Proper and improper uses of the term "racism"

Advocate wrote:

Mexica wrote:
I can freely admit that when I get on a train and the car is full of black teens I don't have the same level of comfort as I do when it is full of white middle-aged men. There is no rationale reason for the discomfort - none of them have done anything to me. Is that not still racism?
-fishin

I dunno, that uneasy feeling might not be a result of racist feelings. But an example of what some call "statistical discrimination," or as author Dinesh D'Souza put it, "rational discrimination."

Jesse Jackson once said that, when walking near his home in DC, he heard steps behind him and became scared. He said he felt relieved when he noted that the steps were those of white youths. He has had a hard time living down this statement.

On another, but related, matter, I have concluded that affirmative action is reverse discrimination.

Yeah, D'Souza did mention that incident in his book The End of Racism, along with Jackson's hymie-town comment. *snicker*

But I agree with half of your statement. I don't see AA has reverse[/] discrimination; I see it as racial (and sex) discrimination.

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Mexica, when I wrote the statement, I expected your literalist reply. You really need to be a bit more figurative.

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Cool?

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fishin said

Quote:

Ummmm.. No. The term racism contains the negative connotations because people used it for political gain and assigned it those negative connations - much the same way as has been done with "liberal" and "homophobic". Your need to attempt to limit the definition and usage of the word is the result of that.

What on earth are you talking about? Lincoln and other abolitionists used the term 'racism' for political gain? He/they assigned negative connotations to 'racism' that wouldn't have been there had he not wanted votes? Is that your claim?

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"Reverse discrimination" is another example of what's going on here. The implication is that such discrimination is the same as what preceded it. Right. A white fellow and a black fellow apply for the same job and have identical qualities to recommend them but the black is picked because of some AA policy. And that's the same as lynching or hundreds of years of slavery. That's where the moral questions and dilemmas here are disjointed, in a rather serious manner.

Consider a situation where a mother dies giving birth to twins, one pretty and the other one ugly. The father remarries and the new wife takes a strong preference for the pretty child, and over a period of years gives her all the cake and makes the ugly one do all the chores.

The father, a dim bulb, finally grasps what has been going on and sets to correcting this historical imbalance and injustice. He discrimates between the two twins and begins giving the ugly child slightly more cake than the pretty one and he begins making the pretty one do more chores.

The pretty one cries..."This is reverse discrimination! It is a wrong, by definition. It must stop or you, dad, are being unfair, unjust and immoral."

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blatham wrote:

fishin said
Quote:
Ummmm.. No. The term racism contains the negative connotations because people used it for political gain and assigned it those negative connations - much the same way as has been done with "liberal" and "homophobic". Your need to attempt to limit the definition and usage of the word is the result of that.

What on earth are you talking about? Lincoln and other abolitionists used the term 'racism' for political gain? He/they assigned negative connotations to 'racism' that wouldn't have been there had he not wanted votes? Is that your claim?

They did?? Really? Have you got a quote where they used it?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the word was first coined in 1932. According to Merriam Webster the word was coined in 1933. Lincoln had been dead for some 60+ years by the early 1930s and the entire abolitionist movement had pretty well dwindled.

A search on The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln shows no work, either written or in speech, where he ever used either "racist" or "racism".

So I have to ask, what is it that you are talking about?

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The term was coined in regards to the Nazi agenda, however the meaning of the word is no longer strictly negative. During the AA debate over the last 20 years racism as become widely acceptable in intelligentsia circles as a morally neutral word, though the less educated still think it is always a negative term. Racists are not too bright, but they are not necessarily bad people.

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blatham wrote:

Consider a situation where a mother dies giving birth to twins, one pretty and the other one ugly. The father remarries and the new wife takes a strong preference for the pretty child, and over a period of years gives her all the cake and makes the ugly one do all the chores.

The father, a dim bulb, finally grasps what has been going on and sets to correcting this historical imbalance and injustice. He discrimates between the two twins and begins giving the ugly child slightly more cake than the pretty one and he begins making the pretty one do more chores.

The pretty one cries..."This is reverse discrimination! It is a wrong, by definition. It must stop or you, dad, are being unfair, unjust and immoral."

We are hard wired by biology to prefer beauty over ugliness, since beauty reflects a symmetry that correlates with being healthier for reproducing. I read this; it's not my opinion.

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blatham wrote:

What on earth are you talking about? Lincoln and other abolitionists used the term 'racism' for political gain?

Lincoln an abolitionists?!
That's news to me.

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I've used racism to allow myself to have a quiet meal at a fast food restaurant by specifically sitting next to a Black family, so the odds are that a certain type of white won't sit near me (because I put myself so close to a a Black family). From a sociological perspective, whites occasionally need to maintain a pecking order with other whites (myself), so in these situations they can't just ignore me eating at a nearby booth, they must be loud, or obstreperous to get my attention, as though the message is, "you're no one so special that we have to let you have a quiet meal." A Black family will not do this one-upsmanship with me usually.

