Confederate Memorials and Monuments - what history do they represent?

[iceberg]

Seriously?

One either opposes white supremacy or one embraces it. AFAIC, there is no middle ground on that.
One either opposes racism or one embraces it. There too, there is no middle ground position I will accept.

Seems very clear cut. What is racism, anyway?

What is racism, anyway?

I will answer your question directly and then I will expound upon my answer by providing a taxonomy of terms pertinent to this subject of race. I'm doing that (1) so that you and others may have a very precise understanding of how I construe a variety of terms and behaviors, (2) so I can refer to it when/if I need to in future discussions on USMB, (3) because though I've on USMB mentioned subtle manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, I don't recall having specifically identified any of them, and (4) to obviate your need to ask me additional definitional questions about related terms. The definitions I use are an amalgam of ideas and observations I've gathered over the course of my personal and professional life, as well as from reading scholarly literature on the matter.

What racism is:
Racism is a type of prejudice that is at once an ideology and system of oppression:

• It is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices,” such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions.
• It is a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group exercise power or privilege over those in non-dominant groups.

Racism, as the definition above implies, exists on multiple levels:

• Structural -- The interplay of policies, practices and programs of differing institutions which leads to adverse outcomes and conditions for communities comprised of the objects of racism when measured in comparison to the perpetrators of racism when the noted outcomes occur within the context of racialized historical and cultural conditions.
• Institutional -- Policies, practice, and procedures that work to the benefit of white people and the detriment of people of color, usually unintentionally or inadvertently.
• Individual/Interpersonal -- Prejudgment, bias, stereotypes or generalizations about an individual or group based on race. The impacts of individual/interpersonal racism on individuals are various internalizations of privilege and oppression and/or illegal discrimination.

On those various levels can be found overt racism (self-explanatory) one or several forms of subtle racism/racists that are not mutually exclusive:

• Symbolic Racism -- Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly (e.g., as opposition to policies that help racial minorities. (See "symbolic discrimination" below)
• Benevolent Racism -- "The White Man's Burden" is the classic notion of this.
• Color Blind Racism -- Color blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members (as opposed to all who don't realize advancement) is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores the relevance of and justness of structural support for inequities unavoidably faced by minorities due to their status as minorities. (See also: Is the Post in Post-Racial the Blind in Colorblind)
• Ambivalent Racism -- Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized racial groups.
• Modern Racism -- Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources.
• Aversive Racism -- Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial equality but have a personal aversion toward racial minorities.

You don't have to like or agree with that definition, but it's the one I apply and neither it nor my application of it is going to change. Period.

If you don't care for the definition to which I ascribe, you are not the first to do so. Generally, folks who reject it do so because they think it means only whites can be racists or the want a definition that seemingly to them absolves them from being racists or racially discriminatory. [1] That the definition above makes whites the sole people eligible to be racists simply is not the case. The definition above doesn't necessarily and universally make whites the only people on the planet who can be racists. It merely makes them the only people who can be racists in places where white people are the dominant group. Insofar as the majority of people in the world are not white, in many places whites are among the individuals who cannot be racist. It just so happens that the U.S. is not one of those places.

The thing is that if one is of a mind to be racist, one must also have the ability to act on it with relative impunity. That's only possible for people who hold the lion's share of power and authority in a given country or larger political block. ("Country" because of the supremacy of national laws and customs over local ones. "Or larger" because of the potential for racist collusion among countries having comparable racial majorities.)

Note:

1. I suppose I understand the latter part. Few non-card-carrying Neo Nazis, KKK members and so on want to face the possibility that despite their best efforts they may still be somewhat racist, thus racists, because in our heart of hearts we all know that racism is like pregnancy -- one either is or isn't.

What racism is not:
Racism is not xenophobia or ethnocentrism, yet it intersects with them.

• Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism is gauging others by using one’s own culture's traits, behaviors and norms as the benchmark/ideal standard by which all others are compared and found wanting.

Racism is also not discrimination.

• Discrimination in all its forms is first and foremost an indication of prejudicial intolerance that people display by behaving in what that deny just [legal sense of the word] treatment or consideration to people because of their membership in some group. Insofar as the discrimination is racial, it's based on the beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of racial prejudice, but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination for discrimination necessarily is an action one performs, not thought one has. It's fitting to here note that while I find it impossible in the U.S for minorities to exhibit and act on racism, certain minority individuals, like non-minorities, definitely are in positions whereby they have the opportunity to and may discriminate, racially, sexually, or on other bases. Discrimination can occur in several ways:
  • Institutional discrimination -- This is an overt form of discrimination whereby laws, organs and functionaries of the state or organization deny just treatment to individuals in the state. The classic example is Jim Crow laws. Kim Davis' faith-based refusal to marry same sex couples is also an example of discrimination promulgated by a non-state organization. One observes that in Zimbabwe there is racism and its discriminatory manifestation against white farmers and in India against Dalits.
  • Genocide and ethnic cleansing -- This is an extreme form of discrimination that I don't think is currently practiced in the U.S., so I'm not going to explicate it here. It's merely listed for completeness' sake.
  • Redlining and racial profiling -- essentially institutional discrimination on the sly, which is why it listed here and separately from the above institutional discrimination which is overt. It is considerably more difficult to identify and prove than are the overt forms of institutional discrimination. Since rarely do the actors admit to or positively record these modes of discriminating, it's generally identified and proven on the basis of pattern recognition.
    • Redlining takes many forms but all of them are covert means of institutionally discriminating. It is essentially consists of a person having some form of subject matter expertise steering people, people whom they are tasked with helping, in one or another direction based on assumptions the "driver" makes about race. Examples include:
      • Banks and/or bank loan officers giving fewer mortgages to people of color and more to non-minorities, based on the belief that the respective individuals, because of their race, are less/more able to repay loans.
      • Real estate agents steering people away from properties in certain neighborhoods and toward others because of the buyer's race and that of the people in the respective neighborhoods.
      • School advisers telling people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or grad school, and encouraging non-minorities to pursue college or grad school.
        
      • Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others.
    • Racial profiling is paying closer attention to members of a given group based solely on the individual's obvious membership in a given group than one does re: individuals not of that same group. For example:
      • Racial profiling often enough happens in my D.C. neighborhood, especially to black males who happen to be walking in it. Despite being within walking distance of a Metro station, almost no male adults walk the streets of my neighborhood, save for on Halloween night. Some people's housekeepers take public transportation to work, so it's not uncommon to see women walking to their place of work. By rights, so to speak, any male walking should be approached by a cop passing through, I'm told that the one minority dude who works as housekeeper gets stopped or "stared at" quite often. I, on the other hand, have never been stopped when I've opted to walk to a local restaurant or just to go for bike ride, jog or walk.
      • Using people's race as the basis for security guards choosing whom to follow through stores, regardless of their attire or other appearance traits.
    • Intolerant Communication
      • "Redneck racism" -- The word "racism" notwithstanding, this is nonetheless a behavior more so than a mindset or system. "Redneck racism" is R.W. Brislin's term for "the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race." Despite the apparent implication of the term "redneck" Brislin doesn't, nor do I, limit the behavior to whites. "Redneck racism" might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of them have some sexual connotation. How is this manifest? It can be somewhat subtle:
        • Often "couched"/veiled in "us/them" language --> Using the "you people" syntax is another way people communicate a willingness to discriminate based on race. This behavior is different from most modes of discrimination in that it suggests the presence of prejudice, and the will to act on it with regard to all members of (not of) a given racial group, more so than being a discriminatory action against someone in particular.
        • "Arm's length" or "social distance" discrimination --> Voicing tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships. This form of prejudicial discrimination, when its predicated on race, is found in remarks such as "She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate.” Statements of that sort assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.
      • Prejudiced colloquialisms -- This is the use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame X” or “retarded X," where "X" is whatever racial classification or epithet one cares to insert.
      • Linguistically innate racial prejudice -- This is challenging one to notice but not to exhibit for it's one that people probably display without realizing it, but covertness and absence are not the same things. One manifestation of it is seen in individuals of one race routinely interrupting speakers of another, yet when a member of one's own race speaks one doesn't do so. Similarly, when one is interrupted by a member of one's own race, one yields, but when another race individual does so, one does not yield or complains about having been interrupted, even though one doesn't do so with interrupters of one's own race. What's being racially discriminated against? The ideas of people belonging to another racial group; interrupting them is a means of squelching and/or discounting them and indicates that one thinks one's own ideas are superior and more deserving of being heard, perhaps preempting an audience's need to even hear the complete thoughts of the person against whom one is prejudiced and thus discriminates. (This form of discrimination can also be and may more often be applied in a sexual context.)
    • Symbolic discrimination -- This form of discrimination is a direct manifestation of symbolic racism. Symbolic discrimination relates largely to political attitudes and choices. It is made manifest in political decisions and proposals that effect one's discriminatory desires by veiling one's "anti-other" racial sentiments under the auspices of political attitudes, efficacies and approaches. Symbolic discrimination is a form of prejudice that is very hard to with certainty say an individual has exhibited and it's yet one that researchers have found absolutely does exist.

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

you asked him a yes or no question.

those are hard to answer when you carry a minimum of 10 bullets per post.

And he won't be able to answer it, even with all three volumes of his definition. The real world has a way of bowling over elaborate edifices like his definition. Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

well it would help if the liberals would stop redefining words to fit their current emo-state of mind.

 

[usmbguest5318]

We all must pick a side.

And those "sides" would be...?

Seriously?

One either opposes white supremacy or one embraces it. AFAIC, there is no middle ground on that.
One either opposes racism or one embraces it. There too, there is no middle ground position I will accept.

Seems very clear cut. What is racism, anyway?

What is racism, anyway?

I will answer your question directly and then I will expound upon my answer by providing a taxonomy of terms pertinent to this subject of race. I'm doing that (1) so that you and others may have a very precise understanding of how I construe a variety of terms and behaviors, (2) so I can refer to it when/if I need to in future discussions on USMB, (3) because though I've on USMB mentioned subtle manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, I don't recall having specifically identified any of them, and (4) to obviate your need to ask me additional definitional questions about related terms. The definitions I use are an amalgam of ideas and observations I've gathered over the course of my personal and professional life, as well as from reading scholarly literature on the matter.

What racism is:
Racism is a type of prejudice that is at once an ideology and system of oppression:

• It is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices,” such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions.
• It is a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group exercise power or privilege over those in non-dominant groups.

Racism, as the definition above implies, exists on multiple levels:

• Structural -- The interplay of policies, practices and programs of differing institutions which leads to adverse outcomes and conditions for communities comprised of the objects of racism when measured in comparison to the perpetrators of racism when the noted outcomes occur within the context of racialized historical and cultural conditions.
• Institutional -- Policies, practice, and procedures that work to the benefit of white people and the detriment of people of color, usually unintentionally or inadvertently.
• Individual/Interpersonal -- Prejudgment, bias, stereotypes or generalizations about an individual or group based on race. The impacts of individual/interpersonal racism on individuals are various internalizations of privilege and oppression and/or illegal discrimination.

On those various levels can be found overt racism (self-explanatory) one or several forms of subtle racism/racists that are not mutually exclusive:

• Symbolic Racism -- Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly (e.g., as opposition to policies that help racial minorities. (See "symbolic discrimination" below)
• Benevolent Racism -- "The White Man's Burden" is the classic notion of this.
• Color Blind Racism -- Color blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members (as opposed to all who don't realize advancement) is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores the relevance of and justness of structural support for inequities unavoidably faced by minorities due to their status as minorities. (See also: Is the Post in Post-Racial the Blind in Colorblind)
• Ambivalent Racism -- Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized racial groups.
• Modern Racism -- Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources.
• Aversive Racism -- Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial equality but have a personal aversion toward racial minorities.

You don't have to like or agree with that definition, but it's the one I apply and neither it nor my application of it is going to change. Period.

If you don't care for the definition to which I ascribe, you are not the first to do so. Generally, folks who reject it do so because they think it means only whites can be racists or the want a definition that seemingly to them absolves them from being racists or racially discriminatory. [1] That the definition above makes whites the sole people eligible to be racists simply is not the case. The definition above doesn't necessarily and universally make whites the only people on the planet who can be racists. It merely makes them the only people who can be racists in places where white people are the dominant group. Insofar as the majority of people in the world are not white, in many places whites are among the individuals who cannot be racist. It just so happens that the U.S. is not one of those places.

The thing is that if one is of a mind to be racist, one must also have the ability to act on it with relative impunity. That's only possible for people who hold the lion's share of power and authority in a given country or larger political block. ("Country" because of the supremacy of national laws and customs over local ones. "Or larger" because of the potential for racist collusion among countries having comparable racial majorities.)

Note:

1. I suppose I understand the latter part. Few non-card-carrying Neo Nazis, KKK members and so on want to face the possibility that despite their best efforts they may still be somewhat racist, thus racists, because in our heart of hearts we all know that racism is like pregnancy -- one either is or isn't.

What racism is not:
Racism is not xenophobia or ethnocentrism, yet it intersects with them.

• Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism is gauging others by using one’s own culture's traits, behaviors and norms as the benchmark/ideal standard by which all others are compared and found wanting.

Racism is also not discrimination.

• Discrimination in all its forms is first and foremost an indication of prejudicial intolerance that people display by behaving in what that deny just [legal sense of the word] treatment or consideration to people because of their membership in some group. Insofar as the discrimination is racial, it's based on the beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of racial prejudice, but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination for discrimination necessarily is an action one performs, not thought one has. It's fitting to here note that while I find it impossible in the U.S for minorities to exhibit and act on racism, certain minority individuals, like non-minorities, definitely are in positions whereby they have the opportunity to and may discriminate, racially, sexually, or on other bases. Discrimination can occur in several ways:
  • Institutional discrimination -- This is an overt form of discrimination whereby laws, organs and functionaries of the state or organization deny just treatment to individuals in the state. The classic example is Jim Crow laws. Kim Davis' faith-based refusal to marry same sex couples is also an example of discrimination promulgated by a non-state organization. One observes that in Zimbabwe there is racism and its discriminatory manifestation against white farmers and in India against Dalits.
  • Genocide and ethnic cleansing -- This is an extreme form of discrimination that I don't think is currently practiced in the U.S., so I'm not going to explicate it here. It's merely listed for completeness' sake.
  • Redlining and racial profiling -- essentially institutional discrimination on the sly, which is why it listed here and separately from the above institutional discrimination which is overt. It is considerably more difficult to identify and prove than are the overt forms of institutional discrimination. Since rarely do the actors admit to or positively record these modes of discriminating, it's generally identified and proven on the basis of pattern recognition.
    • Redlining takes many forms but all of them are covert means of institutionally discriminating. It is essentially consists of a person having some form of subject matter expertise steering people, people whom they are tasked with helping, in one or another direction based on assumptions the "driver" makes about race. Examples include:
      • Banks and/or bank loan officers giving fewer mortgages to people of color and more to non-minorities, based on the belief that the respective individuals, because of their race, are less/more able to repay loans.
      • Real estate agents steering people away from properties in certain neighborhoods and toward others because of the buyer's race and that of the people in the respective neighborhoods.
      • School advisers telling people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or grad school, and encouraging non-minorities to pursue college or grad school.
        
      • Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others.
    • Racial profiling is paying closer attention to members of a given group based solely on the individual's obvious membership in a given group than one does re: individuals not of that same group. For example:
      • Racial profiling often enough happens in my D.C. neighborhood, especially to black males who happen to be walking in it. Despite being within walking distance of a Metro station, almost no male adults walk the streets of my neighborhood, save for on Halloween night. Some people's housekeepers take public transportation to work, so it's not uncommon to see women walking to their place of work. By rights, so to speak, any male walking should be approached by a cop passing through, I'm told that the one minority dude who works as housekeeper gets stopped or "stared at" quite often. I, on the other hand, have never been stopped when I've opted to walk to a local restaurant or just to go for bike ride, jog or walk.
      • Using people's race as the basis for security guards choosing whom to follow through stores, regardless of their attire or other appearance traits.
    • Intolerant Communication
      • "Redneck racism" -- The word "racism" notwithstanding, this is nonetheless a behavior more so than a mindset or system. "Redneck racism" is R.W. Brislin's term for "the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race." Despite the apparent implication of the term "redneck" Brislin doesn't, nor do I, limit the behavior to whites. "Redneck racism" might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of them have some sexual connotation. How is this manifest? It can be somewhat subtle:
        • Often "couched"/veiled in "us/them" language --> Using the "you people" syntax is another way people communicate a willingness to discriminate based on race. This behavior is different from most modes of discrimination in that it suggests the presence of prejudice, and the will to act on it with regard to all members of (not of) a given racial group, more so than being a discriminatory action against someone in particular.
        • "Arm's length" or "social distance" discrimination --> Voicing tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships. This form of prejudicial discrimination, when its predicated on race, is found in remarks such as "She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate.” Statements of that sort assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.
      • Prejudiced colloquialisms -- This is the use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame X” or “retarded X," where "X" is whatever racial classification or epithet one cares to insert.
      • Linguistically innate racial prejudice -- This is challenging one to notice but not to exhibit for it's one that people probably display without realizing it, but covertness and absence are not the same things. One manifestation of it is seen in individuals of one race routinely interrupting speakers of another, yet when a member of one's own race speaks one doesn't do so. Similarly, when one is interrupted by a member of one's own race, one yields, but when another race individual does so, one does not yield or complains about having been interrupted, even though one doesn't do so with interrupters of one's own race. What's being racially discriminated against? The ideas of people belonging to another racial group; interrupting them is a means of squelching and/or discounting them and indicates that one thinks one's own ideas are superior and more deserving of being heard, perhaps preempting an audience's need to even hear the complete thoughts of the person against whom one is prejudiced and thus discriminates. (This form of discrimination can also be and may more often be applied in a sexual context.)
    • Symbolic discrimination -- This form of discrimination is a direct manifestation of symbolic racism. Symbolic discrimination relates largely to political attitudes and choices. It is made manifest in political decisions and proposals that effect one's discriminatory desires by veiling one's "anti-other" racial sentiments under the auspices of political attitudes, efficacies and approaches. Symbolic discrimination is a form of prejudice that is very hard to with certainty say an individual has exhibited and it's yet one that researchers have found absolutely does exist.

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

Whether you are a racist is existential and will be reflected by your choice; however, in the simplicity of circumstances as you identified above, your choice alone and considered in the abstract does not and in no way can define whether you are.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Seriously?

One either opposes white supremacy or one embraces it. AFAIC, there is no middle ground on that.
One either opposes racism or one embraces it. There too, there is no middle ground position I will accept.

Seems very clear cut. What is racism, anyway?

What is racism, anyway?

I will answer your question directly and then I will expound upon my answer by providing a taxonomy of terms pertinent to this subject of race. I'm doing that (1) so that you and others may have a very precise understanding of how I construe a variety of terms and behaviors, (2) so I can refer to it when/if I need to in future discussions on USMB, (3) because though I've on USMB mentioned subtle manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, I don't recall having specifically identified any of them, and (4) to obviate your need to ask me additional definitional questions about related terms. The definitions I use are an amalgam of ideas and observations I've gathered over the course of my personal and professional life, as well as from reading scholarly literature on the matter.

What racism is:
Racism is a type of prejudice that is at once an ideology and system of oppression:

• It is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices,” such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions.
• It is a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group exercise power or privilege over those in non-dominant groups.

Racism, as the definition above implies, exists on multiple levels:

• Structural -- The interplay of policies, practices and programs of differing institutions which leads to adverse outcomes and conditions for communities comprised of the objects of racism when measured in comparison to the perpetrators of racism when the noted outcomes occur within the context of racialized historical and cultural conditions.
• Institutional -- Policies, practice, and procedures that work to the benefit of white people and the detriment of people of color, usually unintentionally or inadvertently.
• Individual/Interpersonal -- Prejudgment, bias, stereotypes or generalizations about an individual or group based on race. The impacts of individual/interpersonal racism on individuals are various internalizations of privilege and oppression and/or illegal discrimination.

On those various levels can be found overt racism (self-explanatory) one or several forms of subtle racism/racists that are not mutually exclusive:

• Symbolic Racism -- Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly (e.g., as opposition to policies that help racial minorities. (See "symbolic discrimination" below)
• Benevolent Racism -- "The White Man's Burden" is the classic notion of this.
• Color Blind Racism -- Color blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members (as opposed to all who don't realize advancement) is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores the relevance of and justness of structural support for inequities unavoidably faced by minorities due to their status as minorities. (See also: Is the Post in Post-Racial the Blind in Colorblind)
• Ambivalent Racism -- Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized racial groups.
• Modern Racism -- Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources.
• Aversive Racism -- Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial equality but have a personal aversion toward racial minorities.

You don't have to like or agree with that definition, but it's the one I apply and neither it nor my application of it is going to change. Period.

If you don't care for the definition to which I ascribe, you are not the first to do so. Generally, folks who reject it do so because they think it means only whites can be racists or the want a definition that seemingly to them absolves them from being racists or racially discriminatory. [1] That the definition above makes whites the sole people eligible to be racists simply is not the case. The definition above doesn't necessarily and universally make whites the only people on the planet who can be racists. It merely makes them the only people who can be racists in places where white people are the dominant group. Insofar as the majority of people in the world are not white, in many places whites are among the individuals who cannot be racist. It just so happens that the U.S. is not one of those places.

The thing is that if one is of a mind to be racist, one must also have the ability to act on it with relative impunity. That's only possible for people who hold the lion's share of power and authority in a given country or larger political block. ("Country" because of the supremacy of national laws and customs over local ones. "Or larger" because of the potential for racist collusion among countries having comparable racial majorities.)

Note:

1. I suppose I understand the latter part. Few non-card-carrying Neo Nazis, KKK members and so on want to face the possibility that despite their best efforts they may still be somewhat racist, thus racists, because in our heart of hearts we all know that racism is like pregnancy -- one either is or isn't.

What racism is not:
Racism is not xenophobia or ethnocentrism, yet it intersects with them.

• Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism is gauging others by using one’s own culture's traits, behaviors and norms as the benchmark/ideal standard by which all others are compared and found wanting.

Racism is also not discrimination.

• Discrimination in all its forms is first and foremost an indication of prejudicial intolerance that people display by behaving in what that deny just [legal sense of the word] treatment or consideration to people because of their membership in some group. Insofar as the discrimination is racial, it's based on the beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of racial prejudice, but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination for discrimination necessarily is an action one performs, not thought one has. It's fitting to here note that while I find it impossible in the U.S for minorities to exhibit and act on racism, certain minority individuals, like non-minorities, definitely are in positions whereby they have the opportunity to and may discriminate, racially, sexually, or on other bases. Discrimination can occur in several ways:
  • Institutional discrimination -- This is an overt form of discrimination whereby laws, organs and functionaries of the state or organization deny just treatment to individuals in the state. The classic example is Jim Crow laws. Kim Davis' faith-based refusal to marry same sex couples is also an example of discrimination promulgated by a non-state organization. One observes that in Zimbabwe there is racism and its discriminatory manifestation against white farmers and in India against Dalits.
  • Genocide and ethnic cleansing -- This is an extreme form of discrimination that I don't think is currently practiced in the U.S., so I'm not going to explicate it here. It's merely listed for completeness' sake.
  • Redlining and racial profiling -- essentially institutional discrimination on the sly, which is why it listed here and separately from the above institutional discrimination which is overt. It is considerably more difficult to identify and prove than are the overt forms of institutional discrimination. Since rarely do the actors admit to or positively record these modes of discriminating, it's generally identified and proven on the basis of pattern recognition.
    • Redlining takes many forms but all of them are covert means of institutionally discriminating. It is essentially consists of a person having some form of subject matter expertise steering people, people whom they are tasked with helping, in one or another direction based on assumptions the "driver" makes about race. Examples include:
      • Banks and/or bank loan officers giving fewer mortgages to people of color and more to non-minorities, based on the belief that the respective individuals, because of their race, are less/more able to repay loans.
      • Real estate agents steering people away from properties in certain neighborhoods and toward others because of the buyer's race and that of the people in the respective neighborhoods.
      • School advisers telling people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or grad school, and encouraging non-minorities to pursue college or grad school.
        
      • Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others.
    • Racial profiling is paying closer attention to members of a given group based solely on the individual's obvious membership in a given group than one does re: individuals not of that same group. For example:
      • Racial profiling often enough happens in my D.C. neighborhood, especially to black males who happen to be walking in it. Despite being within walking distance of a Metro station, almost no male adults walk the streets of my neighborhood, save for on Halloween night. Some people's housekeepers take public transportation to work, so it's not uncommon to see women walking to their place of work. By rights, so to speak, any male walking should be approached by a cop passing through, I'm told that the one minority dude who works as housekeeper gets stopped or "stared at" quite often. I, on the other hand, have never been stopped when I've opted to walk to a local restaurant or just to go for bike ride, jog or walk.
      • Using people's race as the basis for security guards choosing whom to follow through stores, regardless of their attire or other appearance traits.
    • Intolerant Communication
      • "Redneck racism" -- The word "racism" notwithstanding, this is nonetheless a behavior more so than a mindset or system. "Redneck racism" is R.W. Brislin's term for "the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race." Despite the apparent implication of the term "redneck" Brislin doesn't, nor do I, limit the behavior to whites. "Redneck racism" might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of them have some sexual connotation. How is this manifest? It can be somewhat subtle:
        • Often "couched"/veiled in "us/them" language --> Using the "you people" syntax is another way people communicate a willingness to discriminate based on race. This behavior is different from most modes of discrimination in that it suggests the presence of prejudice, and the will to act on it with regard to all members of (not of) a given racial group, more so than being a discriminatory action against someone in particular.
        • "Arm's length" or "social distance" discrimination --> Voicing tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships. This form of prejudicial discrimination, when its predicated on race, is found in remarks such as "She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate.” Statements of that sort assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.
      • Prejudiced colloquialisms -- This is the use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame X” or “retarded X," where "X" is whatever racial classification or epithet one cares to insert.
      • Linguistically innate racial prejudice -- This is challenging one to notice but not to exhibit for it's one that people probably display without realizing it, but covertness and absence are not the same things. One manifestation of it is seen in individuals of one race routinely interrupting speakers of another, yet when a member of one's own race speaks one doesn't do so. Similarly, when one is interrupted by a member of one's own race, one yields, but when another race individual does so, one does not yield or complains about having been interrupted, even though one doesn't do so with interrupters of one's own race. What's being racially discriminated against? The ideas of people belonging to another racial group; interrupting them is a means of squelching and/or discounting them and indicates that one thinks one's own ideas are superior and more deserving of being heard, perhaps preempting an audience's need to even hear the complete thoughts of the person against whom one is prejudiced and thus discriminates. (This form of discrimination can also be and may more often be applied in a sexual context.)
    • Symbolic discrimination -- This form of discrimination is a direct manifestation of symbolic racism. Symbolic discrimination relates largely to political attitudes and choices. It is made manifest in political decisions and proposals that effect one's discriminatory desires by veiling one's "anti-other" racial sentiments under the auspices of political attitudes, efficacies and approaches. Symbolic discrimination is a form of prejudice that is very hard to with certainty say an individual has exhibited and it's yet one that researchers have found absolutely does exist.

