# Defining Racism



## *Asterisk* (Feb 1, 2016)

_Racism is Power Plus Privilege_

I need a thread just to vent on how much I hate this phrase and everyone who supports it.

This is more than just an issue of if black people can be racist to whites.* If this actually does become the new definition of racism to the point of eradicating all others, it'll essentially means that every real or imagined grievance of any degree can be used as an automatic shield against racism by everyone on the planet. Fucking Donald Sterling could bring up black guys having bigger dicks than him as a means of deflecting racism accusations.

The same thing applies to sexism being redefined on these terms. Davis "Ramza" Aurini's subscribers could bring up women not needing to pay for Craigslist hookers every time they want to get laid as a means of deflection. Yet I only see the "power plus privilege" line pushed ever harder with not an ounce of regard for the logical conclusion it'll lead to.

That crap aside, I do think discussing what counts as racism isn't a total waste of time. I just hate it when people promote blatantly unworkable philosophies as guides for how the world works, and trying to supplant a word there's actually a use for in the process only makes it worse. 

* Which can be refuted by anybody in three words, "Jean-Jacques Dessalines."


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## ZehnBoat (Feb 1, 2016)

if it's only bigotry if it's done by someone who has power and privilege, then as a left hander, i can be an asshole and it's okay.


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## QI 541 (Feb 1, 2016)

It's only bigotry when your hipster overlords deem it as bigotry.


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## Marvin (Feb 4, 2016)

It's extremely difficult to dictate language. Language evolves, it's not controlled. You have to influence people to adopt your language changes, you can't force it on them like tumblrites are trying to do here.

Even dictionaries are only seen as having authority because they generally make some attempt to document how language is actually used, not to impose correctness from on high. Could you imagine if the publishers of a dictionary drew a line in the sand, and refused to ever update the dictionary? How quickly would actual written/spoken language diverge from it?

You could certainly be skeptical if a white American claims to be the victim of racism. White people have significant advantages in the United States. But it's definitely not impossible for a white person to be discriminated against for being white. And trying to define away the entire concept of a white person being a victim of racism is completely retarded and without merit, linguistically.

Now, and for the foreseeable future, a solid definition of racism might be "prejudice or discrimination based upon race".


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## Strelok (Feb 4, 2016)

I define racism like the US Government defines pornography. I can't give an exact description, but I know it when I see it.


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## StallChaser (Feb 4, 2016)

It's a pet peeve of mine because it just sets things up for more racism.  The definition itself is racist by being prejudiced against some races (the "privileged") over others.  It gives the "underprivileged" a free pass to be as racist as they want.  They just call it "punching up", as if it's somehow a good thing.  The people being "punched" can then internally justify "punching" back.  It sets up a vicious cycle that won't ever stop, as long as anyone keeps using a shitty one-sided definition to hide behind while attacking.


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## Pikimon (Feb 4, 2016)

Academic Sociologists define it as "Prejudice + Power = Racism" and then go on to say that "All White People are Racist by that logic". I'm not kidding this was taught to us in 3 separate classes. However one other professor that talked about this did bring up a very important point, that this logic is very dependent on what kind of environment someone is in. He said that for example the race dynamics in a place like Southern California is vastly different than the race dynamics of New York, despite them both being large, cosmopolitan cities and that even if a person isn't "racist" that doesn't mean that they're excused from being prejudiced.

And he concluded by saying "Don't worry about being racist, worry about not being prejudiced"

In Psychology we learn its something thats learned and embedded in our mind at an early age from our parents and friends (racists don't just "happen" they're raised and taught by their parent's behavior), and in order to "solve" racist attitudes we need to emphasize empathy and compassion for all people.


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## RepQuest (Feb 4, 2016)

Racism is noticing differences between races. While all racial hatred and racial prejudice are racist by necessity, not all racism is racial hatred and racial prejudice.


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## AnOminous (Feb 4, 2016)

I'd say racism is essentially the false attribution of traits, usually negative, to individuals or groups based on alleged characteristics of a race.

So saying that those of African descent are more likely to have sickle cell genes isn't "racist," but simply a fact.

Saying "white men can't jump" or "black people have rhythm" or "Indians are good at math" is racist, though not horribly offensive.

The pernicious aspect of racism is applying presumed group characteristics to individuals, ignoring their individual characteristics.  It not only often harms the individuals so judged, but leads to inefficient and incorrect decision-making.


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## Emperor Julian (Feb 5, 2016)

_Racism is Power Plus Privilege,  _is a pretty niche sociological stance which has unfortunately leaked into american common liberal and counter culture. The argument itself in academic usage isnt strictly speaking wrong, just debatable (and american centric as fuck). But it's horribly incorrect to try to apply it in common parlance in the same thread of trying to debunk evolution by stating it's a 'theory'.
This of coarse wouldn't be an  big issue but you have retards like Franchesca Ramsey or everyday femmism pumping this out to the teen markets without any context, nuance or the admission it's  subjective and debatable. So you have an entire generation of teens who don't know what Racism actually is using an academic reference they don't understand. The only real conclusion is that it will inevitably be used to muddle the issue of Racism and cloud issues of class and wealth.
On the bright side despite left wing delusions on the subject, linguistics cannot conceal content nor can it be used control thinking. It doesnt matter if we re-wrote the term Racism t0 exclude a rich influencial black supremacist at the expense of trailer trash. It would still be very obvious that you're talking about an evil poisonous shit and language would quickly adapt to articulate that. It would also de-fang the word racist since all it would mean is "member of entrenched obligarchy ".


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## AnOminous (Feb 5, 2016)

Emperor Julian said:


> _Racism is Power Plus Privilege,  _is a pretty niche sociological stance which has unfortunately leaked into american common liberal and counter culture. The argument itself in academic usage isnt strictly speaking wrong, just debatable (and american centric as fuck).



It wouldn't be unreasonable to point out that most destructive racism does come from a position of power.  However, pretending it isn't racism if it doesn't is completely wrong.  It represents the same logical fallacy no matter who does it, and its evil derives from its wrongness, not who does it.  It leads to irrational conclusions.  Those irrational conclusions are more likely to cause harm when they come from large institutional structures or people with power.

Arguably, it is even worse and dumber to be racist if you are a minority yourself, because you're going to be the one who suffers for it, not your target of hatred.


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## Organic Fapcup (Feb 5, 2016)

Racism is discriminating someone based on race. That's it. There's nothing more to it, nothing less to it. People spouting the "muh power plus privilege" line are just really, really stupid.


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## AnOminous (Feb 5, 2016)

Organic Fapcup said:


> Racism is discriminating someone based on race. That's it. There's nothing more to it, nothing less to it. People spouting the "muh power plus privilege" line are just really, really stupid.



Racism is a kind of thinking.  Discrimination is an actual action.  You can be a racist and not actually discriminate against people, and you can discriminate against people without being personally racist.

You can't be sued for being a racist.

You can be sued for discriminating unlawfully.  (And you can be sued for discriminating against white people, straight people where sexual orientation is protected, or against members of the majority religion, etc.)


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## JU 199 (Feb 5, 2016)

Racism is just assumptions. Most are small and benign and some can be much larger and more fundamental to that person's character.


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## Red_Rager (Feb 5, 2016)

Racism is the belief that there is a natural hierarchy where some races are inherently superior to others.  Racialism is the belief that race determines an individual's traits and capabilities.  Racists are people who use race as an excuse to be an ass to others.


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## Emperor Julian (Feb 5, 2016)

AnOminous said:


> It wouldn't be unreasonable to point out that most destructive racism does come from a position of power.  However, pretending it isn't racism if it doesn't is completely wrong.  It represents the same logical fallacy no matter who does it, and its evil derives from its wrongness, not who does it.  It leads to irrational conclusions.  Those irrational conclusions are more likely to cause harm when they come from large institutional structures or people with power.
> 
> Arguably, it is even worse and dumber to be racist if you are a minority yourself, because you're going to be the one who suffers for it, not your target of hatred.


oh yes definatly I don't agree with the sociological argument for a lot of reasons, i was just pointing out that it isnt even meant to be used in common day to day usage. So saying Racism= power + privilege in a non-academic context just makes you look a total tard to anyone who actually reads.


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## Wallace (Feb 6, 2016)

Emperor Julian said:


> oh yes definatly I don't agree with the sociological argument for a lot of reasons, i was just pointing out that it isnt even meant to be used in common day to day usage. So saying Racism= power + privilege in a non-academic context just makes you look a total tard to anyone who actually reads.



Like most of the social justice lexicon, it's a magic word that makes you win an argument by default. Most of the SocJus rhetoric is designed to paint people who disagree with them in the most unfavorable light possible. _e.g._ Disagreeing whether or not something is racist makes you racist, and therefore evil, therefore any argument you make is worthless. Kind of like an _ad hominem_ by association.

*EDIT*: I wanted to elaborate on this some more.

With regards to the OP, casting yourself as a victim of injustice is a very powerful stance to take. First, as you said, it shields your argument from criticism, since anyone arguing against you must be therefore arguing for racism. Second, it removes any blame from yourself. If you are a victim, then you have been subject to harm that is not merely unjust, but undeserved. Your assailant is attacking you due to some quality you have, such as your race in this case. Because of this, you are not responsible for the harm you have suffered; the blame must reside solely on the other party. Finally, being the victim entitles you to compensation, in the form of both sympathy from your peers and retribution against the enemy. You are merely seeking redress against your grievance, therefore any action you take is because you are seeking justice to balance the proverbial scales due to the unjust harm committed against you. 

This is not to suggest that all people who adopt this stance are wrong. Acts of injustice across many axes can and do happen with alarming frequency, and these events generally go unpunished. It is only when someone becomes so deeply enamored with the victim mindset that it causes trouble. This creates magic words that are used to make you win any and all arguments by default by immediately assuming the stance of the victim.

Right now, what’s changing is that the people accused of committing acts of social injustice are being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion on Twitter. These acts of injustice are held up for public denouncement, and it is easy to draw in like-minded people who see this as an injustice against everyone who shares their identity (race/gender/sexuality/etc), and is therefore an injustice against themselves as well. What you wind up with is an angry mob that is convinced that they are morally justified in taking any and all action to strike back, even when such actions are vastly disproportionate to the perceived crime committed. To top it off, there is a social reward for participating in this crusade in the form of retweets or reblogs, and a corresponding social punishment for trying to speak out against it. 

This, to me, is social justice. A system that rewards people for remaining perpetually aggrieved and delivering inordinate mob justice while failing to address the real problems that are happening right under their noses.


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## TheMightyMonarch (Feb 10, 2016)

AnOminous said:


> Saying "white men can't jump" or "black people have rhythm" or "Indians are good at math" is racist, though not horribly offensive.



With this, I feel like there are different degrees of racism. Like there's a difference between "Black people are good at basketball" and saying something "Black people are lazy apes and freeing them from slavery was a mistake." One comes a place of ignorance and nativity and the other comes from hatred. Thing is, "racist" and "racism" are pretty strong words, so someone might get very defensive if you point out that the former statement is, in fact, racist. I know these two are rather extreme areas and there is a lot in between. Some of it can even get pretty gray. 

Overall, I don't think the whole "Power + Prejudice = Racism" is gonna be popular in modern culture for long, aside from academics. If you look at American history, the narrative has a history of changing political ideas a bit. Sure society might be more liberal now but 10 years it was more conservative. The 90s tended to be more liberal wheras the late 70s and 80s were conservative. It's weird. I wouldn't know but I wouldn't be surprised if it was similar in other countries.


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## Lefty's Revenge (Feb 10, 2016)

When it comes to topics of race and stuff I deliberately avoid the term racism or racist because A) It tends to shut down a conversation and B) As we're realizing in this thread it can be super hard to pin down what exactly it means. If anything, I usually just say someone has a problem with race. 

Take for example something like the Cam Newton situation. Cam is a confident and very good QB who does a very black pose whenever he makes a touchdown. He gets called a thug by many a person. This is a guy who spends a tremendous amount of time giving back to his community and to young kids and in a league full of scumbags has a pretty squeaky clean record. Why exactly is he a thug when someone like Carson Palmer can bust out an actual crotch chop during a game and not get called a thug? 

We can debate the merits of Cam Newton and that trash superbowl, but if we're being real he probably got called a thug because hes Black. 

Now, what do we make of those who called him a thug? Do we call them all racists? I don't think so. While I think this happened because of the color of his skin I don't think most of the people who do this even realize that what they did was racially based. Our culture is full of narratives and some are so deeply ingrained into our culture and subconscious we don't even actually think about it. And in a country where barely 50 years ago segregation was still very much alive and thriving and King got shot it really shouldn't surprise any reasonable person that we still have some unresolved issues with race.

For me, the importance in instances like this is dialogue because thats the only way we can start to untangle all of this and when you even call an idea someone presents "racist" it usually shuts down any opportunity for dialogue and everything melts into a big pile of "I have black friends."

As far as the actual definition, in a word, I think a systems based approach is important to better understand how racism works and its long reaching effects. And its important to understanding why things are the way they are now. You often hear people say things like "Slavery was a long time ago" (for the record, historically speaking, it wasn't. Barely 150 years ago) but that skims over the fallout from slavery on both African-Americans and America at large. Slavery leads to Sharecropping which is essentially slavery part deux which goes on for at least a generation or two before African-Americans become a bit more educated. Sharecropping leads to reconstruction era terrorism (KKK etc). This leads to the great migration that happens from 1910 to 1970, Suddenly we just passed the end of the civil rights movement and if we want to be naive and assume everything is now copacetic thats not even 50 years since shit got significantly less fucked up. 

Things don't stay fucked up that long because of some rednecks. This is a narrative that was hammered into our society pretty early on and it influenced and still is influencing Americans to this day. You have to understand the systems at work so yes, we need to get away from the view of racism as just someone not liking someone of a different color. 

As far as the argument that disadvantaged groups can't be racist I don't agree with the idea but there is some practical merit to the thought process. A wannabe white kid getting jumped for saying the N word is very different from a potential employee getting skipped because they have a black sounding name. You need social and financial capital to be able to discriminate effectively and most blacks and latinos in particular cannot do that.


TL;DR: I try not to use the word. Everyone has issues with race. Racism should be viewed in a more systematic lens than an individual one and it is very hard for one to discriminate against white people without the money and businesses to do so.


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## AnOminous (Feb 10, 2016)

Lefty's Revenge said:


> As far as the argument that disadvantaged groups can't be racist I don't agree with the idea but there is some practical merit to the thought process. A wannabe white kid getting jumped for saying the N word is very different from a potential employee getting skipped because they have a black sounding name. You need social and financial capital to be able to discriminate effectively and most blacks and latinos in particular cannot do that.



Anyone can murder someone, though.  It doesn't really matter to someone killed by, say, a black nationalist militant of some sort, that they were "privileged" at the time they were murdered.  It's just that such events are rare.  Much more violence is just motivated by simple criminality.  When motivated by racism, though, it is no less racist and the motive is no less reprehensible.


