Believing black and white are interchangeable is a privilege of being white. NO black person is allowed to believe this. Society tells them so, every single day.

Stop, and chew on that for a while. Think about your black friends - do you think any of them believe blacks and whites are interchangeable? Do you think a cop pulling them over, or a person interviewing them for a job, always believes this? No matter how colorblind you may think you are personally, much of the rest of America is not. Equality is theory, not practice. If you step up and do something about it, you have to acknowledge that inequality is real, that black and white are not interchangeable. If you don't step up, you're denying reality.

The US is a racist society: "race" has no valid biological basis, but is a salient social category which impacts social and economic interactions in a wide variety of ways, producing inequalities of privilege and injustice.

Whether or not you have bigotry in your heart is beside the point—no one can know such things. When you spend all your energy trying to prove that you are untainted and innocent of racism, it seems like you are missing the point: in a pervasivly racist society, discriminatory behaviors creep in the subconscious of everyone, black/white/antiracist/whatever, and we have to consciously struggle with them. The question is really more about how you interact with broader society racism, not whether you are a naif.

You're being willfully obtuse. The points the parent was making were not reliant on a concrete shared definition of 'racism.'

Do you want to be part of a discussion, or do you just want the rush of endorphins that contrarianism provides?

I don't think yummyfajitas is.

I don't like Trump but I still agree that racist is now used as a general slur.

You may think it is becoming a general slur. Many other people think we are finally just calling things for what they are.

You're still missing the point the parent was making.

What then? This:

"it seems like you are missing the point: in a pervasivly racist society, discriminatory behaviors creep in the subconscious of everyone, black/white/antiracist/whatever, and we have to consciously struggle with them."

?

I have recently argued against my own misunderstanding of someones explaination and find that embarrassing so I am actually listening.

Yes, that.

We all hold prejudices that we all need to be mindful of. Getting tangled in the weeds of arguing about semantics completely derails that point.

If there's miscommunication due to semantics that's preventing people from reaching understanding on an important issue, the semantics are indeed important. There has to be some area of common understanding to make that happen, which includes agreed-upon semantics.

To be clear: Racism is important but arguing about its semantics isn'?

Racialism is is the idea that Homo sapiens can be divided into separate social categories or "races" based on a variety of relatively arbitrary society-specific markers: religion, kinship, skin color, and so on. The ideas of race is tied up with the idea of ancestry (and nation), but the biological link between genetic ancestry and racial identities is very ambiguous. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/22/a-lot...

Racism is the discriminatory or prejudicial treatment of people based on these socially-salient-but-mostly-arbitrary social categories. This is pretty basic stuff, really.

Sometimes when you cut some one open and take out body parts it's called murder.

Sometimes when you cut some one open and take out body parts it's called surgery.

CONTEXT MATTERS

Murder is the unlawful and premeditated killing of one person by another.

Surgery is the treatment of injuries or disorders of the body by incision or manipulation, especially with instruments.

Racism is ___?

Please fill in the blanks so I can apply your definition to an action/belief together with it's associated context.

That's my point. It's completely unclear.

That's why it's such a great slur; there is no clear definition of it, no way to prove it false, and it inspires such negative emotions.

Just because some of the people you disagree with are muddleheaded doesn't mean that all of them are. And just because you see an imprecise description of a behavior doesn't mean that behavior does not exist.

"Racism" is a catch-all for the typical set of human behavior directed towards out-groups. This includes distrust, aggression, and in-group signaling. It doesn't matter what defines out-group: dress, gender, skin color, etc, but is generally something tied to identity, something easy to recognize and hard to change. Negative feelings get amplified and applied to all members of the group while positive feelings are suppressed.

In its most extreme form, this permission-to-otherness motivates genocide. Slightly farther down, slavery. Waaaay at the other end it manifests as nervousness around Koreans or something. This is just human nature. There are quite a few things in our nature we no longer casually tolerate in society and work to eliminate. Like ignorance or incest.

But on top of that, context matters. In a situation with heavy power asymmetry, both protagonists may harbor "racist" feelings, but the only attitude that matters to outcome is the attitude of the one with the power. If you feel you're being held to a higher standard, its probably because you are.

"Racism" as used, say, in the 50s, was shorthand for "institutional racism". The game had been rigged against minorities, most especially blacks, to the point that the law told them where to live and eat, who they could and could not marry, etc. This was enforced day to day by the actions of regular people employing regular, everyday racism directed downwards in a situation of power asymmetry.

Since then the institutional stuff has largely been dismantled or covered with tarps, and institutional "fixes" applied, often unevenly and stupidly, but that's also human nature.

Because context matters there is no one line definition.

Not that you care. You will happily argue that MLK was the real racist for making white people let black people eat in their restaurants.

According to you, context matters for murder and surgery as well. Yet there is a clear and unambiguous definition of those terms.

