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Are you racist?

 
 
 
dismal said:
Toni said:
These sorts of threads always make me really sad. Not surprised, though. I grew up in a family of bigots and racists of varying degrees. One relative (may he RIP) was actually a member of the Klan. As in KKK. You know: white sheets, burning crosses. I am ignoring the 'friend request' of a family member because his facebook page makes my stomach churn just too much, although I loved his father, who was a sweet man, may he also RIP. I have a cousin who was like a sibling, who adopted her child from a Central American country and whose nieces and nephews were born to her sister in law, who hailed from that same Central American country. Whose FB and whose husband's FB pages are filled with a lot of anti-immigrant posts, anti-Hispanice memes, and so on. That's not even counting parents and siblings. So, I'm a little bit desensitized to the overwhelming sense of grief that overt and covert racism often inspire in me.

The absolute honest truth is that none of the family members mentioned above, including the one who was a member of the Klan, thought/thinks of himself/herself as a racist or even a bigot. They just thought/think they are 'realistic.' Or that the joke/meme was 'funny.'

I have never met a single person who thought of himself or herself as a racist. Including members of the Klan.

Which is why the responses on this thread do not surprise me.

Which is really sad.
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This is a very strange reaction to a semantic debate about the meaning of a word.

Are you worried if they narrow the definition of "racist" too much you won't be able to fling it about as much?
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Huh. I don't find it strange. I don't even find it strange that people give lots of examples of behavior and attitudes that they consider to be 'racist' based upon their own personally expanded definition of racism, in a variation of the childhood: "But Ma! He hit me first and I didn't even take his stuff or make him bleed when I hit him."

I don't find this worrisome. My own life experiences have inured me to the sorts of posts I have read. It makes me sad but not worried.

I'm pretty used to people saying some really racist stuff while denying that they are racist.
 
Toni said:
I have never met a single person who thought of himself or herself as a racist. Including members of the Klan.
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Witches are like this with their denial of sorcery. That's why special tests were devised to prove their guilt.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
About one of the dumber arguments at this web board and abroad the Intertubes is the semantical pissing war over the word "racist" and "racism".

And for the record, I'm not a 'racist', I'm an unemployed, self-hating communist. At least, according to the right I am.
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Aww, Jimmy. That's okay, I still love ya'. :huggs:
 
Toni said:
dismal said:
This is a very strange reaction to a semantic debate about the meaning of a word.

Are you worried if they narrow the definition of "racist" too much you won't be able to fling it about as much?
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Huh. I don't find it strange. I don't even find it strange that people give lots of examples of behavior and attitudes that they consider to be 'racist' based upon their own personally expanded definition of racism, in a variation of the childhood: "But Ma! He hit me first and I didn't even take his stuff or make him bleed when I hit him."

I don't find this worrisome. My own life experiences have inured me to the sorts of posts I have read. It makes me sad but not worried.

I'm pretty used to people saying some really racist stuff while denying that they are racist.
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They are not expanding the traditional definition of racism here, they are contracting it.

When you add additional requirements for something to be "racist" fewer things by definition are "racist".
 
might want to check out #blackcrimematters if you want to educate yourself.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
A. Let’s first define racism with this formula:

Racism = racial prejudice + systemic, institutional power.
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That's not actually a definition of racism. It's a definition of a subset of racism called systemic racism. When the author later talked about people being prejudiced against people because of their race, he was defining racism.
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No, he was defining racial prejudice. This is a distinct thing from racism, which is the combination of racial prejudice with a worldview that incorporates racial prejudice as an axiom of truth.

For example: the guy who says "Mexicans are lazy and smell bad" is expressing a prejudice. He may meet 100 Mexicans who are not lazy and smell like flowers and rid himself of that prejudice through experience. This contrasts with the guy who says "Mexicans were created by God to be servants to white people, which is why they are lazy and smell bad." This is a systematic belief that makes predictions about the world that reinforces racial prejudice and converts those prejudices into a description of objective reality far removed from the perceptions that caused them.

Even Systematic Racism requires the presence of a positive worldview in order to really be that. A lot has been written, for example, about the racial insensitivity and confrontational attitude of the Chicago States Attourney's office towards blacks and latinos. This doesn't make it all the way to racism, however; the prosectors don't have an actual coherent worldview that would justify their prejudices, in fact quite the contrary, it seems as if they treat minorities with antipathy simply because it is a fashionable and politically expedient thing to do when you are a prosecutor (the best way to befriend a bully is to start picking on one of his victims).

I believe that systemic prejudice is also a thing that can be identified and can be solved with a different set of solutions than full blown systemic racism. Prejudice, after all, can be reformed through education and experience; racism can only be reformed through conversion, and that depends entirely on the willingness of the racist.
 
repoman said:
So Chinese can be racist in China but not in the US?
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sure they can be racist, just like the blacks are very racist to the Whites in Zimbabwe

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Tom Sawyer said:
[

No, English colonists were once rude to the Chinese a few centuries ago, so Chinese can never be racist. They can only be prejudiced against people due to their race.
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:hysterical: that's a very laughable post and I assume it's a joke of course
 
Racism = the pretend belief in imagined 'races', and all the antiquated intellectual crap which goes with such nonsense.
 
so it's got nothing to do with race then that virtually all white countries are richer than black ones?
 
dismal said:
Toni said:
Huh. I don't find it strange. I don't even find it strange that people give lots of examples of behavior and attitudes that they consider to be 'racist' based upon their own personally expanded definition of racism, in a variation of the childhood: "But Ma! He hit me first and I didn't even take his stuff or make him bleed when I hit him."

I don't find this worrisome. My own life experiences have inured me to the sorts of posts I have read. It makes me sad but not worried.

I'm pretty used to people saying some really racist stuff while denying that they are racist.
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They are not expanding the traditional definition of racism here, they are contracting it.

When you add additional requirements for something to be "racist" fewer things by definition are "racist".
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At first, I thought you were wrong but then I went back and re-read posts (I am pretty good at being able to suppress my gag reflex) and realized you are correct: plenty of posters are narrowing the definition of racism so that they can claim they cannot possibly be racist.
 
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