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Notes -
Can I just take a moment to say:
Racists do not describe themselves as racists. They always have beliefs that re perfectly reasonable and normal from their own perspective, and generally have either sources of evidence they consider authoritative or arguments they consider persuasive to validate those beliefs.
That being said: are we all ok with calling BAP a racist, after posts like this?
And if not, who in the world could we call a racist, then?
I worry a lot that people in spaces like this one get blinded by the aesthetics of intellectualism and academic rigor. But it's actually not very hard to use big words and phrase thing in empirical framings. It's not even that hard to do a literature search and find the one paper out of 5,000 that has some stats supporting your view which you can cite.
But in many cases, it's pretty easy to tell when that stuff is all happening above someone's bottom line. This also relates to epistemic learned helplessness, with people being rightly skeptical of arguments and citations that seem persuasive but are highly optimized to seem that way by lots of distributed effort in some cases, but being more amenable to those types of arguments when they come from certain people/groups or support certain things they're disposed towards.
No matter how many epicycles go into justifying the position and adding layers of nuance to it, there has to be some point where you take a step back and notice that the only thing they care about is vilifying racial minorities, blaming all of our problems on them, and advocating for policies against them. There has to be a word for that position regardless of the aesthetics that it is cloaked in.
I really don’t think people in this space grapple with this question, and questions like it, nearly enough.
Many of my complaints about how this “IDW-ish slice” of the Internet discusses racism would be addressed if, after reading someone’s comments about how leftists have used the word “racism” into meaninglessness, I got the impression that they had proactively, introspectively, honestly asked themselves the following questions:
I agree that a lot of left-wing people abuse the term “racism”! But that’s, like, step negative one of an actually introspective conversation. I don’t see many people here actually grapple with “what do I think racism is?”, instead only arguing the negative.
For example, imagine if I did this with something that was more of a sacred cow of these parts — imagine if I argued “right-wing people have abused the term free speech into complete meaninglessness because almost all of them invoke the first amendment in response to private actors criticizing them or banning them from a forum etc”. You can’t really deny that a large number of people actually do this all the time, but this is a terrible comment, right? What I need to do is actually engage with the idea — “what do these people mean when they say free speech? What restrictions do I think should be put on private platforms to honor free speech? What social norms should surround censorship of unpopular statements by private actors?” and so on.
So responding to a right-wing person complaining about free speech with “right-wing people have used this term so loosely I genuinely have no idea what they mean anymore” would be unbelievably lazy. It’s fundamentally my job to understand what they mean, and all my comment shows is that I’ve blatantly refused to do that, and chosen to believe that they mean nothing.
And in terms of my actual statements, this makes me completely indistinguishable from someone who actually doesn’t believe in free speech at all, and would have no objections to the government passing a law to ban spoken racism, doesn’t it?
In the same way, imagine the perspective of someone like me, a person with the opposite view to the prevailing zeitgeist around these parts when it comes to racism. Try to remember that if all you do is make this negative argument (“leftists have abused the term racism so much it’s meaningless now”), I have absolutely no idea if you are someone whose beliefs are closer to “the thing that most young Americans in 1995 would have called racism is in fact bad, but it barely exists and leftists exaggerate it” or whose beliefs are closer to “the thing that most young Americans would have called racism in 1995 is in fact good and more people should do it”, and those are completely different arguments to have. And the process of trying to get to the point where I know which of these you’re actually saying is exhausting and 90% of the time I fail. Many of you I uncharitably suspect of switching between the two whenever it’s convenient for you to do so.
TL;DR: What I really want is for you to be proactive in telling me which you mean, rather than just talking about what you don’t consider to be racism. If this is not racism, what would I consider racism? Did the majority of people who supported segregation do so for racist reasons, or not? And so on.
Why would that be absurd? Why do you believe the term is useful at all? Why do you believe that “racism” indicates a real and important phenomenon worth caring about? What if the word was never anything other than a boo light, intentionally devised as a way to pathologize what is actually a totally normal and healthy outlook?
