The Word "Racism" Doesn't Mean Anything Anymore
I already posted today, so payout declined. I posted this in a conversation on Facebook, and ended up liking it enough to post it here, too.
A word only means something when it has a definition.
When talking about a chair I bought yesterday, we both have good understanding of what the basic concept of a chair is; it can be an office chair, a dinner table chair, a potato peeling chair, so there are variations, but regardless we both know the gist of what's being talked about. Despite the variations, the definition of a chair has certain guidelines, which means that the word chair means a chair.
When it comes to the word racism, however, there are no guidelines at this point; the word racism can mean anything from a person merely disliking people because of their race, to a person hating and even being violent towards people because of their race. But it doesn't even end there, since there's an increasing amount of new, made up versions of racism, which further blurs what the exact definition of the word is.
In other words, "racism" can mean anything, and when a word can mean anything, it means it lacks a definition, and a word that lacks a definition it doesn't mean anything at all.
In other words, the aforementioned chair can now be a table, a sink, a bed, or a potato, or pretty much anything else. So, when you tell me you bought a chair, it's pretty much a guessing game whether you bought a cat or a house.
So, the word racism - which had a serious and important meaning once - has been inflated to the point of nothingness by the people most worried about it.
I don't think the word has become vaguer or lost any of its meaning. I guess you just find yourself in a situation where you disagree with others on what qualities as racism. When somebody tells you chair, you know exactly what they mean, you just disagree with their criteria. And as there are no physical racisms to compare with, it is often a matter of opinion and not objective facts. But there is no communicative value lost, you are just noticing that you disagree with others and their critera and are blaming it on them.
Okay. If you're saying that the term racism still means what it's always meant, that the definition hasn't ever changed even though it gets thrown out at the drop of the hat, I guess I have to agree that the word still means what it means.
However, to paraphrase a famous quote from The Princess Bride, I don't think the word means what too many people think it means. Or better said, too many want to claim that such a wide range of things constitute racism that it's virtually impossible to avoid being accused of it.
We might as well not speak of any other race not our own, ever, because in some circles, if you're not that race, you have no business saying anything about it. As it is, there's still debate over whether or not race actually exists, how many there are, and so forth. Many of us have all kinds of ethnic DNA in us.
In the end it's all rather pointless. Black and white are colors or hues on the light spectrum. They are not races. Neither are Germans, Hispanics, Muslims or Jews. They are words we use to describe nationalities, regional groups or religious adherence. Yet, they get bandied about when it comes to race, too.
The usage or definition of the word racism might have shifted a bit with time, but I think that when we say racist everybody knows what we mean. People might disagree on if a particular action, view or person is racist, but that doesn't make the word useless or hard to understand.
Sure, people will disagree on many things. On one hand, I personally don't think it's that hard to not get accused of racism, but I also understand that we all have our own prejudices and stereotypes that work as part of our subconscious, but it's all about how we handle that. If I firmly believe something I'm doing or saying is not morally objectionable, I wouldn't loose too much sleep over an accusation that I reject.
I wonder what good examples do you have of yourself or others being wrongfully accused of racism.
If races don't exist, what would be the thing that you would want to say about a particular race anyway?
Well, that's pointing out to the biggest change that has occurred with the word racist - it's meaning has shifted from talking about race, to including ethnicity and nationality. But that's a change that has happened that we're all aware of and I find it disingenuous when people claim they don't understand it. On one hand, as you noted, race is a bit arbitrary and ill-defined anyway, and on the other hand, this is a normal thing that happens with language, word shift from their original meanings and are not always faithful to their morphological roots. Objecting to the world on morphological basis is like saying that the phrase "a lot" is confusing because it's morphologically and historically supposed to refer to a designated piece of land. That's obviously not how language works.
The colors of our skins are indeed just hues on the light spectrum, but often people with different hues get different treatments and that's why people see value in using the word and discussing the topic of racism. If you are not discriminating against different skin tones or different nationalities, what are you worried about?