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

you asked him a yes or no question.

those are hard to answer when you carry a minimum of 10 bullets per post.

And he won't be able to answer it, even with all three volumes of his definition. The real world has a way of bowling over elaborate edifices like his definition. Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

Any such professor worth his salt will be equally aware of how others who think there is such a thing as race construe the matter as well as how/why it is that those individuals are mistaken. Accordingly, the professor will be able, as needed, to answer questions from either (or all, in instances where there are more than two sides) perspective. That is why the "professor" in your scenario is able to correctly answer "nine."

That's the way it is with intellectuals. They understand their side of an argument as well as they understand the opposing side; thus they are keenly aware of which side has the greater share of weaknesses, recognizing that greater share may be quantitatively or qualitatively, or a mix of each, determined.

Quite simply it's rare that one overcomes something one doesn't fully understand. Racism is one such thing that requires such a full understanding, at least by some quantity of people who lead, to be overcome.

 

[cnelsen]

And those "sides" would be...?

Seriously?

One either opposes white supremacy or one embraces it. AFAIC, there is no middle ground on that.
One either opposes racism or one embraces it. There too, there is no middle ground position I will accept.

Seems very clear cut. What is racism, anyway?

What is racism, anyway?

I will answer your question directly and then I will expound upon my answer by providing a taxonomy of terms pertinent to this subject of race. I'm doing that (1) so that you and others may have a very precise understanding of how I construe a variety of terms and behaviors, (2) so I can refer to it when/if I need to in future discussions on USMB, (3) because though I've on USMB mentioned subtle manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, I don't recall having specifically identified any of them, and (4) to obviate your need to ask me additional definitional questions about related terms. The definitions I use are an amalgam of ideas and observations I've gathered over the course of my personal and professional life, as well as from reading scholarly literature on the matter.

What racism is:
Racism is a type of prejudice that is at once an ideology and system of oppression:

• It is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices,” such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions.
• It is a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group exercise power or privilege over those in non-dominant groups.

Racism, as the definition above implies, exists on multiple levels:

• Structural -- The interplay of policies, practices and programs of differing institutions which leads to adverse outcomes and conditions for communities comprised of the objects of racism when measured in comparison to the perpetrators of racism when the noted outcomes occur within the context of racialized historical and cultural conditions.
• Institutional -- Policies, practice, and procedures that work to the benefit of white people and the detriment of people of color, usually unintentionally or inadvertently.
• Individual/Interpersonal -- Prejudgment, bias, stereotypes or generalizations about an individual or group based on race. The impacts of individual/interpersonal racism on individuals are various internalizations of privilege and oppression and/or illegal discrimination.

On those various levels can be found overt racism (self-explanatory) one or several forms of subtle racism/racists that are not mutually exclusive:

• Symbolic Racism -- Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly (e.g., as opposition to policies that help racial minorities. (See "symbolic discrimination" below)
• Benevolent Racism -- "The White Man's Burden" is the classic notion of this.
• Color Blind Racism -- Color blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members (as opposed to all who don't realize advancement) is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores the relevance of and justness of structural support for inequities unavoidably faced by minorities due to their status as minorities. (See also: Is the Post in Post-Racial the Blind in Colorblind)
• Ambivalent Racism -- Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized racial groups.
• Modern Racism -- Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources.
• Aversive Racism -- Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial equality but have a personal aversion toward racial minorities.

You don't have to like or agree with that definition, but it's the one I apply and neither it nor my application of it is going to change. Period.

If you don't care for the definition to which I ascribe, you are not the first to do so. Generally, folks who reject it do so because they think it means only whites can be racists or the want a definition that seemingly to them absolves them from being racists or racially discriminatory. [1] That the definition above makes whites the sole people eligible to be racists simply is not the case. The definition above doesn't necessarily and universally make whites the only people on the planet who can be racists. It merely makes them the only people who can be racists in places where white people are the dominant group. Insofar as the majority of people in the world are not white, in many places whites are among the individuals who cannot be racist. It just so happens that the U.S. is not one of those places.

The thing is that if one is of a mind to be racist, one must also have the ability to act on it with relative impunity. That's only possible for people who hold the lion's share of power and authority in a given country or larger political block. ("Country" because of the supremacy of national laws and customs over local ones. "Or larger" because of the potential for racist collusion among countries having comparable racial majorities.)

Note:

1. I suppose I understand the latter part. Few non-card-carrying Neo Nazis, KKK members and so on want to face the possibility that despite their best efforts they may still be somewhat racist, thus racists, because in our heart of hearts we all know that racism is like pregnancy -- one either is or isn't.

What racism is not:
Racism is not xenophobia or ethnocentrism, yet it intersects with them.

• Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism is gauging others by using one’s own culture's traits, behaviors and norms as the benchmark/ideal standard by which all others are compared and found wanting.

Racism is also not discrimination.

• Discrimination in all its forms is first and foremost an indication of prejudicial intolerance that people display by behaving in what that deny just [legal sense of the word] treatment or consideration to people because of their membership in some group. Insofar as the discrimination is racial, it's based on the beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of racial prejudice, but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination for discrimination necessarily is an action one performs, not thought one has. It's fitting to here note that while I find it impossible in the U.S for minorities to exhibit and act on racism, certain minority individuals, like non-minorities, definitely are in positions whereby they have the opportunity to and may discriminate, racially, sexually, or on other bases. Discrimination can occur in several ways:
  • Institutional discrimination -- This is an overt form of discrimination whereby laws, organs and functionaries of the state or organization deny just treatment to individuals in the state. The classic example is Jim Crow laws. Kim Davis' faith-based refusal to marry same sex couples is also an example of discrimination promulgated by a non-state organization. One observes that in Zimbabwe there is racism and its discriminatory manifestation against white farmers and in India against Dalits.
  • Genocide and ethnic cleansing -- This is an extreme form of discrimination that I don't think is currently practiced in the U.S., so I'm not going to explicate it here. It's merely listed for completeness' sake.
  • Redlining and racial profiling -- essentially institutional discrimination on the sly, which is why it listed here and separately from the above institutional discrimination which is overt. It is considerably more difficult to identify and prove than are the overt forms of institutional discrimination. Since rarely do the actors admit to or positively record these modes of discriminating, it's generally identified and proven on the basis of pattern recognition.
    • Redlining takes many forms but all of them are covert means of institutionally discriminating. It is essentially consists of a person having some form of subject matter expertise steering people, people whom they are tasked with helping, in one or another direction based on assumptions the "driver" makes about race. Examples include:
      • Banks and/or bank loan officers giving fewer mortgages to people of color and more to non-minorities, based on the belief that the respective individuals, because of their race, are less/more able to repay loans.
      • Real estate agents steering people away from properties in certain neighborhoods and toward others because of the buyer's race and that of the people in the respective neighborhoods.
      • School advisers telling people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or grad school, and encouraging non-minorities to pursue college or grad school.
        
      • Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others.
    • Racial profiling is paying closer attention to members of a given group based solely on the individual's obvious membership in a given group than one does re: individuals not of that same group. For example:
      • Racial profiling often enough happens in my D.C. neighborhood, especially to black males who happen to be walking in it. Despite being within walking distance of a Metro station, almost no male adults walk the streets of my neighborhood, save for on Halloween night. Some people's housekeepers take public transportation to work, so it's not uncommon to see women walking to their place of work. By rights, so to speak, any male walking should be approached by a cop passing through, I'm told that the one minority dude who works as housekeeper gets stopped or "stared at" quite often. I, on the other hand, have never been stopped when I've opted to walk to a local restaurant or just to go for bike ride, jog or walk.
      • Using people's race as the basis for security guards choosing whom to follow through stores, regardless of their attire or other appearance traits.
    • Intolerant Communication
      • "Redneck racism" -- The word "racism" notwithstanding, this is nonetheless a behavior more so than a mindset or system. "Redneck racism" is R.W. Brislin's term for "the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race." Despite the apparent implication of the term "redneck" Brislin doesn't, nor do I, limit the behavior to whites. "Redneck racism" might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of them have some sexual connotation. How is this manifest? It can be somewhat subtle:
        • Often "couched"/veiled in "us/them" language --> Using the "you people" syntax is another way people communicate a willingness to discriminate based on race. This behavior is different from most modes of discrimination in that it suggests the presence of prejudice, and the will to act on it with regard to all members of (not of) a given racial group, more so than being a discriminatory action against someone in particular.
        • "Arm's length" or "social distance" discrimination --> Voicing tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships. This form of prejudicial discrimination, when its predicated on race, is found in remarks such as "She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate.” Statements of that sort assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.
      • Prejudiced colloquialisms -- This is the use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame X” or “retarded X," where "X" is whatever racial classification or epithet one cares to insert.
      • Linguistically innate racial prejudice -- This is challenging one to notice but not to exhibit for it's one that people probably display without realizing it, but covertness and absence are not the same things. One manifestation of it is seen in individuals of one race routinely interrupting speakers of another, yet when a member of one's own race speaks one doesn't do so. Similarly, when one is interrupted by a member of one's own race, one yields, but when another race individual does so, one does not yield or complains about having been interrupted, even though one doesn't do so with interrupters of one's own race. What's being racially discriminated against? The ideas of people belonging to another racial group; interrupting them is a means of squelching and/or discounting them and indicates that one thinks one's own ideas are superior and more deserving of being heard, perhaps preempting an audience's need to even hear the complete thoughts of the person against whom one is prejudiced and thus discriminates. (This form of discrimination can also be and may more often be applied in a sexual context.)
    • Symbolic discrimination -- This form of discrimination is a direct manifestation of symbolic racism. Symbolic discrimination relates largely to political attitudes and choices. It is made manifest in political decisions and proposals that effect one's discriminatory desires by veiling one's "anti-other" racial sentiments under the auspices of political attitudes, efficacies and approaches. Symbolic discrimination is a form of prejudice that is very hard to with certainty say an individual has exhibited and it's yet one that researchers have found absolutely does exist.

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

Whether you are a racist is existential and will be reflected by your choice; however, in the simplicity of circumstances as you identified above, your choice alone and considered in the abstract does not and in no way can define whether you are.

But wouldn't that qualify by your definition?

Here's an example you gave of racism: "Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others."

Let's use African-Americans and Asian-Americans as the races. Blacks are generally stronger than Yellows, are far more likely to be carrying a gun, are much more prone to violence, are far more likely to have a dysfunctional and violent home life, are bigger in stature, and they physically mature faster. That is simply the truth. Therefore, incidents of police subduing one or the other race will in general have stark differences UNAVOIDABLY. What benefit is there to labeling this unavoidable situation "racist"?

 

[usmbguest5318]

Seriously?

One either opposes white supremacy or one embraces it. AFAIC, there is no middle ground on that.
One either opposes racism or one embraces it. There too, there is no middle ground position I will accept.

Seems very clear cut. What is racism, anyway?

What is racism, anyway?

I will answer your question directly and then I will expound upon my answer by providing a taxonomy of terms pertinent to this subject of race. I'm doing that (1) so that you and others may have a very precise understanding of how I construe a variety of terms and behaviors, (2) so I can refer to it when/if I need to in future discussions on USMB, (3) because though I've on USMB mentioned subtle manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, I don't recall having specifically identified any of them, and (4) to obviate your need to ask me additional definitional questions about related terms. The definitions I use are an amalgam of ideas and observations I've gathered over the course of my personal and professional life, as well as from reading scholarly literature on the matter.

What racism is:
Racism is a type of prejudice that is at once an ideology and system of oppression:

• It is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices,” such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions.
• It is a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group exercise power or privilege over those in non-dominant groups.

