Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Whoa, meta-semantics.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

If you want to argue semantics, you should stick to semantics. When you do shit like this, you leave a different impression.

Amazing how Pelosi has the power to name conservatives violate their principles
 

Ben Sasse is a bad joke.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

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.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I could not possibly call you a racist for this incident, or anything like it. The proper description that fits is "Person who had a racist thought."

This gets to the meat of semantic and logical problems with loose and lazy use of the term, "racist." It cheaply trades in absolutes where an argument of degree is appropriate. Having a single racist thought, or a racist thought every four or five days, or when you're in a certain part of town, does not make you a racist. It makes you a person who's had some racist thoughts.

Odd example, but fitting... I was watching a Bond flick the other night. Gert Frobe, who most know as Goldfinger, was a Nazi for a few years in the 30s. He left the movement before the war and became a staunch liberal, living an admirable life. However, for a period of time far longer than any moment of racist fear you've had, Gert Frobe was a National Socialist. Does this mean that forever he is a Nazi?

Of course it does not. That's an absurd position to take. As absurd as the position that because one is born into a system, he is automatically guilty of the sins of that system. This is akin to original sin, and original sin is a silly religious fiction.

It's logically and semantically lazy and counterproductive to assert "everyone is racist." The accurate statement is, "everybody in the US lives in a racist system." This is fair. Because unlike you, Hank, who may have a passing racist thought every once in a blue moon, many of the systems in this country are discriminatory all the time.

Torturing language is never an effective way to make a point. This board, which leans left, may accept expansions of definitions, but the general public does not. When you define a word so broadly that a person such as Adder can argue that everyone fits into that category, you trifle with rendering the term utterly meaningless. That result would be a huge shame. Because few words are as important as this one.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

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.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Ten years ago i learned the secret to successful dieting. I was on a diet where I did not eat sweets. Then my daughter made me a cake and I ate a piece. I woke up the next day bummed about it. My prior beliefs would be that I am no longer on the diet. But then I had a revelation- I had done "wrong" but I can start over again. I was not 100% bad.

When adder says we are all racists, it doesn't mean he thinks you might as well have gone to Charlottesville- instead he means let's all recognize we can improve (I think that is what he means)

But let's flip it to your def: how far will I have to move to be racist? Like if I'm afraid of a black man in a suit in downtown Birmingham Mi is that enough? Do I need to have thoughts once an hour? Can you define your limit?

The heart of this is you seem to believe someone who is a racist should be shunned and the rest of these socks believe it just means em has work to do (and gets to folks that should be shunned).

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Let me correct myself. I don't think you have any examples.

I answered your argument, and then some. You didn't get the answer you'd like.

I do not feel any guilt, and I am fully aware of just how flawed I am. Half of my persona is laughing at myself.

The expensive use of the term is intellectually lazy and opportunistic. The people who wish to so use it cannot even define it. Adder says everyone is racist. This is preposterous, of course, and proven so with the simple observation this would render a child born right now racist because it was born into a racist society.

You can't just decide to change words' meanings and then not even be able to provide a coherent and credible definition of what the new expanded use of the term includes. Or argue something frivolous like, "it covers everyone." Just because you want to be able to say "everyone is racist" doesn't entitle you to change language and mangle the classical definition of a word to suit your desire to use the word the way you want to.

It is correct to assert we live in a racist society. To assert everyone is racist is soft-headed.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

The heart of it is that this is a difficult argument of degree which should not be avoided by applying a term in an absolute manner. To do that is simply stupid. We have brains. We can assess degrees and develop boundaries where a term ought to fit and where it shouldn't.

Using the logic that everyone in the US is racist, all of the kids born during this thread are and will be racists. Try that argument in a forum where logic and adherence to proper use of language are demanded.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Your reflexive attitude is to deny it. Yes, that is a symptom of it.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Why are you so invested in this distinction? A person who has a racist thought is, on some level, a racist.

You're stuck on Hank not being a bad person, because he's aware of and tries to counteract his racists thoughts. But he can't possibly do that if he doesn't recognize them for what they are.

