Sidebar from “Reflections on Little Rock”

Ophelia · Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:33 pm Post subject: Definition of "racism".

My posting wasn't about McWorther, but about what I perceive to be a growing misuse of the word "racism".

I don't know whether the definition from M-Webster's Dictionary helps to make my point, but just in case:

racism:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

irishrose · Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:07 pm Post subject:

Nope, no discrepancy, as far as I can tell. In fact, the definition of racism you posted is pretty close to the one I was using above. A statement that attributes a “primary determinant of human traits” to race, is a racist statement. As I said, I wasn’t speaking of people being racist, I was speaking of people making racist statements.

BTW, it may help if you note that I’m not judging whether racist statements are “good” or “bad” or even necessarily accurate or inaccurate. All I’m saying is if a statement asserts the “belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities,” then that statement is racist, regardless of the race of the speaker or the target of the comment.

So, going back to what I was saying with McWorther, which is the context in which I raised this whole thing. If he, and I’m not saying that he does, but if he attributes this “cult of anti-intellectualism,” referenced in his table of contents, primarily to race then I’d argue that’s a racist statement.

But, generally speaking, I would definitely assert that anyone, regardless of race, can be racist toward his or her own race. And I don’t think that skews the proper definition of racism.

Ophelia · Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:36 pm Post subject:

For the sake of argument, if I say:

1- When I went to classical music concerts in San Diego or Operas in Los Angeles, I noticed about 95 % (if not more) of the spectators were white.

It seemed to me that, at the end of the day or the week, different ehnic groups organized their leisure time in different ways.

2- When I was kindly invited for Christmas dinner by my African-American neighbours, I realized that all the books their little girl got for C where about black kids, and black heroes and heroines.

Are these racist statements?

I would say these are sentences in which I explain what I noticed about some of the elements of the lives of people from two racial groups.

irishrose · Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:02 pm Post subject:

First, if that question is directed to me, I didn’t mean to posture myself as the expert on all statements racist. So let me preface this by saying I THINK:

No I wouldn’t say either statement is racist, as neither statement fulfills the definition of racism. Neither statement draws any kind of conclusion about race as the primary determinant of, well, anything. You seem to have offered up two observations. And the one, quasi-conclusion drawn was about ethnicity, which I don’t use synonymously with race.

Speaking of ethnicity, you had raised an interesting point in the original Little Rock thread about community, to which I had replied with a conversation referencing Arendt's discussion on "like attracts like." I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, if you find time. Especially considering it's possible the way communities develop in various countries, or even in various parts of the same country, might differ.

MadArchitect · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 2:33 am Post subject:

I'm dragging another quote over from the "Little Rock" thread. Don't think we're picking on you, Ophelia.

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 5:57 am Post subject:

How interesting, I had no idea! One tends to think those classics were dreamt of in the sanitized version form the start...

MadArchitect · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 12:18 pm Post subject:

Hardly. It was a full time job dancing around the standards of decency. Most of it was handled by implication and double entendre. Hollywood essentially adopted a Censorship Board to avoid having the government impose a stricter one on them. But then, that doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with the topic of this thread -- I only mentioned "Gone With the Wind" because it leapt into my tired head when I read your comments about racism within racial groups. Even so, my example wasn't really racism, per se, but cultural discrimination. It only looks like racism because it centers on a word we associate with racism.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 12:33 pm Post subject:

Racism in the context of US history, it seems to me, needs to be seen within the context of white supremacy and black self-loathing. African Americans who embrace the norms of white supremacy and engage in black self-loathing are perpetuating some of the worst of this nation's racist legacies.

African Americans who equate all of white America with white supremacy are also perpetuating racist legacies: everything white is not supremacist, nor should everything from europe be reduced to colonialism. Romantic notions of African nobility are as ahistorical as its Western counterparts.

irishrose · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 6:36 pm Post subject:


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