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"One cannot be racist against mexican..."

Argumemnon said:
Sure. However the problem I see is not that languages evolves, but that language is misused in a way that makes it very confusing. When someone who likes 15 year olds is called a pedophile, it effectively lumps all of them together, but the causes of their "preferences" and the treatment are different, when they're needed at all.
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The number of people who would be concerned about such issues is relatively small (a few people involved in the medical/psych field, perhaps some sociologists), and they should be more than capable of dealing with the differences between common usage of the term "pedophile" and the more clinical definition.

Similarly, lumping "bigotry against Mexicans" in with "racism" is something that would be convenient/useful, and attempting to stick to a more technical definition (subdefine bigotry by subtype - race, religion, nationality) would be useful to only a tiny number of people and inconvenient to the rest of us.
 
Segnosaur said:
The number of people who would be concerned about such issues is relatively small (a few people involved in the medical/psych field, perhaps some sociologists), and they should be more than capable of dealing with the differences between common usage of the term "pedophile" and the more clinical definition.

Similarly, lumping "bigotry against Mexicans" in with "racism" is something that would be convenient/useful, and attempting to stick to a more technical definition (subdefine bigotry by subtype - race, religion, nationality) would be useful to only a tiny number of people and inconvenient to the rest of us.
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There is also the problem that many such racists view refer to all hispanics as mexicans.
 
ponderingturtle said:
There is also the problem that many such racists view refer to all hispanics as mexicans.
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As I pointed out above, we know that it's not about where they are from. Trump called the judge Mexican, even though he was born in Gary, Indiana.

It's about ethnicity.
 
Modified said:
When and where I was a kid, "Mexican" meant "Hispanic". There was no such word as "Hispanic". If you were from Guatemala, you were "a Mexican". Trump is older than me, and may have experienced similar common use of the word and never gone past that. I still hear some older people use the word that way, in various parts of the country.
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This.

I still get asked "what part of Mexico are you from?" even after I tell them I'm from South America.
 
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For those of you who feel the need to split hairs, please see Mumbles' post. This thread was inspired by a recent comment from a Trump-defending conservative. "Ha ha, 'Mexican" isn't a race so you can't call it racist!"

If you haven't seen this used over and over and over and over to explain away Trump, then you've been living under a cabbage leaf for the past year. But to return to Mumbles' contention, if the idiots making the idiotic statements perceive Mexicans or Muslims or Puerto Ricans or Anywhereians as a race and direct their racist xenophobia towards them, then for all intents and purposes consider them racists.

Meh? I prefer "bigot". Racism, to me, has always been open to the possibility that it's unintentional even inadvertent behavior. Being a southern white kid (for certain definitions of "white"; being Jewish-Sicilian I wasn't invited to a lot of White Citizens Council meetings), I can see myself failing the alone-in-the-elevator test.

Bigotry, though? That's a thought-out tenet. Bigots have worked at it and have justifications all built into their defense of their positions. But it's funny, ya know. I haven't seen any of the Trump, Bannon, Sessions, Coulter apologists saying, "Hey, you can't call that racism! Trump's an outright bigot, but there's no proof he's racist." No. It's used to dismiss his behavior and his statements as a trump card to counter the use of the term, not to disprove that he has those qualities. The argument stops at "racist" and if they can hand-wave away that accusation then all's right in the world and he's actually a swell guy.
 
Aepervius said:
"...Because Mexican is not a race" has been told more than once in this forum and others.

I think this is not well reasoned. Firstly "racist" under its modern meaning is actually "xenophobia" which can indeed be the sole xenophobia against Mexican. But nobody or nearly use that word among lay, and most people understand "racist".

Secondly, you can be racist against any non white, but single out Mexican as being the nearest in proximity. The sentence ignore this fully.

As such the various statement of Trump are definitively xenophobic in nature, and almost certainly racist.

What do you think ? Should we encourage the more accurate word at the risk that nobody else use it, or should the modern meaning of racist be taken and simply qualify Trump as racist ?
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There is a valid distinction to be made between being prejudiced against a culture and being prejudiced against a perceived biological ethnicity. The two are often so intertwined that it can get confusing (and one could certainly be prejudiced against both), but they still aren't the same thing.

One can be racist against Mexicans, insofar as they perceive "Mexican" as being an ethnicity or as a subset of a larger ethnicity.

A racist, who is not culturally prejudiced would make an exception for a Caucasian who was technically Mexican due to being a Mexican citizen, being born in Mexico, etc. They would not make an exception for a person of Mexican/Mestizo ancestry who was born in the US and was fully integrated into American culture with no traces of Mexican culture, etc. A person who is prejudiced against Mexican culture, but is not racist would be the opposite on those two things.

As for what words to use, practically speaking... I think it's probably best not to overuse the word racist when it doesn't necessarily apply. And "xenophobe" doesn't flow very well. I think words like "bigoted", "prejudiced", "intolerant" and "hateful" work under a lot of circumstances.
 