Racism, as the definition above implies, exists on multiple levels:

• Structural -- The interplay of policies, practices and programs of differing institutions which leads to adverse outcomes and conditions for communities comprised of the objects of racism when measured in comparison to the perpetrators of racism when the noted outcomes occur within the context of racialized historical and cultural conditions.
• Institutional -- Policies, practice, and procedures that work to the benefit of white people and the detriment of people of color, usually unintentionally or inadvertently.
• Individual/Interpersonal -- Prejudgment, bias, stereotypes or generalizations about an individual or group based on race. The impacts of individual/interpersonal racism on individuals are various internalizations of privilege and oppression and/or illegal discrimination.

On those various levels can be found overt racism (self-explanatory) one or several forms of subtle racism/racists that are not mutually exclusive:

• Symbolic Racism -- Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly (e.g., as opposition to policies that help racial minorities. (See "symbolic discrimination" below)
• Benevolent Racism -- "The White Man's Burden" is the classic notion of this.
• Color Blind Racism -- Color blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members (as opposed to all who don't realize advancement) is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores the relevance of and justness of structural support for inequities unavoidably faced by minorities due to their status as minorities. (See also: Is the Post in Post-Racial the Blind in Colorblind)
• Ambivalent Racism -- Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized racial groups.
• Modern Racism -- Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources.
• Aversive Racism -- Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial equality but have a personal aversion toward racial minorities.

You don't have to like or agree with that definition, but it's the one I apply and neither it nor my application of it is going to change. Period.

If you don't care for the definition to which I ascribe, you are not the first to do so. Generally, folks who reject it do so because they think it means only whites can be racists or the want a definition that seemingly to them absolves them from being racists or racially discriminatory. [1] That the definition above makes whites the sole people eligible to be racists simply is not the case. The definition above doesn't necessarily and universally make whites the only people on the planet who can be racists. It merely makes them the only people who can be racists in places where white people are the dominant group. Insofar as the majority of people in the world are not white, in many places whites are among the individuals who cannot be racist. It just so happens that the U.S. is not one of those places.

The thing is that if one is of a mind to be racist, one must also have the ability to act on it with relative impunity. That's only possible for people who hold the lion's share of power and authority in a given country or larger political block. ("Country" because of the supremacy of national laws and customs over local ones. "Or larger" because of the potential for racist collusion among countries having comparable racial majorities.)

Note:

1. I suppose I understand the latter part. Few non-card-carrying Neo Nazis, KKK members and so on want to face the possibility that despite their best efforts they may still be somewhat racist, thus racists, because in our heart of hearts we all know that racism is like pregnancy -- one either is or isn't.

What racism is not:
Racism is not xenophobia or ethnocentrism, yet it intersects with them.

• Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism is gauging others by using one’s own culture's traits, behaviors and norms as the benchmark/ideal standard by which all others are compared and found wanting.

Racism is also not discrimination.

• Discrimination in all its forms is first and foremost an indication of prejudicial intolerance that people display by behaving in what that deny just [legal sense of the word] treatment or consideration to people because of their membership in some group. Insofar as the discrimination is racial, it's based on the beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of racial prejudice, but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination for discrimination necessarily is an action one performs, not thought one has. It's fitting to here note that while I find it impossible in the U.S for minorities to exhibit and act on racism, certain minority individuals, like non-minorities, definitely are in positions whereby they have the opportunity to and may discriminate, racially, sexually, or on other bases. Discrimination can occur in several ways:
  • Institutional discrimination -- This is an overt form of discrimination whereby laws, organs and functionaries of the state or organization deny just treatment to individuals in the state. The classic example is Jim Crow laws. Kim Davis' faith-based refusal to marry same sex couples is also an example of discrimination promulgated by a non-state organization. One observes that in Zimbabwe there is racism and its discriminatory manifestation against white farmers and in India against Dalits.
  • Genocide and ethnic cleansing -- This is an extreme form of discrimination that I don't think is currently practiced in the U.S., so I'm not going to explicate it here. It's merely listed for completeness' sake.
  • Redlining and racial profiling -- essentially institutional discrimination on the sly, which is why it listed here and separately from the above institutional discrimination which is overt. It is considerably more difficult to identify and prove than are the overt forms of institutional discrimination. Since rarely do the actors admit to or positively record these modes of discriminating, it's generally identified and proven on the basis of pattern recognition.
    • Redlining takes many forms but all of them are covert means of institutionally discriminating. It is essentially consists of a person having some form of subject matter expertise steering people, people whom they are tasked with helping, in one or another direction based on assumptions the "driver" makes about race. Examples include:
      • Banks and/or bank loan officers giving fewer mortgages to people of color and more to non-minorities, based on the belief that the respective individuals, because of their race, are less/more able to repay loans.
      • Real estate agents steering people away from properties in certain neighborhoods and toward others because of the buyer's race and that of the people in the respective neighborhoods.
      • School advisers telling people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or grad school, and encouraging non-minorities to pursue college or grad school.
        
      • Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others.
    • Racial profiling is paying closer attention to members of a given group based solely on the individual's obvious membership in a given group than one does re: individuals not of that same group. For example:
      • Racial profiling often enough happens in my D.C. neighborhood, especially to black males who happen to be walking in it. Despite being within walking distance of a Metro station, almost no male adults walk the streets of my neighborhood, save for on Halloween night. Some people's housekeepers take public transportation to work, so it's not uncommon to see women walking to their place of work. By rights, so to speak, any male walking should be approached by a cop passing through, I'm told that the one minority dude who works as housekeeper gets stopped or "stared at" quite often. I, on the other hand, have never been stopped when I've opted to walk to a local restaurant or just to go for bike ride, jog or walk.
      • Using people's race as the basis for security guards choosing whom to follow through stores, regardless of their attire or other appearance traits.
    • Intolerant Communication
      • "Redneck racism" -- The word "racism" notwithstanding, this is nonetheless a behavior more so than a mindset or system. "Redneck racism" is R.W. Brislin's term for "the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race." Despite the apparent implication of the term "redneck" Brislin doesn't, nor do I, limit the behavior to whites. "Redneck racism" might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of them have some sexual connotation. How is this manifest? It can be somewhat subtle:
        • Often "couched"/veiled in "us/them" language --> Using the "you people" syntax is another way people communicate a willingness to discriminate based on race. This behavior is different from most modes of discrimination in that it suggests the presence of prejudice, and the will to act on it with regard to all members of (not of) a given racial group, more so than being a discriminatory action against someone in particular.
        • "Arm's length" or "social distance" discrimination --> Voicing tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships. This form of prejudicial discrimination, when its predicated on race, is found in remarks such as "She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate.” Statements of that sort assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.
      • Prejudiced colloquialisms -- This is the use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame X” or “retarded X," where "X" is whatever racial classification or epithet one cares to insert.
      • Linguistically innate racial prejudice -- This is challenging one to notice but not to exhibit for it's one that people probably display without realizing it, but covertness and absence are not the same things. One manifestation of it is seen in individuals of one race routinely interrupting speakers of another, yet when a member of one's own race speaks one doesn't do so. Similarly, when one is interrupted by a member of one's own race, one yields, but when another race individual does so, one does not yield or complains about having been interrupted, even though one doesn't do so with interrupters of one's own race. What's being racially discriminated against? The ideas of people belonging to another racial group; interrupting them is a means of squelching and/or discounting them and indicates that one thinks one's own ideas are superior and more deserving of being heard, perhaps preempting an audience's need to even hear the complete thoughts of the person against whom one is prejudiced and thus discriminates. (This form of discrimination can also be and may more often be applied in a sexual context.)
    • Symbolic discrimination -- This form of discrimination is a direct manifestation of symbolic racism. Symbolic discrimination relates largely to political attitudes and choices. It is made manifest in political decisions and proposals that effect one's discriminatory desires by veiling one's "anti-other" racial sentiments under the auspices of political attitudes, efficacies and approaches. Symbolic discrimination is a form of prejudice that is very hard to with certainty say an individual has exhibited and it's yet one that researchers have found absolutely does exist.

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

Whether you are a racist is existential and will be reflected by your choice; however, in the simplicity of circumstances as you identified above, your choice alone and considered in the abstract does not and in no way can define whether you are.

But wouldn't that qualify by your definition?

Here's an example you gave of racism: "Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others."

Let's use African-Americans and Asian-Americans as the races. Blacks are generally stronger than Yellows, are far more likely to be carrying a gun, are much more prone to violence, are far more likely to have a dysfunctional and violent home life, are bigger in stature, and they physically mature faster. That is simply the truth. Therefore, incidents of police subduing one or the other race will in general have stark differences UNAVOIDABLY. What benefit is there to labeling this unavoidable situation "racist"?

But wouldn't that qualify by your definition?

No. My definition is just that, a definition, not an evaluation or diagnosis.

Dogs are mammals, but not all mammals are dogs.

You're trying to fish from me a binary response, and the reality of racism and determining who is and isn't, what instance of a given behavior, one that isn't blatantly racist, is or isn't a manifestation of racism. The reality is that much about racism is not "black and white" but rather gray, and not necessarily one shade of gray. It'd be nice if everything about racism were that simple, but that just isn't the case. Some of can work our way through that and some of us cannot.

Let's use African-Americans and Asian-Americans as the races. Blacks are generally stronger than Yellows, are far more likely to be carrying a gun, are much more prone to violence, are far more likely to have a dysfunctional and violent home life, are bigger in stature, and they physically mature faster. That is simply the truth. Therefore, incidents of police subduing one or the other race will in general have stark differences UNAVOIDABLY. What benefit is there to labeling this unavoidable situation "racist"?

Is the fact that "Blacks are generally stronger, far more likely to be carrying a gun, more prone to violence, more likely to have a dysfunctional and violent home life, are bigger in stature, and they physically mature faster" a function of their being black or a function of something(s) other than their being black?

To the extent that those things are functions of something(s) other than their being black and observers judge blacks on the basis of their merely being black, those observers are at the very least making irrational judgements and at the worst being racist. Which and where those observers/judgment makers fall on that spectrum depends on several of their traits -- what they understand, what they don't understand, what they've attempted to grasp and what they've willfully rejected in spite of there being good evidence that they should not have rejected, etc. -- not on the blacks or yellows, or anyone else.

I think, but I'm not sure, because it's not clear to me whether you're being sincere or argumentative (regardless of why), you're conflating discrimination with unjust discrimination, one form of the latter being racism-driven discrimination. I'm not going to say one cannot and/or should not discriminate for one clearly must. Every choice is a discrimination for and against something(s)/someone(s). What's wrong is unjust discrimination, not merely that one discriminates.

 

[DOTR]

Most were erected between the 1890's and 1920's - more then 30 years after the Civil War ended. They coincided with the rise in legislation essentially reinstalling slavery through a set of laws that segregated black people from white people, prevented them from exercising their right to vote, and saw a huge increase in lynchings and the reappearance of the Confederate Flag.

So what do these things REALLY represent?

Articulate and well thought out post coyote...but you have missed the entire point. You presented the view of those who have ulterior motives of which removing Confederate statues is only the beginning. Their real hatred is for the United States.
As to the time frame: While it may have coincided with segregation laws correlation is not causation. The placing of Confederate memorials also coincided with the Great Influenza Epidemic, the Bimetallism movement and the electrification of America.
I am a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and my mother and grandmother United Daughters of the Confederacy. Organizations under heavy attack by marxists and thugs. I'll get to their role in statues in a moment. First I want to explain their role in America and American history.
The UDC is the premier, probably the umbrella, organization of the other Confederate groups. It and the related groups (ie SCV, UCV,CofC etc) was never intended to be nor viewed as anti-American or racist by anyone except Marxists who have always held a particular hatred for American culture in general and Southern culture in particular. The UDC is one of the few organizations directly chartered by the United States Congress (though that was removed in a later battle a few years ago) and commended by both northern and southern Congressmen. Every President for over 100 years up to Bill Clinton honored their work

They raised money for WWI buying 24.8 million in war bonds (equal to half a trillion dollars today), fully supported a 70 bed hospital for allied soldiers at Neuilly-sur-Seine and paid to train combat nurses for WWII in partnership with the Red Cross. The United States Air Force Academy, Naval Academy and Merchant Marine Academies administer scholarships they fund. The UDC is the *only* private organization allowed by the United States Military to present awards officially to servicemen on active duty (Cross of Military Service and Armed Force Award) which can be worn as part of a military dress uniform.
These two Tiffany windows honor the Daughters of the Confederacy at the American red Cross Headquarters, Governors Hall. LINK

I could go on. United States Naval ships named after Confederate Generals

. Coins were minted by Congress, honoring southern soldiers, for the UDC and SCV to fund Confederate memorials with proclamations such as this...