So glad you also got a bit carried away, glad to the tune of $0.13*(current SP + SBDmarket rate). 📈
I do tend to get carried away from time to time :) I'm glad someone sees some value in my ramblings :P
Thanks for the upvote and the reasoned reply. I'm glad to be able to discuss touchy subjects here. Doesn't happen a lot elsewhere on the Internet.
Based on what I think you're saying, I believe we're heading in the same direction with this discussion, other than I will respectfully agree to disagree on whether or not everyone knows what racism is. I think there are plenty who don't. I also think there are those who invoke it for the purpose of sowing discord and discontent.
Lastly, a clarification. I've not personally been called a racist that I know of. Nor have I personally watched someone be called a racist. I don't think it has to happen to me or someone I know for it to concern me. My reason for commenting was because I agreed with @schattenjaeger that the term is too misused, and in my mind, that leads to desensitization, and eventual rejection of the term all together.
Me too! One of the cool things about this platform really! :) I do make sure I try to engage with people that have opinions different from mine as I don't want to live in an echo chamber and I'm certain there are at least some belief that I hold that are wrong and it's good to put them to a test in a reasonable debate.
No doubt, the world is full of trolls who just want to see it burn :)
I did not assume that at all, it was an honest question. In my opinion if you're saying the term is often misused, you must have a lot of examples of that happening and I wanted to hear some of them so I'd know what kind of misuse you are talking about.
I don't think many people are desensitized to the use of this term, they might be annoyed with it or fed up with it, but surely not desensitized. Otherwise it wouldn't be a supposedly touchy subject, right? ;)
I truly wish I had more to upvote you with, but I'm not even six days old yet (on Steemit) and you know how that goes. :)
Okay, so I'll start with this one for your consideration. It happened over five years ago (time flies), but I believe it's indicative of what I'm talking about. Fired by ESPN for a racist headline, he’s finding his second chance as a Catholic priest. Not sure if you want to read through all of it, but for the most part, the part pertinent to our conversation is in the first 3-4 paragraphs.
Don't sweat the upvotes ;) I've been on the other end of a very similar debate with a very similar voting disparity when I was new now when I think about it. Also, notice that we're having this conversation under a post where the original poster declined a significant payout just because he felt that the fair thing to do on his part.
The example you are giving is actually an interesting case. The headline the guy wrote certainly sounds like a racial pun and there is no way to know if it was meant to be one or if he truly made an honest mistake as he claims. If intentional, it was racist and it is a problem that it got published. But I do think the guy deserved the benefit of the doubt and I'm not a fan of huge repercussions for solitary offenses. We all make mistakes and I'm not a fan of the outrage culture and the screams "off with his head" at the first instance of dubious behavior. I think the problem here is not identifying that the headline was not OK, it's the overreaction and outrage culture which is now the most common reaction to any kind of disagreement. It's certainly not just about racism, people get outrages about anything and are quickly ready to go to war against the perceived enemy. That's not OK and I don't support it, but I don't think it's something that should be blamed on using the term racism incorrectly.
I'll keep on throwing my plankton upvotes at you then. :)
I definitely agree that the reaction in this instance was overblown, and that too many people nowadays from all sides are too quick to judge.
However, I don't know why the phrase, 'Chink in the Armor' is racist in and of itself, regardless of whom the story was about. The phrase predates the use of 'chink' as a derogatory term for Chinese people, and it has to do with being vulnerable or deficient in something. In this case, Lin's game was supposedly lacking.
I think being insensitive, inappropriate or offensive with someone of another race might make you ignorant or racially unaware (or a jerk), but I don't think it should automatically without question or examination of intent make you a racist.
Since racism is a belief that people of the same race all have some particular (usually undesirable) traits because of genetics that somehow supposedly make them inferior to another race, there are quite a few requirements that need to be met before racism should be invoked.