There is nobody on earth who, upon honest reflection, would agree that “Yes, I just hate minorities because they’re ugly and stinky and it’s bad to look different from the way I look.” That is a caricature which exists only in the heads of racial egalitarians and “anti-racists”. In reality, even the least introspective, most unreflective “bigot” has actual specific reasons - even if it’s at the level of anecdotal examples and life experience - to believe that there are important differences between the traits and the history of various groups, and/or that limiting the interpersonal interaction of those groups is optimal. I don’t care if they wouldn’t put it in those high-falutin’ terms. Even if you gave them truth serum and ample opportunity to freely articulate the contents of their own minds, they wouldn’t commit to “just don’t like ‘em, simple as” as an honest reflection of their internal mental state.
Racism isn’t real. Believing in important racial differences is certainly real; I believe it, as do probably a plurality of commenters here. Believing that an optimal society ought to achieve some level of separation/segregation between groups is also real, and is a far more controversial position even in this community; I advocate for the managed and non-coercive separation of black Americans from non-blacks over time, but it’s not because “I just hate the darkies and want them to die”. I have (what I think are) sophisticated reasons for believing what I do; I reasoned myself into this position over time, and did not start from a simple visceral aversion to people who look different from me.
A small number of people today even still believe that some races ought to rule over others, or even that some racial and ethnic groups should be exterminated! I don’t believe that, and I’ve never interacted with anyone who does (I suspect that the vast majority of people who do say these things are simply LARPing or doing a bit) but I don’t deny that such people are real. However, they are still not “racist”. They have actual reasons for believing that the conditions of the world are such that extreme measures genuinely are necessary for the preservation and improvement of mankind.
I could turn this around on you and ask: “Do you own pets? You do? Oh, so you irrationally hate animals? You want them enslaved in your home, rather than free to rule themselves?” And you would rightly respond, “No, I just don’t think humans and animals are precisely equal, and that the natural order of things is for humans to domesticate certain animals and to use them for our benefit, as long as we’re not overly cruel to those animals. I love my cat, but I wouldn’t let him drive a car, or vote in a presidential election.” But if I was absolutely committed to the proposition that speciesism is a useful and important concept, it would be easy for me to distort your beliefs to make them fit into a model that pathologizes them.
This is essentially what I believe that you’re doing with the term “racism”. Let the term go. It was never valuable to begin with. Nobody here cares if you think we’re racist or not. The term has become fully disenchanted. You might as well call us all heretics. Or “enemies of the Emperor of Assyria”. Engage with our ideas on the object level, and stop worrying about whether or not they fall afoul of your made-up boo word.
Well, it would certainly be convenient for you if we'd stop using a "made-up boo word" to describe the beliefs of racists, and I am (to a limited degree) sympathetic to your argument (put forward with more good faith than @The_Nybbler does) that "Racism has become so weaponized as to get my hackles up as soon as I hear it."
However, it looks to me like you basically want to argue for policies and an ideology that would, under any reasonable definition, be considered "racist" - you would just prefer we not use that word, because it now has a negative connotation, and you believe that your policies and ideologies are actually good and reasonable and therefore should not be besmirched with negative connotations. It reminds me of David Duke, back in the day, who did the same dance you and nybbler do, but less elaborately (and less convincingly, because you could practically see the wink and the smirk when he did it): "I'm not a racist, I'm a racialist. I don't hate black people, I just love white people!"
Yes, of course you're correct that hardly anyone hates other races because "they're ugly and stinky" or "just because." The most unreflective might simply hate them because they've always been taught to hate them, or because they have had mostly negative interactions with them. The more reflective will advance more sophisticated arguments like you do about IQ and HBD and how we should agree to an amicable separation so they can peacefully flourish in their own ethnostate and reach their full potential yadda yadda.
But I think insisting that "We should accept the reality that black people are dumber and more criminal and we should bring back segregation, but don't call that racism, because that's made up" is a nonsense argument and you're engaging in it for purely rhetorical reasons. Racism clearly does exist; we're just disagreeing over whether or not it's a bad thing. Would you argue that the many black people who hate white people are not racists? Are @BurdensomeCount's triumphalist screeds about how white people deserve to be made to lick the boots of his folk not racist?
This is precisely what I am disputing! I have to believe that you are not actually this dim and mendacious. My entire point is that it is not in fact reasonable to consider my ideas “racist”. Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t mean it’s reasonable! You’re simply appealing nakedly to consensus and pretending like you’ve made an argument.