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled... a monument to the valor of the soldiers of the South, which was the inspiration of their sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters in the Spanish-American and World Wars, and in memory of Warren G. Harding, President of the United States of America, in whose administration the work was begun..."
Proclamation by Calvin Coolidge

In fact the Sons of Union Veterans and the Veterans of the Grand Army of the Potomac held an annual three day meeting with the United Confederate Veterans and the Sons of Confederate Veterans for decades. The Sons of Union Veterans issued this proclamation

"Several common interests transcend the differences of our Orders. These include a deep respect for all soldiers who fought during our AMERICAN Civil War, a strong desire to ensure that they and what they fought for are never forgotten, a need to ensure that their graves and memorials are maintained and a desire to ensure that the history of our United States is related to successive generations as it actually happened rather than in terms of what is currently in vogue or politically correct."and in all corresponadance with the SCV and UDC address them as "Our Confederate Cousins".

The Military Order of the Loyal Legion, founded by Union officers to honor Abraham Lincoln on his death, issued this proclamation:

" we...oppose the removal of any Confederate monuments or markers to those gallant soldiers in South Carolina and the former Confederate States, and strongly oppose the removal of ANY reminders of this nation's bloodiest war on the grounds of it being politically correct, and

WHEREAS, we, as the descendants of Union soldiers and sailors who, as members of the Grand Army of the Republic, met in joint reunions with the confederate veterans under both flags in those bonds of Fraternal Friendship, pledge our support and admiration for those gallant soldiers and of their respective flags;"

No real man who fought against the Confederacy held any disrespect for Confederate soldiers. Union soldiers would be disgusted with your attempts to erase the memory of Confederate soldiers.

Note the inscription on this United States half dollar "memorial to the valor of the soldier of the South". The obverse features Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

All this to say that no Southern genealogical and remembrance organization dedicated to the Confederacy has ever been considered unpatriotic, racist or un American. Until foreign marxists. Confederate Veterans are considered United States Veterans by the US Government. The Democrats have long admired rioters in Greece and looked with envy on guerilla movements in South America. It was they who imported this hatred. The South is the last place with any remembrance of a time before marxists gained power. The South denies the Democrats control of the government. And fr this it must be broken. They consider this cultural genocide is payback and when complete there will be no more opposition to six way gay/zoopyhilia marriages, zis, zer and zim, socialism, atheism and corporate rule.

...

 

[DOTR]

As to the timing..it is easily explained by the passing away of a generation. Their children remembered the sacrifice of the Confederates and hurried to honor them as the last of them died. Most of the prominent men of the South at that time were Confederate Veterans..loyal to the United States in extreme (my Confederate great great great grandfather served as a United States Postmaster and also a Federal customs collector in his later years)...and their passing was mourned publicly. Their children were loyally leaving for the Spanish American War and WWI reminding them of the years away from home of their fathers and grandfathers. (Care to check the statistics for southerners enlisted in the US armed forces compared to other regions?)
There is also the consideration of the relaxation of Northern control with the end of Reconstruction in 1877. By 1885 newly self governing states were honoring their dead which they had not had the power to do as defeated subjugated states before.
As to segregation...that wasnt limited to the South. It wasnt as noticeable before the great black migrations to the north during the depression but it was there. Martin Luther King made Cicero, Illinois famous for example...a bastion of segregation. Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New jersey had some of the strictest segregation laws in the country. Even California passed anti-miscegenation laws during that time not to be repealed until 1948. Some of the worst anti bussing riots took place in the North. And not a Confederate statue in sight.
If you hate Confederate soldiers you hate America. If you are a Democrat you have made common cause with those who hate America...no matter what excuse you use to justify it to yourself. Your forbears would be ashamed of you. Humiliated at what their progeny had sunk to for the sake of a section 8 voucher or food stamps or free medical care.
And you never know which innocent belief you hold today will be reviled by the cultural marxists tomorrow.

 

[Vandalshandle]

Having read about 20% of the above, I find that, although my great grandfather fought for Tennessee from 1862 to 1865, I am opposed to confederate statues on public land, so I hate the United States. That came as quite a surprise to me, because I thought that those who consider the Confederacy a noble cause hated the United States. Hell, I thought that I love America! Damn!

 

[cnelsen]

Seems very clear cut. What is racism, anyway?

What is racism, anyway?

I will answer your question directly and then I will expound upon my answer by providing a taxonomy of terms pertinent to this subject of race. I'm doing that (1) so that you and others may have a very precise understanding of how I construe a variety of terms and behaviors, (2) so I can refer to it when/if I need to in future discussions on USMB, (3) because though I've on USMB mentioned subtle manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, I don't recall having specifically identified any of them, and (4) to obviate your need to ask me additional definitional questions about related terms. The definitions I use are an amalgam of ideas and observations I've gathered over the course of my personal and professional life, as well as from reading scholarly literature on the matter.

What racism is:
Racism is a type of prejudice that is at once an ideology and system of oppression:

• It is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices,” such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions.
• It is a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group exercise power or privilege over those in non-dominant groups.

Racism, as the definition above implies, exists on multiple levels:

• Structural -- The interplay of policies, practices and programs of differing institutions which leads to adverse outcomes and conditions for communities comprised of the objects of racism when measured in comparison to the perpetrators of racism when the noted outcomes occur within the context of racialized historical and cultural conditions.
• Institutional -- Policies, practice, and procedures that work to the benefit of white people and the detriment of people of color, usually unintentionally or inadvertently.
• Individual/Interpersonal -- Prejudgment, bias, stereotypes or generalizations about an individual or group based on race. The impacts of individual/interpersonal racism on individuals are various internalizations of privilege and oppression and/or illegal discrimination.

On those various levels can be found overt racism (self-explanatory) one or several forms of subtle racism/racists that are not mutually exclusive:

• Symbolic Racism -- Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly (e.g., as opposition to policies that help racial minorities. (See "symbolic discrimination" below)
• Benevolent Racism -- "The White Man's Burden" is the classic notion of this.
• Color Blind Racism -- Color blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members (as opposed to all who don't realize advancement) is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores the relevance of and justness of structural support for inequities unavoidably faced by minorities due to their status as minorities. (See also: Is the Post in Post-Racial the Blind in Colorblind)
• Ambivalent Racism -- Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized racial groups.
• Modern Racism -- Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources.
• Aversive Racism -- Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial equality but have a personal aversion toward racial minorities.

You don't have to like or agree with that definition, but it's the one I apply and neither it nor my application of it is going to change. Period.

If you don't care for the definition to which I ascribe, you are not the first to do so. Generally, folks who reject it do so because they think it means only whites can be racists or the want a definition that seemingly to them absolves them from being racists or racially discriminatory. [1] That the definition above makes whites the sole people eligible to be racists simply is not the case. The definition above doesn't necessarily and universally make whites the only people on the planet who can be racists. It merely makes them the only people who can be racists in places where white people are the dominant group. Insofar as the majority of people in the world are not white, in many places whites are among the individuals who cannot be racist. It just so happens that the U.S. is not one of those places.

The thing is that if one is of a mind to be racist, one must also have the ability to act on it with relative impunity. That's only possible for people who hold the lion's share of power and authority in a given country or larger political block. ("Country" because of the supremacy of national laws and customs over local ones. "Or larger" because of the potential for racist collusion among countries having comparable racial majorities.)

Note:

1. I suppose I understand the latter part. Few non-card-carrying Neo Nazis, KKK members and so on want to face the possibility that despite their best efforts they may still be somewhat racist, thus racists, because in our heart of hearts we all know that racism is like pregnancy -- one either is or isn't.

What racism is not:
Racism is not xenophobia or ethnocentrism, yet it intersects with them.

• Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism is gauging others by using one’s own culture's traits, behaviors and norms as the benchmark/ideal standard by which all others are compared and found wanting.

Racism is also not discrimination.

• Discrimination in all its forms is first and foremost an indication of prejudicial intolerance that people display by behaving in what that deny just [legal sense of the word] treatment or consideration to people because of their membership in some group. Insofar as the discrimination is racial, it's based on the beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of racial prejudice, but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination for discrimination necessarily is an action one performs, not thought one has. It's fitting to here note that while I find it impossible in the U.S for minorities to exhibit and act on racism, certain minority individuals, like non-minorities, definitely are in positions whereby they have the opportunity to and may discriminate, racially, sexually, or on other bases. Discrimination can occur in several ways:
  • Institutional discrimination -- This is an overt form of discrimination whereby laws, organs and functionaries of the state or organization deny just treatment to individuals in the state. The classic example is Jim Crow laws. Kim Davis' faith-based refusal to marry same sex couples is also an example of discrimination promulgated by a non-state organization. One observes that in Zimbabwe there is racism and its discriminatory manifestation against white farmers and in India against Dalits.
  • Genocide and ethnic cleansing -- This is an extreme form of discrimination that I don't think is currently practiced in the U.S., so I'm not going to explicate it here. It's merely listed for completeness' sake.
  • Redlining and racial profiling -- essentially institutional discrimination on the sly, which is why it listed here and separately from the above institutional discrimination which is overt. It is considerably more difficult to identify and prove than are the overt forms of institutional discrimination. Since rarely do the actors admit to or positively record these modes of discriminating, it's generally identified and proven on the basis of pattern recognition.
    • Redlining takes many forms but all of them are covert means of institutionally discriminating. It is essentially consists of a person having some form of subject matter expertise steering people, people whom they are tasked with helping, in one or another direction based on assumptions the "driver" makes about race. Examples include:
      • Banks and/or bank loan officers giving fewer mortgages to people of color and more to non-minorities, based on the belief that the respective individuals, because of their race, are less/more able to repay loans.
      • Real estate agents steering people away from properties in certain neighborhoods and toward others because of the buyer's race and that of the people in the respective neighborhoods.
      • School advisers telling people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or grad school, and encouraging non-minorities to pursue college or grad school.
        
      • Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others.
    • Racial profiling is paying closer attention to members of a given group based solely on the individual's obvious membership in a given group than one does re: individuals not of that same group. For example:
      • Racial profiling often enough happens in my D.C. neighborhood, especially to black males who happen to be walking in it. Despite being within walking distance of a Metro station, almost no male adults walk the streets of my neighborhood, save for on Halloween night. Some people's housekeepers take public transportation to work, so it's not uncommon to see women walking to their place of work. By rights, so to speak, any male walking should be approached by a cop passing through, I'm told that the one minority dude who works as housekeeper gets stopped or "stared at" quite often. I, on the other hand, have never been stopped when I've opted to walk to a local restaurant or just to go for bike ride, jog or walk.
      • Using people's race as the basis for security guards choosing whom to follow through stores, regardless of their attire or other appearance traits.
    • Intolerant Communication
      • "Redneck racism" -- The word "racism" notwithstanding, this is nonetheless a behavior more so than a mindset or system. "Redneck racism" is R.W. Brislin's term for "the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race." Despite the apparent implication of the term "redneck" Brislin doesn't, nor do I, limit the behavior to whites. "Redneck racism" might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of them have some sexual connotation. How is this manifest? It can be somewhat subtle:
        • Often "couched"/veiled in "us/them" language --> Using the "you people" syntax is another way people communicate a willingness to discriminate based on race. This behavior is different from most modes of discrimination in that it suggests the presence of prejudice, and the will to act on it with regard to all members of (not of) a given racial group, more so than being a discriminatory action against someone in particular.
        • "Arm's length" or "social distance" discrimination --> Voicing tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships. This form of prejudicial discrimination, when its predicated on race, is found in remarks such as "She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate.” Statements of that sort assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.
      • Prejudiced colloquialisms -- This is the use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame X” or “retarded X," where "X" is whatever racial classification or epithet one cares to insert.
      • Linguistically innate racial prejudice -- This is challenging one to notice but not to exhibit for it's one that people probably display without realizing it, but covertness and absence are not the same things. One manifestation of it is seen in individuals of one race routinely interrupting speakers of another, yet when a member of one's own race speaks one doesn't do so. Similarly, when one is interrupted by a member of one's own race, one yields, but when another race individual does so, one does not yield or complains about having been interrupted, even though one doesn't do so with interrupters of one's own race. What's being racially discriminated against? The ideas of people belonging to another racial group; interrupting them is a means of squelching and/or discounting them and indicates that one thinks one's own ideas are superior and more deserving of being heard, perhaps preempting an audience's need to even hear the complete thoughts of the person against whom one is prejudiced and thus discriminates. (This form of discrimination can also be and may more often be applied in a sexual context.)
    • Symbolic discrimination -- This form of discrimination is a direct manifestation of symbolic racism. Symbolic discrimination relates largely to political attitudes and choices. It is made manifest in political decisions and proposals that effect one's discriminatory desires by veiling one's "anti-other" racial sentiments under the auspices of political attitudes, efficacies and approaches. Symbolic discrimination is a form of prejudice that is very hard to with certainty say an individual has exhibited and it's yet one that researchers have found absolutely does exist.

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

you asked him a yes or no question.

those are hard to answer when you carry a minimum of 10 bullets per post.

And he won't be able to answer it, even with all three volumes of his definition. The real world has a way of bowling over elaborate edifices like his definition. Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

Any such professor worth his salt will be equally aware of how others who think there is such a thing as race construe the matter as well as how/why it is that those individuals are mistaken. Accordingly, the professor will be able, as needed, to answer questions from either (or all, in instances where there are more than two sides) perspective. That is why the "professor" in your scenario is able to correctly answer "nine."