Meed said:
There is a valid distinction to be made between being prejudiced against a culture and being prejudiced against a perceived biological ethnicity. The two are often so intertwined that it can get confusing (and one could certainly be prejudiced against both), but they still aren't the same thing.

One can be racist against Mexicans, insofar as they perceive "Mexican" as being an ethnicity or as a subset of a larger ethnicity.

A racist, who is not culturally prejudiced would make an exception for a Caucasian who was technically Mexican due to being a Mexican citizen, being born in Mexico, etc. They would not make an exception for a person of Mexican/Mestizo ancestry who was born in the US and was fully integrated into American culture with no traces of Mexican culture, etc. A person who is prejudiced against Mexican culture, but is not racist would be the opposite on those two things.

As for what words to use, practically speaking... I think it's probably best not to overuse the word racist when it doesn't necessarily apply. And "xenophobe" doesn't flow very well. I think words like "bigoted", "prejudiced", "intolerant" and "hateful" work under a lot of circumstances.
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The term "White Hispanic" coined during the trial of George Zimmerman comes to mind.

I've seen examples of both behaviors described above. I have dark skinned Latino friends, born and raised in the US, who are labeled "Mexican".

And of course, there is the sweet southern lady at a company I worked before who could not comprehend how offensive it was ever time she would mimic my accent.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
It's like raping a 15 year old and objecting to the term pedophile. Yes, in a pedantic sort of way you are correct in trying to avoid this stigma, but it does not address the problem.
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Of course doing something bad and then objecting to an misapplied term doesn't "address the problem [of the bad thing you did]". To take that to its logical extreme....

*Jack murders an elderly man*
Jill: Jack murdered someone. He's a child molester!
Jack: No, murder isn't child molestation.
Jill: That doesn't address the problem of you murdering someone.
Jack: Duh....

I don't think "it doesn't address the problem" is a valid complaint. So, that leaves us with the argument that it's a pedantic distinction. I won't take a side on that, but I'll just point out that when you use inaccurate language and someone objects to it, you are the one giving them a valid reason to "not address the problem", a valid reason to portray attacks made against them as incorrect and unreasonable, and so on.
 
Argumemnon said:
In other words, "racist" doesn't mean "racist" anymore. It means a host of things that have nothing to do with what the word actually means.

But yes, mexican isn't a race, it's a nationality. It doesn't prevent people from being bigoted or intolerant. Hey, why not use those words instead?
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Hispanic would be closer to a "race." When I say, as someone who would be considered "Hispanic" and "Mexican" (even though I have a lot of "races" mixed in me and I and the 3 generations before me were born in the USA), "I don't want Mexicans coming here illegally," I don't think there is a racist, bigoted or intolerant undertone to that at all. Maybe a xenophobic undertone, but that isn't my intention.
 
xjx388 said:
Hispanic would be closer to a "race."
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And what race would that be? This is akin to saying Arabic is a race.



xjx388 said:
When I say, as someone who would be considered "Hispanic" and "Mexican" (even though I have a lot of "races" mixed in me and I and the 3 generations before me were born in the USA), "I don't want Mexicans coming here illegally," I don't think there is a racist, bigoted or intolerant undertone to that at all. Maybe a xenophobic undertone, but that isn't my intention.
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Why single out Mexicans? Why not Canadians or Irish? Illegal immigration comes from all over the world. Focusing on "Mexican" does carry a racial undertone.
 
Why can’t Mexican be considered a race? It’s not there is any formal agreement on what makes a race or how to separate one from another.
 
I prefer the term "bigoted" because A) it's a more accurate, all-encompassing term and B) it prevents bigots from creating irrelevant distractions when they're being called out on their bigotry.

Which is exactly what happened to inspire this thread.
 
Segnosaur said:
The number of people who would be concerned about such issues is relatively small (a few people involved in the medical/psych field, perhaps some sociologists), and they should be more than capable of dealing with the differences between common usage of the term "pedophile" and the more clinical definition.

Similarly, lumping "bigotry against Mexicans" in with "racism" is something that would be convenient/useful, and attempting to stick to a more technical definition (subdefine bigotry by subtype - race, religion, nationality) would be useful to only a tiny number of people and inconvenient to the rest of us.
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Well actually we can already see how confusing the expansion of "racism" as a word has become, with nonsense like cultural appropriation and the like.
 
Aepervius said:
"...Because Mexican is not a race" has been told more than once in this forum and others.

I think this is not well reasoned. Firstly "racist" under its modern meaning is actually "xenophobia" which can indeed be the sole xenophobia against Mexican. But nobody or nearly use that word among lay, and most people understand "racist".

Secondly, you can be racist against any non white, but single out Mexican as being the nearest in proximity. The sentence ignore this fully.

As such the various statement of Trump are definitively xenophobic in nature, and almost certainly racist.

What do you think ? Should we encourage the more accurate word at the risk that nobody else use it, or should the modern meaning of racist be taken and simply qualify Trump as racist ?
Click to expand...

Also, some people no doubt use "Mexican" as a generic term for all Hispanics.
 
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