The (re)definition of the word racist

[Tom Sawyer]

You can call him a racist if you want to, but when people are talking about racism in society, he's only a problem if he has power. Do you honestly think lone nutters ranting about the evils of white people, or black people, is a social problem we need to do something about? Or are you only trying to justify a false equivalence here?

It's ironic that you started that post by saying that someone other than you is confused about what's being said.

We're talking about the definition of the word here. How problematic different forms of racism are is totally irrelevant to the definition of the word. Nobody disputes that racism by those in power is far more serious than racism by lone nutters. That doesn't make the less problematic forms of racism somehow not qualify as racism, though.

 

[thebeave]

Ya, that's a stupid definition of racism which isn't catching on outside of a small subset of people who do themselves more harm than good when they try to promote it.

It's fine for the meanings of word to change over time, but this particular redefinition seems to me to be a dud that isn't going anywhere.

No offense, but a black person calling a white person "honky" does not cause as much emotional damage because there is no ugly history of injustice invoked by the use of those words.

And this new-fangled definition of racism used by the FOX News crowd exists solely so that they can claim that white people are suffering just as much injustice as African-Americans despite everything we see on the news every day. The redefinition of racism that seeks to divorce racism from history exists solely so that privileged people can claim that they are also victims and therefore don't have to stop inflicting injustice on unprivileged groups.

You've been asleep at the wheel. There was a whole thread about this a few months ago, and the main promoters of the "blacks can't be racist" were Athena Awakened and laughing dog. I don't think they are part of the Fox News crowd, except maybe to watch them once in a while just for a few laughs.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No offense, but a black person calling a white person "honky" does not cause as much emotional damage because there is no ugly history of injustice invoked by the use of those words.

And this new-fangled definition of racism used by the FOX News crowd exists solely so that they can claim that white people are suffering just as much injustice as African-Americans despite everything we see on the news every day. The redefinition of racism that seeks to divorce racism from history exists solely so that privileged people can claim that they are also victims and therefore don't have to stop inflicting injustice on unprivileged groups.

You've been asleep at the wheel. There was a whole thread about this a few months ago, and the main promoters of the "blacks can't be racist" were Athena Awakened and laughing dog. I don't think they are part of the Fox News crowd, except maybe to watch them once in a while just for a few laughs.

Given the sub-thread about "honky": Yup--fallen forward and laying on the horn!

 

[Togo]

You can call him a racist if you want to, but when people are talking about racism in society, he's only a problem if he has power. Do you honestly think lone nutters ranting about the evils of white people, or black people, is a social problem we need to do something about? Or are you only trying to justify a false equivalence here?

It's ironic that you started that post by saying that someone other than you is confused about what's being said.

We're talking about the definition of the word here. How problematic different forms of racism are is totally irrelevant to the definition of the word.

I don't think you're being consistent here. Worse still I fear you're being terribly disingenuous.

You started off your post by misquoting me. What I posted is that you were confused. What you wrote was a claim that I said you were confused about what's being said.

Do I know what you meant? Sure. Does the distinction I'm drawing actually matter to me? Not really. Is your observation in general accurate? Probably. Was your statement about me technically incorrect? Absolutely! So of course I could just be a prize a** as demand a retraction and an apology. And I'm sure if I got a reply would include a fair amount of sarcasm, and your opinion of me would drop a fair bit.

Why is that? Why would demanding something as simple as a technical correction produce that kind of reaction? Why would we both recognise it as an illegitimate move? The answer, of course, is that it's not just a technical correction, it's me getting you to back down in public on a point that's totally irrelevant to the issues being discussed. It's nothing about what the words mean, and everything about social and political power.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

So, back to your demand for the technical accuracy of word definition. A few questions for you:

Why are you insisting on this in a political forum?
What is the likely political consequence of preventing people from referring to racial bigotry + power as 'racism'? Do you support these consequences?
Is your ability to ignore the consequences and keep them separate from the technical definition a reflection of superior reasoning, or is it just a form of privilege , that you don't need to worry about the effects, while others do?

Nobody disputes that racism by those in power is far more serious than racism by lone nutters. That doesn't make the less problematic forms of racism somehow not qualify as racism, though.