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## Johnny Bravo (Feb 10, 2016)

Isn't racism the belief that a particular race is physically or intellectually inferior or otherwise morally corrupt? Or the opposite, that a particular race is superior?


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## Sweet and Savoury (Feb 10, 2016)

There is no such thing as reverse racism...

this was used to "educate" a class of 9 year olds last week at a local school...enjoy!


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## Lefty's Revenge (Feb 10, 2016)

AnOminous said:


> Anyone can murder someone, though.  It doesn't really matter to someone killed by, say, a black nationalist militant of some sort, that they were "privileged" at the time they were murdered.  It's just that such events are rare.  Much more violence is just motivated by simple criminality.  When motivated by racism, though, it is no less racist and the motive is no less reprehensible.



Wait...when did we start talking about murder? I may have missed something.


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## AnOminous (Feb 10, 2016)

Lefty's Revenge said:


> Wait...when did we start talking about murder? I may have missed something.



You mentioned a white kid getting jumped.

We're talking about things done with racism as a motivation.  That ranges from things like someone visibly locking their car doors when they see a black person to skipping them over for a job, all the way up to assault, lynching, murder, and other extreme acts.  Many of the latter of these do not require privilege at all.


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## Lefty's Revenge (Feb 11, 2016)

AnOminous said:


> You mentioned a white kid getting jumped.
> 
> We're talking about things done with racism as a motivation.  That ranges from things like someone visibly locking their car doors when they see a black person to skipping them over for a job, all the way up to assault, lynching, murder, and other extreme acts.  Many of the latter of these do not require privilege at all.


Getting jumped means getting beaten up, not murdered. Its still wrong, of course. But theres a difference between beating someone because they called you outside of your name and actually murdering them.


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## SlayerOfTyranny (Feb 13, 2016)

> *You could certainly be skeptical if a white American claims to be the victim of racism.*


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## AnOminous (Feb 13, 2016)

SlayerOfTyranny said:


>



Awwww, you're such a cute pony!


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## Jack Haywood (Feb 17, 2016)

Sweet and Savoury said:


> There is no such thing as reverse racism...
> 
> this was used to "educate" a class of 9 year olds last week at a local school...enjoy!



Good fucking God, that is so cringeworthy. There are about a hundred other ways the issue of racism could have been depicted better, but... THIS?!! It's no wonder plenty of people out there hate the hard left when they become associated with this shit, or even worse outright propagate it.


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## fuehrer_dessler (Feb 25, 2016)

*Asterisk* said:


> _Racism is Power Plus Privilege_[...]


Yes, this phrase is bullshit. Privilege based on race is racism in action, but racism is dividing humanity in superior and inferior "races" and everyone can do that kinda shit, privilege or not.


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## *Asterisk* (Mar 8, 2016)

Sweet and Savoury said:


> There is no such thing as reverse racism...


This is such a dumb phrase. What the hell is it even supposed to mean? The reverse _of_ racism? Isn't that supposed to be fucking tolerance or something?


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## Aquinas (Mar 8, 2016)

I do not believe Africans or Americans of African descent can be Racist.

Racism is something that only occurs in people


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## autisticdragonkin (Apr 4, 2016)

I think that racism is simply ascribing traits to a person based on their ethnicity without sufficient backing. From this saying that estonians are HIV resistant is not an example of racism because it is very well documented. In addition the simple desire to help those of the same ethnicity and not another ethnicity wouldn't in itself be racism but it would be if one said that the other ethnicity were criminals as the justification. For this reason many europeans anti immigration activists would be racists because they use such justifications but saudi arabia just saying screw the syrians wouldn't be racist


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## *Asterisk* (Apr 4, 2016)

autisticdragonkin said:


> I think that racism is simply ascribing traits to a person based on their ethnicity without sufficient backing. From this saying that estonians are HIV resistant is not an example of racism because it is very well documented. In addition the simple desire to help those of the same ethnicity and not another ethnicity wouldn't in itself be racism but it would be if one said that the other ethnicity were criminals as the justification. For this reason many europeans anti immigration activists would be racists because they use such justifications but saudi arabia just saying screw the syrians wouldn't be racist


Racism, Eye-Em-Oh, is when people --pardon the corniness of this term -- assign the gift of the Holy Spirit to themselves while believing that same ensoulment either doesn't exist, or is lesser, in other races for reasons beyond that which they as individuals can be blamed.

There must be no pastguilt anyone should be held to for reasons beyond the part they themselves played, unless it's something you could say about everyone from every time. Believing or behaving otherwise is contemptible no matter who lives up to that adjective.


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## norrington (Apr 4, 2016)

People have pointed out that sociologists have defined racism as occurring only in a top-down institutionalized context (the power + privilege thing) and the term they have for the thing you guys are talking  about is 'racial prejudice' which can happen in any context. Racism = punching down. And the goal of making that point was, for sociologists, to highlight this very issue, since white people in the past few decades love to pull the 'racism is over' card (which does sort of suggest an understanding of this definiton of the term on at least some level, I think, but whatever).

I don't think the power of the term racism comes from sociology or SJWs or black people, though, I think the power of the term racism comes from white people who shit themselves if it's suggested that they're racist or have benefited from the oppression of another race in some way. Call a white person a racist and they start backpedaling and explaining how they're not, rather than non-rhetorically, non-sarcastically asking how they were racist and having to actually listen to a black person talk about it with genuine understanding of the notion in their head that "what I said just hurt another person in some way, I'm not a sociopath and/or don't enjoy hurting others, I don't see how what I said was hurtful but I can't know because I'm white and don't have the same experiences/background, and I'd like to find out so I don't go around unintentionally hurting people from here on." 

As far as that professor talking about Californians not being racist, they sort of still are, because they're brought up in a culture that esteems white culture as correct and proper and black culture as inherently negative and stupid and uneducated and black people as stereotypically aggressive, dangerous, physical, et cetera. Suggesting Cali doesn't have race issues when you have fucking LA and a huge hispanic population is bizarre, anyway. 

The sociological definition of the term is trying to shed more light on the more invasive and institutionalized forms of racism that fly under the radar because they aren't overtly violent or even all that easy to put your finger on, or they aren't clear without first understanding the historical context. I don't see what's so strange about the idea that you can't be racist against white people in the United States. I can't think of a context where a white person would suffer some kind of oppression based on their race, would be prevented from some opportunity, would be held back by having white skin as opposed to some other color.


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## Marvin (Apr 4, 2016)

norrington said:


> I don't see what's so strange about the idea that you can't be racist against white people in the United States.


I think the linguistic argument is pretty solid. In non-academic conversation, with your average speaker of American English, the word "racism" pretty solidly means what you describe as racial prejudice. I'm pretty sure a study of speakers of the dialect would show that.


norrington said:


> I can't think of a context where a white person would suffer some kind of oppression based on their race, would be prevented from some opportunity, would be held back by having white skin as opposed to some other color.


Jews in urban areas get lots of shit. Howard Stern and Ralph Bakshi come to mind.

I don't think anti-white racism is common enough to be a concerning problem. But you can certainly find examples of it.


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## norrington (Apr 4, 2016)

Marvin said:


> I think the linguistic argument is pretty solid. In non-academic conversation, with your average speaker of American English, the word "racism" pretty solidly means what you describe as racial prejudice. I'm pretty sure a study of speakers of the dialect would show that.
> 
> Jews in urban areas get lots of shit. Howard Stern and Ralph Bakshi come to mind.
> 
> I don't think anti-white racism is common enough to be a concerning problem. But you can certainly find examples of it.



Yeah, but antisemitism is either a type of ethnic prejudice or prejudice based on religion, it's not based on the fact that they're white men.

As far as that being the normal way that it's used, I don't disagree, but I don't see a problem with changing the definition of the term to better reflect the realities of systemic racism that only marginalized groups face. If it's semantics, and you're in an argument with someone where you say they're racist and they go 'you can't be racist against white people because blah blah fuckin blah' I don't see what the big deal is with rolling your eyes and going 'fucking Christ, fine, it's racially prejudiced then.' If they contest the reality of that as a phenomenon, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about and they're just parroting what they heard someone else on the internet say to try and win an argument after they've already made an ass of themselves. 

I don't get what invalidating a widely understood definition (a lot of people have said it's an academia-exclusive thing, but a large part of all this is the fact that they're teaching racism this way in high school/undergrad sociology courses today in an effort to change how the term is understood) is meant to accomplish. If you're arguing with an idiot and them dodging your accusations of racism upsets you because they don't know what they're talking about, then show them up by understanding it better than they do. It won't be that difficult, if their argument's as weak as most of the ones you guys seem to have heard. Trying to say 'that's not how racism is typically used as a word' or 'that's not what that means' just makes them think they won because they walk away assuming they know something from the one class they stayed conscious in during their bullshit 101 gen ed social sciences requirement.


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## Marvin (Apr 4, 2016)

norrington said:


> Yeah, but antisemitism is either a type of ethnic prejudice or prejudice based on religion, it's not based on the fact that they're white men.


With Howard Stern and Ralph Bakshi, I think it was primarily a racial thing. The fact that they're Jewish just meant they were more likely to live near black neighborhoods.


norrington said:


> f it's semantics, and you're in an argument with someone where you say they're racist and they go 'you can't be racist against white people because blah blah fuckin blah' I don't see what the big deal is with rolling your eyes and going 'fucking Christ, fine, it's racially prejudiced then.' If they contest the reality of that as a phenomenon, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about and they're just parroting what they heard someone else on the internet say to try and win an argument after they've already made an ass of themselves.


Oh certainly, I can think on my feet, and for the sake of argument, I can switch to a different term. But when we're done talking, I'd just walk away from the conversation thinking that they're a dumbass.


norrington said:


> I don't get what invalidating a widely understood definition (a lot of people have said it's an academia-exclusive thing, but a large part of all this is the fact that they're teaching racism this way in high school/undergrad sociology courses today in an effort to change how the term is understood) is meant to accomplish.


There's not a moral problem with it. I just believe that it'll ultimately be ineffective. It'll be a giant SJW fuckup that only serves to make activists look like dumbasses disconnected from the average voter.

Everyday language is much more useful of a tool than obscure, academic jargon. And especially when it looks like you're trying to play mind checkers by redefining everyday words.


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## AnOminous (Apr 4, 2016)

Marvin said:


> Everyday language is much more useful of a tool than obscure, academic jargon. And especially when it looks like you're trying to play mind checkers by redefining everyday words.



Trying to "win" arguments by sneakily redefining words is just being a lying sack of shit.  I don't take anyone seriously who pulls bullshit like that.


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## norrington (Apr 4, 2016)

Marvin said:


> With Howard Stern and Ralph Bakshi, I think it was primarily a racial thing. The fact that they're Jewish just meant they were more likely to live near black neighborhoods.
> 
> Oh certainly, I can think on my feet, and for the sake of argument, I can switch to a different term. But when we're done talking, I'd just walk away from the conversation thinking that they're a dumbass.
> 
> ...



I don't know enough about Stern and Bakshi and the incidents you're referring to, honestly, but I don't know if dismissing antisemitism is that easy if Jews are the only examples you can come up with.

I don't think the point of changing the term is to help SJWs win arguments, SJWs refuse to acknowledge that they know exactly what the fuck you're talking about and pull this to change the conversation and that's absolute bullshit, and honestly, pulling the 'you can't be racist against white people card' in an argument between two white people is just capitalizing on racial issues to win an argument.

I don't think it's a necessarily political thing either. I live in the deep south, and talking about racism this new, somewhat redefined way has been really helpful in getting the concept of systemic and/or institutionalized racism across to white people; that's how it should be used, not as a checkmate move in an argument. It's a helpful tool in framing explanations to white people in positions of power (employers, gov't officials, teachers, etc) who equate racism with blatant prejudice and the KKK, and don't think that they're being racist when they automatically assume any black person they meet is thuggish, ghetto, on drugs, or cheating the welfare system unless they act white enough to pass. It's helpful in explaining affirmative action to white guys who think it means they'll get picked over in college/job applications unfairly for less qualified candidates. It's a redefinition meant to help broaden the scope of conversations about race issues, not to win an election or an argument or confuse white folks.


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## TheAmazingAxolotl (Apr 4, 2016)

Racism to me has always been less about bigotry and more about how there's a belief mankind is divided into separate races. That's pretty much all it is - another -ism, a belief system like a religion or a philosophy; then again, this logic can be applied to sexism, which would make that the belief mankind is divided into sexes. tl;dr - if you're not sexist, you're a fucking moron!

Anyway, race in this sense is that mankind is only divided into race based solely on skin colour and minute differences that don't even mean much. HK Guenther, whose race philosphies inspired Hitler's regime, divided race into those who "create culture", those who "carry it forward", and those who "destroy it", which of course was used to mean the Germanic tribes of yore created culture, their Aryan children carried it forward, and the Jews were the ones to destroy it. Holding these beliefs about races are of course considered very bigoted and likely to get you clocked out for being a Trump supporter or something.

The more bigoted form of racism that SJWs cry foul over is none of this prejudice + power shit. If I have the power to be prejudiced as well as the power to be in charge of something, I have more than enough sense to fear taking in new people; you don't let strange sheep into the flock. Bigotry is taking that belief that mankind is divided into races and trying to create a hierarchy, usually with whites on top and the browns on the bottom where they belong. The only reason this works now is because it worked up until some 60 years ago, but with our current system of laws - 13th, 14th, 15th amendments,Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing act, Equal Pay Act - this system barely even exists. It's only alive because people who believe they are oppressed by this system keep it alive, and they're often helped by the media (inb4 "I DON'T BELIEVE THE LIBERAL MEDIA") to spread this viewpoint; imagine if the Michael Brown incident wasn't publicised as "WHITE COP SHOOTS UNARMED BLACK MAN". It would be "COP SHOOTS UNARMED MAN", where there would still be a shitstorm, but little to no race riots save for that small contingent of black folk who think the world revolves around them.

To put this as bluntly as possible, people who believe mankind is divided into several distinct racists are inherently bigoted and we're all just going to deny this because racists do not believe they are racist.


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## Marvin (Apr 4, 2016)

norrington said:


> I don't know enough about Stern and Bakshi and the incidents you're referring to, honestly, but I don't know if dismissing antisemitism is that easy when Jews are the only examples you can come up with.


Well, it's more that I know more about Jews than other groups. I don't know much about, say, eminem.

Howard Stern was just one of a handful of white kids at his high school, and he got the shit kicked out of him regularly. It's possible there was an antisemitic angle to it, but I can't imagine all the people beating him up stopped to ask him his religion. Or maybe word got around? I don't know, but I could imagine a non-Jewish kid encountering the same reception.

