07-10-2018, 10:48 AM
(07-09-2018, 02:36 PM)Dill Wrote: Do you think terms are "just words," or themselves the problem, or can they illuminate aspects of racism that just aren't very plain? Also, fish, grasshoppers and pandas are all covered by the term "animal." But that doesn't mean there is no advantage to further distinguishing animals with backbones from those without, and/or those with warm blood from those with cold, right?
I think "institutional racism" is a very useful concept, because it decribes practices which are racially discriminitory in effect, but could be maintained by people who do not consciously think about race at all.
Surely you can see how policies like ivy league universities' legacy admissions discriminate, can't you? And calling that "institutional racism" makes it usefully distinguishable from "just racism" of the blatant Charlottesville type? And asking people to be nicer wouldn't help much in this case, since the policy is carried out independently of individual preference, by employees just doing their job. It is the institution, the policy, which has to be addressed--not some "racist-making-a-decision."
And would you say that it is utterly impossible that proportion of black drivers stopped for speeding--or stopped and frisked--is proportionally higher than whites?
I would contend that these terms provide people who already feel downtrodden that there are even more cards stacked against them. They promote more victim hood and hopelessness. If I had been told my whole life that racism is holding me down and keeping me from getting what I want, that can do two things...spur me to overcome, or cause me to say why bother, they won't let me win anyway. Now throw on top of that the relatively recent terms of institutional racism and white privilege and there's two more things I have to overcome to make it. Can you see how those make the deck seem even more stacked when in essence, they are both already part of racism? To me, I just feel they make the problem seem larger (and therefore harder to overcome) and further divide or separate the races rather than work towards bringing us together.