I don't believe these comments are racist. They just reflect a sociology of pecking orders, and who pecks who. We often peck at those that we feel a need to show who's top dog. But, you can observe on your own who sits next to whom in a fast food restaurant.

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hawkeye10 wrote:

Racists are not too bright, but they are not necessarily bad people.

Oh I dunno about that, there have been a few bright racists through out history.
Hume, Kant, and even Marx come to mind.

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Mexica wrote:

Oh I dunno about that, there have been a few bright racists through out history.
Hume, Kant, and even Marx come to mind.

In my opinion a racist is one for whom race is the primary marker for the individual, they are their race before anything else. Correct me if I am wrong, but i believe that the above mentioned said that race matters, it is A factor. This is clearly true...race does matter, but seeing that does not make me a racist.

Hitler is an example of a racist because even the most kindly intelligent and helpful Jew was still a Jew to him, thus needed to be killed. His view of every person on the planet was similarly primarily defined by race.

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hawkeye10 wrote:

Hitler is an example of a racist because even the most kindly intelligent and helpful Jew was still a Jew to him, thus needed to be killed. His view of every person on the planet was similarly primarily defined by race.

Are you claiming that if a Jew is "most kindly intelligent and helpful" they are not truly a Jew? Morphing into something else? I say this because the phraseology, "was still a Jew to him," implies that there might be something inherently wrong/bad with Jews and only by being "most kindly intelligent and helpful" a Jew might just not be as bad as other Jews? I'm assuming this is not what you meant, but I understand you are a product of the popular culture which is not philo-Semitic.

Anyway, this is America. We don't have National ID cards that say Jew. There are Jews that have decided to live as non-Jews, so this forum's using Jews in examples of "racism," may just show how indelible racism is in the culture (that came from Europe).

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Foofie wrote:

[
Are you claiming that if a Jew is "most kindly intelligent and helpful" they are not truly a Jew?.

I am claiming that if a man was standing in front of Hitler, and he was in every way the kind of man that Hilter would want to be part of the cause, but he was a Jew, the only thing that would matter to Hitler is that he was a Jew. That is a racist. Race matters before all else. For an extreme racist like Hitler race is the only thing that matters.

In America with all of our races this is a most unhelpfully way to view people. Those who pat themselves on the back about how multicultural they are are racists as well, just less extreme. The people in their lives are picked at categorized by race, and then I am expected to listen to them talk about how evolved they are. I would be more impressed if they picked the best people as friends and lovers, what ever the race labels were.

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hawkeye10 wrote:

In my opinion a racist is one for whom race is the primary marker for the individual, they are their race before anything else. Correct me if I am wrong, but i believe that the above mentioned said that race matters, it is A factor.

Hmmm, well I'd say that they said a bit more than race matters.

"I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men, to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures among them, no arts, no sciences"
-David Hume
"The Negroes of Africa have received from nature no intelligence that rises above the foolish. The difference between the two races is thus a substantial one: it appears to be just as great in respect of the faculties of the mind as in color."
-Immanuel Kant
"... it is now completely clear to me that he [Ferdinand Lassalle] , as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother had not interbred with a nigger. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product. The obtrusiveness of the fellow is also nigger-like."
-Karl Marx
"I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind...This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people."
-Thomas Jefferson

My point is, mental deficiency isn't a necessary component for racist thought; as there have been, and doubtlessly are, many intelligent people who do subscribe to racists beliefs and/or conclusions. I think it an inaccuracy and a mistake to generalize racists as ignorant and/or irrational.

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Mexica wrote:

My point is, mental deficiency isn't a necessary component for racist thought; as there have been, and doubtlessly are, many intelligent people who do subscribe to racists beliefs and/or conclusions. I think it an inaccuracy and a mistake to generalize racists as ignorant and/or irrational.

I agree with you, but I was coming from the position that categorizing by race in modern America is foolish. We live in a mostly free society, most have access to the same environmental settings that other races enjoy, and what ever genetic deficiencies a person may have because of race they are free to choose a breeding mate who will counteract it so that the kids can be better off. From what I can tell sexual relations between the races runs very strong, and often they produce babies. Whatever genetic problems are real will with-in a few generations be self correcting.

Talking about racial intellectual capacity is the third rail you know. Talking about that is absolutely verboten. The PC police will be by shortly to haul you away.

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You know, I didn't mean to "put you on blast," but that whole "racists are just fools" rhetoric just kinda bugs me. I just wanted to...vent, I guess--it's a a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

And yes, I agree, the climate for discussing even the possibility of racial cognitive differences is a hostile one, to say the least. ****, you cant even say that a certain group is, on average, naturally faster than another without getting labeled a racist or causing some uproar.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion.

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Mexica wrote:

You know, I didn't mean to "put you on blast," .........Anyway, thanks for the discussion.

Nope, no blast, just arguing what I believe. I enjoy finding somebody knows something I don't, or has a better argument. Learning is a good thing.

Anyways...I enjoy the process....so thanks back at ya.

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"Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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So is verbal racism always a bad thing?

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Proper and improper uses of the term "racism"

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