Ralph Bakshi as a kid lived for awhile in a black neighborhood in DC. He fit in with the locals pretty well, but when he tried to enroll in a black school, his family was forced him to move elsewhere because there were concerns that there would be riots if it was found out that a white student was attending a black school.


norrington said:


> I live in the deep south, and talking about racism this new, somewhat redefined way has been really helpful in getting the concept of systemic and/or institutionalized racism across to white people; that's how it should be used, not as a checkmate move in an argument. It's a helpful tool in framing explanations to white people in positions of power (employers, gov't officials, teachers, etc) who equate racism with blatant prejudice and the KKK, and don't think that they're being racist when they automatically assume any black person they meet is thuggish, ghetto, on drugs, or cheating the welfare system unless they act white enough to pass.


I know what you mean. Unless the cop is doing a nazi salute while kicking your teeth in, it doesn't count as racism to many people. And that's silly. There are lots of softer forms of racism. People need to realize that.

However, at the end of the day, I think redefining words as a rhetorical strategy alienates people and makes you seem dishonest. I generally think that arguments/explanations/lessons should be as simple as possible. Time spent explaining to someone how they're misunderstanding a well understood concept is time that you could've been using to get to your point.


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## norrington (Apr 4, 2016)

Marvin said:


> Well, it's more that I know more about Jews than other groups. I don't know much about, say, eminem.
> 
> Howard Stern was just one of a handful of white kids at his high school, and he got the shit kicked out of him regularly. It's possible there was an antisemitic angle to it, but I can't imagine all the people beating him up stopped to ask him his religion. Or maybe word got around? I don't know, but I could imagine a non-Jewish kid encountering the same reception.
> 
> ...



Stern's case sounds like racial prejudice. Was Stern always the sort of edgy asshole he's known for being today? Since that could also be a part of it. 

Riots about a white kid attending a black school in the (segregated? I assume?) south probably weren't concerns about the black people rioting, but the white people. So in that case, he could be argued to be disadvantaged by systemic racism (similar to how dads who get shafted in custody battles are disadvantaged by institutionalized misogyny, rather than by misandry). 

In my experience, it's been easier to explain this definition of racism to people than it has been to explain to a middle class white man that on average, a black person (or any other minority) is at a considerable disadvantage to him in life due to systemic and deeply culturally ingrained racism. Like the argument against that shit is usually that 'what??? the system isn't RACIST, there's no LAW saying explicitly not to hire black people' so the term has changed in response to that sort of thinking, I'd imagine. 

Changing the term helps with the people who think if you can't call something racist under the explicitly-racist definition they have in their heads, then the issue's not harmful or racially based at all. It helps with white people who go 'how am I racist? I have 2.5 black friends!' but then say shit like 'if black people were just as naturally intelligent as white people, why aren't there just as many black Harvard graduates as white ones?' or 'why can't they get off their lazy asses and just make more money?' Not to get all PC Principal about it, but it helps white people to better understand in explicit terms how they benefit from the current system, and it stops white people from going 'oh but they're not talking about _me_, I'm a _good _white person' automatically any time they see something involving the word 'racist.' 

If idiots on the internet misuse it to win a fight, that's not a sign that the alternative definition is better.


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## autisticdragonkin (Apr 4, 2016)

TheAmazingAxolotl said:


> Racism to me has always been less about bigotry and more about how there's a belief mankind is divided into separate races. That's pretty much all it is - another -ism, a belief system like a religion or a philosophy; then again, this logic can be applied to sexism, which would make that the belief mankind is divided into sexes. tl;dr - if you're not sexist, you're a fucking moron!
> 
> Anyway, race in this sense is that mankind is only divided into race based solely on skin colour and minute differences that don't even mean much. HK Guenther, whose race philosphies inspired Hitler's regime, divided race into those who "create culture", those who "carry it forward", and those who "destroy it", which of course was used to mean the Germanic tribes of yore created culture, their Aryan children carried it forward, and the Jews were the ones to destroy it. Holding these beliefs about races are of course considered very bigoted and likely to get you clocked out for being a Trump supporter or something.
> 
> ...


What you are talking about is racialism rather than racism


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## TheAmazingAxolotl (Apr 4, 2016)

autisticdragonkin said:


> What you are talking about is racialism rather than racism









My mistake.


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## autisticdragonkin (Apr 4, 2016)

TheAmazingAxolotl said:


> My mistake.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racialism


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## Vitriol (Apr 5, 2016)

norrington said:


> As far as that being the normal way that it's used, I don't disagree, but I don't see a problem with changing the definition of the term to better reflect the realities of systemic racism that only marginalized groups face. If it's semantics, and you're in an argument with someone where you say they're racist and they go 'you can't be racist against white people because blah blah fuckin blah' I don't see what the big deal is with rolling your eyes and going 'fucking Christ, fine, it's racially prejudiced then.' If they contest the reality of that as a phenomenon, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about and they're just parroting what they heard someone else on the internet say to try and win an argument after they've already made an ass of themselves.


It makes very little sense to change the established meaning of a term and not create a new one instead. Words gather connotations as they age and an accusation of racism is a very serious one with serious connotations. Redesigning it so as to exclude whites (even if this is then covered by 'racial predujdice' ) is trying to remove those negative connotations when using it to describe a class the speaker favours. It's a redefinition meant to focus on allowing certain kinds of racism through and not others. 


As for your point about AA that's exactly what it means- the concept is inherently racist and they will get passed over for a less qualified black, redefining terms like racism is done precisely so this is ok and harder to object to.


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## *Asterisk* (Apr 5, 2016)

@norrington,

Has it occurred to you that, by giving racism a pass when those who enact it are "punching up" allows an unlimited degree of racism as long as those espousing it can concoct some way in which they're the victim? Or that such thought experiments are completely unnecessary since this is exactly what's been enacted by the likes of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Idi Amin Dada, Robert Mugabe, Henry Ford, the capos Mao put in charge of minority-majority provinces like Tibet and Xinjiang, the True Whig party, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, the KKK, and even the Führer Himself?

Are you aware that human social groups seldom divide neatly between oppressors and the oppressed? Or the sheer absurdity of the hoops that are needed to jump through in order to justify your philosophy?

Has it crossed your mind that this identity politics mentality -- where the only way to judge someone is in the context of factors outside their control like their ethnicity or gender -- is a hideously illiberal position which runs counter to everything good about free society and is driving the entire Left Wing to intellectual death?

If not, why? What compells you go support such an unworkable philosophy?


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## norrington (Apr 5, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> It makes very little sense to change the established meaning of a term and not create a new one instead. Words gather connotations as they age and an accusation of racism is a very serious one with serious connotations. Redesigning it so as to exclude whites (even if this is then covered by 'racial predujdice' ) is trying to remove those negative connotations when using it to describe a class the speaker favours. It's a redefinition meant to focus on allowing certain kinds of racism through and not others.
> 
> 
> As for your point about AA that's exactly what it means- the concept is inherently racist and they will get passed over for a less qualified black, redefining terms like racism is done precisely so this is ok and harder to object to.



This got long as shit. Sorry. Obviously you're not under any obligation to read it. I appreciate you engaging with me about it nonetheless and reading through the rest of the shit I've thrown out here so far.

Is it that serious an accusation, though? I mean, yeah, people have lost jobs over accusations of racism, but usually after doing something like posting pictures of themselves in blackface on their Facebook profiles. I can't think of someone getting fired or having their life seriously affected over accusations of racism when there's no hard evidence there; it's not like adultery or a closeted sexuality, it doesn't spread around after the person and get talked about behind closed doors in a negative way (at least not where I'm from). A black guy won't get fired for just acting racially prejudiced against white people, maybe, but I'd argue a white guy is just as unlikely (if not more unlikely) to get fired for being racist (or racially prejudiced, I guess makes more sense for the argument I'm about to make) in the workplace.

That sort of speaks to why the distinction is, in my opinion, one worth making. A black person won't get fired for being racist, because what could they really do to white people that would be the inverse equivalent of blackface, or of something like this video? To me, there's a big difference between the weight behind white-on-black racism and its reverse. That's the difference the sociological field is trying to point to.

Now, in the common vernacular, I don't see a problem with people using the term 'racist' the way it's always been used, to refer to any racial prejudice in any direction. I also don't think it's wrong of someone to take the opportunity presented by an accusation of 'reverse racism' to talk about how the terminology is changing, to talk about systemic racism. Saying 'you can't be reverse racist' is just another way of saying 'yeah, a black person may be prejudiced against white people, but there is virtually no viable comparison between that and white-on-black racism, which has a hell of a lot more institutionalized and systemic violently racist ideology backing it.'

As I've said, though, that doesn't mean I think it's reasonable for a white person to use that counter as a trump card to win an argument and then blow the other person off like they've won. Black people, in general, can hold their hands up and say 'it's not my job to educate you.' in my view anyway, because I'm one of those people that thinks it's not on the oppressed group to educate the oppressive majority on how their group's oppression has shaped the modern world. I will say, however, that in my experience, if a black person thinks you'll genuinely hear them when they talk to you about this kind of thing, they will stop and explain it to you calmly and rationally and in great detail despite their lack of obligation, because it matters to them,because they know just how important it is. The people I see going 'you can't be REVERSE RACIST' and using that as a get-out-of-jail-free card in an argument tend to be white people who barely understand the concept themselves.

I mean, in the end, though, no one person can dictate how or when or by whom words ought to be used, so at this point the argument of whether or not the sociological definition should be brought up in everyday conversations seems like a simple matter of opinion. But I could be wrong,especially if you still hold that accusations of racism are more serious than I perceive them.


Part Two Re: Affirmative Action

As for the rest of it, I don't know shit about how or to what extent Affirmative Action is enacted in the rest of the world, but in the US, even if it's not the 'colorblind' style people have been advocating for more recently, I think it's necessary in a lot of areas of the country, particularly the South. For one thing, I'd assume the amount of people that are truly overlooked for less qualified (much less unqualified) candidates is negligible; even if it weren't, I don't see it as inherently wrong that the system has measures in place to correct for the disadvantaged position certain minority groups start out at in applying for jobs/schools, a disadvantage that same system played a large role in establishing for them and, arguably, still does today.

In somewhere like the UK, the lines are a bit fuzzier since they don't necessarily have a directly institutionalized top-down history of systemic racism like the US does (I could try and make the argument if anyone's interested in hacking down that path, I guess). Here, though, you have loads of states that had laws in place specifically designed to disenfranchise black voters, you had segregation and intense local violence (full-out lynchings happened in the US as late as the '60s) keeping past generations from getting educations or better jobs, you have racial prejudice deeply ingrained into the local cultural mindset, you had black schools getting lower quality materials and much less funding, and today's generation of black students are still affected by these setbacks; Affirmative Action is a system attempting to correct its own wrongs, rather than attempting to make the natural way of things more PC-friendly.

You can definitely argue that it's not the government's place to do that, and of course you can argue that it flat out does not work. To the first, I say if a government's going to have the level of authority our government does, this imposition is in no way beyond the scope of what they ought to be doing, and it's hardly beyond any other limitations the government places on businesses and publicly funded schools. As to the second, I'd say that no one who's ever argued for Affirmative Action ever genuinely thought it'd fix all the racial woes of the US, but that it's a small step towards leveling the playing field after centuries of brutal oppression.


EDIT: including this to avoid double-post


*Asterisk* said:


> @norrington,
> 
> Has it occurred to you that, by giving racism a pass when those who enact it are "punching up" allows an unlimited degree of racism as long as those espousing it can concoct some way in which they're the victim? Or that such thought experiments are completely unnecessary since this is exactly what's been enacted by the likes of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Idi Amin Dada, Robert Mugabe, Henry Ford, the capos Mao put in charge of minority-majority provinces like Tibet and Xinjiang, the True Whig party, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, the KKK, and even the Führer Himself?
> 
> ...



I'm not suggesting we give people a pass for treating other people like shit, no matter who they are or what race they're from. I'm suggesting that there's validity to distinguishing between systemic racism and individual instances of racial prejudice. Minorities aren't magically cured of all their woes just because they have a response when someone accuses them of reverse racism.


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## Vitriol (Apr 5, 2016)

norrington said:


> As for the rest of it, I don't know shit about how or to what extent Affirmative Action is enacted in the rest of the world, but in the US, even if it's not the 'colorblind' style people have been advocating for more recently, I think it's necessary in a lot of areas of the country, particularly the South. For one thing, I'd assume the amount of people that are truly overlooked for less qualified (much less unqualified) candidates is negligible; even if it weren't, I don't see it as inherently wrong that the system has measures in place to correct for the disadvantaged position certain minority groups start out at in applying for jobs/schools, a disadvantage that same system played a large role in establishing for them and, arguably, still does today.
> 
> In somewhere like the UK, the lines are a bit fuzzier since they don't necessarily have a directly institutionalized top-down history of systemic racism like the US does (I could try and make the argument if anyone's interested in hacking down that path, I guess). Here, though, you have loads of states that had laws in place specifically designed to disenfranchise black voters, you had segregation and intense local violence (full-out lynchings happened in the US as late as the '60s) keeping past generations from getting educations or better jobs, you have racial prejudice deeply ingrained into the local cultural mindset, you had black schools getting lower quality materials and much less funding, and today's generation of black students are still affected by these setbacks; Affirmative Action is a system attempting to correct its own wrongs, rather than attempting to make the natural way of things more PC-friendly.
> 
> You can definitely argue that it's not the government's place to do that, and of course you can argue that it flat out does not work. To the first, I say if a government's going to have the level of authority our government does, this imposition is in no way beyond the scope of what they ought to be doing, and it's hardly beyond any other limitations the government places on businesses and publicly funded schools. As to the second, I'd say that no one who's ever argued for Affirmative Action ever genuinely thought it'd fix all the racial woes of the US, but that it's a small step towards leveling the playing field after centuries of brutal oppression.


i like the long replies thank you for taking the time to write them. I can only apologise that my own responses won't be as long. i do acknowledge that most of what you post is reasonable and I'm not going to address it all.

AA might have noble goals but that doesn't change the fact that fundamentally it is a system of discrimination based on race. While it may be a positive discrimination for every positive there is a negative and the net result is that it does discriminate against whites. Redefining Racism is done specifically to avoid people from describing policies like this as racist- it's sophistry as they clearly are and do have a negative impact on whites. One might argue as you have attempted that they rebalance the classes but that is a political goal and does not change  that to the end result is a discrimination against an indivual based on the colour of their skin not their individual ability.

