Racism is contextual

[Lithrael]

Well if on one hand the accusation can end your life and carreer, you can't then turn around and say there's nothing to it because everyone's a racist. It can't be both.

It can, because the career-ending thing is a completely different phenomenon, it's this weird public-shaming bandwagon thing, and it happens when some popular figure/blog/site decides to try to virally drag someone for something, as you say, relatively innocuous.

Then once you have hundreds of thousands of people engaged, it stops mattering that most of them are sensible and just think 'hah, wow that was in bad taste' because a few of them are in fact those perpetually super angry types who are going to go parading a quote around as evidence of what an awful person this must be. One of the real problems here is that the unconsidered anger of that bandwagon, once it gets going, has clout because companies are so terrified of bad PR.

For people whose comments don't escape their social circles and end up on millions of screens, the accusation doesn't end their life and career.

 

[Belz...]

It can, because the career-ending thing is a completely different phenomenon, it's this weird public-shaming bandwagon thing, and it happens when some popular figure/blog/site decides to try to virally drag someone for something, as you say, relatively innocuous.

How can you have outrage that results in someone having their life destroyed if it's not something anyone should worry about? You're not making sense.

 

[JoeMorgue]

It can, because the career-ending thing is a completely different phenomenon, it's this weird public-shaming bandwagon thing, and it happens when some popular figure/blog/site decides to try to virally drag someone for something, as you say, relatively innocuous. One of the real problems here is that the unconsidered anger of that bandwagon, once it gets going, has clout because companies are so terrified of bad PR.

For people whose comments don't escape their social circles and end up on millions of screens, the accusation doesn't end their life and career.

"I'm going to call you my version of the word 'racist' even if most everybody else uses the word in a different way but it's okay because most of the time it won't ruin your life."

 

[Lithrael]

How can you have outrage that results in someone having their life destroyed if it's not something anyone should worry about? You're not making sense.

Because those situations are outliers.

How can you have airplane crashes that result in all hands lost if dying in an airplane wreck isn't something anyone should worry about?

 

[Lithrael]

"I'm going to call you my version of the word 'racist' even if most everybody else uses the word in a different way but it's okay because most of the time it won't ruin your life."

To this I'll just say that anyone that participates in a social media smear storm without considering the consequences is being incredibly thoughtlessly cruel. To my knowledge I have never done anything like this.

Situations where I use it like I'm using it are conversations like this one, discussions with friends, etc.

Also make note in the article I linked to, one of the examples was a guy who was fired by his company for an innocuous joke going viral looking bad, and immediately after that the lady who put his innocuous joke in a position to go viral was fired by her company too. So you don't just have your life ruined for being accused of thing but also for accusing someone of thing. Or, more broadly, for doing anything that makes your company look bad.

It's the employer that's the one that doesn't care if you're a hateful bigot or just someone who said something dumb. And the employer doesn't care because the loudest people on the internet don't care, and they're worried other people will listen to them and it'll hurt their bottom line. But generally, most of the time, most people do not need to worry about what a youtube commenter would say about them.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Unless one has taken it upon themselves to assume the title of "Super Progressive Man: Most Progressive of the Progressive, with the magical ability to psychicly spot racism with 100% accuracy at a hundred yards" there's no functional difference between "A racist who isn't aware of their racism" and "Someone you've up and decided a racists who isn't."

In other words if Bill says he's not racist and you say he is, why should I automatically believe you?

Because everyone is.

Would you say giving preferential treatment in job offerings to whites over blacks is a type of racism? What about if the person does not recognize that they are doing that, and don't think of themselves as racist?

So we are either at the idea that not hiring someone because they are black or killing someone because they are black is not fundamentally racism. Then what is?

 

[ponderingturtle]

Good point. I'm torn over whether this is racist, but the more personal, the more difficult it is to argue that these opinions aren't racist.

And of course there is nothing racist about shooting a black man when you wouldn't shoot a white man in the same situation.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Same way that you talk to someone who is dead set convinced that you're a racist, even though you're not: You don't.

This seems to say that the only thing we can do is ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist. Burying your head in the sand is not really a good solution to your problems.

 

[ponderingturtle]

"Privilege" "Microaggression" "Culture of Racism" "Unconscious racism."

Progressives just have got to stop taking "Liberal White Guilt" off the shelf, slapping a new coat of paint on it and keep trying to sell it to me over and over.

Yep in your world it is really the white people who are oppressed I see. There is no sexism or racism existent in the world and really never was.

 

[Belz...]

Because those situations are outliers.

How can you have airplane crashes that result in all hands lost if dying in an airplane wreck isn't something anyone should worry about?

Frequency has absolutely nothing to do with the argument. The issue is one of severity. Seriously, do you not see the contradiction between:

"Everybody's a racist, so being accused of being one shouldn't be a big deal."

And

"If you're a racist your life will be destroyed."

