"Racism"

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(03-15-2018, 11:46 AM)Dill Wrote: Just a couple of points:

There is quite a long history of quality scholarship on race which is neither "just honesty" nor "screaming."  Sometimes it comes into social media at odd and unsupported angles, where it takes on a new life, glossed onto already existing unscholarly definitions and quickly shaped to uncritical, partisan purposes.

The latter happens in part because legal definitions of racism have real, institutional consequences for people's life opportunities, and in part because "the left" (as social liberals are called in social media nowadays) has momentarily won the long social/cultural struggle to define racism as an unqualified evil. I say momentarily because the Trump election signals concerted pushback against that definitional control of the terrain of social debates.

I think that is what you are marking when you refer to "lowering the bar."  Think of Bannon's embrace of the term "racist" during his recent speech in France, part of the struggle to win back the moral high ground from "the left," or at least the power to speak more negatively about racially defined groups without social/political consequences.

This is a great example of how a person beholden to an ideology can't see the weaknesses of said ideology.  The left certainly deserves credit for advancing the dialogue on race in this country and exposing the evils of institutional and personal racism.  They deserve equal opprobrium for then advancing racist ideas of their own.  The concept that only white people can be racist is, itself, racist and it comes solely from the left.  The idea that a person can speak about or treat white people in a way that any logical person would conclude is racist and earn, not censure, but acceptance is as nauseating as it is racist and counter productive.  Again, this is not only advanced by the left but applauded.

I made a point in the South Africa thread that the thing Mandela deserves the most credit for is the way he handled the transition of power form the apartheid government.  By historical precedent the transition should have been a blood bath.  Mandela knew that revenge was counter productive and wrong.  He knew that reconciliation was the way forward and that holding today's people responsible for the sins of yesterday would only perpetuate division.  

If we want to truly put racism in our rear view mirror, for the majority of us, then it can't be "it's our turn now".