No, it doesn’t!
Yes! Obviously, yes! I am explicitly saying that these people are not racist. I have never said anything otherwise. Have you ever once seen me complain about “anti-white racism” or “reverse racism” or anything like that? No! They are anti-white, and I dislike them for that reason. Their beliefs are bad for my people, which is why I oppose them. But in many cases they are based on completely sensible, well-reasoned motivations. I don’t oppose them because they’re “racist” in some abstract sense of “it’s bad to prefer one group over another and to advocate in favor of that group, even when such advocacy negatively impacts another group” or “it’s bad not to like people because of their group identity”. It’s perfectly fine to do either! I just don’t want it done against my group, because that would be bad for my group. What about this is difficult for you to understand? Why do you keep acting like you’ve exposed some secret ulterior motive of mine?
Again, as both I and @SecureSignals noted, your argument here is structurally identical to an accusation of heresy. “Well, clearly you recognize that God is real, and the Bible is true - you just hate them!” And we are responding with “No, actually we reject your whole frame.” Again, just because a lot of people believe something does not mean it’s reasonable, or that people who reject it are doing so dishonestly.
What do you think I mean when I use the word racist? What do you think most people mean?
So your argument is "Racism is completely sensible and well-reasoned, so please don't use that word because it's a boo-word."
Exactly. This is the point you are missing. I understand that you are arguing that beliefs that are conventionally called "racist" are actually perfectly fine and reasonable beliefs. Go ahead and argue that.
I reject your objection to the word itself, not because I disagree with your ideology, but because I refuse to stop using a word just because you would prefer it not be used because it has negative associations. If I say your beliefs are racist, and you feel like that's a boo-word and I'm saying you're just like the KKK (which I am not btw), you are entitled to point out how your beliefs are different from the KKK's.But you are not entitled to tell me "Yes, I believe in racial discrimination and segregation, but don't call that racism because racism doesn't exist." You would like us to use some more politic, less pejorative word, but "racist," whether you like it or not, is an actual word that describes actual beliefs. The dispute is not over whether those beliefs exist, but what we should think about them.
Absolutely not. It's more akin to you saying "I do not believe in God and I think religion is fake and gay - but don't call me an atheist, that's a boo-word."
Let’s take a step back and check the extent to which you and I actually disagree.
Do you believe that there is such a thing as a slur? By this, I mean a word which is inherently designed to contain within it the implication that the thing being indicated is bad? And such that there would be no way to use the word in a value-neutral way?
Take the word “faggot”, for example. If I call a gay man - let’s call him Travis - a faggot and he protests by asking me to stop using that word, I can defend my usage of it in two ways. One of those ways - riffing, perhaps, off of the famous Chris Rock bit, is, “I’m not calling you a faggot because you fuck guys. I’m calling you a faggot because you’re mincing all over the place, acting all effeminate, and a man shouldn’t act like that. A straight guy can be a faggot too, if he acts faggy. Nothing specifically gay about it.” But of course, Travis is well aware of the history of this word, and that it was always designed and intended to target gay men, and simultaneously to conglomerate a number of behaviors commonly associated with specifically gay men and to anathematize those behaviors. So Travis understands that I am either mistaken or (more probably) lying.
The second way I can defend my usage of the word is to say, “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be a faggot! Being faggy is a totally normal and reasonable thing for a person to be.” Travis would likely respond, entirely reasonably, “Then why didn’t you use a word that doesn’t carry an insulting connotation? Why not call me, I don’t know, a queen? It’s not something everyone likes to be called, but at least it’s not a word that someone has only ever used to insult me.” If I were to reply, “No, I’m going to continue to say faggot. Everyone knows what it means, and yes, the vast majority of people who use it and/or have ever used it meant it insultingly. But I don’t think it is, so I’ll keep using it.” Do you think Travis would believe that I am being fully up-front with him?
By tabooing the word “faggot” and forcing me to describe him in a more value-neutral way, or at least to disaggregate the various assumptions contained within the word, Travis can at least get me to try and explicitly demonstrate that the various aspects of a supposed “faggot” are, independently, things worth caring about or drawing attention to. I would also need to demonstrate that such aspects do, in fact, typically come together in a particular package, and that the person whom I’m currently calling a faggot possesses all of those aspects.
