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A neologism (or a new meaning for the word?) that I have begun to see everywhere and has really started to annoy me is 'anti-racism'.
The annoyance began when I noticed the term being used in places where it was anachronistic. Two instances that I remember were the Wikipedia pages of "Pepsi" and "J.R.R Tolkien". Pepsi's article describes Pepsi's early attempts to advertise to black people as an untapped market as an "anti-racism stance". Tolkien's article states that "scholars have noted... he was anti-racist." After some digging around in the edit history of Pepsi's article, I found that the term 'anti-racist' was only added to the Pepsi article in mid-2018, and to Tolkien's article in early 2021.
"Anti-racism" is a term popular within Critical Race Theory. It was particularly popularised and entered the public consciousness in large part due to Ibram X. Kendi's 2019 book How to be an Anti-Racist. Kendi defines "anti-racism" in that book as follows:
According to Kendi, any racial inequity, or anything that results in a racial inequity is by definition racist, and in order to be an "anti-racist" you must support racial equity (i.e. forcing equal outcomes) for everything. A similar quote is from Angela Davis: "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”
"Anti-racism" is a classic example of linguistic laundering/doubling, or linguistic motte-and-bailey, that is rife within woke/Critical Social Justice circles. The pattern is to take a word that has a plain meaning to the layman (anti-racist simply means against racism), and create a second specific, academic and ideological meaning for it. This second meaning is then smuggled into conversations and policy when the public naturally just assume the first, plain meaning. Ultimately, this is done for political and ideological ends. Manipulate people to get on board through the plain meaning (you're not a racist are you? You want to be an anti-racist!), then implement the ideological agenda, while maintain it is nothing usual because the word is the same. Other common words doubled in this way are the trio of diversity, equity, inclusion.
Critical Social Justice is the amalgamation of Neo-Marxism/Critical Theory, and Post-modernism/Post-Structuralism. Michel Foucault is the most cited scholar in history, and many other post-modernists, and Neo-Marxists top the list of most cited humanities scholars. It's hard to overstate how influential these ideas are currently in the humanities. Both Neo-Marxism but particularly post-modernism have an extreme focus on language. Language is the medium of power, and therefore, of oppression. It should not be surprising then that Critical Social Justice deliberately engages in such language manipulation as part of their political project, including engaging in historical revisionism to legitimise themselves.
Uh, what term are they supposed to use instead? Specifically serving a disfavored group, or writing letters about how dumb racists are, seems pretty anti-racist to me.
Your proposed "political and ideological ends" don't make a lot of sense, either.
1.Use "anti-racist" in the Tolkien article
2.Poor shmucks think that he's just neutral on racism
3.But those In The Know can tell he was actually supporting racial equity!
4.???
5.New era of racial equity
Not really seeing the payoff for them. Likewise for DEI--cui bono? What are those nasty CRT partisans getting from promoting a second meaning?
Don’t be so cute. You know what anti-racism is, and it’s not aww gee shucks I just think racism sure is bad. It’s classic motte & bailey feminism is just equality stuff.
Not being cute.
I know what anti-racism is, and Tolkien saying “I have the hatred of Apartheid in my bones” fits. Do you have an alternative?
No, that's being "not racist." Totally different than anti-racist. A "not racist" person believes in color blindness and treating people equally and putting the responsibility for differential outcomes on the individual. An anti-racist person believes in structural racism and fighting it by treating people differently in order to compensate. Where is the evidence that Tolkien acknowledged the existence of structural racism? Where is the evidence that he ever advocated or personally gave special dispensation to URM in order to counteract the effects of structural racism?
I think it's reasonably plausible that Tolkien was not racist, but I don't see much evidence that he was anti-racist.
Then I guess I’ve fallen for the CRT strategy. I don’t believe you have to subscribe to a particular structural theory to be anti-racist. Maybe Kendi wants to redefine it so that’s true; we aren’t obligated to go along.
Can you elaborate then on what you see as the difference between not-racist and anti-racist?
If Kendi's definition is more prevalent in academic, scientific and governmental discourse, would you at least acknowledge that your usage is nonstandard?
There are at least four categories: Racist, not racist, opposed to racism, and Kendi-approved.
Tolkien was in the third. Lots of Americans are. Telling your drunk uncle not to use the n-word is in this category, as is arguing with racists on the Internet. It would make sense, in a vacuum, to call this “anti-racist.”
Kendi is attempting to apply that legitimacy to his own category. As pointed out across this thread, Tolkien would likely not meet his seal of approval. It is rhetorically useful to call his category “anti-racist” precisely because many people would like to be in it.
Getting upset at the normal, sensible meaning of the word is ceding the battle.
At the same time, though, you don't get to write the dictionary, or at least, what goes into the dictionary.
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Prior to the last several years, I would have interpreted "not racist" to mean "not discriminating or holding prejudice against persons or peoples on account of race" and "anti-racist" as meaning "making efforts to counter or thwart racism, or at the very least, opposed to the toleration of racism and racists". I haven't read Kendi's book, but I interpreted the title How to be an Antiracist as gesturing straightforwardly at the latter: "Yes, and here is how racism can be thwarted, and these are the efforts you need to make".
I'd agree though that edits to Tolkien's wikipedia page are made with the new sense in mind. I doubt the person meant it in ideological sense, though. They were just aware that in the new world Critical Social Justice has made, racism is a black and white struggle and you are either with the racists or you are "Anti-Racist". This bugs me about as much as it seems to bug you, ie, a lot.
Yeah, exactly. The ideologues have triumphed to that extent, that if you don't make Wiki edits in line with the New Orthodoxy, you get crushed or even the page gets deleted because it's full of wrongthink. The loud online minority of activists may only be a minority, but they are very loud and will go around claiming "So-and-so is bad because we say so!" and they get their way by being screeching nuisances.
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