If you say so. However would it be fair to say that they are a form of racism that is utterly irrelevant to a discussion on a political forum, and that your insistence on giving it equal considerations is a political act in it's own right?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If you say so. However would it be fair to say that they are a form of racism that is utterly irrelevant to a discussion on a political forum, and that your insistence on giving it equal considerations is a political act in it's own right?

If I had made some kind of insistence about that kind of equal political consideration as opposed to specifically saying the opposite on numerous occasions then I suppose you could draw some kind of conclusion about that. Otherwise, such a conclusion would be both unfair and odd.

Words don't have different meanings in a political forum than they do in other forums.

 

[Togo]

If you say so. However would it be fair to say that they are a form of racism that is utterly irrelevant to a discussion on a political forum, and that your insistence on giving it equal considerations is a political act in it's own right?

If I had made some kind of insistence about that kind of equal political consideration...

Uh-uh. No adding words to change the meaning.

You're insisting that people who use the word racism must mean racist opinions and thoughts as well as action. You're insisting that a meaning of the term that is irrelevant to their position must be treated as equally implied to one that is relevant.

It may seem odd to you. It certainly is unfair, that your words carry implications that you might wish they didn't. However, that doesn't change their actual impact.

Words don't have different meanings in a political forum than they do in other forums.

Yes, they do. Of course they do. Smaller government isn't about putting a height limit on members of Congress, pro-choice specifically refers to a position on abortion and nothing else, and 'hawks' and 'doves' are not rival tribes of bird fanciers. When it comes to the meaning of words, context can and does change the meaning of words.

Why is this issue so important to you?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

You're insisting that people who use the word racism must mean racist opinions and thoughts as well as action. You're insisting that a meaning of the term that is irrelevant to their position must be treated as equally implied to one that is relevant.

Because the definition of the word applies equally to both. It doesn't mean that both meanings have equal weight. It's like how the word "speeding" applies to going one mile per hour over the speed limit and going 100 mph over the speed limit. That doesn't mean that someone who says "Speeding is dangerous" is somehow implying that going 1 mph over the limit is equally dangerous as going 100 mph over the limit.

If someone has racist thoughts and opinions, then that guy is a racist. If those opinions never translate into actions then he's a racist you don't need to particularly give a shit about, but he's no less of a racist.

 

[Togo]

You're insisting that people who use the word racism must mean racist opinions and thoughts as well as action. You're insisting that a meaning of the term that is irrelevant to their position must be treated as equally implied to one that is relevant.

Because the definition of the word applies equally to both. It doesn't mean that both meanings have equal weight. It's like how the word "speeding" applies to going one mile per hour over the speed limit and going 100 mph over the speed limit. That doesn't mean that someone who says "Speeding is dangerous" is somehow implying that going 1 mph over the limit is equally dangerous as going 100 mph over the limit.

If someone has racist thoughts and opinions, then that guy is a racist. If those opinions never translate into actions then he's a racist you don't need to particularly give a shit about, but he's no less of a racist.

And voting for a shorter president is voting for smaller government, even if it isn't a form of smaller government you particularly give a shit about.

Say you're talking about speeding, and someone insists that speeding isn't dangerous, because most people speeding only go a few mph over the limit. Do they have a point, or are they dragging in something irrelevant to the topic?

 

[fromderinside]

You're insisting that people who use the word racism must mean racist opinions and thoughts as well as action. You're insisting that a meaning of the term that is irrelevant to their position must be treated as equally implied to one that is relevant.

Because the definition of the word applies equally to both. It doesn't mean that both meanings have equal weight. It's like how the word "speeding" applies to going one mile per hour over the speed limit and going 100 mph over the speed limit. That doesn't mean that someone who says "Speeding is dangerous" is somehow implying that going 1 mph over the limit is equally dangerous as going 100 mph over the limit.

If someone has racist thoughts and opinions, then that guy is a racist. If those opinions never translate into actions then he's a racist you don't need to particularly give a shit about, but he's no less of a racist.

Now we're on to something. Speeding over the limit is not sanctioned nor likely actionable for many reasons including measurement and error. A minority nut screaming racist things would probably not be actionable in society where racism is sanctioned. On the other hand one overtly acting on one's racist positions against one which whom one is a racist towward should always be actively sanctioned by all. Nice point. Actually the first nice point in this thread. I think I'm gonna .......

