rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

zach is pretty otm here but like I think part of the issue with the liberal academic/anti-racist activist definition of racism := institutional/systemic racism is that for many Americans in recent decades in many communities calling someone a racist is like one of the *worst things you can accuse someone of*. Like plenty of people who hold implicitly biased attitudes towards people of X race would also tell you that they are not racist, because they were told/brought up to not be racist, not hate black folks, whatever. The elementary school version of the civil rights movement is that America/the South discriminated against black folks, and then we had lots of peaceful marches and now we don't do that anymore, and see this multicultural pack of crayolas? You shouldn't hate black people! Now let's celebrate Columbus Day drawing some Indians!

the anti-racist community fans

contenderizer is otm across the board

I know it seems like you're on the side of the oppressed when you say that racism should only mean XYZ, even though XYZ is the less frequent use of the word today, but in narrowing the definition of the word you're not 'taking sides' you're just ensuring that even more people will be having pointless semantic arguments instead of actually talking to each other.

can someone link me to an author or text that makes a case that the OED's definition of racism is in fact racist or is this just signaling how open minded and awesome we all are and really just a stack of nonsense?

like "racism" has this particular meaning for anti-racist activists that zach has been discussing and it's not what like most people think of when they hear "racism" cf. this thread. Hence people react super-defensively because fuck, they're not *racist!* *Nazis* are racist. Call me a racist again, you fucking asshole!

liberal academic/anti-racist activist definition of racism := institutional/systemic racism

This is not true. Zach's definition of racism is not the liberal academic definition of racism.

Don't think you can blame the US for that tbh

― Charles Kennedy Jumped Up, He Called 'Oh No'. (Tom D.), Friday, January 27, 2012 1:25 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

At all? I'm not as familiar with Japan, but at least in Korea, the US military presence comes with a lot of problems, as it does in many other parts of the world. I'm not saying Koreans don't have hostility toward white people, but what I'm saying is that a lot of it comes out of a historical experience of military occupation, and at least in the power-racism thing that was going on above, it's a something that's emerged as a reaction to a form of oppression.

I feel like zachylon is saying that he needs evidence that racism that isn't systemic or institutional is the valid definition of the word when contenderizer & co are just saying that there are multiple valid definitions of racism

then ignore the "liberal academic" half? not essential to my point, I more mean that the definition of racism that zach is talking about is that which prevails in certain activist and intellectual circles. xp Mordy

things are not put in the dictionary to further the interests of old white dudes, they are put in the dictionary because that is the way people use those words. that is what a dictionary is for.

er that's not exactly what i'm saying but i guess i disagree anyway. i'm not saying the people who decide on dictionary definitions are evil and ask "what are the ways we can make the english language as evil as possible today." i'm saying the fact that they're largely written by old white dudes guarantees that they will reflect the usage of old white dudes.

you have to be really naive to think that dictionaries are the perfect communicators of usage. there's a reason they're updated every few years, and imo there's a reason they're allowed to have multiple definitions of every word but still never include the word "power" anywhere in the definition of racism. despite the fact that that is one of the most commonly-used definitions of the word.

anyway this is veering into an undergraduate semantic wank, only minutes before people start c&ping dictionary definitions!

Academics are not writing papers + books about what the word racism really means. It's such a silly conversation and such a weird thing to stake out this impassioned position on.

veering

yeah for an english major you seem to have a very strange idea of why a dictionary exists

Nobody is saying that Japan's racial attitudes are based on imperialism in the past, right? Because last I checked, Japan has been a lot more imperialist than any country they've interacted with. The only third-party control in Japan was post-WW2 and most of these attitudes predate that by a fair bit.

there's a condescending tone here that really sticks in my craw. the blanket insistence that any racism that any white person experiences is necessarily trivial and something that can be easily escaped strikes me as contemptibly arrogant and (yes) prejudiced. on a large, social level, sure, i agree. but demographic truths don't define or limit individual experience (or vice-versa). i'm sure that in this world there are people of every race who have been racially oppressed in some form or another. all victims of racism are equally deserving of sympathy. this is not to plead "boo-hoo" for the many angry white assholes who live to whine about "reverse racism" or whatever. those fuckers can go to hell. this is simply to plead for sympathy, compassion and an open-minded willingness to understand that human experience cannot be confined either to politics or demographics.

at this point i can only really say that we disagree and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it

anyway this is veering into an undergraduate semantic wank, only minutes before people start c&ping dictionary definitions!

