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On January 23 2023 20:13 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2023 17:18 Acrofales wrote:Not too long ago there was a discussion about whether Kanye West could be racist and/or anti-semitic. Today, I read a column about "black anti-semitism" and how silly the whole concept is. I thought it might be interesting to some here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jan/20/antisemitism-race-black-americans-jews-kanye-west
For some Jewish Americans, remarks and posts by Ye, Cannon and Kyrie Irving come together in a concept that one could, very tendentiously, label “Black antisemitism”. But we must be vigilant to the fact that what could be mislabeled as such is instead antisemitism of other varieties. If Ye describes Jewish financial domination, or control of the media, it is not “Black antisemitism”. It is garden-variety American antisemitism. Christian nationalism is the view that the US was founded as a Christian nation, and its exceptional nature is a testament to the abiding Christian character of its founding laws and culture. Christian nationalism is also a traditional source of antisemitism, the blame for which can hardly be placed on Black Americans.
Even when we look at antisemitic comments made by Black Hebrew Israelites, or some of the leaders of the Nation of Islam, we need to ask whether the antisemitism has anything to do with being Black American, or rather some other source (eg certain forms of Christianity or Islam). There are a variety of sources of antisemitism. None of them are specifically Black.
The great thing about wokeism is you can continuously invent new bullshit to explain away the incongruence in your previous bullshit. It’s like when the woke-ists decided to redefine racism as not just being racist but also having “power.” Then they can say White people have all the power therefore only white people can be racist. Brilliant. Oh Wait now Kanye is doing some pretty racist things, how do we explain that? Simple mate, Kanye is a white supremacist. Genius.
Nothing incongruent about racism being prejudice + power and Kanye or any other person perpetuating white supremacy.
I have plenty of critiques for Democrats bastardization of identity politics, but this is just facile rabble-rousing.
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On January 23 2023 21:37 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2023 21:19 Liquid`Drone wrote:People generally say that 'people of all races can be racist, but it's more troublesome when it's backed up by institutions or other structures of power'. I think that's a reasonable take. I have no real need to defend (or even address, tbh) some dumb twitter-take.  Some college student emailed Meriam Webster and told them the definition should be prejudice combined with institutional power and Meriam Webster replied and said ok we will revise the definition. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52993306
You left us with a cliffhanger here. Do you think this is a reasonable or unreasonable thing to do?
To me, it makes sense. For instance, someone telling me: "you can eat spicy food really well for a white guy" versus "we think the colour of your skin makes you less than human so we will not allow you to vote" are both cases one could label "racist", yet they're not even remotely equal.
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Norway28631 Posts
They didn't change the definition. They added one more. If you check the definition in the BBC article and compare with the current first definition, it is identical. However, they made adjustments to a secondary definition. Nothing about MW's definition states that only white people can be racist.
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United States42497 Posts
Take Chinese people being super racist in China. Nobody would say that their prejudice wasn't racism just because they're not white.
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Imho it's a plain ridiculous concept that you need to have power/influence to be racist. It's obviously worse if there is power involved due to the opportunities to act on it but that still doesn't make it some requirement.
If some downtrotten drug addict is spouting racist bullshit 24/7, he's being racist. He's probably not doing much actual harm but that doesn't make him any less racist.
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I think some confusion comes from the fact that when it comes to racism, kind of like environmentalism, there's two different discussions people have: one is about the personal level, an individual's actions, and the other is on a systemic level, like what are big companies and lawmakers doing to perpetuate or solve the problem. There's a couple of things that happen, one is that the two conversations tend to bleed together sometimes, because ostensibly they're about the same thing. But really, when you're discussing someone who repeated a racial stereotype vs. a landlord or employer literally giving people of color a different contract or no consideration whatsoever, those are 2 distinct conversations. And the impact of someone acting on an individual level is usually much less than the impact of system driven racism.
I think I would say there's also a third conversation that can take place, which is how does action on the personal level get to interact with racism on the systemic level. Which is a much more tangled issue, kind of by design. Systems, institutions and laws have a ton of inertia from when they were created, and the discrimination they enact on people is a lot harder to see and unpack, let alone dismantle. So there's many a conversation to be had about how someone can help to organize and contribute to reducing racial disparities where they can, because it's an uphill battle to effect change on that higher level.