What I’m saying is that “racist” has always been a slur. That it was coined by someone who intended it to refer to a cluster of things he thought were bad, and that it was popularized exclusively by people who all agreed that being racist was a bad thing. And that it is impossible to use in a value-neutral way due to its history. With which parts of this do you disagree?
Doesn't all of this apply to words like "wrong", "selfish", or "boring" as well? Sometimes people create words to refer to things that they think other people shouldn't do. Not all of those are slurs.
I continue to believe that the word "racist" is perhaps the best one-word description for the policies you've said you'd like to pursue. You see racial divisions between people as extremely important and would like to completely restructure society along its lines; I consider the extent to which you care about this, the extent to which you think racial division is important, to be extremely irrational - so irrational that the only way I can really try to understand it, though I would keep this to myself normally, is to start postulating things like trauma, depression, a ridiculously sheltered upbringing, and so on, to explain to myself how someone can get to where it seems like you are. I don't say those things as insults, I'm just trying to really make it clear that "that is racist" to me is not "you hate black people", it's kind of a statement in the epistemic universe of "you are depressed"; it's my own observation that you probably have a certain bias.
Setting the prescriptive stuff aside, at least descriptively, basically every American, including almost every attendee in the crowd at CPAC, would agree that the policies you're calling for can be accurately called "racist". The crowd at CPAC would immediately, reflexively jump to your defence once they saw that I was a left-wing person calling someone racist, but if you honestly explained your beliefs in front of the crowd in the way that you did above, there would be much clearing of throats, embarrassed murmurs, and rapid changing of subjects coming from the crowd.
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I agree that racist has inherently negative connotations for historical reasons. ("Racists" in the past wouldn't have used the word to describe themselves because it was essentially a universal belief. Segregationists in the 50s did not call themselves "racists" but they probably would not have shied away from the label either.) I do not agree it is a "slur." You compared it to calling someone a "faggot," but I think it would be more comparable to calling someone a "homosexual." A term that is both descriptive and at one time had very strong negative connotations, and still does with some people. If I call someone a homosexual because he's mincing around acting effeminate, it would still reasonably be understood as an insult. But if I describe people who engage in same-sex relations as "homosexuals" and am told that I shouldn't use that word because it's a slur, I'm going to ask them who decided that.
You advocate racial discrimination and segregation as reasonable and desirable, and you would like to taboo the word "racist" because to most people, "racist" has very negative connotations. I can understand why you would like to persuade people to use words without that baggage to describe your beliefs, but that does not mean anyone should feel obligated to accommodate you. Even here on the Motte, if someone just dismissed you with "Wow, you are such a racist," they would likely get modded, but describing your beliefs as "racist" is accurate. You may object to it, just as there are in fact gay people who now object to "homosexuals." Maybe you will be as successful as the "queer" community is at pushing for linguistic shifts. Or maybe you can rehabilitate the word "racist." But you are not the sole determiner of what a word means and how it is used, and just because it would suit your agenda to taboo the word or claim it "isn't a real thing" doesn't mean it does not, in fact, describe a real thing.
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I think a good comparison is the word heretic. Imagine you are an atheist and a puritan accuses you of being a heretic. Do you say "yes, you are right I am indeed a heretic." Only if you are trying to be provocative, but really you would just dismiss the entire frame of that question. No, I'm not going to admit to you that I am a heretic, I'm not going to accept your frame of the world by embracing that label, I dismiss the label altogether.
I don't have to imagine I'm an atheist, I am, and I'd happily confirm that I'm a heretic relative to any particular religion's dogma that defines me as such. I know that I meet that definition and don't have any problem with the word because it is has no moral worth to me.
The way that example is different from the one we're talking about here is that the people who meet a standard definition of racism don't want to be called racists. You imagine an atheist wouldn't want to be called a heretic, but why should we care? We've actively rejected that frame, so we're not embarrassed about being accurately labeled.