That's my cue! From OED

racism

Pronunciation: /ˈreɪsɪz(ə)m/
noun
[mass noun]

the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races: theories of racism

prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior: a programme to combat racism

Nakh! I need to ask you something. Sign online pls?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

Zach, can you please actually cite some of the work you're drawing from? Not that I think you're an imperfect vessel of your argument, but I'm wondering if maybe someone else has laid it out in a perhaps more compelling manner?

Conversely, Dictionary.com:

rac·ism
   [rey-siz-uhm] Show IPA
noun
1.
a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2.
a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3.
hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Professor James M. Jones postulates three major types of racism: (i) Personally-mediated, (ii) internalized, and (iii) institutionalized.[3] Personally-mediated racism includes the specific social attitudes inherent to racially-prejudiced action (bigoted differential assumptions about abilities, motives, and the intentions of others according to), discrimination (the differential actions and behaviours towards others according to their race), stereotyping, commission, and omission (disrespect, suspicion, devaluation, and dehumanization). Internalized racism is the acceptance, by members of the racially-stigmatized people, of negative perceptions about their own abilities and intrinsic worth, characterized by low self-esteem, and low esteem of others like them. This racism can be manifested through embracing “whiteness” (e.g. stratification by skin colour in non-white communities), self-devaluation (e.g. racial slurs, nicknames, rejection of ancestral culture, etc.), and resignation, helplessness, and hopelessness (e.g. dropping out of school, failing to vote, engaging in health-risk practices, etc.).

professor jones' work would make no sense in a world where we were limited to one definition of the word racism and it was zachlyon's

poor professor jones

Nobody is saying that Japan's racial attitudes are based on imperialism in the past, right? Because last I checked, Japan has been a lot more imperialist than any country they've interacted with. The only third-party control in Japan was post-WW2 and most of these attitudes predate that by a fair bit.

― mh, Friday, January 27, 2012 1:34 PM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark

Yeah I agree with this.

I guess for me there is a distinction between the way Japan treats foreigners/white people and the way they treat their ethnic minorities/neighbors/former colonies and that they emerge out of different things. But I feel like I'm derailing the thread a bit so I'll let go & ppl can go back to debating the definition of racism in the US.

geez this thread is moving very quickly

I don't know how useful it is for people from minority communities whose antagonists are people from other minority communities to be told that their experience of "racism" is something else - be it 'bigotry' or 'prejudice'. I can approve of the idea of racism being defined by the marginalised but who decides which marginalised groups have the authority to make that decision?

The issue of people with power claiming victim status to derail that power being questioned is a huge one, and it needs to be eviscerated whenever it appears, but i'm wary of a word that means numerous different things to numerous groups of people - each with their own legitimate POV - being narrowed too far.

i think it's important to not say "systemic racism" because racism is systemic and saying "systemic racism" is essentially putting anti-POC racism as a subset and putting the anti-white distinction at the very top.

I suspect that there are racist statements and ideas that are not institutional or systemic. People are capable of a lot of sloppy thinking all on their own. The idea that racist beliefs are only inherited or instilled is naive--it means the problem can be fixed rather than constantly struggled with.

Also, I don't understand the second half of your argument.

claiming that systemic, or institutionalized racism is the only valid kind is getting rid of a lot of discourse. and not in a way that just removes "power" from the equation, but in the fact that the other types can either stand alone or be strongly linked to systemic racism

xp contenderizer, I know what you mean by the terms but most people when they hear "racist" don't deal in degrees. So if a black politician is labelled racist for a comment about white people large numbers of white people will leap at the excuse to make them seem equivalent when they're plainly not. None of the people attacking Diane Abbott were saying "Oh yeah it was racism but not systemic racism." They were saying "Look at this racist black person, we're victims too" wiping out any discussion of context, power, history, anything.