I have no idea what you are trying to argue in your second line. Is that an attempt at a strange ad-hominem attack?

Context matters for cutting people open and removing bits of them.

The second half of your last sentence is the key to the issue, IMO. People calling things racist, and yet those who agree with the things being called racist seeing those name calling ignoring similar behavior weakens the concept of bigotry.

My favorite example of this is the legal system. The legal system is racist against blacks and Hispanics because it is harder on them. The legal system is also sexist against women because it is easier on them. When someone sees both of these views together, the entire concept of bigotry is called into question.

And it's becoming a self parody as well. People are now being called transphobic for being unwilling to have sex with a transsexual they aren't attracted to. A gay guy who is only attracted to people with a punishment is now a bigot... what? Yeah, that view isn't by any means common yet, but it has been appearing online for a while now.

I don't have time at the moment to give this the response it deserves, but this is quite an eye-opening comment. There are many who believe that globalism is discriminatory as well. I truly think there's an answer that is in line with the "gut feelings" of those of us who are abhorred by Trump's order and not by trends towards globalism, but as you note, it's difficult to articulate.

Racism is making decisions about a person's character based on information about their ethnic background. Usually these decisions negatively impact the subject of the racism, serving to position them as inferior to the decider's race.

I'd start here - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism

#1 leads to #3 leads to #2.

But there is a lot more to it. Not a simple concept. There is a lot of reading to do if you'd like to understand more. Can provide some links.

Isn't it increasing argued that the dictionary definition of racism is only one possible definition? I've heard it stated many times that the newer excepted definition involves the traditional aspect of racism coupled with the component of power. That is to say that racism is prejudice plus power.

As an example, a minority in the US may be prejudiced or bigoted, but they cannot be racist since they lack the societal power that whites enjoy. Thus only whites can be racist.

Just to be clear, I'm not endorsing one definition over the other, I only meant to illustrate​ that even seemingly well defined words can have different meanings.

Wouldn't your given definition be a working combination of the given definitions from Webster?

You're correct. I should have been more clear. My main point was that racial prejudice alone (#3 in the above link), minus the power component, wouldn't be enough to satisfy the requirements of racism under some definitions.

What you're referring to the as the "traditional aspect" is #3 in the linked page. #3 coupled with power is #2 in the linked page.

Good point, although I think it could be argued that there could be a political doctrine based on racism at say the local or regional level, that wouldn't be widespread enough at the societal level to qualify as racism under some definitions. For example you could live in a city or town that adopts discriminatory laws against whites, this would meet the political doctrine aspect, but it still wouldn't be widespread enough in American society to qualify as racism.

I'm not very smart though so you should keep that in mind, I could be totally off base here.

I know this is going to come off like a "smart ass" But, I really curious what people think. Can someone be a bigot towards racists? I've heard the argument that the left is intolerant of intolerance and there for hypocritical, which sort of on it's face sounds plausible but seems more like an alt-fact to me. But I can't put my finger of why.

It kind of reminds me of the time I was arguing with my brother and his response was "I don't believe in logic"

How do you deal with people that refuse to argue with logic and facts?

> How do you deal with people that refuse to argue with logic and facts?

This is a good point, and circles back to the original thought in this thread. When words are unclear, how can you discuss logic and facts? People don't have the patience (nor should they) to sit down and cooperatively define dozens of key terms each time they have a meaningful discussion about the direction of society, culture, and government.

Relabeling and redefining things to assert power (instead of reasoning with others) inhibits cooperative reason and is therefore, in my mind, irrational and harmful.

Why shouldn't people have the patience to define their language before having a discussion? Your last line seems to indicate that you think having unchanged definitions to words is a good thing.

My wife and I define things to each other frequently. We often are saying the same things but confusing each others meanings because of wording.

> Why shouldn't people have the patience to define their language before having a discussion?

Most people aren't practiced in keeping sets of definitions in mind that vary from context to context.

You're also opening the (aspirationally meaningful) conversation with somewhat involved semantic discussion and debate.

"Now that we've labored over the meanings of 'race', 'diversity', and 'equality' for fifteen minutes and invented three new terms to encompass the meanings of 'racism' that are relevant here, tell me how the latest executive order might end up exposing your family to more of racism-type-B."

The implications are overwhelming. To be a meaningful part of the debate would require a great deal, maybe even obsessive, of focus, time and research.

I used to love text because it felt unambiguous. I just realized a part of me fears speaking because I don't want to be misunderstood.

Agreed. But I realized I don't need to speak to be misunderstood.

I would say these days anything along the lines of what you are asking is difficult to answer. The language concerning such topics have been so muddled with people's opinions of what words actually mean that no one fully understands what the other side is trying to say. Which only ends in personal attacks.