That's the way it is with intellectuals. They understand their side of an argument as well as they understand the opposing side; thus they are keenly aware of which side has the greater share of weaknesses, recognizing that greater share may be quantitatively or qualitatively, or a mix of each, determined.

Quite simply it's rare that one overcomes something one doesn't fully understand. Racism is one such thing that requires such a full understanding, at least by some quantity of people who lead, to be overcome.

"thus they are keenly aware of which side has the greater share of weaknesses"

If intellectuals have it so figured out, why do they produce such a steady stream of nonsense? Hmmm....maybe it's not "understanding", as you put it, they are after. White privilege? Race is a social construct? Diversity is our strength? Institutional racism? The Civil War was fought over the price of cotton? The examples of complete bullshit gushing forth from academe are endless. And these are the people of complete "understanding" who you believe should lead lead us? Yikes! You one scary dude.

"Quite simply it's rare that one overcomes something one doesn't fully understand. [especially if it doesn't exist in the first place] Racism is one such thing that requires such a full understanding, at least by some quantity of people who lead, to be overcome."
"

 

[DOTR]

That came as quite a surprise to me, because I thought that those who consider the Confederacy a noble cause hated the United States. Hell, I thought that I love America! Damn!

You learn something new everyday don't you?
Get back with me when you attention span improves.

 

[Conservative65]

We all must pick a side.

And those "sides" would be...?

Seriously?

One either opposes white supremacy or one embraces it. AFAIC, there is no middle ground on that.
One either opposes racism or one embraces it. There too, there is no middle ground position I will accept.

Seems very clear cut. What is racism, anyway?

What is racism, anyway?

I will answer your question directly and then I will expound upon my answer by providing a taxonomy of terms pertinent to this subject of race. I'm doing that (1) so that you and others may have a very precise understanding of how I construe a variety of terms and behaviors, (2) so I can refer to it when/if I need to in future discussions on USMB, (3) because though I've on USMB mentioned subtle manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, I don't recall having specifically identified any of them, and (4) to obviate your need to ask me additional definitional questions about related terms. The definitions I use are an amalgam of ideas and observations I've gathered over the course of my personal and professional life, as well as from reading scholarly literature on the matter.

What racism is:
Racism is a type of prejudice that is at once an ideology and system of oppression:

• It is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices,” such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions.
• It is a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group exercise power or privilege over those in non-dominant groups.

Racism, as the definition above implies, exists on multiple levels:

• Structural -- The interplay of policies, practices and programs of differing institutions which leads to adverse outcomes and conditions for communities comprised of the objects of racism when measured in comparison to the perpetrators of racism when the noted outcomes occur within the context of racialized historical and cultural conditions.
• Institutional -- Policies, practice, and procedures that work to the benefit of white people and the detriment of people of color, usually unintentionally or inadvertently.
• Individual/Interpersonal -- Prejudgment, bias, stereotypes or generalizations about an individual or group based on race. The impacts of individual/interpersonal racism on individuals are various internalizations of privilege and oppression and/or illegal discrimination.

On those various levels can be found overt racism (self-explanatory) one or several forms of subtle racism/racists that are not mutually exclusive:

• Symbolic Racism -- Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly (e.g., as opposition to policies that help racial minorities. (See "symbolic discrimination" below)
• Benevolent Racism -- "The White Man's Burden" is the classic notion of this.
• Color Blind Racism -- Color blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members (as opposed to all who don't realize advancement) is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores the relevance of and justness of structural support for inequities unavoidably faced by minorities due to their status as minorities. (See also: Is the Post in Post-Racial the Blind in Colorblind)
• Ambivalent Racism -- Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized racial groups.
• Modern Racism -- Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources.
• Aversive Racism -- Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial equality but have a personal aversion toward racial minorities.

You don't have to like or agree with that definition, but it's the one I apply and neither it nor my application of it is going to change. Period.

If you don't care for the definition to which I ascribe, you are not the first to do so. Generally, folks who reject it do so because they think it means only whites can be racists or the want a definition that seemingly to them absolves them from being racists or racially discriminatory. [1] That the definition above makes whites the sole people eligible to be racists simply is not the case. The definition above doesn't necessarily and universally make whites the only people on the planet who can be racists. It merely makes them the only people who can be racists in places where white people are the dominant group. Insofar as the majority of people in the world are not white, in many places whites are among the individuals who cannot be racist. It just so happens that the U.S. is not one of those places.

The thing is that if one is of a mind to be racist, one must also have the ability to act on it with relative impunity. That's only possible for people who hold the lion's share of power and authority in a given country or larger political block. ("Country" because of the supremacy of national laws and customs over local ones. "Or larger" because of the potential for racist collusion among countries having comparable racial majorities.)

Note:

1. I suppose I understand the latter part. Few non-card-carrying Neo Nazis, KKK members and so on want to face the possibility that despite their best efforts they may still be somewhat racist, thus racists, because in our heart of hearts we all know that racism is like pregnancy -- one either is or isn't.

What racism is not:
Racism is not xenophobia or ethnocentrism, yet it intersects with them.

• Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism is gauging others by using one’s own culture's traits, behaviors and norms as the benchmark/ideal standard by which all others are compared and found wanting.

Racism is also not discrimination.

• Discrimination in all its forms is first and foremost an indication of prejudicial intolerance that people display by behaving in what that deny just [legal sense of the word] treatment or consideration to people because of their membership in some group. Insofar as the discrimination is racial, it's based on the beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of racial prejudice, but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination for discrimination necessarily is an action one performs, not thought one has. It's fitting to here note that while I find it impossible in the U.S for minorities to exhibit and act on racism, certain minority individuals, like non-minorities, definitely are in positions whereby they have the opportunity to and may discriminate, racially, sexually, or on other bases. Discrimination can occur in several ways:
  • Institutional discrimination -- This is an overt form of discrimination whereby laws, organs and functionaries of the state or organization deny just treatment to individuals in the state. The classic example is Jim Crow laws. Kim Davis' faith-based refusal to marry same sex couples is also an example of discrimination promulgated by a non-state organization. One observes that in Zimbabwe there is racism and its discriminatory manifestation against white farmers and in India against Dalits.
  • Genocide and ethnic cleansing -- This is an extreme form of discrimination that I don't think is currently practiced in the U.S., so I'm not going to explicate it here. It's merely listed for completeness' sake.
  • Redlining and racial profiling -- essentially institutional discrimination on the sly, which is why it listed here and separately from the above institutional discrimination which is overt. It is considerably more difficult to identify and prove than are the overt forms of institutional discrimination. Since rarely do the actors admit to or positively record these modes of discriminating, it's generally identified and proven on the basis of pattern recognition.
    • Redlining takes many forms but all of them are covert means of institutionally discriminating. It is essentially consists of a person having some form of subject matter expertise steering people, people whom they are tasked with helping, in one or another direction based on assumptions the "driver" makes about race. Examples include:
      • Banks and/or bank loan officers giving fewer mortgages to people of color and more to non-minorities, based on the belief that the respective individuals, because of their race, are less/more able to repay loans.
      • Real estate agents steering people away from properties in certain neighborhoods and toward others because of the buyer's race and that of the people in the respective neighborhoods.
      • School advisers telling people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or grad school, and encouraging non-minorities to pursue college or grad school.
        
      • Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others.
    • Racial profiling is paying closer attention to members of a given group based solely on the individual's obvious membership in a given group than one does re: individuals not of that same group. For example:
      • Racial profiling often enough happens in my D.C. neighborhood, especially to black males who happen to be walking in it. Despite being within walking distance of a Metro station, almost no male adults walk the streets of my neighborhood, save for on Halloween night. Some people's housekeepers take public transportation to work, so it's not uncommon to see women walking to their place of work. By rights, so to speak, any male walking should be approached by a cop passing through, I'm told that the one minority dude who works as housekeeper gets stopped or "stared at" quite often. I, on the other hand, have never been stopped when I've opted to walk to a local restaurant or just to go for bike ride, jog or walk.
      • Using people's race as the basis for security guards choosing whom to follow through stores, regardless of their attire or other appearance traits.
    • Intolerant Communication
      • "Redneck racism" -- The word "racism" notwithstanding, this is nonetheless a behavior more so than a mindset or system. "Redneck racism" is R.W. Brislin's term for "the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race." Despite the apparent implication of the term "redneck" Brislin doesn't, nor do I, limit the behavior to whites. "Redneck racism" might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of them have some sexual connotation. How is this manifest? It can be somewhat subtle:
        • Often "couched"/veiled in "us/them" language --> Using the "you people" syntax is another way people communicate a willingness to discriminate based on race. This behavior is different from most modes of discrimination in that it suggests the presence of prejudice, and the will to act on it with regard to all members of (not of) a given racial group, more so than being a discriminatory action against someone in particular.
        • "Arm's length" or "social distance" discrimination --> Voicing tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships. This form of prejudicial discrimination, when its predicated on race, is found in remarks such as "She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate.” Statements of that sort assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.
      • Prejudiced colloquialisms -- This is the use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame X” or “retarded X," where "X" is whatever racial classification or epithet one cares to insert.
      • Linguistically innate racial prejudice -- This is challenging one to notice but not to exhibit for it's one that people probably display without realizing it, but covertness and absence are not the same things. One manifestation of it is seen in individuals of one race routinely interrupting speakers of another, yet when a member of one's own race speaks one doesn't do so. Similarly, when one is interrupted by a member of one's own race, one yields, but when another race individual does so, one does not yield or complains about having been interrupted, even though one doesn't do so with interrupters of one's own race. What's being racially discriminated against? The ideas of people belonging to another racial group; interrupting them is a means of squelching and/or discounting them and indicates that one thinks one's own ideas are superior and more deserving of being heard, perhaps preempting an audience's need to even hear the complete thoughts of the person against whom one is prejudiced and thus discriminates. (This form of discrimination can also be and may more often be applied in a sexual context.)
    • Symbolic discrimination -- This form of discrimination is a direct manifestation of symbolic racism. Symbolic discrimination relates largely to political attitudes and choices. It is made manifest in political decisions and proposals that effect one's discriminatory desires by veiling one's "anti-other" racial sentiments under the auspices of political attitudes, efficacies and approaches. Symbolic discrimination is a form of prejudice that is very hard to with certainty say an individual has exhibited and it's yet one that researchers have found absolutely does exist.

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

If you're white and choose the white guy, you would be considered racist by blacks and the guilt ridden bleeding heart whites. However, if you are black and choose the black, all is well and you'll be honored for not contributing to bullshit belief of white privilege. In other words, it depends.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I will answer your question directly and then I will expound upon my answer by providing a taxonomy of terms pertinent to this subject of race. I'm doing that (1) so that you and others may have a very precise understanding of how I construe a variety of terms and behaviors, (2) so I can refer to it when/if I need to in future discussions on USMB, (3) because though I've on USMB mentioned subtle manifestations of racism and racial discrimination, I don't recall having specifically identified any of them, and (4) to obviate your need to ask me additional definitional questions about related terms. The definitions I use are an amalgam of ideas and observations I've gathered over the course of my personal and professional life, as well as from reading scholarly literature on the matter.

What racism is:
Racism is a type of prejudice that is at once an ideology and system of oppression:

• It is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices,” such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions.
• It is a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group exercise power or privilege over those in non-dominant groups.

Racism, as the definition above implies, exists on multiple levels:

• Structural -- The interplay of policies, practices and programs of differing institutions which leads to adverse outcomes and conditions for communities comprised of the objects of racism when measured in comparison to the perpetrators of racism when the noted outcomes occur within the context of racialized historical and cultural conditions.
• Institutional -- Policies, practice, and procedures that work to the benefit of white people and the detriment of people of color, usually unintentionally or inadvertently.
• Individual/Interpersonal -- Prejudgment, bias, stereotypes or generalizations about an individual or group based on race. The impacts of individual/interpersonal racism on individuals are various internalizations of privilege and oppression and/or illegal discrimination.

On those various levels can be found overt racism (self-explanatory) one or several forms of subtle racism/racists that are not mutually exclusive:

• Symbolic Racism -- Symbolic racists reject old-style racism but still express prejudice indirectly (e.g., as opposition to policies that help racial minorities. (See "symbolic discrimination" below)
• Benevolent Racism -- "The White Man's Burden" is the classic notion of this.
• Color Blind Racism -- Color blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members (as opposed to all who don't realize advancement) is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores the relevance of and justness of structural support for inequities unavoidably faced by minorities due to their status as minorities. (See also: Is the Post in Post-Racial the Blind in Colorblind)
• Ambivalent Racism -- Ambivalent racists experience an emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized racial groups.
• Modern Racism -- Modern racists see racism as wrong but view racial minorities as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources.
• Aversive Racism -- Aversive racists believe in egalitarian principles such as racial equality but have a personal aversion toward racial minorities.

You don't have to like or agree with that definition, but it's the one I apply and neither it nor my application of it is going to change. Period.