Now back to the discussion. So Togo, are causal words in private to one from the category against which he is racist sufficient for one such as Donald Sterling to be actively sanctioned by society upon the hearsay release of phone messages?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

And voting for a shorter president is voting for smaller government, even if it isn't a form of smaller government you particularly give a shit about.

Say you're talking about speeding, and someone insists that speeding isn't dangerous, because most people speeding only go a few mph over the limit. Do they have a point, or are they dragging in something irrelevant to the topic?

The only thing I'm dragging into the topic is that words have meaning. Given that the topic is about the meaning of words, it's not really dragging something into it.

If someone says that speeding isn't dangerous because most people only go a few miles over the limit then that person would be wrong. If someone says that the word speeding doesn't apply to those going less than 20 mph over the limit then that person would be wrong. Both of those statements are misusing the word speeding.

Similarly, if someone says that racism isn't a problem because most people don't act on their racist opinions then that person would be wrong. If someone says that the word racism doesn't apply to those who don't act on their racist opinions then that person is wrong. Both of those statements are misusing the word racism.

 

[SimpleDon]

A key element in both is the idea that one race is superior to another. How do you then call AA racism?

I don't accept that as the key element. I don't really care too much what people think of me, I care how they act. Their thoughts and feelings are non of my business. Whether they discriminate against me is where my most concern is. It doesn't matter why they say they are discriminating against me assuming their good intentions is even the truth.

I think that it is fairly established in law that intentions don't have to be established as true or not only that the action resulted in circumstances which would have resulted if the intent was true. In other words intent is inferred from the facts, circumstances and the result of the act. The law can't read minds.

I have to admit that I was a little surprised to see the presumption of superiority included in the two definitions that I saw. But the more that I thought about it the more inclined that I am to accept it. The word "racism" is a fairly new word, dating from the 1930's. In its short life, it has become exceedingly negative. It seems to be reasonable to limit it to the worse meaning, including the presumption of superiority.

Certainly the case of AA illustrates the problem with the word. It is not reasonable to brand AA as being racism in the sense of having a presumption of superiority included in it. It is an attempt to compensate for discrimination that did include the presumption of superiority.

No matter how you define the word the discrimination against *hites involved in AA is allowed by the courts as an attempt to compensate the descendants for the legacy of 400 years of race based discrimination with the presumption of superiority. Discrimination that was enshrined in law, truly horrible laws. If you or anyone else has a better way to do this please speak up.

I don't believe that it is a very effective way to do it. If I was asked, and I haven't been, I would advise the descendants of those treated so horribly to look past race and to broaden their efforts to solving the problem of poverty for all of the poor.

Racism is not going away until the somewhat ridiculous idea of race goes away. The idea that there are different "breeds," apologies for any offence, of humans about which we can draw conclusions about their intelligence, their behavior, their abilities and even their hopes and dreams by something as trivial as skin color or the presence or lack of eye hoods for example.

Those that benefit from AA are going to have to decide this. But I believe that in the long run it is better to eliminate race based programs entirely, to deemphasize race as a divider of the people in society.

I may have expressed the above here already, I didn't check. You can check me for inconsistencies and castigate me for them. As if you need my permission.

Required disclosure statement hidden below

Show

It looks like the Simple family is going to benefit from AA. My daughter recently passed her PE/SE test for structural engineering. She was almost instantly deluged with offers of employment, largely from engineering companies that do a lot of government work, because of AA. While there are a lot of women entering the profession, about 21% of graduate civil engineers, the beginning rung for structural engineers, it is a recent development and of all of the PE/SEs in the country only about 2% of them are women.

The prospective employers go through the roof when they find out that my daughter has everything set up including funding and is working on her PhD in Forensic Structural Engineering, the people who decide who is at fault when buildings collapse etc.

There are only a handful of these people in the US. It is a very lucrative business to be in. The firm that did all of my forensic work, their main job is to calculate and design additions to existing structures for which you don't have the original calculations, has a standing offer to her of a job north of 180K a year for her when she gets her PhD. They are partially funding her research in hopes that they can hire her.

You can't build a structure over three stories high unless a licensed Professional Engineer/Structural Engineer signs off on the design. I don't think that you can build anything in an earthquake zone 2 or more higher than a single floor unless it is sealed by an PE/SE.