One can argue (as i think you have tried) that its politically necessary racism but it is still racism and redefining the word has no purpose other than to make challenging what should be a highly controversial subject harder to challenge and to try and cloak it in spin. Maybe it is politically necessary- but that isn't an argument for redefining the terms.


norrington said:


> Is it that serious an accusation, though? I mean, yeah, people have lost jobs over accusations of racism, but usually after doing something like posting pictures of themselves in blackface on their Facebook profiles. I can't think of someone getting fired or having their life seriously affected over accusations of racism when there's no hard evidence there; it's not like adultery or a closeted sexuality, it doesn't spread around after the person and get talked about behind closed doors in a negative way (at least not where I'm from). A black guy won't get fired for just acting racially prejudiced against white people, maybe, but I'd argue a white guy is just as unlikely (if not more unlikely) to get fired for being racist (or racially prejudiced, I guess makes more sense for the argument I'm about to make) in the workplace.
> 
> That sort of speaks to why the distinction is, in my opinion, one worth making. A black person won't get fired for being racist, because what could they really do to white people that would be the inverse equivalent of blackface, or of something like this video? To me, there's a big difference between the weight behind white-on-black racism and its reverse. That's the difference the sociological field is trying to point to.
> 
> ...



That is a very collectivist view and that's not in itself a bad thing but in my opinion such broad policy always fails in practical detail.

A white person can absolutely be subject to the same institutional racism if the institution they are applying to happens to be majority BME or pushing quotas aggressively. A black person ridiculing using whiteface might be unlikely but there is absolutely nothing preventing a group of BME people singling out an individual because of race and excluding or ridiculing them. I don't see any significant difference in reverse racism and the regular form except that one has a historical context and as i do not believe the individual should be effected by the historical actions of their class i see no reason why this should be treated differently.

If I call a black colleague a nigger and he complained I would rightly expect to be dismissed, If he called me a cracker and I complained I would expect the same, otherwise I'm being treated differently based on the class of my birth something which i have no control over- this is discrimination and the fact that white people have not been racially abused by powerful blacks in the past is completely irrelevant.

white on black racism might be more prevalent but that is irrelevent- laws which do not distinguish between systematic racism or racism and 'reverse racism' should still deal with these cases just fine.

As for 'its not my job to educate you' it's a fundamental tenant of both law and logic that the burden of proof in an accusation must lie on the accuser. It doesn't matter whether they are part of an oppressed class or an oppressed individual if someone makes an accusation or allegation of racism systematic or otherwise the onus must be on them to prove it. Saying 'its not my job to educate you' is absolutely inadequate because it leaves the accused party having to prove a negative.

I'm afraid if black people wish to claim they are being treated unfairly then they do have an obligation to prove it- exactly the same as a white person or any other group.

the sociological definition is used almost exclusively by collectivist academics precisely to avoid admitting that collectivist policies are by their nature racist. This is sophistry and i think it is absolutely valid and important that a politically motivated redefinition not be accepted into common use. Western society is fundamentally liberal individualist in nature- see private property rights and the importance we place on personal rights. I think its extremely dangerous to allow incompatible collectivist terms to filter into our culture as they inevitably lead to the curtailing of the liberty of the individual for traits they have no control over.


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## norrington (Apr 5, 2016)

@Vitriol I'm only familiar with the collectivism/individualism opposition in certain specific philosophical/political examples, I'm not sure I'm familiar enough with broader philosophical basics to get what you mean by that here. I get your point about the modern history of western society being intricately linked to liberal individualism, and I'm _pretty _sure I get what you're saying overall, but could you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by collectivism in this? Or point me in the direction of the right neighborhood at least, I don't mind doing the grunt work, but are we talking in a Marxist sense or a universalist sense or is that all sort of the same shit or am I completely off the mark and in desperate need of an Introductory Philosophy class? 

Also, your posts are well thought out and considerate, what more could somebody ask for? Length's irrelevant, if it's that.


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## *Asterisk* (Apr 5, 2016)

@norrington,

Again, you're basing this on the idea that all people in an ethnic group have either equal moral guilt of equal moral virtue. The world's always been more complicated than that, and people are very good at twisting any one exception to anything so they can have a kosher outlet for their horrendous evil to spread unchecked?

Look at Robert Mugabe. To this day he blames colonialism and espouts the righteousness of African victimhood to distract from his crimes in Zimbabwe against every citizen of every color. The CSA's Whites used the actions of the North and the Reconstruction to grant themselves moral pardon for their horrendous crimes against the newly-freed Plantation Blacks. Russians today use the boogeyman of The West to justify actions ranging from oppression of gays to supporting Bashar al-Assad.

I can go on, but I'll boil this down to one point: Since you've earlier admitted this definition is something that can be changed; -- via your earlier admittion of power-plus-privilige itself being a change but one you feel is worth enacting -- _why do you feel this is an improvement_ compared to the harm this dogma causes to the world when put in action?


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## Vitriol (Apr 5, 2016)

norrington said:


> @Vitriol I'm only familiar with the collectivism/individualism opposition in certain specific philosophical/political examples, I'm not sure I'm familiar enough with broader philosophical basics to get what you mean by that here. I get your point about the modern history of western society being intricately linked to liberal individualism, and I'm _pretty _sure I get what you're saying overall, but could you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by collectivism in this? Or point me in the direction of the right neighborhood at least, I don't mind doing the grunt work, but are we talking in a Marxist sense or a universalist sense or is that all sort of the same shit or am I completely off the mark and in desperate need of an Introductory Philosophy class?
> 
> Also, your posts are well thought out and considerate, what more could somebody ask for? Length's irrelevant, if it's that.


sure happy to elaborate a little-

regardless of field, be it law, philosophy, politics or sociology one can choose to approach things either by regarding people as a sum of classes eg cis, white, protestant, male or by their individual circumstance- Vitriol.

So when we apply this to the concept that all people are equal we get two subtly different positions.

For the individualist the person inherits equality as a personal right and anyone who encroaches on that has offended the individual right and so it becomes irrelevant which group has power in society as all members regardless of skin colour possess the same right to equality by virtue of their personhood. so Vitriol must be equal with James.

A collectivist approach takes the view that all classes are equal and therefore employs class based solutions. So blacks as an example must be collectively equal with whites and therefore it is, in the collectivist view, just to discriminate in favour of certain individual blacks against whites in order to balance out the classes- an example of this is AA.



Spoiler: example



if we look at this hypothetically from a tax perspective instead of employment or criminal harassment for the purpose of illustration the distinction becomes more clear.

let us take two countries I and C. both have a history of whites oppressing blacks. Both have a constitution stating that all people are equal. i is individualist in founding C is collectivist.

Then we take our person X who is white and person Y who is black. they have the same job.

X finds he is being taxed more than Y.

In I he has a recourse as his personal right is to be taxed the same as Y and the colour of his skin is not relevant to his possessing of the right

In C as he is part of a historically oppressive class he may have to pay the extra tax as he is part of an advantaged class as the state attempts to balance class wide inequality despite him having never directly caused it. His personal liberty to enjoy the fruits of his labour is therefore curtailed by his skin colour or the behaviour of his forebears- something he had no control over.


I've simplified this because it has been a long time since i studied it and I'm going off memory.

from you're writing i would assume that most of what you have been exposed to academically is Sociology or Anthropology based- both these fields have a natural bias towards collectivism and consequently the lecturers tend to be collectivists. Jurisprudence is notably different and tends towards the other way, even if you are not convinced by my points I'd encourage you to pick up a textbook on basic jurisprudence and it should provide you with better and fuller explanations than mine above.


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## autisticdragonkin (Apr 5, 2016)

One thing that many people do not realize is that affirmative action often harms its beneficiary classes because it causes the beneficiaries to on average be worse at the job than those who get it based on skill. This means that they are more likely to be unable to perform the job and reinforces the inequalities it was meant to fight against.


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## Vitriol (Apr 5, 2016)

autisticdragonkin said:


> One thing that many people do not realize is that affirmative action often harms its beneficiary classes because it causes the beneficiaries to on average be worse at the job than those who get it based on skill. This means that they are more likely to be unable to perform the job and reinforces the inequalities it was meant to fight against.


the late Scalia pointed this out recently-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12045037/Supreme-Court-judge-criticised-over-seeming-to-say-black-students-do-better-at-less-academic-schools.html

People were so blinded by their hate for him they tend to overlook that he was a very intelligent man with some perfectly valid points. Albeit also some very conservative opinions.


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## norrington (Apr 5, 2016)

*Asterisk* said:


> @norrington,
> 
> Again, you're basing this on the idea that all people in an ethnic group have either equal moral guilt of equal moral virtue. The world's always been more complicated than that, and people are very good at twisting any one exception to anything so they can have a kosher outlet for their horrendous evil to spread unchecked?
> 
> ...




I'm not looking to blame anyone. I think blame is a pretty toxic notion in general, but particularly when it's applied en masse. I said as much in the radicalism thread at a couple different points (albeit in slightly different terms), if you were following that one. Switching the term is meant to highlight the disadvantage minorities are at in a society that has, since it's foundation and until the past few decades (or even up to modern day, depending on where you draw the line on the definition of systemic and/or institutionalized racism), been founded on the oppression of those minorities to the benefit of the white population. 

It changes the conversation, it ties the modern day cultural, social, and economic ramifications of centuries of violent and systemic racism to something concrete and easily understandable as a concept. It connects the struggle the average minority citizen faces today with the historical context by which that struggle was created. Most of all, I appreciate it because when I'm explaining it to someone particularly dismissive, skeptical, and/or hostile to ideas and definitons in race relations, I don't have to pull out some bullshit sociological term to explain the weight of institutionalized racism that they would say is made up by white-liberal-guilt-riddled academics for the sake of people who want to feel sorry for themselves and want something else to blame for their failures and/or laziness in life. Some people (family members of mine come to mind) still try to say as much about the concept of institutionalized racism, but on the whole, in my experience, it's seemed to be easier for people to grasp when you explain it in these terms as opposed to having to create a new type of black-only or minority-only systemic and harmful system of oppression. 

Explaining how 'racism' in its institutional form is an experience exclusive to an oppressed minority that members of the oppressive majority can't experience firsthand is easier than trying to tell people 'well sure black people can be racist but only white people can be UBERRACIST which is way more awful and damaging'. The weight of the word racism (which do I think carries weight in its meaning, but not so much as an accusation because it's easily confronted in cases where there is no malicious intent by having a conversation with the accuser) being applied universally in any scenario while some made up word most people don't even believe is the only one minorities get "ownership" of exclusively just seems bass ackwards. The word 'racism' has more weight behind it than the word 'prejudice'; prejudiced acts committed in a downward direction in the context of an institutionalized system of oppression has more weight behind them because they are generally going to be more powerful/effective as an action, and because the oppressed individual already in a system of oppression outside of this specific act is going to have a harder time recovering from it. 

The words have been changed to more proportionately reflect what they're describing. 



Vitriol said:


> A white person can absolutely be subject to the same institutional racism if the institution they are applying to happens to be majority BME or pushing quotas aggressively.



This is sort of what I'm talking about with the layering effect of individual oppression on top of societal oppression. The white guy is oppressed based on his race in that specific circumstance, but his chances of finding a different employer or college that will hire/accept him is high because, even if this was a post-racial world, human beings generally find people like themselves and from similar backgrounds more trustworthy/relatable/appealing (I can dig up a psych source if need be, I know I should off the bat but I'm trying to be quick) and there are far more white people sitting on admissions boards and hiring committees than there are racially prejudiced black men in those same positions (you've pointed out that Affirmative Action balances this somewhat, which is what I'm saying the point of it).

We don't live in a post racial society, though, of course, and on top of this more basic evolutionary instinct to trust people from our own 'tribe.' you have a lot of racist ass white people who often don't even know they're racist in positions of authority and power within the system. Or if they do know they're racist, they know that they are and resent/self-shame for it without ever really understanding how they're racist, how racism is perpetuated, and so on. Even white people with good intentions do this, partially because this conversation tends to be such an uncomfortable one and people have such an adverse reaction when the word 'racist' comes into play. 




Vitriol said:


> If I call a black colleague a nigger and he complained I would rightly expect to be dismissed, If he called me a cracker and I complained I would expect the same, otherwise I'm being treated differently based on the class of my birth...


If it were one to one, yeah, but I'd argue that one of those is much more inappropriate and offensive than the other, which might be more of a factor in any variations between punishment in the two cases as opposed to the difference being due solely to race. I don't mean to just dismiss this example by getting stuck on that kind of technicality because I know you're making a bigger point but I'm not positive I know exactly how it fits into your argument here.



Vitriol said:


> As for 'its not my job to educate you' it's a fundamental tenant of both law and logic that the burden of proof in an accusation must lie on the accuser



In a court of law, yeah, absolutely. I'm not suggesting that as a hard and fast rule, it's just a personal belief of my own, and like I said, it's usually irrelevant, because most black people I've met who genuinely believe they're going to be heard out and carefully considered will do everything they can to explain it. I'd argue that it's not immediately comparable with a fresh court case, either, since the whole conversation a consequence of previous crimes and unjust punishments. I genuinely cannot think through a proper legal metaphor here for that sort of back and forth, so I'll settle for just saying it doesn't seem as simple to me as a plaintiff/defendant relationship, on top of the fact that in a courtroom, the plaintiff themselves is not the person advocating for their side, they have a lawyer to do it for them, but obviously black people and other minorities aren't going to hire lawyers to explain what wrongs have been done to their minority groups over the years to every person who denies the existence of any disadvantage or oppression. Regardless, though, it's mostly irrelevant; it's not a moral judgement, it's not something I think anyone else is obligated to believe or not to believe. 

Let me know if I missed anything.


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## RepQuest (Apr 5, 2016)

*Asterisk* said:


> the True Whig party


That's not really a good example, since the descendants of American freedmen were the privileged class in Liberia's social hierarchy.


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## norrington (Apr 5, 2016)

autisticdragonkin said:


> One thing that many people do not realize is that affirmative action often harms its beneficiary classes because it causes the beneficiaries to on average be worse at the job than those who get it based on skill. This means that they are more likely to be unable to perform the job and reinforces the inequalities it was meant to fight against.


Do you have a source for more info on this? I don't hear this argument often and I'd like to read more about it.


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## Vitriol (Apr 5, 2016)

norrington said:


> We don't live in a post racial society, though, of course, and on top of this more basic evolutionary instinct to trust people from our own 'tribe.' you have a lot of racist ass white people who often don't even know they're racist in positions of authority and power within the system. Or if they do know they're racist, they know that they are and resent/self-shame for it without ever really understanding how they're racist, how racism is perpetuated, and so on. Even white people with good intentions do this, partially because this conversation tends to be such an uncomfortable one and people have such an adverse reaction when the word 'racist' comes into play.