It's not lose and lazy. It's holding all of us accountable for our crap. Loose and lazy is excusing it, like you're doing.

It funny that what you think is "fair" is to absolve everyone of personal responsibility.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

My reflexive attitude is a dislike of stupid concepts. It is stupid to take a word and expand it to an extent where it is meaningless.

To say the following -- "Everyone in this country is a racist" -- which you have said, is simply, in a nutshell, stupid.

Imagine going into court and making the case, "You honor, I intend to prove that everyone in the US is racist." You'd be laughed at.

You can play with the word on a board like this, or any other forum where people sympathetic to the notion behind your expanded definition will give its linguistic and logical failings a pass, but that does not mean the general public will accept your view. The word has an accepted meaning and an accepted use.

My deep rooted dislike for this sort of thing actually has very little to do with this particular word. It has to do with something I see on both the right and left these days: A desire to replace facts with narratives, and often extreme narratives.

We of course live in a racist society. This is fact. But when you choose to say that everyone in the society is racist, you're now trafficking in narrative. That you claim it is essential that all people in the US acknowledge that they are racist does not prove that all people in the US are racist. That is illogic of the worst kind. Here's another fact: you cannot prove that all people in the US are racist. Your only argument there is the assertion all people born in the US are racist because the US society is generally racist. This argument is flatly absurd because it allows for no outliers. It's like arguing that all residents of the US make the average US income.

When the illogic of these arguments is exposed (the general public can see right through this sort of stuff, which I think irritates the shit out the left), its proponents then look to academia for cover. This is how we wind up with books filled with elliptical and incomplete arguments on things like "[insert subject] theory." These books rarely apply any rigor in their analyses. They often read like papers attempting to dispute global warming or claim the singularity is imminent. But they support some extreme view, like everyone is a racist, or everyone is a sexist.

The left usually has altruistic reasons for engaging in this behavior. It wants to shape narratives because if a narrative takes hold, it can change the way people think, and change the world for the better. The right can be a bit more sinister, disputing facts to create narratives of doubt on things like climate change. But they share a common strategy: Elevating a story over the actual facts.

The actual fact is no one can credibly say everybody in any nation is sexist, ageist, racist, [insert other 'ist's here]. Can't be done. What can be said, however, is to say that a society generally is [insert 'ist']. We can look at how groups are treated and say, based on empirical evidence, society is [insert 'ist'].

No narrative, no "enlightened" and nebulous expansion of the definition of a word will change this reality and allow any man anywhere to ever say with any credibility "all residents of X country are [insert 'ist']."

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Have you even paused to consider the fact that no one agrees with you is pretty strong evidence that the thing you believe is self-evident just isn't?

And it really would not be hard to find evidence for that case (there are actual people out there studying this stuff, you know). Heck, exhibit 1 is the fact you have repeatedly offered "are newborns racist?" as though it doesn't make you sounds like a 7th grader.

Yes, and it's not what you think it is.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You're far too conversant in statistics to accept the generalization, "everyone here is [insert]." We all know what's being done there. People want to create a really strong narrative. It's all with good intention. But it's not factual. "All Germans alive from 1930 to 1950 are Nazis." "All men alive in the 50s were sexists." "All Americans are capitalists." "All Soviets were communists." This could go on forever.

But people don't say these things. Because these things are facially untrue.

People are careful, and use this thing we call language, with all sorts of words in it, to state a thing in an accurate fashion. Instead of saying all Soviets were Communists, they say "The Soviet Union was a communist society." This allows for the obvious reality: Not every man, woman, and child in the USSR was a communist. The system, the society, was generally communist.

Not every man, woman, and child had personal responsibility for what Soviet society did or did not do. Some did, some did not. It also depended on what act or omission you're discussing.

If you wish to describe a complex concept, you have more than adequate words with which do so accurately. If you wish to expand words to create narratives that support a view of society you'd prefer people accept rather than the actual reality, you're free to do that as well. But understand -- anyone can do that. Donald Trump says extreme things and generalizes all day long. People read through that sort of intentional generalizing. Ultimately, it doesn't work. And that you have good motives for doing it is not an excuse.