It is another day in paradise when I can brag on my kids!

 

[Metaphor]

No matter how you define the word the discrimination against *hites involved in AA is allowed by the courts as an attempt to compensate the descendants for the legacy of 400 years of race based discrimination with the presumption of superiority.

AA does not only discriminate against Whites, it discriminates against Asians. Also, as your own example shows, it also discriminates by gender.

Discrimination that was enshrined in law, truly horrible laws. If you or anyone else has a better way to do this please speak up.

That's rather like using leeches to treat coeliac disease, then demanding 'a better way' to treat coeliac disease from other people before you'll stop using leeches. A better way to treat coeliac disease is to stop using leeches, that is, literally do nothing. The leeches aren't treating the coeliac disease and they never could.

I don't believe that it is a very effective way to do it. If I was asked, and I haven't been, I would advise the descendants of those treated so horribly to look past race and to broaden their efforts to solving the problem of poverty for all of the poor.

It doesn't do it at all. Those who were discriminated against and enslaved in the past cannot be made whole. Those who were discriminated against and still alive ought to be compensated, and they should pursue it in a court of law. Discriminating against Asians in medical school admissions doesn't help Black people who are long since dead. It doesn't even help Black people who are alive. Everyone is made poorer when decisions are based on race and not merit, and that includes AA.

Those that benefit from AA are going to have to decide this. But I believe that in the long run it is better to eliminate race based programs entirely, to deemphasize race as a divider of the people in society.

Like any decision where factors other than merit influence selection, we are made all the poorer by AA.

AA is like nepotism. While there are people who are selected who otherwise wouldn't have been, and they therefore benefit, since the best person was not selected, everyone else loses, including society as a whole. Even the person selected on nepotistic grounds may feel pressured in their performance expectations, knowing they weren't the best candidate, and not achieve the same job satisfaction that they would have had they achieved it on merit. And of course even the person who has the plum job based on nepotism is part of the society that lives with other plum jobs that are also given away on nepotistic grounds, and that society is harmed.

The point is not that AA is an imperfect way to compensate for the legacy of slavery. Compensating for the legacy of slavery is literally impossible. The point is that AA is actively harmful to those living, including members of races it is ostensibly discriminating for.

It is another day in paradise when I can brag on my kids!

Your daughter has achieved much she ought to be proud of on her own merits. This is marred by the fact that she will given more plum offers, and given the 'royal treatment', compared to similar-achieving male colleagues, because she has a vagina and they do not.

Precisely how discriminating against men helps undo the 'legacy of slavery' I'm sure I don't know.

 

[SimpleDon]

It results, as it must, in disadvantaging members of races that have aptitude and achievement higher than other races.

Yes, it does.

In medical schools admissions, this means Asians and Whites are disadvantaged and discriminated against. If you don't believe discriminating by race is racism, it hardly matters. Discriminating by race is wrong and I'm happy to call out AA for discriminating by race.

Medical school admissions in a bad choice to use as an example. Medical schools have ten times the number of qualified applicants applying to them as the number of medical school slots available. They turn down lots of qualified applicants. It is incorrect to say that they reject a lot of more qualified candidates than they accept. The process is much more involved than picking the candidates with the highest MCAT scores. The MCAT scores and the college GPA are only used as part of process. You have to have a minimum score and GPA to make to the next round of the process. It is not accurate to say that an applicant with a higher MCAT score or a higher GPA is more qualified to be a doctor than an applicant with lower ones. Medical schools establish the minimums for these two that show that the applicants can stand up to the pace and the academic rigor of the studies. Then they go on to the other qualities that point to being a doctor. And yes, this includes race.

My son went to medical school. more hidden, I talk about my son this time...

Show

He is white but he scored points because he lives in the city proper, not in the suburbs, where most of the applicants come from. He speaks Spanish and was able to have his entire interview in Spanish. He learned Spanish solely so that he would be a better doctor. He volunteered in a hospice all of the time he was in college in Atlanta. The head doctor in the hospice said that she felt that my son would make a better doctor than any of her class mates at Duke, that she would volunteer to be interviewed in person and if they didn't accept him she would come in person to find out why. (A little bit of hyperbole helps to get you remembered.) He was a Chemical Engineer at Georgia Tech, arguably the most difficult school of Engineering in the world and arguably the hardest course of study in that school. He spent his spare time doing drug research, PhD level work.

