The (re)definition of the word racist

[Toni]

Asians are discriminated against in college and medical school admissions only if you believe that test scores establish the most qualified students.

I would say any objective measure, really, but we don't even have to agree. Stop asking students their race and let the chips fall where they may.

You realize, of course, that race is not a required field to complete. And that geographic location, just as school and 'legacy' admissions are often proxies for race.

 

[Metaphor]

I would say any objective measure, really, but we don't even have to agree. Stop asking students their race and let the chips fall where they may.

You realize, of course, that race is not a required field to complete. And that geographic location, just as school and 'legacy' admissions are often proxies for race.

Whether it's a required field or not is irrelevant if there's an interview component.

And if geographic location and 'legacy' admissions are proxies for race and used to get around directly discriminating by race, they too are suspect.

Why are people so desirous of discriminating by race? So much harm has come from discriminating by race; why do people want to keep doing it?

 

[ronburgundy]

I have often marveled at how we can have pages of rants about something like affirmative action and completely miss the point that medicine for example should be something that is widely taught and there simply are not enough educational facilities to meet our needs or the needs of students who would admirably practice medicine if they only had the chance. We seem obsessed with scarcity and seem to do everything possible to maintain scarcity for the masses. Do we want to improve conditions for all of society or only "those who can afford" the improvements? We are not valuing the right kind of things and place too much on social standing to properly address any of our mutual social problems.

Medicine and other needs are expensive simply because we have not as a society valued these things sufficiently to address them as social needs and produce enough of them to make them practical. So we have people waiting a month for a doctor visit...three months for a driver's license test, and sometimes longer for admission and treatment for something like drug addiction. The more basic the human need, the more threatening the lack of remedy is, the more we have so called conservatives saying what they always say: "Not everybody can have this. It is just too costly." Then they busy themselves making sure these things stay costly.

If a person cannot meet the rather low, barely able to read, write, or think standards required to get into a college, then they are not going to make it through med school without also waiving the competence standards there. If you want to get operated on by such a person, then go ahead, but I want a big asterisk put next their credentials so I can avoid them.

Also, the way to get more doctors with minimal sacrifice to competence is to ignore race and any other factor besides competence and merely lower the standard overall. That would result in admitting people just below the current cutoffs of the groups with the currently highest cutoff levels (i.e, the most competent and likely to get through med school). Another solution is reduce the number of students admitted into the many fluff majors and increase admitted majors into pre-med, mental-health, and other vital fields where there are shortages. But you'll get outcry from the pro-AA crowd because it is Asians and Whites who are more likely to choose those more vital professional fields.

 

[Bomb#20]

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.

Did you not understand my question, or are you refusing to answer it?

I'll take the crickets as a refusal to answer. You evidently do not assert that for four hundred years the black race believed they were superior to another race and has a right to dominate other races. So you are declaring the white race collectively culpable for a historic wrong other races are innocent of; and you aren't offering any other wrongs by other races to even things out. That is a de facto charge that the white race is morally inferior.

This is entirely typical. Most people who defend AA don't seem to be able to keep the group blame from leaking out of their subconscious premises and into their arguments, even if on an intellectual level they know perfectly well that guilt is an individual matter, or at least know perfectly well that the people they're arguing with do not believe in crimes committed by races. Yes, I decoded your sentence. Yes, I get that you can't even decide whether "the white race" is singular or plural. No, the white race did not believe they[sic] were superior to another race and has[sic] a right to dominate other races. Races do not believe things; people believe things.

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.

No, on that point you don't appear to be in a minority of one here. That is another predictable trope of defenses of AA: character assassination. You're accusing all the others here of thinking skin color or the presence or absence of eye folds accounts for differences in human intellect, behavior, abilities, and even hopes and dreams. You're doing it without evidence. None of our posts have given any such indication.

Actually, funny story about that...

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

Asians are discriminated against in college and medical school admissions only if you believe that test scores establish the most qualified students. But this has never been the case.

Hmm. That's an assertion that Asians are not discriminated against in college and medical school admissions...

