General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why Reverse Racism Isn't Real [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)So, the idea is that we're going to redefine traditional terms for sociological and political reasons.
As it stands,
1. We already have words for "culture-wide group-based oppression" and "institutional racism."
2. We have another term, "racism," which refers generally to racial animus: a race-based motivation for hatred or discrimination, in which anyone, in any group, can engage.
The new premise is that we will now say that "racism" only applies when racial animus is wielded by members of the most-empowered groups -- here, white people.
This is a political construct, and one that has not been thought out.
I think we can all understand the motivation:
1. To emphasize the importance of relative group power within the culture as a whole when discussing bigotry of any kind.
2. To undercut the "tit for tat" cultural muttering where an empowered group claims "it's same for everybody" because individual racism still exists against the empowered group. Somewhere a white person or a man or a Christian suffered discrimination, and someone will use that to imply that the larger social dynamic is therefore diminished.
But is it so hard to articulate these things that we need to disingenuously claim that individual racial animus doest even exist?
And immediately you have this problem:
What will we now call individual racial animus outside of the empowered group attacking a less-empowered group? The Asian-American landlord who hates black people and will not rent to them. Not a "racist" because Asian-Americans are not at the top of the overall racial dynamic in America?
And are we going to employ this new frame of relative culture-wide group power to qualify all bigotry? What if a culture-wide overweening oppression cannot be shown, or dissipates? Will we e-evaluate each group's right to be recognized as capable of bigotry or insulated from it, on the basis of the current culture?
No one's going to buy "only __ people can be ___" on the theory that only successful, culture-wide, institutional bigotry counts at all. It's silly and it infantilizes the genuine argument it tries to advance.
It's just lazy argument. And so transparently untrue that it just discredits people trying to wield it. "I can't be racist, despite my hatred for ___, because I am ___." Really?
No one's going to look at a black person being racist or a woman being sexist or a Unitarian being religiously bigoted and pretend it's something else to advance this facile idea that only culture as a whole matters.
It's not so hard to make a point overall group dynamics that we have to also pretend that individuals don't EVER engage in bigotry except from an empowered group, toward a less-empowered group.
Nobody thinks that.