If you don't care for the definition to which I ascribe, you are not the first to do so. Generally, folks who reject it do so because they think it means only whites can be racists or the want a definition that seemingly to them absolves them from being racists or racially discriminatory. [1] That the definition above makes whites the sole people eligible to be racists simply is not the case. The definition above doesn't necessarily and universally make whites the only people on the planet who can be racists. It merely makes them the only people who can be racists in places where white people are the dominant group. Insofar as the majority of people in the world are not white, in many places whites are among the individuals who cannot be racist. It just so happens that the U.S. is not one of those places.

The thing is that if one is of a mind to be racist, one must also have the ability to act on it with relative impunity. That's only possible for people who hold the lion's share of power and authority in a given country or larger political block. ("Country" because of the supremacy of national laws and customs over local ones. "Or larger" because of the potential for racist collusion among countries having comparable racial majorities.)

Note:

1. I suppose I understand the latter part. Few non-card-carrying Neo Nazis, KKK members and so on want to face the possibility that despite their best efforts they may still be somewhat racist, thus racists, because in our heart of hearts we all know that racism is like pregnancy -- one either is or isn't.

What racism is not:
Racism is not xenophobia or ethnocentrism, yet it intersects with them.

• Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism is gauging others by using one’s own culture's traits, behaviors and norms as the benchmark/ideal standard by which all others are compared and found wanting.

Racism is also not discrimination.

• Discrimination in all its forms is first and foremost an indication of prejudicial intolerance that people display by behaving in what that deny just [legal sense of the word] treatment or consideration to people because of their membership in some group. Insofar as the discrimination is racial, it's based on the beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of racial prejudice, but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination for discrimination necessarily is an action one performs, not thought one has. It's fitting to here note that while I find it impossible in the U.S for minorities to exhibit and act on racism, certain minority individuals, like non-minorities, definitely are in positions whereby they have the opportunity to and may discriminate, racially, sexually, or on other bases. Discrimination can occur in several ways:
  • Institutional discrimination -- This is an overt form of discrimination whereby laws, organs and functionaries of the state or organization deny just treatment to individuals in the state. The classic example is Jim Crow laws. Kim Davis' faith-based refusal to marry same sex couples is also an example of discrimination promulgated by a non-state organization. One observes that in Zimbabwe there is racism and its discriminatory manifestation against white farmers and in India against Dalits.
  • Genocide and ethnic cleansing -- This is an extreme form of discrimination that I don't think is currently practiced in the U.S., so I'm not going to explicate it here. It's merely listed for completeness' sake.
  • Redlining and racial profiling -- essentially institutional discrimination on the sly, which is why it listed here and separately from the above institutional discrimination which is overt. It is considerably more difficult to identify and prove than are the overt forms of institutional discrimination. Since rarely do the actors admit to or positively record these modes of discriminating, it's generally identified and proven on the basis of pattern recognition.
    • Redlining takes many forms but all of them are covert means of institutionally discriminating. It is essentially consists of a person having some form of subject matter expertise steering people, people whom they are tasked with helping, in one or another direction based on assumptions the "driver" makes about race. Examples include:
      • Banks and/or bank loan officers giving fewer mortgages to people of color and more to non-minorities, based on the belief that the respective individuals, because of their race, are less/more able to repay loans.
      • Real estate agents steering people away from properties in certain neighborhoods and toward others because of the buyer's race and that of the people in the respective neighborhoods.
      • School advisers telling people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or grad school, and encouraging non-minorities to pursue college or grad school.
        
      • Police officers being more/less brutal in their subduction techniques when dealing with members of one or several races than with another/others.
    • Racial profiling is paying closer attention to members of a given group based solely on the individual's obvious membership in a given group than one does re: individuals not of that same group. For example:
      • Racial profiling often enough happens in my D.C. neighborhood, especially to black males who happen to be walking in it. Despite being within walking distance of a Metro station, almost no male adults walk the streets of my neighborhood, save for on Halloween night. Some people's housekeepers take public transportation to work, so it's not uncommon to see women walking to their place of work. By rights, so to speak, any male walking should be approached by a cop passing through, I'm told that the one minority dude who works as housekeeper gets stopped or "stared at" quite often. I, on the other hand, have never been stopped when I've opted to walk to a local restaurant or just to go for bike ride, jog or walk.
      • Using people's race as the basis for security guards choosing whom to follow through stores, regardless of their attire or other appearance traits.
    • Intolerant Communication
      • "Redneck racism" -- The word "racism" notwithstanding, this is nonetheless a behavior more so than a mindset or system. "Redneck racism" is R.W. Brislin's term for "the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race." Despite the apparent implication of the term "redneck" Brislin doesn't, nor do I, limit the behavior to whites. "Redneck racism" might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of them have some sexual connotation. How is this manifest? It can be somewhat subtle:
        • Often "couched"/veiled in "us/them" language --> Using the "you people" syntax is another way people communicate a willingness to discriminate based on race. This behavior is different from most modes of discrimination in that it suggests the presence of prejudice, and the will to act on it with regard to all members of (not of) a given racial group, more so than being a discriminatory action against someone in particular.
        • "Arm's length" or "social distance" discrimination --> Voicing tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships. This form of prejudicial discrimination, when its predicated on race, is found in remarks such as "She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate.” Statements of that sort assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.
      • Prejudiced colloquialisms -- This is the use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame X” or “retarded X," where "X" is whatever racial classification or epithet one cares to insert.
      • Linguistically innate racial prejudice -- This is challenging one to notice but not to exhibit for it's one that people probably display without realizing it, but covertness and absence are not the same things. One manifestation of it is seen in individuals of one race routinely interrupting speakers of another, yet when a member of one's own race speaks one doesn't do so. Similarly, when one is interrupted by a member of one's own race, one yields, but when another race individual does so, one does not yield or complains about having been interrupted, even though one doesn't do so with interrupters of one's own race. What's being racially discriminated against? The ideas of people belonging to another racial group; interrupting them is a means of squelching and/or discounting them and indicates that one thinks one's own ideas are superior and more deserving of being heard, perhaps preempting an audience's need to even hear the complete thoughts of the person against whom one is prejudiced and thus discriminates. (This form of discrimination can also be and may more often be applied in a sexual context.)
    • Symbolic discrimination -- This form of discrimination is a direct manifestation of symbolic racism. Symbolic discrimination relates largely to political attitudes and choices. It is made manifest in political decisions and proposals that effect one's discriminatory desires by veiling one's "anti-other" racial sentiments under the auspices of political attitudes, efficacies and approaches. Symbolic discrimination is a form of prejudice that is very hard to with certainty say an individual has exhibited and it's yet one that researchers have found absolutely does exist.

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

you asked him a yes or no question.

those are hard to answer when you carry a minimum of 10 bullets per post.

And he won't be able to answer it, even with all three volumes of his definition. The real world has a way of bowling over elaborate edifices like his definition. Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

Any such professor worth his salt will be equally aware of how others who think there is such a thing as race construe the matter as well as how/why it is that those individuals are mistaken. Accordingly, the professor will be able, as needed, to answer questions from either (or all, in instances where there are more than two sides) perspective. That is why the "professor" in your scenario is able to correctly answer "nine."

That's the way it is with intellectuals. They understand their side of an argument as well as they understand the opposing side; thus they are keenly aware of which side has the greater share of weaknesses, recognizing that greater share may be quantitatively or qualitatively, or a mix of each, determined.

Quite simply it's rare that one overcomes something one doesn't fully understand. Racism is one such thing that requires such a full understanding, at least by some quantity of people who lead, to be overcome.

"thus they are keenly aware of which side has the greater share of weaknesses"

If intellectuals have it so figured out, why do they produce such a steady stream of nonsense? Hmmm....maybe it's not "understanding", as you put it, they are after. White privilege? Race is a social construct? Diversity is our strength? Institutional racism? The Civil War was fought over the price of cotton? The examples of complete bullshit gushing forth from academe are endless. And these are the people of complete "understanding" who you believe should lead lead us? Yikes! You one scary dude.

"Quite simply it's rare that one overcomes something one doesn't fully understand. [especially if it doesn't exist in the first place] Racism is one such thing that requires such a full understanding, at least by some quantity of people who lead, to be overcome."
"

If intellectuals have it so figured out, why do they produce such a steady stream of nonsense?

You know I'm not going to provide a substantive response to a loaded question.

 

[DOTR]

Having read about 20% of the above, I find that, although my great grandfather fought for Tennessee from 1862 to 1865, I am opposed to confederate statues on public land, so I hate the United States. That came as quite a surprise to me, because I thought that those who consider the Confederacy a noble cause hated the United States. Hell, I thought that I love America! Damn!

And stop with the pretend hero of the marxist revolution stuff. You have chosen to not resist and join the celebrities, corporate ceos, media conglomerates and wealthy democrats. They lead you in a fight for their status quo as they dig in their heels against the election and the change it brought which will upend them and their safe spaces. Rich Silicon Valley CEOs back your every thought and fund the In" crowd. It is the least brave thing you could do. You face no censure or fear of criticism from the media or any government or private power broker. The animals roaming the streets and vandalizing monuments are no threat to you. You are going with the flow...the easy way to be brave while lost in a crowd of knuckledraggers.
And you feel like you are "resisting" something? You couldn't acquiesce more if you tried.

 

[Syriusly]

How can a statue put up by a dead person- be 'speech' by a living person?

Hey- does that mean though, that I can go erect a statue to anyone I like in any public park- because of my free speech right?

Now- what about the free speech rights of those who don't want them to stay?

Same way a traitor burning the American flag uses free speech to defend doing it.

You mean a traitor like those who attack American soldiers in 1860?

They weren't traitors.

LOL- you call a guy burning an American flag a traitor- but not the Americans shooting Americans soldiers.

How fucked up are you anyway?

Nowhere near as fucked as a pussy like you that gets his panties in a wad over a piece of metal.

You are a coward and a pussy.

LOL- you call a guy burning an American flag a traitor- but not the Americans shooting Americans soldiers.

How fucked up are you anyway?

 

[Syriusly]

My initial thought was - they're a legacy of the civil war, put up by the losing side...and no "big deal" beyond that history. But I was wrong.

Removing historical monuments is always a "slippery slope", but so is erecting those monuments. For example, in Russia - the many monuments to Stalin (torn down when communism fell) or in Iraq, the many monuments to Sadaam (torn down too).

There IS something similar in the Confederate Monuments, compared to Stalin or Hussein or others. That is WHY they were erected.

Most were erected between the 1890's and 1920's - more then 30 years after the Civil War ended. They coincided with the rise in legislation essentially reinstalling slavery through a set of laws that segregated black people from white people, prevented them from exercising their right to vote, and saw a huge increase in lynchings and the reappearance of the Confederate Flag.

So what do these things REALLY represent? There has been a sustained movement to sanitize the Confederacy - to severe it from slavery and portray it as little more than a "state's rights" conflict. But you can't do that - it's inseperable from the slavery issue, as is evident by what occurred in the south AFTER the war's end.

So what are we seeking to "preserve" by keeping both that flag and those monuments on public spaces? These aren't battlefield monuments...they are monuments erected all over the country outside of historical sites. I used to be a huge Civil War buff as a kid...and I value and love history - but THIS part of the history, I was oblivious of. SHOULD we support it, in our public spaces, or retire it to Museums where it might be more fitting? This historian makes some good points.

Like The Flag, Confederate Monuments Have Been 'Severely Tainted'

JAMES COBB: Well, the great bulk of them were erected between roughly 1890 and 1920. But every time there was a sort of a racial flare up, later on, there would be a more modest surge in erecting monuments in the same way that Confederate flags started going on. State flags are being flown atop state capitals, but the 1890-1920 period is really, I think, critical because that period also saw the rise of legally mandated racial segregation and disfranchisement of black Southerners.

And in tune with that, the campaigns for passage of these segregation, disenfranchising laws involved a tremendous amount of horrific racial scapegoating. So that same period saw roughly 2,000 lynchings of black Americans. And so the thing I think people miss because it's so easy to jump on the clear connection between these monuments and slavery is that they also were sort of like construction materials in an effort to rebuild slavery.​

and

COBB: Well, I think for generations, white Southerners had maintained, despite the presence of the flag at all of these racial atrocities, had maintained that it was possible to separate heritage and hate. And I think the slaying in Charleston pretty much shattered what was left of that mythology. And there were a number of cases, a number of states, where Confederate flags were furled almost, you know, within a matter of days of that event. The next target was going to be monuments. But compared to a flag, the monuments are a bit less emotive. And they were seen like as on the second line of defense as far as the whole cult of the lost cause and the refusal to accept the idea that both the flag and the monuments were tied to slavery.


Monuments were simply less closely associated in the minds of white Southerners, in particular, with anything related directly to racial oppression. It was the flag that had been waved at the Klan rallies. You know, it's easier to hoist a flag than a bust of Stonewall Jackson. It had the much stronger visual association with racial oppression or racist hate groups than monuments did.​

and

COBB: Well, as a historian, I'll confess to a certain nervousness about sanitizing the historical landscape. But I think what we're looking at here is that these monuments, just like the flag, have been sort of seized on. And they've been so severely tainted. I think the best way to look at them upon removing them - and I think they do have to be removed from public spaces.