All of this finally counted for much more than his GPA and his MCAT score.

Neither his mother or I wanted him to go to medical school. He is an extraordinary individual who would excel at anything that he was interested in. We felt like he was wasting himself by spending the time and effort in medical school. He went into a combination MD/PhD dual degree program. And its now doing drug research. But he is now working with two other researchers in a start up. He is doing more computer programming than medical work because so few understand both. A friend of mine who walks with me in the pool is a retired doctor. I took him to see what my son was doing. He has now put money into the start up and works for my son part time.

It is being done to try to undo a small part of the legacy of 400 years of the *hite race believing that they were "superior to another race or races" "and has the right to dominate others" resulting in "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."

Did Asians in America have equal culpability for the 'legacy of 400 years of the White race'?

No, of course not. Unless you are a socially stunted, asian girl, if you got into college in the last twenty years or so, you benefited from legal discrimination. No university wants an incoming freshmen class of social stunted asian girls, especially the so-called elite schools. That is what they would have if they relied solely on high school GPA and SAT or ACT scores.

The Universities want a broad range of students. They establish a minimum GPA and SAT or ACT score that they will accept and go on to other discriminating criteria for deciding on who they accept. Just like the medical schools.

What makes you think AA can undo the past? The dead victims of discrimination and racism cannot be made whole, and we are all the poorer for it. The alive victims of discrimination and racism have a legitimate grievance that they should pursue in a court of law.

But discriminating by race now because some White people discriminated by race in the past? That is blood libel.

I don't think that AA is very effective. I wrote another long post somewhere up there ^^^^ explaining what I would recommend.

You are more than welcome to explain what your proposal would be to compensate the descendants of the people who were wronged for four hundred years.

Or you can try to argue that they weren't damaged by the years of discrimination to their ancestors. I have never found this argument successfully presented. But you could be the first.

I would recommend that you stop using that term. It is the false claim against the Jews that they sacrificed Christian babies as part of their religious ceremonies. The use of it is not destined to influence many here. It doesn't apply in this case.

 

[laughing dog]

You've been asleep at the wheel. There was a whole thread about this a few months ago, and the main promoters of the "blacks can't be racist" were Athena Awakened and laughing dog.

Apparently you also have been asleep at the wheel. I have not promoted any definition of racism. I just don't think this argument over an alternative use is a big deal.

I don't think they are part of the Fox News crowd, except maybe to watch them once in a while just for a few laughs.

I do not watch any TV news.

 

[Metaphor]

Medical school admissions in a bad choice to use as an example.

No: it's a very good example, because we have good statistics about admissions data to medical schools (although hardly all the statistics I'd like).

Medical schools have ten times the number of qualified applicants applying to them as the number of medical school slots available. They turn down lots of qualified applicants. It is incorrect to say that they reject a lot of more qualified candidates than they accept.

What?

The process is much more involved than picking the candidates with the highest MCAT scores.

Whatever makes you imagine I think it is, or ought to be, based solely on MCAT scores?

The MCAT scores and the college GPA are only used as part of process.

Whatever makes you imagine I think there are no non-GPA non-MCAT admissions criteria?

You have to have a minimum score and GPA to make to the next round of the process. It is not accurate to say that an applicant with a higher MCAT score or a higher GPA is more qualified to be a doctor than an applicant with lower ones.

All other things being equal, of course they are. Of course they are. This is why those in the highest band of MCAT/GPA combo are more likely to get into medical school than those with lower MCAT and GPA scores.

If variation above the minimum score didn't matter, we'd so no difference in admission rate by MCAT/GPA grouping.

Medical schools establish the minimums for these two that show that the applicants can stand up to the pace and the academic rigor of the studies. Then they go on to the other qualities that point to being a doctor. And yes, this includes race.

Race is not a qualification. Discriminating by race is morally evil.

He is white but he scored points because he lives in the city proper, not in the suburbs, where most of the applicants come from.

Scoring points for where you live seems to me a rather stupid criterion, but that's a separate debate.