I think a tactic used by folks on the right, whether they're aware of it or not, is trying to reduce any conversation about racism to being purely in the individual realm. An individual's actions are not overtly racist, therefore they cannot be racist. The systemic component and how they feed into that simply doesn't exist in their argument. Really, there's a fair number of Democrats that get sucked into this, too, with performative not-racism. And as an example, they both fight right now to perpetuate the state of heavy-handed, militarized law enforcement that pretty blatantly singles out people of color for violent treatment. But it's cool as long as they're not caught using a slur. It's easy to reframe the conversation in a way that leaves out half the picture so you can tell yourself you're not part of the problem.
So basically, that's why you can have discussions about how American racism is a White Supremacist regime backed by institutional power, while on the individual level Kanye can be racist in his actions against other black people. And it explains why that discussion will look different if you examine racism and discrimination in non-White countries.
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Really, there's a fair number of Democrats that get sucked into this, too, with performative not-racism. And as an example, they both fight right now to perpetuate the state of heavy-handed, militarized law enforcement that pretty blatantly singles out people of color for violent treatment. But it's cool as long as they're not caught using a slur.
Cop City is a pretty good example of this. Also, Biden's insistence (and his party's support) on giving cops even more money/resources demonstrates this is a fundamental problem with the Democrat party at every level of government.
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On January 23 2023 23:05 Velr wrote:
Imho it's a plain ridiculous concept that you need to have power/influence to be racist. It's obviously worse if there is power involved due to the opportunities to act on it but that still doesn't make it some requirement.
If some downtrotten drug addict is spouting racist bullshit 24/7, he's being racist. He's probably not doing much actual harm but that doesn't make him any less racist.
The definition of power + prejudice = racism really only works in the context of systemic racism. For example, in the US, black people with the same criminal record who commit the same crime as a white person are given more time than white people. This is racism that displays power and prejudice because 1) a clear prejudice against black people is being shown and 2) the power of the judicial system is being used against them to harm them more for being black.
Using power + prejudice as your definition for racism outside the context of systemic racism is pretty silly.
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I see at the core of the argument for why not just white people are racist is a foolhardy effort to equate personal racial prejudice between groups when they clearly aren't the same beyond the most superficial understanding of racism.
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On January 24 2023 10:02 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2023 09:47 GreenHorizons wrote:
I see at the core of the argument for why not just white people are racist is a foolhardy effort to equate personal racial prejudice between groups when they clearly aren't the same beyond the most superficial understanding of racism. That sounds vauge and condescending, but perhaps Im misreading. Can you please expand on your thought with specifics?
It's the common refrain that only white people can be racist because only white people have power and all other races are powerless and have no history of oppression of other races.
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United States24660 Posts
I feel pretty comfortable saying that anybody can be racist. There's no need to place additional conditions. When you talk about racism in systems instead of in people, it gets a little more complicated.
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On January 24 2023 11:10 micronesia wrote:
I feel pretty comfortable that anybody can be racist. There's no need to place additional conditions. When you talk about racism in systems instead of in people, it gets a little more complicated.
That's just it. I don't believe we can responsibly separate instances of interpersonal racial prejudices from the systemic and institutional conditions that proliferate, amplify, and underpin them, or deny the underlying historic discrepancies which make "honky" and "ni***r" decidedly different.
I think there's a reasonable (albeit mostly pedantic imo) case for refining the terminology around this stuff, but that's in the context where half the voting public supports people advocating removing even basic education about the historical/contemporary experience of people as told from outside the most intense glare of the omnipresent white gaze.
We all know (at least I'm hoping so) that there's a deep and substantive difference in the trading of superficially similar racial epithets. From my perspective, one of the most important aspects of the discussion on whether "only white people can be racist" is the recognition of that distinction and inseparability regardless of the specific words people settle on.
Racism as prejudice + power is an (arguably insufficient/developing) attempt to articulate that distinction and inseparability in an applicable way. There are valid critiques of the work around racism as prejudice + power, but the fixation on whether everyone can be "racist" or just white people is about basically anything but those valid critiques and frequently misses the distinction and inseparability (which I'd argue is really the point) entirely.