I think that I have explained this in this post or one in this thread. Short form,

• Test scores are for establishing that the candidate can do the academic work required.
• Each school establishes the minimum scores that they feel that meets this standard.
• All of the candidates who score above the minimum are assumed to be capable of doing the work required.
• The school moves on to other criteria that they have for admissions.
• My son is a doctor. When he applied to medical school he gained points because,
  • He speaks Spanish.
  • He volunteered in a hospice while in school
  • He took a much more rigorous undergraduate degree, Chemical Engineering
  • From an academically hard school, Georgia Tech
  • He lives in the city, not the suburbs
  • He had strong recommendations from doctors who knew of his long time desire to go into medicine
• And yes, race is a factor in medical school admission, we need doctors of all races.
• Just as we need engineers, teachers, accountants, lawyers, etc. of different races.

So your grounds for claiming Asians are not discriminated against is that test scores are just one of many considerations that go into admissions. Very true. And yet, for any given test score, an Asian has a lower chance of being admitted than, say, an African-American. And here you are, arguing that that's not because of racial discrimination but because of all those other factors. Hmm. But that would imply that an African-American is more likely than an Asian to speak multiple languages, to have volunteered in a hospice, to take a rigorous undergraduate degree, to come from an academically hard school, or to have some other such merit. My, what an awful lot of characteristics you are in effect claiming are accounted for by skin color! When you offer that argument as grounds for thinking Asians would only be being discriminated against if test scores established the most qualified students, you are implying Asians are inferior.

So no, what I wrote was not a non sequitur. If you found it funny it's because you have a tin ear. Two minutes of conversation with the average AA advocate will indeed deliver grounds to call AA racism, by your stated criterion.

 

[Bomb#20]

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."

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

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.

Without it in the definition, the definition you're happy with becomes:

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races​

So you claim that by that definition nearly everyone here is a racist. What is your evidence for that claim? By all means, quote us passages from posts from nearly everyone here, implying that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement. Heck, quote us a passage from a post from anyone in this thread, implying that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement. Quote us a passage arguing for a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering a doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement. Quote us a passage arguing for discrimination against a human racial group. Quote us a passage expressing hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

You're confused: it's the people who think racism = racism + power that are redefining the word.

As are the people who are squeezing the implication of superiority of one race over another out of the definition of the word also redefining the word.

Defining the word as meaning anything that considers race in any form in kind of a "we are all racists" unsatisfying way that undercuts the impact of the word as well as its meaning.

Yes, the fact that so often there is clarification by saying "institutional racism" and "racism + power" undercuts the argument that these are included in the definition of the word "racism." But in the same way the phrase "reverse racism" undercuts the "we are all racists" definition if we consider race in any form, if we ignore the implication of superiority.

Or, if you prefer, don't quote any post. Don't provide evidence for your accusation that we're nearly all racists when superiority isn't in the definition. Just repeat your charge. If you say it three times maybe that will make it true.

 

[whichphilosophy]

If racism = racism+power then by substitution

racism = (racism + power) + power.

And further:

racism = (racism + power) + power + power.

And then by rearranging terms:

racism - power - power - power = racism.

Your logic is wrong. You are suggesting that something equals something else, yet fail to define what racism is.

 

[dismal]

If racism = racism+power then by substitution

racism = (racism + power) + power.

And further:

racism = (racism + power) + power + power.

And then by rearranging terms:

racism - power - power - power = racism.

Your logic is wrong. You are suggesting that something equals something else, yet fail to define what racism is.

I start with an identity that was asserted in the OP:

Racism = Racism + power.

The rest is just math.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Your logic is wrong. You are suggesting that something equals something else, yet fail to define what racism is.

I start with an identity that was asserted in the OP:

Racism = Racism + power.

The rest is just math.

So you are saying that if 2 is 2
Then 2+ 1 = 2

 

[dismal]

I start with an identity that was asserted in the OP:

Racism = Racism + power.

The rest is just math.

So you are saying that if 2 is 2
Then 2+ 1 = 2

Your math is flawed. Mine isn't.

And as for what I am saying, what I said is still there to be read.

 

[beero1000]

Of course, any expression using + or = is obviously math, so we can clearly start manipulating words as if they were numbers. It makes complete sense, doesn't it...