He speaks Spanish and was able to have his entire interview in Spanish. He learned Spanish solely so that he would be a better doctor. He volunteered in a hospice all of the time he was in college in Atlanta. The head doctor in the hospice said that she felt that my son would make a better doctor than any of her class mates at Duke, that she would volunteer to be interviewed in person and if they didn't accept him she would come in person to find out why. (A little bit of hyperbole helps to get you remembered.) He was a Chemical Engineer at Georgia Tech, arguably the most difficult school of Engineering in the world and arguably the hardest course of study in that school. He spent his spare time doing drug research, PhD level work.

All of this finally counted for much more than his GPA and his MCAT score.

Whatever makes you imagine I think MCAT and GPA should be the sole criterion?

I have never said that nor do I believe it. All I've ever said is that discriminating by race is wrong.

No, of course not. Unless you are a socially stunted, asian girl, if you got into college in the last twenty years or so, you benefited from legal discrimination.

Wow. You claim to know I benefited from legal discrimination in getting into University? What an extraordinary, breathtaking claim.

I like the racist jab at Asians too.

No university wants an incoming freshmen class of social stunted asian girls, especially the so-called elite schools. That is what they would have if they relied solely on high school GPA and SAT or ACT scores.

I have never said, nor do I believe, that entry into courses must be restricted to GPA/SAT/ACT. I feel I must keep repeating this, over and over and over.

All I have said is that it is wrong to discriminate based on race.

The Universities want a broad range of students. They establish a minimum GPA and SAT or ACT score that they will accept and go on to other discriminating criteria for deciding on who they accept. Just like the medical schools.

A good University would discriminate between students on criteria that relate to academic merit.

Discriminating by race, however, is morally wrong. Evidently you do not believe that.

I don't think that AA is very effective. I wrote another long post somewhere up there ^^^^ explaining what I would recommend.

You are more than welcome to explain what your proposal would be to compensate the descendants of the people who were wronged for four hundred years.

AA is worse than 'not very effective'. It harms everyone. It literally harms everyone in society.

Nor can the descendants of people who were wronged and who are now dead be compensated. It is impossible. The hands of time cannot be unwound.

 

[SimpleDon]

A key element in both is the idea that one race is superior to another. How do you then call AA racism?

Two minutes of conversation with the average AA advocate.

Are you practicing non sequitur responses trying to be funny or was it unintentional?

No one is saying that minority races are superior to the *hite race. It is not being done because of hatred or intolerance directed toward the *hite race. It is being done not to disadvantage members of the *hite race. It is being done to try to undo a small part of the legacy of 400 years of the *hite race believing that they were "superior to another race or races" "and has the right to dominate others" resulting in "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."

That sounds like an assertion that for four hundred years the white race believed they were superior to another race and has a right to dominate other races. Is that what you intend to assert?

Yes. Congratulations, you decoded my sentence.

If so, do you also assert that for four hundred years the black race believed they were superior to another race and has a right to dominate other races?

It doesn't much matter if the black race feels superior to another race they lacked the control and the resources of a modern, for the times, nation state necessary to pass the laws required to put another group under legal servitude, like the *hite race did to the blacks.

 

[Derec]

I have said it before, and I'll say it again. While there is legitimate reason to talk about institutional racism there is no reason to pretend that that is the only kind that merits the word "racism". Also, these attempts to redefine the word "racism" are all intellectually dishonest because they are motivated by the ideologically preferred outcome, to declare that "only whites can be racist". Thus, even when blacks have the institutional power and act in a racist fashion the redefiners will not concede that it is racism because of their ideological commitment to "only whites can be racist". Take Victor Hill^* for example, the racist sheriff of Clayton County, Ga, who fired white deputies because they were white and wanted to replace them with blacks.
Georgia Sheriff Fires Workers, but Then a Judge Intervenes
Inexplicably, that racist piece of shit is still sheriff. Yet another disgusting double standard of how racism is treated in contemporary America.

^* he has been in the news recently for shooting a woman two counties over.

 

[Bomb#20]

If so, do you also assert that for four hundred years the black race believed they were superior to another race and has a right to dominate other races?

It doesn't much matter if the black race feels superior to another race they lacked the control and the resources of a modern, for the times, nation state necessary to pass the laws required to put another group under legal servitude, like the *hite race did to the blacks.