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That isn't a sufficient argument though. There are more races out there than just black and white people. There are more people having this conversation than just american white people and american black people. We do not live in an isolated bubble in the new world where our words are just ment to be applied to be applied for the very specific case of how black people are treated in the united states of America. It is just and exhausting and worthless argument to have that does nothing but shut down any possible progress by dividing the only forces in the country that are even pretending to help the problem. You GH are part of that half the country that is supporting the side that wants to remove even the "historical/contemporary experience of people as told from outside the most intense glare of the omnipresent white gaze" that we have today.
You do not live in a country that cares about third party politics or third party influences. Those were stamped out more than a generation ago in the united states. All the well intentioned and righteous bashing you do against the democratic party in america does is help republicans with your efforts. That is the reality of the world you live in. We can want change in america but the only way your voice or opinion matters is if you win the election.
Do you want things to get better in the united states or do you want them to get worse? This binary question is the only one you are allowed to make.
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On January 24 2023 13:37 Sermokala wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That isn't a sufficient argument though. There are more races out there than just black and white people. There are more people having this conversation than just american white people and american black people. We do not live in an isolated bubble in the new world where our words are just ment to be applied to be applied for the very specific case of how black people are treated in the united states of America. It is just and exhausting and worthless argument to have that does nothing but shut down any possible progress by dividing the only forces in the country that are even pretending to help the problem. You GH are part of that half the country that is supporting the side that wants to remove even the "historical/contemporary experience of people as told from outside the most intense glare of the omnipresent white gaze" that we have today.
You do not live in a country that cares about third party politics or third party influences. Those were stamped out more than a generation ago in the united states. All the well intentioned and righteous bashing you do against the democratic party in america does is help republicans with your efforts. That is the reality of the world you live in. We can want change in america but the only way your voice or opinion matters is if you win the election. Do you want things to get better in the united states or do you want them to get worse? This binary question is the only one you are allowed to make.
It's not that I don't understand your position, it's just that I find it to be a modern rehashing of loyalist arguments borne of similar motives. I strongly suspect it's a refluffed refrain we can find ahead of most major steps of societal progress. I simply don't find it compelling.
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Norway28631 Posts
The thing about words is they don't have an intrinsic meaning attributed to them, they mean what we collectively decide that they mean. For most words this in unproblematic because we generally agree, but racism/racist is a bit contentious. However the meanings of 'thinks one ethnic group is superior to another' or 'hates people of a particular ethnic group' are fairly straight forward and has pretty strong support. It's not a word you'll get unanimous consent of the meaning of, because it is an insult that also happens to, depending on which definition you choose and how you interpret said definition, describe literally everyone to some degree. (Add 'thinks ethnic groups should be treated differently' and every quota scheme or targeted policy to reverse historic injustices qualifies, go with the aforementioned two and 'black people are better dancers than white people' might.)
So the best we can do is probably to have several definitions that all happen to be contextual and accept that certain forms of racism are more harmful than others. Honky and nigger can both be racist while one is more racist and more hurtful. 'I don't want my daughter dating a white boy' and 'I'm not employing a black guy' are both racist but one is arguably more damaging than the other. 'White people can't dance' is probably mildly racist but not in a way that offends me at all (also I'm a great dancer), while 'black people can't do math' is obviously racist in a more harmful way (in particular because of a historical context where we've decided that humanity is defined and separated from 'animals' through our capacity for thinking and where we recognize that much of the dehumanizing that has targeted black people has taken the form of describing them as 'more animal-like', and then for example through highlighting physical attributes while diminishing mental ones.
All of this essentially backs up the notion that white people being racist is generally more harmful than black people being racist, but obviously the capacity is there for everyone.
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On January 24 2023 15:28 Liquid`Drone wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The thing about words is they don't have an intrinsic meaning attributed to them, they mean what we collectively decide that they mean. For most words this in unproblematic because we generally agree, but racism/racist is a bit contentious. However the meanings of 'thinks one ethnic group is superior to another' or 'hates people of a particular ethnic group' are fairly straight forward and has pretty strong support. It's not a word you'll get unanimous consent of the meaning of, because it is an insult that also happens to, depending on which definition you choose and how you interpret said definition, describe literally everyone to some degree. (Add 'thinks ethnic groups should be treated differently' and every quota scheme or targeted policy to reverse historic injustices qualifies, go with the aforementioned two and 'black people are better dancers than white people' might.)