Man this thread is moving fast.

racist statements and ideas that are not institutional or systemic

see the weird comments by ilxors about kids/students who wish they had more elongated eyes and called them "chink eyes"

yeah for an english major you seem to have a very strange idea of why a dictionary exists

i mean are you familiar with linguistics rhetoric and prescriptivist vs. descriptivist thought? i am willing to get academic about that, at some later time. but it's mostly the linguist academics, the ppl who study language, who doubt the authority of the dictionary. most english majors don't really have much knowledge of linguistics fwiw

lol wat u read a DFW article?

yeah yeah I went to college and took linguistics courses too. dictionaries are not prescriptivist dude. if they were, they'd never need to be updated.

hey guys, let's all stop fighting and go make fun of Two Lights

YO, i am not saying that "personal" or w/e racism is not racism! p much everything in this thread fits under the umbrella of racism. i said in the beginning of all this, racism is both personal and institutional. to clarify that, not all institutional racism involves individually-spiteful acts, but every instance of personal racism is a part of institutional racism.

YO, i am not saying that "personal" or w/e racism is not racism! p much everything in this thread fits under the umbrella of racism. i said in the beginning of all this, racism is both personal and institutional. to clarify that, not all institutional racism involves individually-spiteful acts, but every instance of personal racism is a part of institutional racism.

idk this seems to be pretty different from every other post you've made itt

But mostly--while I do think that zach's positions are too inflexible and his arguments are getting increasingly shrill and dogmatic--I think that 9-out-of-10 times in my country, white people whining about anti-white racism (especially around politics) is bullshit, and often it's a smokescreen for genuine racism on their part or on the part of a person or institution they're sympathetic with.

zach, I knew what you meant

nakh otm

can i highly recommend to anyone who is interested in this stuff to read Sara Ahmed's Affective Economies which locates racism/race in affect and community and is actually really brilliant and insightful and doesn't have any paragraphs about what the word racism really secretly means?

Buy "Garner's Modern American Usage" and get "ILX's Rolling 'Is This Racist?': A Clusterfuck of Thread Derailments" at an additional 5% off Amazon.com's everyday low price.

idk this seems to be pretty different from every other post you've made itt

that wasn't my intention, and i don't really know what you're talking about. this whole argument is about how racism is institutional, and "personal" racism hasn't really been the center of it.

but of course "personal" racism is the clearest weapon of institutional racism

as i understood it, you were arguing that a) white people cannot experience racism as directed towards them and b) that is because the very word racism only refers to institutional racism and since white people are always institutionally privileged that means (a) is true

u mean 'centre'

again, contenderizer, you're asking me to defend why ppl in the anti-racist community use their definition of "racism," but you're not actually defending why you use your definition. who was it that determined that your usage is the correct one? is it because you were brought up that way and you've always assumed that to be the right definition? what about all the people who are brought up with the other definition?

― zachylon (zachlyon), Friday, January 27, 2012 10:19 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the word racism was originally designed and used to describe theories of racial superiority and inferiority (e.g., nazi bullshit). in such usage, the thing described was not the power imbalances that such racialist thinking embodied, but rather the component of race-related bigotry as a specific thing in itself. this is why the word "racism" was chosen, as opposed to "powerism" or "race-powerism" or w/e.

the attempt to redefine racism seems to have arisen as a preventative response to white claims of oppression. the sensible response, however, would not be to unilaterally claim to have redefined the term, but rather to point out that racial prejudice (racism) absent the power granted by a single race's social dominance has very little power to meaningfully oppress.

contenderizer otm

Again, you're assuming that most people will be alive to that crucial distinction instead of just hearing "RACISM!!!" and acting like it's all equally pernicious.

what contenderizer said

yup