Whereas most racists have not actually rejected the social frame that gives rise to definitions and accusations of racism. They still want to be an upstanding member of that society, and they still want to think of themselves as morally correct within that society. So they want that society to drop it's own labels and definitions in order to accommodate them.
But could you be so blasé about labels like heretic or infidel if they carried with it serious social repression? If you couldn’t get a job, or lost all your friends or contact with your children if people knew you were an infidel, would you still happily accept the label? Racist is a label that still carries those kinds of consequences for those so labeled. Heretic and infidel really don’t outside of heavily religious communities.
Right, that was the point of my last paragraph.
People who meet society's current definition of racist just want society to change its beliefs or norms so that they're not punished. The idea that 'racist' is an incoherent or meaningless category is primarily a rationalization to justify that effort.
Saying that the social sanctions for being racist are too extreme and should be mollified is a real position that can be argued.
Saying that people are using 'the worst argument in the world' or 'labels as superweapons' to apply those sanctions to people who don't actually deserve them under the original purpose and intent of those sanctions is a real position that can be argued.
I don't think 'that word doesn't mean anything because I don't want it to' is a real argument, here. I think it's mostly a rationalization to try to dodge the issue, and society won't accept it.
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That's very brave of you, you could write "I am le heretic!" all day long and get updoots on Reddit.
If someone though is sincerely accusing you of being an infidel or heretic and you confirm their accusation you are accepting their frame of reference.
When you say you will "happily confirm you are a heretic" it's a "what are you going to do about it?" play. But if you actually lived in a society where that accusation had weight and social consequences, and you opposed the conventional wisdom for what entailed heresy, you would not accept that label for yourself or use it to describe your beliefs.
As a factual statement, a non-believer is an infidel. That's what infidel means. As a factual statement, someone who believes in racial discrimination and segregation is a racist.
You can reject the religion that labels nonbelievers infidels, and you can reject a society that abhors racism, but the words still have meanings that accurately describe a set of beliefs or lack thereof.
Yes, there are social consequences for being a racist, as there were at one time harsher social consequences for being an infidel. I understand why you would like to remove the social consequences for being a racist. That does not, however, change the factual meaning of the word or your beliefs. You and @hoffmeister are trying to argue that "racism doesn't exist," when what you're actually claiming is "racism is good and shouldn't be stigmatized." Those are not the same arguments, and the objection to the word "racist" is one of tactical semantics, because of the negative weight "racism" has today. You would prefer a less freighted term - like, say, "racialist" - but that doesn't mean "racist" is not an accurate label. You might not like someone calling you a racist. I would not like someone flinging "infidel" at me as an insult, especially if it potentially carried more serious consequences. But I cannot honestly say I'm not an "infidel."
Yes, this is my exact point. If I reject a religion that labels me an infidel or heretic, I am not going to accept that label to describe myself or my own beliefs. This is really basic stuff, nobody does this, except for farming upvotes on /r/atheism which falls under the "intentionally provocative" mode of embracing that label only as a power flex.
I reject the religion that frames the entire concept of racism which, by the way, relative to world history is a brand new concept tightly coupled with our own post-WWII civic religion which is exactly what we reject. "Words have meaning", exactly, which is why it is stupid for you to demand that I accept the framing of a religion that I reject by embracing that word to describe myself. Words have meaning, so I refuse to play along with that garbage and humor a religious fanaticism that I oppose.
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Yeah, that's how communication works.
Words have meaning, and have meaning in context. Just because you disagree with an opponent's worldview doesn't mean that words within the context of that worldview stop having discrete and coherent meanings.
There's a strict empirical definition of what it means to be a heretic to Christians even if I don't believe in Christianity, and there's a literally true answer to that empirical question. There's a strict empirical definition of what it means to be (for example) a racist under the utilitarian definition of racism, even if you reject the empirical racism as a politically meaningful concept, and there's a literally true answer to that empirical question.
It makes sense that you would want to 'reject the frame' if you think you can evade social sanctions thereby. That's a pretty normal thing to do, especially if you think the social sanctions are unjust.
But my point is,. just acknowledge the fact that by doing so, you are running from the truth and trying to muddy the waters. There's a true matter of fact that you're denying because you think people will react to hearing it badly/unjustly.