So the best we can do is probably to have several definitions that all happen to be contextual and accept that certain forms of racism are more harmful than others. Honky and nigger can both be racist while one is more racist and more hurtful. 'I don't want my daughter dating a white boy' and 'I'm not employing a black guy' are both racist but one is arguably more damaging than the other. 'White people can't dance' is probably mildly racist but not in a way that offends me at all (also I'm a great dancer), while 'black people can't do math' is obviously racist in a more harmful way (in particular because of a historical context where we've decided that humanity is defined and separated from 'animals' through our capacity for thinking and where we recognize that much of the dehumanizing that has targeted black people has taken the form of describing them as 'more animal-like', and then for example through highlighting physical attributes while diminishing mental ones. All of this essentially backs up the notion that white people being racist is generally more harmful than black people being racist, but obviously the capacity is there for everyone.
To be clear, raycism as prejudice + power is not about being "more harmful", it's about it being a fundamentally different thing happening, including on the interpersonal level. It's a substantive difference not just in magnitude of harm but in form and function.
Essentially anyone can be "racist" but only white people are being raycist when they do it. That's not to be confused with the mistaken notion that only white people can advocate or engage in white supremacy.
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On January 24 2023 16:25 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2023 15:28 Liquid`Drone wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The thing about words is they don't have an intrinsic meaning attributed to them, they mean what we collectively decide that they mean. For most words this in unproblematic because we generally agree, but racism/racist is a bit contentious. However the meanings of 'thinks one ethnic group is superior to another' or 'hates people of a particular ethnic group' are fairly straight forward and has pretty strong support. It's not a word you'll get unanimous consent of the meaning of, because it is an insult that also happens to, depending on which definition you choose and how you interpret said definition, describe literally everyone to some degree. (Add 'thinks ethnic groups should be treated differently' and every quota scheme or targeted policy to reverse historic injustices qualifies, go with the aforementioned two and 'black people are better dancers than white people' might.)
So the best we can do is probably to have several definitions that all happen to be contextual and accept that certain forms of racism are more harmful than others. Honky and nigger can both be racist while one is more racist and more hurtful. 'I don't want my daughter dating a white boy' and 'I'm not employing a black guy' are both racist but one is arguably more damaging than the other. 'White people can't dance' is probably mildly racist but not in a way that offends me at all (also I'm a great dancer), while 'black people can't do math' is obviously racist in a more harmful way (in particular because of a historical context where we've decided that humanity is defined and separated from 'animals' through our capacity for thinking and where we recognize that much of the dehumanizing that has targeted black people has taken the form of describing them as 'more animal-like', and then for example through highlighting physical attributes while diminishing mental ones. All of this essentially backs up the notion that white people being racist is generally more harmful than black people being racist, but obviously the capacity is there for everyone. To be clear, raycism as prejudice + power is not about being "more harmful", it's about it being a fundamentally different thing happening, including on the interpersonal level. It's a substantive difference not just in magnitude of harm but in form and function. Essentially anyone can be "racist" but only white people are being raycist when they do it. That's not to be confused with the mistaken notion that only white people can advocate or engage in white supremacy.
Are Chinese not being Raycist in China?
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Of course they are.
But are the Chinese not the ones with power in China?
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Why do you need to change the definition of the word just because racism changes when it is related to other forms of power? Why not just say "state sponsored racism", "racism of the majority population" or something?
What about the word "hate"? should that word also have a new set of definitions; it's after all much different if a person in power hates someone than when someone who doesn't have power hates someone. I propose we add a second meaning for the word hate: "A white person who hates people of a different origin"....
All of this semi-mysterious shuffling around with words is, to me, a blatant attempt to sabotage rational discourse ("Rationality is racism!!"). If you are out of arguments you simply change the definitions of the words so no one can argue against you.
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EPT