?

 

[ponderingturtle]

It doesn't matter if you're using the term "racism" in some new approved "Woke" way when 95% of the population is still using it to mean "Intentional and harmful conscious bias based on skin tone."

That's how words work. If you call someone a "racist" you're calling them the most commonly accepted definition of the word, not your own.

Which is why there is nothing racist about killing a black man because he is black. Blacks are scary and there is nothing racist about finding black men fundamentally threatening. Lots of totally non racist people find blacks very threatening. Because that is totally different from "Intentional and harmful conscious bias based on skin tone." it is just a gut reaction after all.

 

[Belz...]

Because everyone is.

Well, I actually wasn't sure I had interpreted your post correctly. I thought there was still room for it to have been some sort of sarcasm, but now it's clear that you actually believe that.

One wonders why you think racists are such terrible monsters if being a racist is a feature of being a living human.

Which is why there is nothing racist about killing a black man because he is black.

Who cares, since everyone's racist anyway?

 

[ponderingturtle]

"I'm going to call you my version of the word 'racist' even if most everybody else uses the word in a different way but it's okay because most of the time it won't ruin your life."

And really who cares if blacks are getting killed because totally not racist people find them threatening for normal everyday activities, you and I are not black so why should we be worried about that it won't happen to us.

Now being accused of racism that is a serious problem, far worse than some dead blacks, This is about white peoples careers! Important things unlike mere black lives.

Oh crap does that sound racist?

 

[mgardner]

Stuff like this is why I rarely use the term 'racist'. It's too vague and has been used to encompass way to many issues.

Here's my definition of racist :
- The belief that members of certain racial groups are less then one's own group.

and maybe
- Policies that explicitly treat individuals differently because of their race.

Anything outside of that is not racism. It might be bad, but you can't simply say "that's racist" and expect everyone to fall in line with your declaration.

 

[Lithrael]

Frequency has absolutely nothing to do with the argument. The issue is one of severity. Seriously, do you not see the contradiction between:

"Everybody's a racist, so being accused of being one shouldn't be a big deal."

And

"If you're a racist your life will be destroyed."

?

Because they're not having their lives destroyed over being racist. They're having their lives destroyed over being infamous and ridiculed, which can be cooked up whole cloth out of anything, because the infamy machine does not care. The critical misstep that seems to lead to infamy is just doing something ironic or cliche for your situation; the PR lead making an AIDS joke on the way to Africa, the silicon valley guy making a dick joke. I don't mean this in a 'they brought it on themselves' way just in a 'this is what people resonate with and that's what makes it go viral' way.

If it was as simple as 'if you're accused of racism your life is over' then what's with the relative lack of consequences and outpouring of support for guys like Zimmerman? What's with all the people who get called racist for being overly critical of Kaepernick and haven't experienced much/any blowback?

 

[Belz...]

Because they're not having their lives destroyed over being racist.

Ok at this point this is getting ridiculous. The thing that they say or do that gets the outrage machine going and gets them, for instance, fired, is not what gets them fired according to you.

I don't think there's any possible discussion left.

 

[Giz]

IMO the biggest problem here is it's one of the times when language is straight up not equipped for the discussions the culture wants to have, so some of the culture starts appropriating words and creating new ways to use them to say what they mean, and the rest of the culture is like WTF?!?!?

On the one hand you can't get (quickly) a useable language out of 10,000 people independently trying to redefine or create words; you can't have a conversation when you have to stop every two feet to get all the definitions straight. On the other hand, you have to get words and phrases for new concepts into the language somehow.

It'll take about two generations to iron out. It's happened before and it'll happen again.

"Racist" is probably going to be rehabilitated as non-pejorative around the same time as the swastika. Maybe try a different word?

 

[Belz...]

Oh crap does that sound racist?

Well, everyone's racist anyway, so why even ask the question?

 

[Belz...]

"Racist" is probably going to be rehabilitated as non-pejorative around the same time as the swastika. Maybe try a different word?

Oh, but they really, really want to use that word. Why? Specifically because it's NOT innocuous, and because it's used to shame people into compliance with an ideology.

 

[Lithrael]

"Racist" is probably going to be rehabilitated as non-pejorative around the same time as the swastika. Maybe try a different word?

Yeah, if I was calling the shots I would. It's a no-win though, everybody hates new words and everybody hates re-purposed words and nobody will listen to nuanced words. Though in the fork where your choice is get everyone to understand and care what this unfamiliar word 'bias' means, or to nudge 'racism' which everyone understands at least 'it sucks if you're on the receiving end of it and it ought to be fought' over into something non-pejorative, I'd look at arguments like this one and go for option A. I don't know though, I'm not a sociologist, it seems like people in the know think that getting people to talk more is better and a little misplaced outrage definitely drives attention. They'd probably say that more people end up aware of bias by making them argue about what racism is than by trying to tell them what bias is.