Racism is judging people on the colour of their skin, if this is as widespread as you claim it should be easy to prove and black people affected by it should have easy cases. As it is the notion that all white people are inherently racist is, ironically, racist.




norrington said:


> This is sort of what I'm talking about with the layering effect of individual oppression on top of societal oppression. The white guy is oppressed based on his race in that specific circumstance, but his chances of finding a different employer or college that will hire/accept him is high because, even if this was a post-racial world, human beings generally find people like themselves and from similar backgrounds more trustworthy/relatable/appealing (I can dig up a psych source if need be, I know I should off the bat but I'm trying to be quick) and there are far more white people sitting on admissions boards and hiring committees than there are racially prejudiced black men in those same positions (you've pointed out that Affirmative Action balances this somewhat, which is what I'm saying the point of it).


this, while correct ,is irrelevant in dealing with his specific instance likewise the black man with his systematic oppression can claim as an individual each time. If we agree that all individuals are equal then there is no need to distinguish between types of racism- the only purpose for doing so is letting some forms through.


norrington said:


> If it were one to one, yeah, but I'd argue that one of those is much more inappropriate and offensive than the other, which might be more of a factor in any variations between punishment in the two cases as opposed to the difference being due solely to race. I don't mean to just dismiss this example by getting stuck on that kind of technicality because I know you're making a bigger point but I'm not positive I know exactly how it fits into your argument here.



My point is the wider context is irrelevant- it is not worse for me to abuse him racially than for him to abuse me because we share the same basic rights. feeling that one term is worse than the other is irrelevant as it is the intention behind the word that gives it its power- hence why slurs evolve over time. My point is that the actions of the individual should not be mitigated or exaggerated by being born into a certain class and yet if we make a distinction between racism and reverse racism based on historical or systematic causes that is what we are doing.



norrington said:


> In a court of law, yeah, absolutely. I'm not suggesting that as a hard and fast rule, it's just a personal belief of my own, and like I said, it's usually irrelevant, because most black people I've met who genuinely believe they're going to be heard out and carefully considered will do everything they can to explain it. I'd argue that it's not immediately comparable with a fresh court case, either, since the whole conversation a consequence of previous crimes and unjust punishments. I genuinely cannot think through a proper legal metaphor here for that sort of back and forth, so I'll settle for just saying it doesn't seem as simple to me as a plaintiff/defendant relationship, on top of the fact that in a courtroom, the plaintiff themselves is not the person advocating for their side, they have a lawyer to do it for them, but obviously black people and other minorities aren't going to hire lawyers to explain what wrongs have been done to their minority groups over the years to every person who denies the existence of any disadvantage or oppression. Regardless, though, it's mostly irrelevant; it's not a moral judgement, it's not something I think anyone else is obligated to believe or not to believe.



Its a point of rhetoric and reasoning, not of law, if black people cannot articulate clearly and prove what is wrong they cannot expect change. In any discussion, such as the one the society needs to have regarding race those who make an allegation have to prove it- once its proved the other side must then refute. Saying 'its not my job to educate you' is refusing to engage in this process and effectively demanding the other side 'listen and believe' . The back and forth in the legal context is called an adversarial proceeding but in normal language we just call it a discussion.

In a democracy policy is not made by hiring lawyers but by winning public discussion. In order to achieve best policy arguments should be persuasive and for that the above method must be followed. Otherwise the side that makes the allegation wins by default. If you don't believe me- prove in your next post that you are not racist against white people.

yes there are issues about resources and equality of arms etc but these do not alter the role of the natural burden of proof in reaching the best conclusion.


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## I-chi (Apr 5, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> If we agree that all individuals are equal then there is no need to distinguish between types of racism



Nobody wants actual equality anymore, they want their 15 minutes of catharsis.

To acknowledge that all individuals are equal would, on some deeper and unconscious level, be to reason that racism is wrong, that everybody is more or less on the same starting line, and that nobody regardless of past mistakes, prejudices, thoughts, and actions should continue to be held accountable to the burdens of those stigmas on them, because the people who committed them are long dead and gone from this world, and that it's completely reasonable to move on as a unified humanity to more important things.

Racism is a silly, accusatory word that; as you stated in the very beginning, has more or less become a tool used by people who feel disenfranchised to knock another group down a peg that they feel offends them on some level just by lieu of being in a better or more privileged situation. It's like a see-saw, one group goes down, and the other goes up in its place where it can ventilate its own prejudices as "vengeance" while justifying it with the accusation of racism. Then the counter group will use this same accusation to continue to push back up and continue cycle of aggression and nothing actually progressive gets done.

Black Racism, Hispanic Racism, etc; it was "okay" for a good while for this kind of racism to exist because only Whitey was the one who got to be on the top of the seesaw for the longest time. When we live in a world, as we do now, than can at least acknowledge that it's still racist for somebody colored to discriminate and hate on somebody else different from them for difference's sake; it doesn't do anything but to acknowledge a problem because nobody wants to work on fixing it, it merely self perpetuates.


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## Mark Corrigan (Apr 5, 2016)

KidKitty said:


> Racism is a silly, accusatory word that; as you stated in the very beginning, has more or less become a tool used by people who feel disenfranchised to knock another group down a peg that they feel offends them on some level just by lieu of being in a better or more privileged situation.



Just because some groups try to derail the meaning of the word does not make the word any less relevant. Judging people solely on account of their selected physical characteristics (skin colour, nose shape, etc.) is wrong and stupid and it doesn't matter who does it, it's still racism.


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## autisticdragonkin (Apr 5, 2016)

norrington said:


> Do you have a source for more info on this? I don't hear this argument often and I'd like to read more about it.


https://fee.org/articles/how-affirmative-action-can-backfire/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118792252575507571
http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/28/how-affirmative-action-backfires/
http://www.theatlantic.com/national...ainful-truth-about-affirmative-action/263122/
http://asianam.org/affirmative-action-backfires/


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## *Asterisk* (Apr 5, 2016)

RepQuest said:


> That's not really a good example, since the descendants of American freedmen were the privileged class in Liberia's social hierarchy.


That's not what they were saying when they were slaving the non-Americos out to Equitorial Guinea among other atrocities.

Bottom line: people are experts at finding moral outs for themselves and not others, and that's what happens every time an out like this comes along. The Americas saw themselves as oppressed by whites, and thus absolve themselves of their own racism. The Christian Right in Europe did this with Jewish bankers. The Chinese are doing this with the Japanese.

And this'll only get worse the more people buy into this nonsense.


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## I-chi (Apr 5, 2016)

Mark Corrigan said:


> Just because some groups try to derail the meaning of the word does not make the word any less relevant. Judging people solely on account of their selected physical characteristics (skin colour, nose shape, etc.) is wrong and stupid and it doesn't matter who does it, it's still racism.



That was basically my point, and no, it isn't 'some' groups; it's all groups. Everybody wants to be on the oppression train these days, if not collectively, than the loudest voices are screaming about it because it wouldn't be profitable if such a consistency stopped. PREJUDICE, stereotyping, and discrimination based on preconceptions about a group is still there, but Racism as a catch all term for it no longer means as it should.


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## Jaimas (Apr 5, 2016)

KidKitty said:


> Nobody wants actual equality anymore, they want their 15 minutes of catharsis.
> 
> To acknowledge that all individuals are equal would, on some deeper and unconscious level, be to reason that racism is wrong, that everybody is more or less on the same starting line, and that nobody regardless of past mistakes, prejudices, thoughts, and actions should continue to be held accountable to the burdens of those stigmas on them, because the people who committed them are long dead and gone from this world, and that it's completely reasonable to move on as a unified humanity to more important things.
> 
> ...



I get what you mean, but it's not quite that myopic yet.

There's no "seesaw" effect - people are people, and some are good, some are pricks, and some will look at any reason that exists to hate someone else and if they can't find one, then they'll invent one. Yes, there is a cyclic effect where one person is racist, causing another to be racist, which causes another to be racist, but this is fucking rare and inevitably, common humanity wins out.

Fact is, racism dies on the altar of public debate. Contrary to what Tumblr says, the KKK and Neo-Nazis, whilst they exist, are not some all-encompassing racial-supremacy superpower with infinite resources and threat level, it's a tiny shred of people with backwards-ass ideas who would be minimized if people learned to not give a damn about what they say, let them speak their peace, and let the coins fall where they may. Likewise, the Tumblrinas have never been, and moreover, will never be a majority anywhere.

What _you're_ picking up on is the simple truism that racist groups, by accident or design, feed on one another. Let's look at the resurgence of certain racist groups both in Europe and the USA alike. These people, again, will never be the majority, but they've managed to get a resurgence because the other side has been so loud and obnoxious that it's prevented debate, and ergo, prevented people from being able to disseminate data on their own. Ergo you have the Tumblrinas on the regressive left who, despite attempts to change the definition of racism so only whites can be guilty of it, are just as racist as the assholes on the alt-right who blame the blacks/jews/insert race/ethnicity here for all their problems, with both sides fueling one another in this hotbed of moldering idiocy and fail.

So where does that leave us? Well, it's a self-correcting problem, given time. If one group's sufficiently racist, it'll eventually fuck off in due time. There's fallout, of course, but that's a subject for another thread. If either side of the racism divide gets too much power, things will suck for a bit, but when one side inevitably dies off (which_ will_ happen; these groups are unsustainable, and will piss too many people off and be subjected to public backlash eventually), the other's power will wane in kind and we'll be right back where we should be, with these idiots marginalized as they should be.


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## Mark Corrigan (Apr 6, 2016)

KidKitty said:


> That was basically my point, and no, it isn't 'some' groups; it's all groups. Everybody wants to be on the oppression train these days, if not collectively, than the loudest voices are screaming about it because it wouldn't be profitable if such a consistency stopped. PREJUDICE, stereotyping, and discrimination based on preconceptions about a group is still there, but Racism as a catch all term for it no longer means as it should.



Oh, but that's very easy to explain and it goes beyond just racism. There's an awful lot of money to be made and political influence to be won by exploiting people's sense of entitlement, especially since in most civilised countries all major political parties have long ago reached a consensus on the most important policy aspects and are now focusing on irrelevant things in order to create an illusion of differences - and that involves looking out for any fringe electorate that can be won solely by pandering to their entitlement. That's why in some countries "identity politics" is such a big thing and which is why I'm certain that sooner or later we will see the emergence of an MRA/"alt-right" equivalent of tumblr, for example, which will also give greater voice to the so-called "white nationalists", "race realists" and other wankers. Thank God Europe is not quite there yet.


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## Abethedemon (Apr 6, 2016)

I define racism as the discrimination against an ethnic group. What a lot of intersectionalists forget is that people of color can be racist against other people of color. In addition, I think the idea that all white people are racist is very wrong, because there are groups of people who could be considered "white" (Such as the Sami people or da jooz) who are discriminated nonetheless both by other white people and by people of color.


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## norrington (Apr 6, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> Racism is judging people on the colour of their skin, if this is as widespread as you claim it should be easy to prove and black people affected by it should have easy cases. As it is the notion that all white people are inherently racist is, ironically, racist.


It's not all white people, it's all people, on average. It's most likely connected to a lack of exposure to people outside of one's own race in early development; infants and toddlers who have grown up in white families and been exposed to primarily white faces in school tend to be able to better recognize emotions and read the faces of people of their own race. Here's a quick list of quotes related to this (linked to source).

This is an article quoting a couple different sociological papers which talks about how early such biases set in. 

Adults have more difficulty recognizing faces that belong to people of another race, and this deficit appears to start early.
New research indicates that by the time they are 9 months old, babies are better able to recognize faces and emotional expressions of people who belong to the group they interact with most, than they are those of people who belong to another race.
Babies don't start out this way; younger infants appear equally able to tell people apart, regardless of race. (Wynne Parry, Livescience.com)​

Psychologists love tying facial recognition to empathy; how it relates exactly isn't clear and I don't want to get into the differences in cognitive vs affective and/or emotional empathy and the implications that has for anti-social personality disorder and the autism spectrum and all that since it's way the hell off topic, but there is a connection nonetheless, summed up here: 

Regardless of the particular terminology used by different authors, there is broad agreement that empathy involves three primary elements: a cognitive capacity to adopt the perspective of the other person, some monitoring and self-regulatory mechanisms that keep track of the origins of self and other emotions, and an affective response to another person, that often entails sharing that person’s emotional state...We generally know what emotional states other experienced by reading their facial expressions (Balconi and Pozzoli 2007, 2009), since emotional cue detection may guarantee an adequate empathic response to that emotional situation. Thus, the perceptual ability to attending in social relevant stimuli, including facial expression of emotions, is central to empathic response (Enticott et al. 200. (Baltoni + Bertottoni, Cogn Neurodyn)​
This is a webpage disussing Harvard's "Project Implicit," a survey studying implicit or subconscious biases in subjects. More on that in #4, but this page was very informative and compiled a lot of the information I've referenced above and been talking about here.

Whether laboratory studies adequately reflect real-life situations is not firmly established. But there is growing evidence, according to social scientists, that hidden biases are related to discriminatory behavior in a wide range of human interactions, from hiring and promotions to choices of housing and schools. In the case of police, bias may affect split-second, life-or-death decisions. Shootings of black men incorrectly thought to be holding guns — an immigrant in New York, a cop in Rhode Island — brought this issue into the public debate. It is possible unconscious prejudices and stereotypes may also affect court jury deliberations and other daily tasks requiring judgments of human character. (Tolerance.org)​
So, the Project Implicit test, which you can take here, talks about what the results of its test do and don't indicate here in their FAQ: 

Social psychologists use the word prejudice to describe people who report and approve negative attitudes toward outgroups. Most people who show an implicit preference for one group (e.g., White people) over another (e.g., Black people) are not prejudiced by this definition. The IAT shows biases that are not endorsed and that may even be contradictory to what one consciously believes. So, no, we would not say that such people are prejudiced. It is important to know, however, that implicit biases can predict behavior. When we relax our active efforts to be egalitarian, our implicit biases can lead to discriminatory behavior, so it is critical to be mindful of this possibility if we want to avoid prejudice and discrimination. (Proj. Implicit FAQ)​
EDIT: I thought it might be unclear, as well, so I thought I'd add another quote from the Project Implicit page, on how all this ties into systemic and institutionalized cultural racism. This survey is so interesting because it shows how it isn't just 'well of course white people have an implicit bias towards black people, look at all that other shit about inherent cognitive bias explaining it!' but that: 

Results from this website consistently show that members of stigmatized groups (Black people, gay people, older people) tend to have more positive implicit attitudes toward their groups than do people who are not in the group, but that there is still a moderate preference for the more socially valued group. (Proj. Implicit FAQ)​


Vitriol said:


> Its a point of rhetoric and reasoning, not of law, if black people cannot articulate clearly and prove what is wrong they cannot expect change. In any discussion, such as the one the society needs to have regarding race those who make an allegation have to prove it- once its proved the other side must then refute. Saying 'its not my job to educate you' is refusing to engage in this process and effectively demanding the other side 'listen and believe' . The back and forth in the legal context is called an adversarial proceeding but in normal language we just call it a discussion.



I don't mean this as any kind of hard and fast rule, it's mostly just a personal thing with me, and it's said with a very specific scenario in mind that I don't think most people here would necessarily be the type to bring about. I think black people can and have articulated and proven what is wrong with the system and what is being done to them many times over, I think a great deal of this information has been published online and in other formats.

