Comment by crostlybostly
7 hours ago
Ranting about “Black people cant be racist” is a great way to get most people to ignore everything you say after.
Everyone can be racist. No one wants to debate pedantic redefined terms that liberal arts professors came up with so they could sell books.
The whole "X can't be racist" claim is part of the broader class of intellectual ragebait--subverting the original meaning of a term to elicit reaction and thereby garner views (or in the academic realm, citations), but with more refined language and logic than the usual memes ragebait is found in. I find it frustrating and detracting from actual meaningful social/scientific efforts.
There’s two kinds of racism - systemic, or institutional, racism, and colloquial individual racism.
Of course anyone can be individually racist. But institutionally, no. The American institutions and systems have always been white-focused, black people simply do not have the power to be institutionally racist.
I mean, has there ever been any anti-white law ever written in the US? No, because it’s not possible. The institution which makes, and enforces, the law is itself white.
Uhh Goldman Sachs came to my campus in 2010 and said they were only there to interview women and minorities. That is systemic racism.
Boohoo. What an ignorant take, a supporter of systemic racism pretending they're a victim of discrimination. Even elementary school children know their history better. You're not fooling anyone but yourself.
1 reply →
We really don't care any more. Nobody's buying what you're selling
Should you've stopped at "everyone can be racist", the comment would've been an excellent, if oversimplified, synthesis of the issue.
E:
> No one wants to debate pedantic redefined terms
Some do, and we can give them the space to do that without implying that the effort is automatically deserving of consideration.
> pedantic redefined terms that liberal arts professors came up with so they could sell books
That's a somewhat silly thing to argue. That's not how it really works, and it's not a "liberal" thing, whatever that may mean. (I assume it's an American term meant to designate something that's not conservative.)
Otherwise, what you say is correct.
The person you responded to never said it was a liberal thing, but liberal arts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
That's fair. Thanks for pointing it out. My point should be corrected in this case, but it still stands: that's not how it works.