice it’s definitions of racism butting heads, and we’ll probably never even get to the issue of whether each of you thinks there is some kind of actual societally bad consequence that will result from that procedure. All we can do is infer that it’s probably more likely that somebody who opposes this kind of procedure would also be more likely to call it racist, and so the people who call it racist probably oppose it.
In other words, you don’t think affirmative action is racist, but that doesn’t necessarily tell me anything about whether the John Mace University Law School would engage in affirmative action. It just says what you think racist means. And I can tell you I’ll allow that affirmative action is racist, by Bone’s definition, but what that doesn’t tell you is that I’m all in favor of it, because I don’t think it being racist by Bone’s definition says anything about whether or not it’s cool.
Actually, her debunkings usually wind up being debunked. That one-quarter claim? According to the WaPo, it’s only 20%. Those wildly exaggerating feminists! And repeated studies have found that yes, women get paid less than men on average for the same work. Would be nice if it wasn’t true, but.
I’m not seeing why that is a problem. We define killing as the taking of a human life, but that doesn’t tell us whether the killing was good or bad.
OK, so why is that a problem? If I say Joe killed Mike, we don’t know if Joe was right or wrong in killing Mike. And so, we dig deeper.
I guess I don’t see why that is a problem, unless you want it to be a problem. Why can’t I just tell you straight up whether or not JMU will engage in AA?
You can do that. But you had asked about what Richard Parker’s Malcolm X and sickle-cell examples were intended to demonstrate. I think the point was to respond to Bone’s accusation that he, or the left, condones some kinds of racism and not others.
The example demonstrates that the generalized definition of racist, where you’re treating different races differently, must not be the definition most people really use, because usually when people say something is racist they’re really saying it’s wrong, not that it meets their own subjective definition. What Bone seemed to be saying was “you think some forms of racism are bad and some aren’t,” and Richard Parker was saying yes, most people do.
And so what I’m saying is, your response to him, even, relies on your own subjective definition of what racist means. You’re saying those things are clearly not racist… but that’s not really true; it’s only true if you’re also accepting the leftist kind of definition that incorporates oppression.
I guess I fall back on a word meaning what most people think it means. If most people DO NOT subscribe to the idea that racism only means “white racism”, then yes, you are trying to win the debate by redefining the word.
You are certainly free to TRY and redefine the word, and if you succeed, then more power to you. Until then, I’m sticking with the majority definition. And I’m willing to bet any amount of money that a good majority of Americans would not accept that definition of racism. I’m not even sure that a majority of blacks in the US would accept that definition.
I don’t know where the idea of my trying to redefine anything or win an argument based on a particular definition comes in. I’m trying to avoid that whole mess; you can think whatever word means whatever you like and I think that’s fine.
If you think you have access to a “majority definition” of the word racist that doesn’t include selecting only actors of a single race, but which doesn’t do that because there’s some component of power dynamics embedded in it, more power to you, but I don’t know where you found it.
Right, I understand. But I’m not sure it holds up that there’s one side trying to "re"define the word and another side just relying on the “actual” definition. I think that’s exactly the point Richard Parker was trying to raise.
But he said: Most people on the left define it thus and so". The word was not originally defined that way, so somewhere along the line some group of people decided to try and redefine it.
Remember when Bush tried to redefine “imminent threat”? I know it’s not in the same league, but I see it as the same process. What came first, the agenda or the definition? If the former, then yes one is trying win (or shape) the debate by redefining words. Happens a lot, on both the left and the right.
I don’t want to speak too much for RP (if not for any other reason, because he’s smarter than I am) but I think post 159 gets to that. There certainly is A definition of racism, that you would find in a dictionary, that was functionally redefined to mean “oppressive racial policies by whites against blacks in America, and things quite similar to them.”
The real sticking point is, isn’t that the standard people are using, functionally, when they talk about something being “racist?” Is the strict and technical zero context kinda definition Bone wants to use actually the standard most people are informally using when they talk about whether something is racist?
Yes, I’m sure there is in some dictionaries, since there are people how use it that way. Some dictionaries will also not that “bad” can mean “good”, but that doesn’t make it the norm.
I think there is so much more white on black racism that when someone heres the term out of context, one assumes it is white on black. But I doubt there are many Americans who would claim that a bunch of black guys pulling a white guy out of truck and beating the living shit out of him for no other reason than because he is white, is not a racist act.
The dictionary definition of racism is usually something like “a belief that one’s own racial or ethnic group is superior.”
Contextually, in America, a reference to racism is usually referring to a belief that white people are superior. When I wrote, “American leftists generally reserve the term ‘racist’ for policies that further white supremacy,” you seem to have taken me to say that a belief in black supremacy would not be racist. But that is not the distinction I intended. The distinction I intended was between talking about ideas of racial superiority (i.e., racism) and ideas of racially differential treatment. In America, there really is no significant black supremacy ideology. Even black nationalists–some of whom come pretty close to black supremacy–tend not to cross that line.
If, instead, you define racism as any differential treatment on the basis of race, or any such differential treatment without a good reason, then I think you’re watering down the term. And the dictionary agrees with me (or at least supports my understanding just as well).
Jimmy Chitwood is correct in characterizing my argument. If you use a definition of racism that encompasses Malcolm X and sickle cells, then it isn’t enough to know (under your definition) that something is racist. Under that version, some racist things are potentially good ideas and some are unequivocally bad. And the political point of using that definition (whether you are aware of its political history or not) is to intentionally conflate the unequivocally bad and the potentially good when it comes to things like affirmative action. If, instead, you use a definition like the one contained in dictionaries, pretty much anything that is racist is actually bad, and affirmative action is definitionally not racist.
Because it conflates the ideologies of racial superiority and the policies and practices that flow from them with racially differential treatment of all kinds with any motivation, and the former is worse than the latter.
Obviously I dispute that my definition is unique or narrow, but I take your point to be that you think we should be able to use the social cachet of the label of “racist” in order to more successfully criticize bad things that do not flow from ideas of racial superiority. But I think you’d object to that kind of thing in other circumstances. Suppose I campaign to start calling unconsented hand-holding “rape” (which is not such a farfetched exampled). Would you agree with me if I said that limiting rape to more serious sexual violations was a narrow definition that gives cover to other sexual battery?
One is worse than the other but both are sufficiently bad that measuring how bad one is over another is not an exercise worth engaging in. That’s my take anyways.
Not quite. There needn’t be a desire to use the social cachet for any purpose. The point need only be that the term should be used consistently - not just to describe activity negatively impacting black people. The Russian immigrant who is denied what would otherwise be granted if they were a black person is just as mich a victim of racism as a black person being overlooked for the Russian.
I tend to think too much is called racist in gross amounts anyways and the whole idea reeks of trying to find more victims.