rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

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

this is going too fast and i feel like i have to respond to every single post, but i have a lot of cooking to do, so i'm out. i look forward to reading 700 new posts when i come back.

to whoever wanted sources supporting the usage of the word i'm familiar with, i don't keep a working bibliography on me, though i clearly should. i feel pretty confident that i could just recommend that you start reading any book from a notable recent anti-racist writer and this topic will come up. but most of it comes from talking to individual ppl about it irl.

I will say, it's amazingly alienating to have gone through a college experience where every black person I talked to when the subject came up, both student and faculty, followed Zach's definition, and then to see a bunch of white ppl 15+ years later being all "no no, people are racist against us too" on a messageboard.

That's not what's going on.

That's basically what it looks like.

^ agree

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.

Not sure the kind of people you're talking about would be alive to the difference between 'racism', 'bigotry' and 'prejudice'. Had Abbott been called out for 'bigotry' against white people, would the reaction have been any different?

Not saying that there isn't a value to the idea of defining racism in terms of power structures but i am not sure what practical difference it's going to make in this context. White people with power claiming victim status illegitimately need to be set straight but the grievance isn't bound up in semantics.

There is a commonly accepted understanding of how racism operates (particularly in America today, but also wrt post-colonialism) that sees racism as being a tool of systemic control and supporting implicit hierarchies. Often when people talk about racism, this is what they are referring to. It is not controversial, I don't think, that there are numerous economic/political/social systems in place that either explicitly or implicitly discriminates against people of color. However, that doesn't mean that the word racism only refers to this understanding and has no other meaning. It also doesn't mean that racism against white people is impossible definitionally (even though, as many people have written on this thread, discussing racism against white people in America tends to be a way of eliding/avoiding actual racism in favor of scoring political points).

should I read this thread before I start trolling it

zach has been really clear that he cares about who defines words, no one has engaged him on that, this is boring now.

I meant to say - it's not controversial, I don't think, to acknowledge those structures. Obviously those structures themselves are very controversial. xp

the important thing here is that ppl who agree 99.8% with each other argue dictionary definitions while the TERRORISTS WIN

It's more that zach was saying that all racism is institutional or derived from it, and we were saying that the odd outliers do exist and there are other definitions (outside of validity in what WE THINK about how racism actually affects people) in play.

But yeah, you just said "in college," right? I don't think anyone has ever been racist against me, and I think the majority of "racism" against supposed white people is a prejudice supposing that the white person in question either holds racist beliefs or conforms to a certain profile and is not, in fact, racism.

I will say, it's amazingly alienating to have gone through a college experience where every black person I talked to when the subject came up, both student and faculty, followed Zach's definition, and then to see a bunch of white ppl 15+ years later being all "no no, people are racist against us too" on a messageboard.

if you are reading contenderizer's posts and coming off w/ this take I have no idea what to tell you other than maybe you should consider rereading them

frogbs otoh sure yeah nobody's defending frogbs

a prejudice supposing that the white person in question either holds racist beliefs or conforms to a certain profile and is not, in fact, racism.

Except that it is.

I think the institutional definition of racism is the most important to be addressed, but acknowledging that there's some variation in the use of the term is really an effective way to get people who are skeptical about the detrimental effects of society-level racism to accept that racism at the personal level comes from somewhere, and that it's endemic, and then you point to systemic racism and they understand that what they thought was only person is in fact the big picture.

um, in fewer words:

Racism in your face is really just the local version of racism all over the place

thanks, I'll be here all night

It is not controversial, I don't think, that there are numerous economic/political/social systems in place that either explicitly or implicitly discriminates against people of color. However, that doesn't mean that the word racism only refers to this understanding and has no other meaning. It also doesn't mean that racism against white people is impossible definitionally (even though, as many people have written on this thread, discussing racism against white people in America tends to be a way of eliding/avoiding actual racism in favor of scoring political points).

― Mordy, Friday, January 27, 2012 11:05 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

mordy OTM

and then to see a bunch of white ppl 15+ years later being all "no no, people are racist against us too" on a messageboard.

lol