I don't think they were ever worried about it; it was(ahem, is) a mode of identity politics used by the Left to attack other ideologies.
Which really sucks when it comes to real victims of racism, b/c it is hard to take the racist charge seriously now
I agree with your agreement.
"You are a racist" has lost its bite. And being an actual racist just meant you avoided certain areas.
Maybe we will actually see some healing in this area done now.
Or watch the left destroy themselves by doubling down again, some more.
I wish, but there is always going to be a large portion of people that are inherently do-gooders, which is why leftism has never been consigned to the garbage dump of history where it belongs
Pretty sure this post is #racist.
Hahahahahaha hahahahahaha.... To be honest though, a part of me agrees with @tuck-fheman.
Kudos for raising this issue!
Racism has a very precise definition which is "the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races."
The problem nowadays is that the term is used for political reasons only, based on the marxist concept of oppressor vs oppressed. Some people are altering its meaning just to justify votes for their preferred political party.
Racism is a useless word. We are all racists.
I am racist towards nice asses vs fat asses for example
I discriminate
Even if something describes all of us, this doesn't make it useless. Knowing how we work is useful.
But we are by no means all equally racist and don't discriminate in the same ways. That's why there is a subjective sliding scale between what is considered acceptable and what isn't. Also I'm sure you'd agree that there is a substantial difference between your example that pretty much nobody would really call racist and a white supremacist. It's not all boolen, sometimes amounts and levels matter too.
Interestingly enough, by your logic, the objection that people are using racist too much is invalid as they are all correct.
A chair is an object, and we can objectively agree upon the fact that chairs exist. But the “we”—a third-person plural—I’m invoking here is nothing like the chair, as we are objects (bodies and brains) who happen to have subjective experiences. The degree to which we square off our inner models of reality with external, objective things—like chairs, or empirically blatant evidence of a gamut of things that make up the assemblage of forces we call “racism”—determines the parameters around what exactly it means to decide if a concept is cogent enough to be shared among subjects, what it means for a concept to reference something that happens to be “real.” That process of reality checking is the discursive nature of history; and experience itself of time requires subjectivity and shared communicative conventions (vocabulary, syntax, grammar, etc.), if indeed the conceptual referents we use to navigate reality at any given state across history change just as we do.
The neat thing about markdown is how easy it is to link to other parts of the internet; the browser has no choice, as an object, but to render whatever you manipulate your code to say, but you—a subject with an inner life—didn’t integrate any links to justify any of this. A blog post is an object, and it’s not going to be able to hold enough information to make the case that racism—the systemic organization of humans according to a number of metrics beyond skin color, all varying in form over history—simply “doesn’t exist.”
That’s a lot, but I wanted to unpack what I meant in an earnest way, b/c I don’t think your’e trolling with this post, but all of the above could be said this way, too, and a bit more to the point: You write that “a word only means something when it has a definition.” Definitions are not propriety; words cannot “have” anything—not just because they’re not economic subjects, but also because a word isn’t a “thing,” but a pattern of mouth noises we make which happen to correspond with squiggles. There’s a lot of writing on the ever-changing meaning of race, but you’ll never see a biography of it—chairs, nor words, have never been subjected to chattel slavery; no object has, but chairs are great to sit in while reading a book about racism, many of which literally are just expositions of the changing meaning of race. That’s an objective fact that I hope we can all agree on.
I'm reminded of a quote from Jon Snow in Game of Thrones:
And that's where we are today. That's where our political paradigm and political system has taken us. Whoever breaks faith with the truth first gets an advantage, and whoever tells the best lies and mounts the best spin campaign comes out ahead.
Small wonder that the word "racism" has been pimped out beyond any recognition. That's happened to our whole society.
At the risk of being blunt, racism is a bullshit word. Probably used to remind the masses of what's different about 'them'.
Since it is a proven fact that there is only one race the word racism just doesn't work. Bigot or bigotry is much more correct.