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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Good grief, here I go again.

Adder is correct. You are wrong. Your constant inability to understand racism as a system which benefits one group of people over others because all you can see is the good-bad binary that requires actual malice before one can be labeled as a racist is a huge problem.

We live in a racist society set up to benefit white people in every possible way. Continuing to vote to keep that system in place is a vote for that racist system. One party has made it clear that that is what they are about. Voting for politicians who fight tooth and nail against fixing the problems with the system is a vote for racism. Requiring a smoking gun before admitting any action is racist--as opposed to looking at how an action, decision, policy, or law actually impacts people, is racist.

For example, you can talk about how a voter ID law is race neutral til you're blue in the face. If the law addresses a nonexistent fraud issue and reduces black voters by multiples over white voters, that law is racist. Period. Impact. It doesn't even matter if the person who drew up the law loves it because it reduces the number of Democrats, because the impact is racist. This is the most obvious example I can give you, but there are a million examples of this type of thing that fall in different places on the systemic racist spectrum in this country--application of death penalty, drug laws, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, etc.

And this is just the institutional stuff. If you are a partner and you only work with associates with whom you identify (mutual friends, both like sailing, grew up in your township), and you end up only working with white men, that's racism. You don't need to sit behind your desk, rubbing your hands together trying to figure out how to keep the black man down. The impact of your "unintentional" actions is racist.

TM

He understands all of that. He doesn't have a word that indicates systemic discrimination, and he uses the word "racist" to mean, as you say, only systemic discrimination combined with specific intent.

If Sebby wanted to talk about racism in the sense that the rest of us use the word, he would find a word to describe it. He doesn't want to do that, so he doesn't, and using the word the way he wants to lets him redirect the conversations, on his terms, to what he prefers to talk about.

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't- till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"

"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper some of them- particularly verbs: they're the proudest- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs- however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"