But I think the best way to look at them is that they're not being preserved in a museum, which is where I think they should go as a monument, but really, as an artifact because their connection with, you know, the effort to practically reinstitute slavery after the Civil War gives them an extra layer of complexity that I think most people have not been exposed to. Whereas they - in a public spot, I think they can only be divisive and a source of discord and conflict.​

i honestly don't give a rats ass about the monuments. i'm to the point of being sick and tired of told what my morality should be by the left. they got away with the WE JUST WANT THIS FLAG OFF THIS PROPERTY! to look what we have now?

nothing is sacred. our history is to be forgotten in the name of "feeling better".

Who is suggesting our history be 'forgotten'?

Do you think that if there is not a statue to Robert E. Lee no one will remember the Civil War, or how the Confederacy was formed to protect the institution of slavery?

Why do you object to local communities deciding to remove monuments?

 

[iceberg]

So if I am in a lifeboat and there is only room for one more, and there is a black guy and a white guy in the water and I choose the white guy, am I a racist?

you asked him a yes or no question.

those are hard to answer when you carry a minimum of 10 bullets per post.

And he won't be able to answer it, even with all three volumes of his definition. The real world has a way of bowling over elaborate edifices like his definition. Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

Like the college professor who's just winding up a class in which he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt there's no such thing as race, when a masked gunman runs into the room, presses a pistol against the professor's head and says "You've got one second to tell me the correct number of African-American students you have in this class or you die". "Nine!" the professor shouts immediately and correctly.

Any such professor worth his salt will be equally aware of how others who think there is such a thing as race construe the matter as well as how/why it is that those individuals are mistaken. Accordingly, the professor will be able, as needed, to answer questions from either (or all, in instances where there are more than two sides) perspective. That is why the "professor" in your scenario is able to correctly answer "nine."

That's the way it is with intellectuals. They understand their side of an argument as well as they understand the opposing side; thus they are keenly aware of which side has the greater share of weaknesses, recognizing that greater share may be quantitatively or qualitatively, or a mix of each, determined.

Quite simply it's rare that one overcomes something one doesn't fully understand. Racism is one such thing that requires such a full understanding, at least by some quantity of people who lead, to be overcome.

"thus they are keenly aware of which side has the greater share of weaknesses"

If intellectuals have it so figured out, why do they produce such a steady stream of nonsense? Hmmm....maybe it's not "understanding", as you put it, they are after. White privilege? Race is a social construct? Diversity is our strength? Institutional racism? The Civil War was fought over the price of cotton? The examples of complete bullshit gushing forth from academe are endless. And these are the people of complete "understanding" who you believe should lead lead us? Yikes! You one scary dude.

"Quite simply it's rare that one overcomes something one doesn't fully understand. [especially if it doesn't exist in the first place] Racism is one such thing that requires such a full understanding, at least by some quantity of people who lead, to be overcome."
"

If intellectuals have it so figured out, why do they produce such a steady stream of nonsense?

You know I'm not going to provide a substantive response to a loaded question.

well there's a first time for everything.

 

[Conservative65]

Same way a traitor burning the American flag uses free speech to defend doing it.

You mean a traitor like those who attack American soldiers in 1860?

They weren't traitors.

LOL- you call a guy burning an American flag a traitor- but not the Americans shooting Americans soldiers.

How fucked up are you anyway?

Nowhere near as fucked as a pussy like you that gets his panties in a wad over a piece of metal.

You are a coward and a pussy.

LOL- you call a guy burning an American flag a traitor- but not the Americans shooting Americans soldiers.

How fucked up are you anyway?

I'm not the one that's afraid of a statue.

 

[DOTR]

Why do you object to local communities deciding to remove monuments?

Local communities dont need bands of out of state thugs to "decide to remove some monuments" do they? There is no "decision" possible where coercion is involved. These local communities were happy with their historical monuments until lately weren't they?
Next you'll say "why do you oppose a woman's decision to have sex in an alley" after she is brutally raped. Because sometimes in the face of overwhelming thuggery innocent people, who don't want to become martyrs, go along just in hopes of being left alone..or alive.

You are a propagandist. But not a very good one.

 

[iceberg]

My initial thought was - they're a legacy of the civil war, put up by the losing side...and no "big deal" beyond that history. But I was wrong.

Removing historical monuments is always a "slippery slope", but so is erecting those monuments. For example, in Russia - the many monuments to Stalin (torn down when communism fell) or in Iraq, the many monuments to Sadaam (torn down too).

There IS something similar in the Confederate Monuments, compared to Stalin or Hussein or others. That is WHY they were erected.

Most were erected between the 1890's and 1920's - more then 30 years after the Civil War ended. They coincided with the rise in legislation essentially reinstalling slavery through a set of laws that segregated black people from white people, prevented them from exercising their right to vote, and saw a huge increase in lynchings and the reappearance of the Confederate Flag.

So what do these things REALLY represent? There has been a sustained movement to sanitize the Confederacy - to severe it from slavery and portray it as little more than a "state's rights" conflict. But you can't do that - it's inseperable from the slavery issue, as is evident by what occurred in the south AFTER the war's end.

So what are we seeking to "preserve" by keeping both that flag and those monuments on public spaces? These aren't battlefield monuments...they are monuments erected all over the country outside of historical sites. I used to be a huge Civil War buff as a kid...and I value and love history - but THIS part of the history, I was oblivious of. SHOULD we support it, in our public spaces, or retire it to Museums where it might be more fitting? This historian makes some good points.

Like The Flag, Confederate Monuments Have Been 'Severely Tainted'

JAMES COBB: Well, the great bulk of them were erected between roughly 1890 and 1920. But every time there was a sort of a racial flare up, later on, there would be a more modest surge in erecting monuments in the same way that Confederate flags started going on. State flags are being flown atop state capitals, but the 1890-1920 period is really, I think, critical because that period also saw the rise of legally mandated racial segregation and disfranchisement of black Southerners.

And in tune with that, the campaigns for passage of these segregation, disenfranchising laws involved a tremendous amount of horrific racial scapegoating. So that same period saw roughly 2,000 lynchings of black Americans. And so the thing I think people miss because it's so easy to jump on the clear connection between these monuments and slavery is that they also were sort of like construction materials in an effort to rebuild slavery.​

and

COBB: Well, I think for generations, white Southerners had maintained, despite the presence of the flag at all of these racial atrocities, had maintained that it was possible to separate heritage and hate. And I think the slaying in Charleston pretty much shattered what was left of that mythology. And there were a number of cases, a number of states, where Confederate flags were furled almost, you know, within a matter of days of that event. The next target was going to be monuments. But compared to a flag, the monuments are a bit less emotive. And they were seen like as on the second line of defense as far as the whole cult of the lost cause and the refusal to accept the idea that both the flag and the monuments were tied to slavery.


Monuments were simply less closely associated in the minds of white Southerners, in particular, with anything related directly to racial oppression. It was the flag that had been waved at the Klan rallies. You know, it's easier to hoist a flag than a bust of Stonewall Jackson. It had the much stronger visual association with racial oppression or racist hate groups than monuments did.​

and

COBB: Well, as a historian, I'll confess to a certain nervousness about sanitizing the historical landscape. But I think what we're looking at here is that these monuments, just like the flag, have been sort of seized on. And they've been so severely tainted. I think the best way to look at them upon removing them - and I think they do have to be removed from public spaces.


But I think the best way to look at them is that they're not being preserved in a museum, which is where I think they should go as a monument, but really, as an artifact because their connection with, you know, the effort to practically reinstitute slavery after the Civil War gives them an extra layer of complexity that I think most people have not been exposed to. Whereas they - in a public spot, I think they can only be divisive and a source of discord and conflict.​

i honestly don't give a rats ass about the monuments. i'm to the point of being sick and tired of told what my morality should be by the left. they got away with the WE JUST WANT THIS FLAG OFF THIS PROPERTY! to look what we have now?

nothing is sacred. our history is to be forgotten in the name of "feeling better".

Who is suggesting our history be 'forgotten'?

Do you think that if there is not a statue to Robert E. Lee no one will remember the Civil War, or how the Confederacy was formed to protect the institution of slavery?

Why do you object to local communities deciding to remove monuments?

we've taken down the monuments for being "insensitive". we've removed dukes of hazard cause of the general lee. we're now wanting statues of columbus to be removed.

why do you think it will stop there? once we've gotten rid of things no one has likely paid attention to in a decade will they then force the softening up of our history books? will we teach todays version of the civil war or the real one?

if i see the liberals continue to get their way it will be rewritten that the south was nazi driven before we even had nazis.

so yes, we're removing history cause its inconvenient to todays sensitivities.

 

[Conservative65]

My initial thought was - they're a legacy of the civil war, put up by the losing side...and no "big deal" beyond that history. But I was wrong.

Removing historical monuments is always a "slippery slope", but so is erecting those monuments. For example, in Russia - the many monuments to Stalin (torn down when communism fell) or in Iraq, the many monuments to Sadaam (torn down too).

There IS something similar in the Confederate Monuments, compared to Stalin or Hussein or others. That is WHY they were erected.

Most were erected between the 1890's and 1920's - more then 30 years after the Civil War ended. They coincided with the rise in legislation essentially reinstalling slavery through a set of laws that segregated black people from white people, prevented them from exercising their right to vote, and saw a huge increase in lynchings and the reappearance of the Confederate Flag.

So what do these things REALLY represent? There has been a sustained movement to sanitize the Confederacy - to severe it from slavery and portray it as little more than a "state's rights" conflict. But you can't do that - it's inseperable from the slavery issue, as is evident by what occurred in the south AFTER the war's end.

So what are we seeking to "preserve" by keeping both that flag and those monuments on public spaces? These aren't battlefield monuments...they are monuments erected all over the country outside of historical sites. I used to be a huge Civil War buff as a kid...and I value and love history - but THIS part of the history, I was oblivious of. SHOULD we support it, in our public spaces, or retire it to Museums where it might be more fitting? This historian makes some good points.

Like The Flag, Confederate Monuments Have Been 'Severely Tainted'

JAMES COBB: Well, the great bulk of them were erected between roughly 1890 and 1920. But every time there was a sort of a racial flare up, later on, there would be a more modest surge in erecting monuments in the same way that Confederate flags started going on. State flags are being flown atop state capitals, but the 1890-1920 period is really, I think, critical because that period also saw the rise of legally mandated racial segregation and disfranchisement of black Southerners.

And in tune with that, the campaigns for passage of these segregation, disenfranchising laws involved a tremendous amount of horrific racial scapegoating. So that same period saw roughly 2,000 lynchings of black Americans. And so the thing I think people miss because it's so easy to jump on the clear connection between these monuments and slavery is that they also were sort of like construction materials in an effort to rebuild slavery.​

and

COBB: Well, I think for generations, white Southerners had maintained, despite the presence of the flag at all of these racial atrocities, had maintained that it was possible to separate heritage and hate. And I think the slaying in Charleston pretty much shattered what was left of that mythology. And there were a number of cases, a number of states, where Confederate flags were furled almost, you know, within a matter of days of that event. The next target was going to be monuments. But compared to a flag, the monuments are a bit less emotive. And they were seen like as on the second line of defense as far as the whole cult of the lost cause and the refusal to accept the idea that both the flag and the monuments were tied to slavery.


Monuments were simply less closely associated in the minds of white Southerners, in particular, with anything related directly to racial oppression. It was the flag that had been waved at the Klan rallies. You know, it's easier to hoist a flag than a bust of Stonewall Jackson. It had the much stronger visual association with racial oppression or racist hate groups than monuments did.​

and

COBB: Well, as a historian, I'll confess to a certain nervousness about sanitizing the historical landscape. But I think what we're looking at here is that these monuments, just like the flag, have been sort of seized on. And they've been so severely tainted. I think the best way to look at them upon removing them - and I think they do have to be removed from public spaces.


But I think the best way to look at them is that they're not being preserved in a museum, which is where I think they should go as a monument, but really, as an artifact because their connection with, you know, the effort to practically reinstitute slavery after the Civil War gives them an extra layer of complexity that I think most people have not been exposed to. Whereas they - in a public spot, I think they can only be divisive and a source of discord and conflict.​

i honestly don't give a rats ass about the monuments. i'm to the point of being sick and tired of told what my morality should be by the left. they got away with the WE JUST WANT THIS FLAG OFF THIS PROPERTY! to look what we have now?

nothing is sacred. our history is to be forgotten in the name of "feeling better".

Who is suggesting our history be 'forgotten'?

Do you think that if there is not a statue to Robert E. Lee no one will remember the Civil War, or how the Confederacy was formed to protect the institution of slavery?

Why do you object to local communities deciding to remove monuments?

Why do you object to local communities putting up a monument?

Apparently the idiots in the SC government thought removing a Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds would solve something. Anyone believing removing the flag would do that believes the flag pulled the trigger at the AME church in Charleston.

Why are you afraid of statues and monuments?