However, if someone's talking to a black person, and they call you racist, and your response is 'That's not racist' and you get into an argument with them about it, and then start going 'how is that racist?! No, explain to me, I wanna know!' in that tone people get when they think the other side can't explain shit because they're full of shit, and then going 'hah they didn't explain it to the white guy vehemently disagreeing with them then asking them condescendingly to explain with no real indication that they're actually going to explain, therefore I win the argument' is shitty. I'm not saying anyone here would do that, I'm saying it is something you see a lot on the internet and in real life. That's anecdotal, though, of course, but that's primarily the type of situation that the 'it's not the duty of the oppressed to explain to their oppressors how they're being oppressed' is responding to. It's not 'no one is ever going to talk about it', it's not 'no one has a duty to explain it', its that it's not on the oppressed group to do it.

In fact, this is why white people dodging the argument after pulling the 'no such thing as reverse racism' line is that much more inexcusable, to me, because if they do believe all this, then they're essentially saying that they fully accept that black people are suffering extreme systemic oppression, and yet they also don't have a civic duty or responsibility to respond and attempt to educate someone to the best of their ability just because the other person is being a bit rude. It's a complete narcissistic cop out.

As far as the natural burden of proof argument, you can't hold an example applicable to a wrongdoing between two individuals as being equally applicable when the wrongdoing is on a societal scale, or when it's criminal in nature, which is why the state prosecutes criminal cases and why abolitionists didn't go 'well if the slaves really had it bad they'd take care of it themselves.' That's an extreme example and I'm not trying to say that either is analogous, but why the natural burden of proof stance doesn't hold water as well in this situation.

It's also to do with the fact that such a standard rests on the assumption that both parties are standing on equal ground from the start, but in a case of systemic oppression, just as in a case of victimization, that isn't the case. You'd be asking the wronged party to prove that he is subjected to systemic inequality by the accused, and your logic for requiring that is that we're all equal, and that their opponents view them as equals, when the accusation is that they don't. That's why activism is important. That's all that statement's really about, as well as a suggestion to some people that they shouldn't demand a black person calmly explain race issues to them if they've already said they don't want to talk about it, or if the other person has been uncivil up to that point. It's not a 'it's not my job to educate you' at all, in fact, for me, it's me saying the exact opposite; it _is _my job, my duty, my obligation to do so.

I'm guessing the implicit bias piece I covered here and the argument made in point 3 is gonna be the next step in the argument, and I'm more than happy to get into statistical examples of systemic racism and all that next, but I'm gonna post this first partially because I want a quick break and partially because that is sort of a separate argument and you should of course have the opportunity to respond to this before we complicate all this shit even more.


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## Vitriol (Apr 6, 2016)

norrington said:


> It's not all white people, it's all people, on average. It's most likely connected to a lack of exposure to people outside of one's own race in early development; infants and toddlers who have grown up in white families and been exposed to primarily white faces in school tend to be able to better recognize emotions and read the faces of people of their own race. Here's a quick list of quotes related to this (linked to source).
> 
> This is an article quoting a couple different sociological papers which talks about how early such biases set in.
> 
> ...


While the studies you have quoted are interesting re empathy none of them prove in anyway that what all four recognise as a minor bias is enough to overide decision making based on merit in favour of race- they show we are better at recognising and interpreting features we are broadly familiar with and that we are better at empathising with people we understand better, but it is a break to suggest this supplants objective criteria the project implicit stuff acknowledges this. The implicit study attempts to weasel round this by pointing out that a racist on a jury may skew results but they fail to connect overt racism with a minor difference in interpreting facial expressions ( which, for all its talk of bias, is what that test is actually testing). The flaw with most such studies is that they are unable to prove that an unconscious bias controls a conscious action. It is widely known flaw btw that according to that study the far sighted are most terrible bigots!

But even if we do take your point as true that does not make a case for distinguishing between systematic and regular racism. In a system which does not distinguish institutional racism can still be challenged by an individual experiencing it. I maintain the only reason for the distinction is to allow racist doctrines like AA to pass without being labelled racist as this is politically difficult. It is political doublespeak to distract from the inherent illiberal nature of the practice. It can be argued AA is a political necessity but that isn't an argument for changing the term.

This is the third post where you have failed to show any reasoning for making the distinction between systematic racism and racism by narrowing the definition for racism and including instead racial bias or whatever for racism against traditional advantaged classes.

Saying syatematic racism exists is not an argument for no longer calling individual discrimination against whites racism.



norrington said:


> As far as the natural burden of proof argument, you can't hold an example applicable to a wrongdoing between two individuals as being equally applicable when the wrongdoing is on a societal scale, or when it's criminal in nature, which is why the state prosecutes criminal cases and why abolitionists didn't go 'well if the slaves really had it bad they'd take care of it themselves.' That's an extreme example and I'm not trying to say that either is analogous, but why the natural burden of proof stance doesn't hold water as well in this situation


Of cousre you can- its the only workable way to have a discussion about most

Your slavery anlogy is misleading as it was a discussion on morals which naturally has no objective proof. In rce relations both sides agree racism is wrong- but it's existance requires proof or evidence to be acted upon.

The reason discussions have to flow like that reguardless of scale is the near impossibility of proving a negative compared to proving a positive.

To illustrate this I repeat my allegation that you are racist against whites and challenge you to prove me wrong.

As I said in my earlier comments racism is a serious allegation- if someone claims its ocuring on any scale the response should absolutely be ' show me how?' that in no way implies the allegation should be ignored, but if the response at that point is to try and shift the burden of proof the accusation must be abandoned as otherwise the already discussed difficulty of proving a negative means every accusation of racism no matter how spurious becomes impossible to dispute.

That includes the claim I'm making against you now.

Edit:The tone of this message is far more aggressive than in intended: liberally sprinkle '!'  throughout. I just feel you've lost site of the key points we were actually dicussing.

These are:

Narrowing the definition of racism in favour of racism for 'systematic racism' and 'bias' for racism against those classes traditionally not oppressed.

And

Whether 'its not my job to educate you' is an appropriate response when asked to prove racism.


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## norrington (Apr 6, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> This is the third post where you have failed to show any reasoning for making the distinction between systematic racism and racism by narrowing the definition for racism and including instead racial bias or whatever for racism against traditional advantaged classes.



I'm sorry, I've been trying to respond to specific points that've come up over the course of the discussion. I hope I haven't been going off topic or come across as though I'm trying to avoid the main issue; I'm not, if I've done either of those things unintentionally, just... Please excuse me and keep reminding me I'm off the mark, if it's not too annoying, since I do tend to lose sight of the main point when arguing about something with so many different parts to it.



Vitriol said:


> The flaw with most such studies is that they are unable to prove that an unconscious bias controls a conscious action.



I'll work on linking this more clearly next.



Vitriol said:


> It is political doublespeak to distract from the inherent illiberal nature of the practice.  It can be argued AA is a political necessity but that isn't an argument for changing the term.



I do argue that it's a political necessity even though it is illiberal; I'm going to be responding to ADK's post shortly for more on that, though I don't know if that will get straight to the point you're making here.



Vitriol said:


> Your slavery analogy is misleading as it was a discussion on morals which naturally has no objective proof. In race relations both sides agree racism is wrong- but it's existence requires proof or evidence to be acted upon.



Apologies for it being misleading, I tried to acknowledge that; I was thinking it was more misleading in the sense that it's not to a similar scale, though. And you're right, there is a fair bit of difference in the way that slavery was being debated as opposed to how racial injustice is debated today and the question at hand being different, that's a good point and I hadn't thought about it at the time. Couldn't it be argued, though, that abolitionists were arguing that a moral wrongdoing existed, when the pro-slavery side argued that the existence of slavery did not equal the existence of a moral wrongdoing?

It may not be worth pursuing since it wasn't a key point of my argument, and getting too deep into the ins and outs of a compare/contrast between the slavery debate and the racism debate, and I'm not asking that rhetorically, I genuinely don't know if that would make them seem more equivalent in some way, so feel free to just ignore this part if you think we're getting too far off the main point.



Vitriol said:


> The reason discussions have to flow like that regardless of scale is the near impossibility of proving a negative compared to proving a positive.



I agree with you, and in a formal setting, in the context of political activism or debate and forensics or in a court of law, that's true, because both parties have come to the argument with the assumption that they will be challenged, and their participation is a sign of tacit agreement to be held to rigorous standards. Similarly, in an informal setting where two people are having a civil discussion in line with all the basic principles of a debate, anyone, no matter their race, has a right to get up and walk away, and the other person has a right to call them an asshole, I'm not arguing either of those things, either.



Vitriol said:


> As I said in my earlier comments racism is a serious allegation- if someone claims its occurring on any scale the response should absolutely be ' show me how?' that in no way implies the allegation should be ignored, but if the response at that point is to try and shift the burden of proof the accusation must be abandoned as otherwise the already discussed difficulty of proving a negative means every accusation of racism no matter how spurious becomes impossible to dispute.



I'm saying the notion is mainly applicable in everyday scenarios, when there's already been a parting from the basic principles of debate and civility; it's not meant to be addressed to someone who's discussing things calmly and civilly (as cows often use it, for instance) but to people who don't have backgrounds in debate or don't appreciate the fact that they've already departed from the principles of a debate by being aggressive, impolite, making personal attacks, or mocking the other person without responding to them then expect the other person to respond civilly. In that latter scenario, I personally don't hold it against a black person for stepping back and removing themselves from the situation since the other person has indicated that they have no interest in hearing them out regardless, but that a white person who is making this argument does have more of a civic duty to try if they genuinely believe, as they've argued already in such a context, that it is a matter of systemic oppression of an entire group of people. That's all that really means. 

If a formal complaint has been made or if it's an informal discussion and no one's been unnecessarily uncivil, you're right, both parties have an obligation to argue their point to the fullest, or they forfeit the possibility of winning the argument by walking away. I'm not at all trying to make a situation where someone can make an unfounded accusation with severe repercussions and not have to back that up, and I don't think it happens regularly enough in reality to an extent of severe damages to the accused; as far as the burden of proof in that argument, the accusation has shifted to, arguably, being one of slander, in which case the burden of proof that these damages exist and have had a detrimental effect on the person's quality of life, and that the original statement was untrue, would be on the person being called a racist.



Vitriol said:


> To illustrate this I repeat my allegation that you are racist against whites and challenge you to prove me wrong.



As I said, I'm gonna respond to ADK first since their comment's further back, then I'll get into this again. I want to be clear about what exactly it is you want me to prove, though, so I don't go too far after a side point that's mostly irrelevant, since, given the volume of all this, it's a bit difficult for me to piece apart exactly where the argument stands now in explicit terms.

So, I need to:

be able to connect the results of those studies, which are gauging facial recognition and therefore (through virtue of link #2 in my old post) an aspect of the underlying mechanisms in relating to another person through empathy with a larger phenomenon of cultural racial bias
demonstrate the existence of systemic racism (or should I hold off with this, since you have overriding points at the moment)
argue for the reason why there should be a distinction made between the racism experienced by white people and the racism experienced by oppressed minorities, based on the assumption that systemic racism does exist
Is that off the mark, or is there anything else I need to address there, or what?


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## Vitriol (Apr 6, 2016)

norrington said:


> It may not be worth pursuing since it wasn't a key point of my argument, and getting too deep into the ins and outs of a compare/contrast between the slavery debate and the racism debate, and I'm not asking that rhetorically


I don't disagree with you at all there- but I think it can be safely left by the side, we both agree there was a debate, that it was moral in nature and that there is a difference in debate of subjective motals and objective facts.

The point you need to address is not the existence of systematic racism or unconscious bias- for the purpose of discussion im happy enough to assume systematic racism exists reguardless of its origin.

The point is that the existence justifies narrowing the definition to, as you put it:


norrington said:


> Racism = punching down



With individual racism described as:


norrington said:


> the term they have for the thing you guys are talking about is 'racial prejudice' which can happen in any context




Your initial argument was that it was to highlight the important effect of institutional racism. My initial point was that doesn't make sense as a new term would do that and the only practical difference between choosing a new term and redefining one for its already serious connotations is to take those connotations away from discrimination the speaker views as OK ie AA.


That said I think we've both said enough that we have made our views pretty clear and im happy to let the matter rest.

Im travelling atm and the Internet is shitty- I fucked this up three times trying to post so please excuse formatting errors.


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## norrington (Apr 6, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> I don't disagree with you at all there- but I think it can be safely left by the side, we both agree there was a debate, that it was moral in nature and that there is a difference in debate of subjective motals and objective facts.
> 
> The point you need to address is not the existence of systematic racism or unconscious bias- for the purpose of discussion im happy enough to assume systematic racism exists reguardless of its origin.
> 
> ...



The reason behind the distinction is the same reason behind trying a hate crime differently than a violent crime not motivated by racial bias. Assuming that distinction is valid for the sake of debate, then it comes down to a simple matter of the impact words carry. 'Racist' has negative connotations, and the strength of those connotations, in my opinion, don't match the strength of a racist act committed in isolation from systemic and culturally ingrained racism.

As far as just picking a different term to refer to white-on-black racism in order to achieve the same effect, it's just the fact that that's not how language works. For instance, if the words were switched, and racism referred to general racist acts and prejudice referred to white on black racism occurring within a system of systemic oppression, it wouldn't accomplish anything. Telling someone they're prejudiced just doesn't have the same level of strength to it that telling someone they're racist does, it doesn't garner the same reaction, they don't mean the same thing within the vernacular due to what the words connote, the sociological change is meant to reflect that difference which already exists within society, for the same reason changing 'negro' to 'black' or 'african american' as the acceptable term to refer to black people was valid.

That may seem contradictory to my earlier arguments against your claim that calling someone a racist is damaging, and a lot of that has to do with poor wording and elaboration on my part for the sake of getting my point across more succinctly. Basically, I see it as sort of analogous to the term 'alcoholic' with respect to its negative connotations and the weight they carry.

To follow through with this, it'll take a bit more unpacking.


Spoiler: Alcoholism metaphor



First, keeping in mind that we're assuming systemic racism does exist, then in this analogy, it would be the analogue of alcoholism as a psychological disease; members of the oppressive majority, even if they are not personally prejudiced in individual interactions, benefit from the systemic racism of that society through virtue of the fact that more room is made for them while others are being hindered by oppression. That benefit, and the earlier-quoted tendency to allow implicit bias to affect decision making when not being consciously considered while making the decision, or accepting those benefits without considering the racially oppressive system in which those benefits arise, would be the equivalent of drinking as an untreated alcoholic.

Non-alcoholics, then, would be racial minorities who don't benefit from systemic racism. Non-alcoholics can drink without being an alcoholic, so calling them an alcoholic for drinking is untrue. People can drink and hurt other people as a consequence of their drinking, and the fact that they were drunk doesn't excuse what they did, but they're not necessarily an alcoholic because of one such incident, because they can still function in day-to-day life without alcohol.