It is one thing to try to deal with people who refuse to argue with facts; it's quite another to deal with people who refuse to accept that their can be different interpretations of the same facts by different people.

Argue with emotions instead. It will have more swaying power anyway.

you make a lot of great points that call back to one central concept: the liberal idea of "racism" is multifaceted and constantly shifting to be more inclusive.

understanding what "racism" is requires you to keep up with the thought development that's ongoing, and frankly it's too much work for almost everyone to do so.

perhaps a different perspective will be useful, and i'm just making this up as i go, so bear with me.

imagine a utopian society in which 100% of people have complete equality of opportunity as well as ability to capitalize on opportunities. the society itself has no needs which are unmet, and vast resources which are disbursed equally. this means that the choice of what to do with one's destiny is limited only by their share of the society's resources. if there ever were any ethnicity, religions, or races, they've long since been forgotten, and all the members of this society are united in their affection for equality and humanism.

here, someone going for a facile point would ask what color do you imagine the people of this society to be (looking for a "gotcha", you're a racist), but that's not my purpose. instead, try to work your way backward from this theoretical society to the broad term of "racism" we have today. what needs to change?

for one, the actual situation of an arbitrary group of people needs to change, along with their mental outlook. let's say that this arbitrary group starts off with fewer opportunities than the rest, though their ability to capitalize on what opportunities they have is supposedly unchanged. their mental outlook is thus that of starting from behind, and they're not wrong.

because they've started from behind, the development of this group to reach their individual goals for life is slower. if the citizens of the rest of the society truly love equality in the fashion that they claim, then they must redistribute all of their resources en-masse, removing the disparity between the groups. unfortunately, in our thought experiment, a one-time transfer isn't enough, and each new generation the disadvantaged group will need to receive some resources from everyone else.

this spawns resentment among a portion of the egalitarian-minded population. we'll call this portion the conservatives. fed up with having less as a result of the group requiring their resources, they decide as a bloc to withhold their contribution despite still benefiting from the general climate of promoting equality themselves. predictably, the disadvantaged group begins to fall further behind, as they're not receiving as many resources as before. we now have the poor, the liberals, and the conservatives.

eventually, the withdrawal of resources by the conservatives begins to impact the poor more severely, and limits their ability to capitalize on opportunities as well as additionally hurting the resources that they start with. their sphere of potential paths to take in life shrinks expediently. education becomes more limited, many lose sight of egalitarian ideals, and a few turn to crime. the utopian society is no longer utopian at this point in our journey toward our reality.

let's fast forward a number of generations. the situation of the poor group has degraded considerably, and poverty has scarred the minds of its people. the egalitarian ideals of the past are still alive, in some people-- but to ignore the dilapidated condition of the poor group is impossible, and so calls to renew equality are aspirational. many have invented stories about why exactly it is that the poor are so unsightly, seem to be the only one committing crimes, and don't have the same resources as everyone else. these stories aren't fantastical, so much as they are filters of perception instantiated in specific incidents. many people treat the group differently as a result of the stories that are told, further reducing their opportunities. we can, at this point, generally say that these filters are equivalent to "racism".

so, let's say you're one of the old-school idealists, and you still think that, even though the challenges are greater than back in the day, equality is necessary and desirable. would you say that the group at the start of the thought experiment is interchangeable with the other groups? no, not anymore, though they were at the start-- and this is a sticking point for understanding the concept of racism in a more nuanced way.

are they NOT interchangeable? at the start of the thought experiment, they were in fact fully interchangeable, until we changed the variables. now, they need more resources to succeed. is it "racist" to discriminate on the basis of race? well, yes, if you believe in egalitarianism, you shouldn't be disqualifying someone because their starting conditions were different-- and if you really, REALLY are serious about egalitarianism, you'll give up some of your resources to them to help them catch up. the liberals would prefer it if everyone were in the REALLY serious camp, and tend to describe alternatives as "racist".

i wonder if this made any sense

Your example doesn't match up with reality. In your example, one group arbitrarily starts out disadvantaged. In the real world, (let's say United States) there was no arbitrariness. White folk, in aggregate, set up a system to massively redistribute resources from black folk to white folk, causing horrifying suffering in the process. You can't just ignore this and start your scenario with the slate wiped clean.

The parent poster claims it's clear. I'm pointing out that there seem to be widely disparate and inconsistent opinions on the matter.

The best way to prove me wrong would be to provide a clear and unambiguous definition. Strangely, no one has done that.

Why would you assume I need to disprove the assertion that there's are disparate and inconsistent opinions? Of course there are! That's why they are opinions!

Also I'm not sure why you'd look to HN for clarity on any sort of social issue. That's not this community's expertise. That's why I'm saying go forth and learn.

Metafunctor asserted that he knows what racism means, and implied that it was obvious. I was disputing this, that's all.