Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I don't think you have many compelling examples because I do not think you are involved in acts or omissions which perpetuate racism.
Now do I think you've done so in the past.
I think this emphasis on defining racism to include everyone and everything in society lacks intellectual rigor and abuses semantics. I think you lose on the semantics so quickly and completely (people arguing for this expansive definition cannot even clearly define it themselves) that we needn't get to the logic. But if we did, you's lose there as well.
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You didn't ask for compelling examples, you asked for one example, so I gave you one, in the (fruitless) hope that you would answer my questions. If really want to have a semantic argument, my examples are going to pointless, because they are going to be examples of what you have already decided is not "racism."
Why does it matter so much to you that the word "racism" not be used broadly? You've been pretty clear that it's because you see "racism" as really bad, and you believe that you personally are not bad in that way. It's about your need to feel innocent in a flawed world.
I don't feel guilty about my role in hiring. There are lots of problems in the world that I haven't addressed. But part of what is insidious about societal racism is that lots of people, lots of whites, can act without conscious bigotry and yet some people, lots of blacks, are systematically harmed by it.