Now, as far as why I have this seemingly flippy-floppy view of the term, saying simultaneously that it's not life-ruiningly offensive but that it does carry weight, is this. Saying 'all white people are racist' is, to me, similar to saying 'all people who've gone through the Alcoholics Anonymous program are alcoholics.' An alcoholic who's been through AA doesn't get offended by being called an alcoholic; they call themselves alcoholics because even when you've stopped drinking, you acknowledge that the disease is still there, the issue that made you rely on drinking in order to function is still in you, you are still an alcoholic. If someone accused them of being an alcoholic in a particularly vitriolic way, they'd take that accusation as a sign to seriously consider their own actions and whether they were slipping instead of jumping straight to 'I'm not an alcoholic how could you say that about me.'

Unrecovered alcoholics, by contrast, are quick to deny it altogeter and brush the person off, and take serious offense to being called an alcoholic. If they admitted they had a problem, though, and that they had done wrong, and they went through AA, they'd respond to the accusation the same way I described beforehand.

Now, if it's a formal allegation of serious racism on par with slandering someone for something they didn't do, either it'll be proven untrue and the accuser will be appropriately reprimanded, or the person will have done some wrong, in which case they were rightly called a racist. In the other direction, if a black person commits an act of racially-motivated violence or property damage, they're held guilty for that property damage or violent act; if a non-alcoholic harms someone or damages property under the influence, that doesn't inherently mean that they are an alcoholic (court mandated AA aside), but they will still face the consequences of their actions.

You could argue that it's not one-to-one because the penalty for a DUI is the same regardless of whether or not someone's an alcoholic, but that's not necessarily true, since the penalty alotted is on a scale, and that penalty is usually based on, along with the severity of the offense, BAC levels and likelihood of repeat offense. If an alcoholic gets a DUI, even if they don't have other misdemeanors or anything else on their record indicating that they are an alcoholic on paper, their BAC will very likely be much higher since heavy drinking increases an individual's ability to function at increasingly higher BAC levels (and therefore less likely to make the kind of error that would result in being pulled for a DUI with a 0.08 BAC, where a nonalcoholic might be more likely to make such a mistake at that lower level).

You could argue that the comparison falls apart there, because alcoholic or not, someone getting stopped at a traffic stop with any BAC over 0.08 is getting charged, but alcoholics are going to be more likely to encounter a traffic stop while over 0.08 through virtue of the fact that they're chronic drinkers. Basically, then, the increased likelihood that an alcoholic will receive criminal charges and that those charges will be more severe due to factors like a higher BAC can be seen as analogous to the stronger weight a hate crime carries as opposed to the same crime committed in a non-racially motivated way within the context of this metaphor.



To me, then, I wouldn't be insulted if someone called me a racist, and I'll happily call myself a racist because I benefit from this system. If someone called me a racist, I'd take the accusation seriously and ask them how, exactly, I'm being racist, and more than likely agree that what I'd done was racist, and apologize. That's why I say I don't think it carries as much weight, because if a black person calls me a racist, it's basically a statement of fact even if, after discussing it with them, nothing I did in that moment legitimately merited an accusation of racial prejudice. I am a racist because I benefit from a system of racial oppression as a white person, the term fits. I don't see it as offensive, even though I acknowledge that the term carries weight. The very fact that the term carries weight is why it should be used within a specific context.

Making the term 'racist' to mean oppressor-on-oppressed prejudice is justified because the term alludes to the systemic racism the accused benefits from and forces them to consider its existence and the role that it plays in their life and their outlook on life. In the inverse, there's no need for a black person to consider how their views of white people may be shaped by a system they benefit from which oppresses a white person, the term doesn't need to carry so much weight. A black person not hiring a white person because of their race doesn't have the same detrimental effect on a white person as it would in the inverse situation. Systemic racism provides more weight to the action, so there should be weight to the word used to accuse someone of such an action.


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## Vitriol (Apr 9, 2016)

norrington said:


> Racist' has negative connotations, and the strength of those connotations, in my opinion, don't match the strength of a racist act committed in isolation from systemic and culturally ingrained racism.


This is the core of where we disagree- to me both acts are equally abhorrent as they offend against the individual's right to equality and I would address the difference in practical consequence with sentencing or damage awards. 

Racist in the broad definition can still be used to describe everything you've mentioned however it's hard to see any reason why affirmative action should not be described as racist- it's institutional oppression based on colour. It might be politically justifiable but the real reason for restricting the wording is its proponents do not want to be labelled racists. The only real difference between Jim Crow laws and affirmative action is the colour of those negatively affected.

Your definition of racism is way off. It is only true that all members of a non oppressed class benefit if race is the primary attribute in society. In America, for example, I think it's pretty obvious that wealth matters more therefore a policy like affirmative action does not just rebalance the scales in favour of blacks but as a natural consequence punishes poor whites as the balance that is being adjusted for is not something that they were benefitting from in any tangible way.

As far as the burden of proof and your normal response. It's fine but that is not what I asked you to do, don't tell me how you normally respond by asking for evidence prove to me that 'it's not my job to educate you' is a valid response which does not retard discussion by proving that you are not racist and my earlier claims are spurious. 


I think we've got as far as we're going to with this- you believe racism can justly be redefined to address class based disparity,  I believe it cannot without impinging on individual rights.


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## norrington (Apr 10, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> This is the core of where we disagree- to me both acts are equally abhorrent as they offend against the individual's right to equality and I would address the difference in practical consequence with sentencing or damage awards.
> 
> Racist in the broad definition can still be used to describe everything you've mentioned however it's hard to see any reason why affirmative action should not be described as racist- it's institutional oppression based on colour. It might be politically justifiable but the real reason for restricting the wording is its proponents do not want to be labelled racists. The only real difference between Jim Crow laws and affirmative action is the colour of those negatively affected.
> 
> ...



In the big picture, white people are far less likely to be in poverty than black people; black people have higher poverty rates than white people across the board in the US. Poverty rates among the white population are disproportionately lower than the ~75% of the US population that white people make up. 

White poverty is more complicated. On the one hand, as white people,they're still members of a privileged class that have stood to benefit historically from the oppression of other minorities. For this, there's the fact that they are far less likely to live in areas of concentrated poverty, more likely to be viewed as "deserving" and "hard-working" by the general public. On the other, they're hurt by the public's tendency to view poverty as a racial issue:


> to the extent the public identifies poverty and welfare efforts with blacks, that same public will become increasingly hostile to the provision of income support needed by all persons in poverty, including whites. Studies have found that the public perceives the poor to be much blacker than they are, and that the public perception of blacks and their work ethic is the single strongest predictor of their attitudes towards income support programs. In other words, if whites think of blacks (especially poor blacks) in negative terms — a kind of racism that provides privilege to the white poor who can be viewed as more deserving than those of color — this racism will translate into calls for safety net cuts, thereby endangering the well-being of the very whites who benefited in relative terms from the racist imagery in the first place.



So, poor white people are hurt by systemic racism despite the fact that they're members of the privileged class because of the culturally ingrained views of the oppressed class, which have a harmful effect on poor whites who are sort of caught in the crossfire. It's not dissimilar to what happens with men who are harmed by society's perpetuation of "toxic" masculinity in the shape of being more likely to be incarcerated, more likely to successfully commit suicide, more likely not to speak out about rape, sexual harassment, or sexual abuse as a child, and less likely to win child custody in courtrooms. For instance, areas with the highest black population density tend to have the lowest rates of upward economic mobility; however, that lower likelihood of upward mobility effects all races equally within that majority-black area. In addition to this, black children are less likely to be born into poverty (keep in mind, this makes sense given the fact that white people make up ~3/4 of the US population) but are also less likely to rise up out of poverty in adulthood than white children. 

Black people are more likely to be victims of homicide, they have higher incarceration rates, make up a disproportionate size of the prison population; prosecutors in the US justice system are statistically more likely to invoke capital punishment for black-on-white homicide than the inverse (the number's 296 to 31). The majority of people exonerated by DNA testing after wrongful convictions were black.

I've agreed with you several times that appropriate action is illiberal, and it could arguably be considered a form of institutionalized racism (though it's a difficult argument to make considering that the country's lawmakers and lobbyists are a disproportionately white male majority), but coming on the heels of centuries of the US's disenfranchisement, segregation, and widespread violence against blacks and other minorities, it may be one of the best available options for making a step towards greater equality and overcoming the deeply ingrained and otherwise difficult-to-undo racial scars that still have severe effects today. 

Or maybe it's not. Maybe it actually will have a detrimental effect. It doesn't change the fact that racism exists and is different from racial prejudice. I say my justification for distinguishing the terminology still holds water, and your subsequent disagreement rested largely on going back to denying that systemic racism or institutional racism exists.


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## Vitriol (Apr 10, 2016)

norrington said:


> In the big picture, white people are far less likely to be in poverty than black people; black people have higher poverty rates than white people across the board in the US. Poverty rates among the white population are disproportionately lower than the ~75% of the US population that white people make up.
> 
> White poverty is more complicated. On the one hand, as white people,they're still members of a privileged class that have stood to benefit historically from the oppression of other minorities. For this, there's the fact that they are far less likely to live in areas of concentrated poverty, more likely to be viewed as "deserving" and "hard-working" by the general public. On the other, they're hurt by the public's tendency to view poverty as a racial issue:
> So, poor white people are hurt by systemic racism despite the fact that they're members of the privileged class because of the culturally ingrained views of the oppressed class, which have a harmful effect on poor whites who are sort of caught in the crossfire. It's not dissimilar to what happens with men who are harmed by society's perpetuation of "toxic" masculinity in the shape of being more likely to be incarcerated, more likely to successfully commit suicide, more likely not to speak out about rape, sexual harassment, or sexual abuse as a child, and less likely to win child custody in courtrooms. For instance, areas with the highest black population density tend to have the lowest rates of upward economic mobility; however, that lower likelihood of upward mobility effects all races equally within that majority-black area. In addition to this, black children are less likely to be born into poverty (keep in mind, this makes sense given the fact that white people make up ~3/4 of the US population) but are also less likely to rise up out of poverty in adulthood than white children.
> ...



None of this matters at all to the individual unable to get into a course or a job because of the colour of their skin. As you admit it's fundamentally illiberal and goes against the core of our society. Every example you have cited can be dealt with by the individual and on an individual scale without impinging on the rights of others. 

There is no difficulty at all in white lawmakers pushing policies that hurt their own race- being racist is judging people arbiterily on the colour of their skin, ones own is irrelevant.

Gang culture counts for most of the problems you described above. From murders, to sentences, to poverty traps, to likelihood of being searched. If the black community is being targeted by law enforcement as it has a disproportionate gang and criminal culture that isn't arbitary and therefore is not systemic racism.

None of this changes that your distinction exists purely to allow certain forms of discrimination for arbitrary reasons beyound the individuals control.

The obvious solution is to invest more in poorer schools no matter the colour and let merit carry then rather than make it artificially easy for one group on the basis of their colour. Which is quite obviously racist. That is what they did in London and it worked very well.

I'm not going to touch your comments on 'toxic masculinity' as that's way off topic, but I consider the very concept every bit as offensive as 'fragile femininity' and the 'weaker sex'.


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## norrington (Apr 10, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> The obvious solution is to invest more in poorer schools no matter the colour and let merit carry then rather than make it artificially easy for one group on the basis of their colour. Which is quite obviously racist. That is what they did in London and it worked very well.


I agree with you there, and it's something people have been pushing for for years. Ironically, people made arguments similar to your own about the bussing program being racist, when it was designed to overcome the inherent segregation that comes with dividing school populations by district, which had black students and white students bussed to schools further away from where they lived to try and combat the fact that black schools got less funding. It was hardly effective, and you're absolutely right that the natural solution would be to give the schools more funding, but this analysis of data collected by the US Dept. of Education points out "that schools with 90 percent or more students of color spend a full $733 less per student per year than schools with 90 percent or more white students," (p. 2). 



Vitriol said:


> Gang culture counts for most of the problems you described above. From murders, to sentences, to poverty traps, to likelihood of being searched. If the black community is being targeted by law enforcement as it has a disproportionate gang and criminal culture that isn't arbitrary and therefore is not systemic racism.


I don't understand this point; are you trying to suggest that black people are inherently more violent and prone to gang culture by some natural difference from white people? Without systemic racism playing a role, how else would you explain the disproportionate rates of black gang violence compared to other races? Compared to the white population?  

Gang violence rises in response to preexisting inequality, which is why gangs are often prevalent among disadvantaged immigrant communities (such as the Italians, the Irish, the Russians and various others on the East coast at different times in US history, and among the hispanic/latino populations here), the urban poor, any community with fewer opportunities for education, employment, financial aid, and so on. Gang violence has a strong positive correlation to income inequality. 



Vitriol said:


> None of this matters at all to the individual unable to get into a course or a job because of the colour of their skin. As you admit it's fundamentally illiberal and goes against the core of our society. Every example you have cited can be dealt with by the individual and on an individual scale without impinging on the rights of others.



White people are statistically more likely to get call backs for job interviews and job offers than black people. 


> The authors find that applicants with white-sounding names are 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with African-American-sounding names. Applicants with white names need to send about 10 resumes to get one callback, whereas applicants with African-American names need to send about 15 resumes to achieve the same result.
> 
> In addition, race greatly affects how much applicants benefit from having more experience and credentials. White job applicants with higher-quality resumes received 30 percent more callbacks than whites with lower-quality resumes. Having a higher-quality resume has a much smaller impact on African-American applicants, who experienced only 9 percent more callbacks for the same improvement in their credentials. This disparity suggests that in the current state of the labor market, African-Americans may not have strong individual incentives to build better resumes.
> 
> ...



If a black person gets turned down because of the color of their skin, systemic racism means that they'll be 50% less likely to get a call back than a white person who gets turned down for a single job. That single act of discrimination has a more damaging end result for the black person than the white person. 



Vitriol said:


> None of this changes that your distinction exists purely to allow certain forms of discrimination for arbitrary reasons beyound the individuals control.



The above is why I'm saying racism should be a different term. Even if Affirmative Action didn't exist it would deserve to be its own term. That's been my argument the entire time. The distinction exists as a way to illustrate a preexisting difference in the effect an individual act of prejudice has on the person being discriminated against. 

P.S. Toxic masculinity isn't meant to be offensive, I'm sorry if it came across that way without more context; it describes societal expectations placed on men to act a certain way. Your linking it to fragile femininity is quite valid because the whole point is that it's an unfounded societal double standard with little to no logical or scientific basis that perpetuates gender inequality that is equally harmful to both genders. It isn't meant to suggest that _all_ masculinity is inherently toxic, but that society's preconceived notions of masculinity and the value system we attach to masculinity has a negative effect on men, just as the preconceived notion of fragile femininity has a negative effect on women.