Did you not understand my question, or are you refusing to answer it? In case it's the former, I was not asking for your opinion about whether it much matters. Did the black race believe they were superior to another race and has a right to dominate other races?

 

[SimpleDon]

Redefinition of the wold racism

If that's true, then why are we purposely and knowingly screwing over the Chinese now (e.g. college admissions) just like we did a century ago?

I am absolutely amazed at the obsession that people have with college and medical school admissions and the horrible injustice of not basing admissions solely on merit in the form of SAT scores and MCAT scores.

I have written to great extent on this subject in other responses here. Short form: Test scores are one of many considerations that go into admissions and higher scores don't mean that someone is more qualified. Maintaining a balance from different population groups is certainly a valid consideration, especially for the medical schools.

I have waited in vain for the most obvious and blatant affront to merit based college admission to be attacked with anything like even 1/10th the ferocity that race based admissions are attacked. I am of course talking about legacy admissions. Perhaps one of you who so fiercely oppose race based admissions can explain why you accept or at least never mention legacy admission, which is a class based system?

Perhaps it is the same reason that you support intentionally disadvantaging the poor and the middle class to artificially boost the incomes of the already wealthy?

Yes, we discriminated horribly against the Chinese. We also discriminated horribly against the Irish before them and we discriminated horribly against the Italians after them. And yet these groups rose above the discrimination thrown at them to boost the *hites. They did it differently, the Irish and the Italians did it by assimilating, sometimes after only a single generation. The Chinese did the opposite, they went into insular communities, built them economically and socially in spite of the discrimination from the *hites, until they could no longer be ignored and marginalized.

But it took the Chinese many generations to accomplish, generations during which we lost much as a nation of the contributions that they might have made. Discrimination is a horrible waste of human resources.

The obvious question is why haven't the other minorities been able to duplicate the example of the Chinese or the Italians and the Irish? I can think of some reasons.

But why bother? There is widespread acceptance among everyone here that legal discrimination against any group for any supposed reason is harmful to that group. It is sufficient that so-called racial minorities were legally discriminated against in order to boost the fortunes of others, a legacy of which a their decendents have been unable to escape. Just like the Chinese this represents a waste of human resources. It is not unreasonable to try to help them, for all of our benefits.

I am in a minority of one here apparently. I don't believe that the concept of race itself is valid. It is ridiculous to think that skin color or the presence or absence of eye folds, environmental or sexual preference adaptations of tens of centuries, an eye blink in human evolution, could account for differences in human intellect, or any of the other characteristics that it is suppose to effect.

Accepting this idea of the supposed superiority in intellect of one of group over another whether based on skin color, eye folds, hair color, social class, the alignment of the stars you were born under, raises serious questions about anyone who is willing to accept such an argument. What does it tell us but that they believe that persons of lower intellect deserve to be poor and that they somehow deserve to suffer the relative depreviation of poverty in the US? This is evil.

It makes a lie of the often repeated mantra that the poor can rise above poverty if they work hard and if we make poverty uncomfortable enough that the poor have the proper incentive to want to do it.

And it is why I believe that we shouldn’t be trying to carry out a race based solution, we should be eliminating poverty completely, for all of the poor. No one deserves to be poor in America, not the victims of discrimination, not the intellectually challenged.

 

[SimpleDon]

I so enjoy these semantic argument threads. I don't have much to add to this one, I am happy as always with the dictionary definition of the word "racism."





The first two in a google search for "racism definition." The first is unattributed, the second is from Dictionary.com.

A key element in both is the idea that one race is superior to another. How do you then call AA racism?

No one is saying that minority races are superior to the *hite race. It is not being done because of hatred or intolerance directed toward the *hite race. It is being done not to disadvantage members of the *hite race. It is being done to try to undo a small part of the legacy of 400 years of the *hite race believing that they were "superior to another race or races" "and has the right to dominate others" resulting in "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."

Or perhaps you guys have different definition of the word from the one in the dictionary?

I guess the OP article might fit in to definition 2, which is ironic, as its the only kind of racism that she acknowledges...

I rather like the idea of including the idea of the assumption of superiority in the definition. It certainly will cut down on the number of people who can be called a racist. Without it in the definition nearly everyone here is a racist.