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In a society where it’s illegal to be a heretic, one has to hide one’s atheism to avoid prosecution and the points here about wordplay are irrelevant.
If I’m an atheist in say Iran, then the label is not the problem, it’s that my deconversion from Islam is a tad illegal.
Even in the US the label of apostate or heretic doesn’t matter in terms of “accepting their frame of reference”; what mattered is how my family/friends/society responded to my deconversion. It’s the object level, not the label.
Similarly, if say one has clear racial animosity, many people can find that abhorrent without ever needing to invoke the word “racism.” That term has been abused, but the 1995 version was much less so.
The hard bit is that certain facts about reality do seem to be “racist” or “sexist” and the toxicity of these labels keeps polite society from understanding reality in certain policy areas, inconveniently. That doesn’t make it better for those who really just dislike a given race or sex and/or want to discriminate against them and want those labels to disappear.
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An atheist is specifically not a heretic, and in puritan society atheism would in fact be a valid defense against charges of heresy.
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Isn't a heretic 'a believer who practices some heresy' -- which lets atheists specifically off the hook on that charge? (and puts Puritans in jeopardy, incidentally)
So the right response would be something about glass houses I suppose.
“Apostate” is what we atheists get.
Still no go:
The term apostasy comes from the Greek word apostasia ("ἀποστασία") meaning "rebellion", "state of apostasy", "abandonment", or "defection". It has been described as "a willful falling away from, or rebellion against, Christianity. Apostasy is the rejection of Christ by one who has been a Christian.
So long as you never did believe, you are in the clear on that one. Although the Papists do feel that fallen Rationalists merit a shout-out, amusingly:
Apostasy a fide, or perfidiæ: Perfidiæ is the complete and voluntary abandonment of the Christian religion, whether the apostate embraces another religion such as Paganism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, etc., or merely makes profession of Naturalism, Rationalism, etc.
Rationalism has a specific technical meaning along the line of "denying the role of faith in holding beliefs".
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As long as you cop to the fact that your beef is not fundamentally with some recent progressive redefinition of the word “racism”, but with the entire idea that racism, including old-school “I don’t trust the blacks” racism, is actually bad, which it seems to me like you have, then I respect your honesty but will do everything I can to prevent people who think like you from ever (re-)gaining political power.
Basically, I’m specifically annoyed by people who masquerade as your classic anti-woke Classical Liberals but who actually have white-nationalist sympathies, or who are mindkilled enough about politics that they don’t even know or care themselves what their beliefs are as long as they’re on the other side as the wokes, and I don’t think you’re masquerading or hiding anything.
I think many of your beliefs are wrong on the object level about human societies and psychology, I think your beliefs are still unbelievably unpopular in normie right-wing circles, and I hope to God they don’t gain traction there.
Edit:
I completely agree with you here, except that I actually think many left-wing anti-racists understand well that this is not how racism works. To me, it’s precisely the right-wing anti-woke contingent who don’t understand that people who actually supported segregation had a more complex internal narrative than “minorities are bad and I don’t like them”. To me, I’m the last person on this forum who needs to be told this (in fact, I just said it myself over the course of many more words, but in service of an argument whose conclusion was in the opposite political direction).
My impression is that the dance seems to be: right-wing Classical Liberals and I think that old-school pro-segregation racism is wrong, and you don’t. You and I think that old-school racism (though you wouldn’t call it that) was always more complex than people who deep-down believed “I just don’t like the minorities”, and right-wing classical liberals think “no, the idea of racism actually was that simple, and described most supporters of this ideology, until the progressives changed the definition and now it’s meaningless”. You and right-wing classical liberals oppose describing those “more complex reasons”, if indeed they do exist, as “racism”, while I think that the reasons are at once more complex than “I don’t like the blacks”, but will also call them “racist” (though I’m not a fan of the one-word description and will explain over and over again with many many words that the way I am using the word “racism” allows for more complex reasons - it’s not the conscious reasons that word is pointing at when I say it).
I have no evidence to support me, but I don't think that's constrained to right-wing anti-woke—I think that's pretty conventionally usual. (Consider how much people are taught that it was due to prejudice?)
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Context Copy link
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Context Copy link
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Context Copy link