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## Vitriol (Apr 10, 2016)

norrington said:


> White people are statistically more likely to get call backs for job interviews and job offers than black people.


That makes perfect sense- they are more likely to be better educated and wealthy. That's not racism, it's just the effect of a difference in resources. White people from poor backgrounds get less than those from rich ones for the same reason.


norrington said:


> don't understand this point; are you trying to suggest that black people are inherently more violent and prone to gang culture by some natural difference from white people? Without systemic racism playing a role, how else would you explain the disproportionate rates of black gang violence compared to other races? Compared to the white population?
> 
> Gang violence rises in response to preexisting inequality, which is why gangs are often prevalent among disadvantaged immigrant communities (such as the Italians, the Irish, the Russians and various others on the East coast at different times in US history, and among the hispanic/latino populations here), the urban poor, any community with fewer opportunities for education, employment, financial aid, and so on. Gang violence has a strong positive correlation to income inequality.


no there is no inherent genetic bias- my point is that there is a culture of joining criminal gangs which does not exist in analogous poor white groups. Yes poverty is a factor but culture is a larger one- all the immigrant groups you mentioned came from regions with strong organised crime. Other immigrant groups such as the Koreans, civil war era spainish, Dutch or Scandinavians do not and it is no coincidence that those groups escaped the poverty trap. Black America likes to blame racism for all its woes but a lot of them, especially those regarding the justice system, are a direct result of their own decisions to form and join gangs. The % of blacks jailed who had no connection to organised crime is proportionate to the rest of the population.

Being poor is not an excuse to join a gang, but a gang culture within an ethnicity is absolutely an excuse for the police and justice system to pay them closer attention and is going to have negative consequences for their education levels generally which in turn will effect their employability.

I would note that African immigrants do not have the same problem with call backs as native blacks suggesting the problem is one of culture not race.


My quote function has broken.

To your last two points: if the only difference is in severity of the effect this can be delt with by the awards revoverable. That is not an argue ment for different terms just for different awards when discrimination is proven.

Toxic masculinity: I am familiar with the definition and the theory surrounding it. I think it's bullshit. Society does not hold men up to some Victorian caricature of the stiff upper lip family man rather this concept is used as a scapegoat by third wave feminist academics unwilling to admit that certain changes in various areas over the past 30 years were made specifically to advantage women with no thought to how they would effect men.  disparities in medical, psychological and social funding combined with extensive lobbying on behalf of females on a range of issues with no equivelant masculine advocacy is to blame for high male suicides, mental illness and homelessness. Not some cartoonish concept of the ideal man no one has had any notion of fitting for a hundred years. Somewhere else in the sub forum I go into more details on this. I think it's the men's issues thread.


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## norrington (Apr 12, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> That makes perfect sense- they are more likely to be better educated and wealthy. That's not racism, it's just the effect of a difference in resources. White people from poor backgrounds get less than those from rich ones for the same reason.
> 
> no there is no inherent genetic bias- my point is that there is a culture of joining criminal gangs which does not exist in analogous poor white groups. Yes poverty is a factor but culture is a larger one- all the immigrant groups you mentioned came from regions with strong organised crime. Other immigrant groups such as the Koreans, civil war era spainish, Dutch or Scandinavians do not and it is no coincidence that those groups escaped the poverty trap.



White gangs in the US include biker gangs such as the Hells Angels, the KKK, and skinheads/Aryans, they create big problems among prison populations as well. 

Korean gangs like Kkangpae have been gaining prominence in the US in the past few decades. Korean immigration has been low, historically, and been on the rise in the past 50 or so years (and Kkangpae activity with it) until recently rates have begun to stall as the economy in South Korea has somewhat stabilized. 

Arguably, though, their influence is negligent; accepting that for the sake of argument, then, I'll compare the 'culturally peaceful' immigrant populations you've cited with the more historically gang-oriented cultures. A total of 302,000 Spaniards have immigrated to the US since 1820, and several thousand immigrated back in the early 20th century before the civil war. Compare that to 5.5 million Italian immigrants between 1820 and 2004, 4.5 million Irish immigrants between 1820 and 1930, and a current Russian American population estimated at 3.3 million.

Now to consider the US's other major immigrant groups, Germans, Scots, and the English. Most immigrated for economic opportunity or due to religious persecution; German-speaking Europe and Great Britain have historically been very economically prosperous and stable countries. German immigrants assimilated quickly, I'd argue because there was little prejudice against German-speakers (before WWI+II) among any populations (except maybe the French, and the American public has always had an iffy opinion of the French, who kept to their own areas regardless). Beside that, much of the German immigration was very early on (like the Irish, largely in the 17-1800s, but Germany and Ireland in those centuries are hardly comparable). 

Morals aside, on an economic scale, organized crime develops when there is a place for it within the economy; when the cost-benefit analysis of engaging in criminal activity in order to gain wealth is the most viable option because other options are closed off. The theory behind that is covered well in this paper, which I've quoted below. It's nothing to do with a cultural predisposition.


> Mafias and gangs emerge in areas of weak state control, because of prohibition and geographic, ethnic, or social isolation.
> 
> ...
> 
> ...



Now, you could argue that it's just because of a false perception of discrimination among the black community, but if that were truly the case and discrimination and oppression against blacks were all in their own heads, the prominent role gangs play in urban economies would start to fade, as there wouldn't be as much of a demand for them. No doubt it's self-perpetuating to some extent, but the Italian mafia has largely faded from relevance except for a few stronghold families in places like New York; it's no longer a pervasive problem touching every corner of the country like black gang activity is. That's because there is still a demand for the services gangs provide, because those services are not being provided effectively by the state. 



Vitriol said:


> That makes perfect sense- they are more likely to be better educated and wealthy. That's not racism, it's just the effect of a difference in resources. White people from poor backgrounds get less than those from rich ones for the same reason.



Why are white people more likely to be better educated and wealthy? Why is that justifiable? How is that not evidence of systemic racism? Black people aren't stupider, by your own arguments they should have just as much opportunity as white people (especially with Affirmative Action favoring them so unfairly). 

Also, the study I quoted was sending out identical resumes with "white sounding" and "black sounding" names so that doesn't explain why a white resume got a call back 1 out of every 10 times while a black resume got a call back 1 out of every 15 times. Here's the study in full. Employers hear a name they associate with blackness and they don't call back when they would call back if the applicant didn't have a name like "Tyrone, Jamal, Darnell, Aisha, Keisha," or whatever else. 

Blackness in America is culturally associated with incompetence, violence, stupidity, and poverty, even when the statistics or the facts don't support that (for instance, when the majority of Americans below the poverty line are white), even when the individual is just as qualified as their white counterpart. That is, by definition, racial prejudice.


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## RepQuest (Apr 12, 2016)

norrington said:


> (for instance, when the majority of Americans below the poverty line are white)


That's because there are more whites than blacks in the United States. Per capita rates are more important in that regard.


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## norrington (Apr 12, 2016)

RepQuest said:


> That's because there are more whites than blacks in the United States. Per capita rates are more important in that regard.



I appreciate the clarification, but I covered that earlier (at least in part):



norrington said:


> In addition to this, black children are less likely to be born into poverty (keep in mind, this makes sense given the fact that white people make up ~3/4 of the US population) but are also less likely to rise up out of poverty in adulthood than white children.


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## Vitriol (Apr 17, 2016)

norrington said:


> White gangs in the US include biker gangs such as the Hells Angels, the KKK, and skinheads/Aryans, they create big problems among prison populations as well.
> 
> Korean gangs like Kkangpae have been gaining prominence in the US in the past few decades. Korean immigration has been low, historically, and been on the rise in the past 50 or so years (and Kkangpae activity with it) until recently rates have begun to stall as the economy in South Korea has somewhat stabilized.
> 
> ...


White and korean gangs do exist but not in anything like the numbers of black and hispanic gangs per head of pop.

This site has a fairly comprehensive breakdown, you'll notice the black numbers are out of line with their population but in line with thir prison pop.
https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/demographics
If it was a matter of economics whites and asians would have proportional representaion to their share of the poor. They don't.

If it was a poverty trap then the more prosperous latinos would not have a rate of almost 50% gang membership despite being a more socially mobile demographic.

The inconveniant truth for african americans is that the numbers relating to their poverty and lack of social mobility is not shared by recent african immigrants. It is therefore absolutely a culture based thing. Ghetto culture has negative stereotypes attached because empirically people living in those areas do have less education and are more likely to commit violent criminal actions.

As a further element of the social trap is the hugely high percentage of single parent families in black communities. Its far out of proportion to their population size and that of any other group. It cant be blamed on racism and children growing up without a father have been proven to be more susceptible to violent and criminal lifestyles and lower academic qualifications again and again.

Whic brings me nicely to the names issue- names do not have race they have culture. One can change their name. That survey does not test what people think of black people but 'black culture' and as the statistics show there are empirical reasons for them to wish to be disassociated with it. That isnt sytematic racism, if all one has to differentiate between two applicants is that one has chosen a name that implies a connection with a more violent less stable subculture it makes perfect sense to choose the other.

It's not that it is justifiable that whites are more likely to be wealthy but rather it is unjustifyable to punish the children for the sins of the fathers as it were. This goes back to my comments about our system being inherently liberal individualist- we hold people to account for their actions, not the actions of others.


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## RepQuest (Apr 17, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> As a further element of the social trap is the hugely high percentage of single parent families in black communities. Its far out of proportion to their population size and that of any other group. It cant be blamed on racism and children growing up without a father have been proven to be more susceptible to violent and criminal lifestyles and lower academic qualifications again and again.


With the advent of public housing and Great Society antipoverty programs, single-parent families eventually became the norm in the black population because they would no longer be eligible for those benefits if they had a male head of the household present.


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## 💗Freddie Freaker💗 (Jan 12, 2021)

I think about this a lot these days.

In my opinion, racism is judging people by their racial label and not their actions. That's all. If you are able to treat people of other races as equals when they behave like equals and chastise people of your race when they misbehave, you are not a racist. It's very important to acknowledge that skinfolk are not always kinfolk.

Statistics and facts are never racist. Criticizing a culture is not racist and disagreeing with this implies being okay with things like honor killings and slavery. Whether or not slurs are racist depends on how they're used. Obsessing over which race is best is pointless and dumb but not necessarily racist.



Johnny Bravo said:


> Isn't racism the belief that a particular race is physically or intellectually inferior or otherwise morally corrupt? Or the opposite, that a particular race is superior?


When you divide people up by race, there's inevitably going to be statistical differences in the behavior and performance of different groups. I don't think it's racist to acknowledge that so long as you also acknowledge that on an individual level, we're all different and people who are distant from what's average for their group do exist.

It's more useful to divide people up by personality and ability, imo. Like classrooms. If you want to maximize everyone's happiness and productivity, you don't put a bright kid in special ed and you don't put a Chris-Chan in advanced classes.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jan 12, 2021)

I think the word "racism" should never have been invented. It led to deliriously insane identity politics where just about anything can be "racist", and people can be held automatically accountable for the actions of others of their kind - if their kind is "oppressor".

If someone does something "racist" - something otherwise actually bad - it should be called "being a jerk" or the like, without invoking social "justice" bullshit.


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## 💗Freddie Freaker💗 (Jan 12, 2021)

ToroidalBoat said:


> I think the word "racism" should never have been invented. It led to deliriously insane identity politics where just about everything can be "racist", and people can be held automatically accountable for the actions of others of their kind - if their kind is "oppressor".
> 
> If someone does something "racist" - something otherwise actually bad - then it should be called "being a jerk" or the like, without invoking social "justice" bullshit.


It might have been useful in the past, back when discrimination was truly rampant. At this point it seems to be doing more harm than good, though.



Sweet and Savoury said:


> There is no such thing as reverse racism...
> 
> this was used to "educate" a class of 9 year olds last week at a local school...enjoy!


It's offensive how they assume every member of one race starts at the same point. These things would be completely alien to a wealthy Nigerian immigrant, but according to this animation they'd still be more oppressed than a poor white American.

I wish they'd acknowledge that class and culture are way bigger dividers than race.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jan 12, 2021)

💗Bitchstopher Columbitch💗 said:


> It's offensive how they assume every member of one race starts at the same point.



Like I said, it's that divisive Current Year Clown World "logic" where a person is held automatically accountable for the actions of others of their kind.



> I wish they'd acknowledge that class and culture are way bigger dividers than race.


The elite want people divided against eachother, not united against them. And that's why we're stuck in Clown World.


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## The Curmudgeon (Jan 12, 2021)

It's supposed to mean just hating someone from a different race. You know the normal, common sense definition. But nowadays they changed the meaning so that only white people are racist, which is ridiculous.


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## Kyria the Great (Jan 13, 2021)

Racism should be arbitrarily judging someone based on factors they cannot control like skin color. Though it has been warped by those who want to use it as a method of no making instutiionally equal, but to destroy hierarchy because that is something folks honestly believe they can destroy.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Jan 14, 2021)

norrington said:


> This got long as shit. Sorry. Obviously you're not under any obligation to read it. I appreciate you engaging with me about it nonetheless and reading through the rest of the shit I've thrown out here so far.
> 
> Is it that serious an accusation, though? I mean, yeah, people have lost jobs over accusations of racism, but usually after doing something like posting pictures of themselves in blackface on their Facebook profiles. I can't think of someone getting fired or having their life seriously affected over accusations of racism when there's no hard evidence there; it's not like adultery or a closeted sexuality, it doesn't spread around after the person and get talked about behind closed doors in a negative way (at least not where I'm from). A black guy won't get fired for just acting racially prejudiced against white people, maybe, but I'd argue a white guy is just as unlikely (if not more unlikely) to get fired for being racist (or racially prejudiced, I guess makes more sense for the argument I'm about to make) in the workplace.
> 
> ...


Norrington, have you ever even been to the South or have any experience with it at all?


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Jan 16, 2021)

The problem is that racism/racist essentially has three definitions, that is it is A OR B OR C.

The concepts are:

A) Belief that one group is in some way genetically/hereditarily worse than another. This is like scientific racism, ie “X are dumb and stupid because they have bad genes and are subhumans.  .”

B) Belief that you should put your group above another group, or conversely, that the other group should be targeted for something bad.

“Fuck X, fucking Xoids deserve the rope.”
“Y is the master race, all other races were made by Y-ahweh to serve Y.”

C) Personal dislike of another group, or other bad feelings towards them.

“I hate Xers because one stole my bicycle once.  .”

Notably, while the probability of having any one of these three traits increases if you have another one, these DO NOT have to go together. For example, modern Leftism tends to have B and C, but not A. Nationalism implies B but not necessarily A and C.

We would do a lot better if we acknowledged that racism is actually an umbrella term for a number of different belief systems. I think you could call A “racialism,” B “ethnocentrism” or “prejudice,” and C “prejudice” or “bigotry.”


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