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I'm not sure I follow your logic - are you equating 'majority establishment' with 'majority'?

vidarh 11y ago
To give you another example, then: Pre-Apartheid, Mahatma Ghandi campaigned for improved rights for Indians. Only. He explicitly did not support giving blacks the same rights he wanted for Indians, and explicitly accepted continued white supremacy. Indians in South Africa at the time were an oppressed group, with substantially curtailed rights - they were by no means part of the "majority establishment". I am sympathetic to threat expressions by oppressed groups with more leniency, but trying to redefine racism to avoid labelling it as such I find extremely offensive - it does not just affect the "majority establishment", but also other minority groups.
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> I'm not sure I follow your logic - are you equating 'majority establishment' with 'majority'? Are you not equating it? A demographic majority is an enormous source of power. It seems like you're trying to avoid the dynamic and highly local nature of power by putting everything on "institutions" to paper over all the subtlety. Institutions are not monolithic, are not all aligned with one another, and are not the sole source of all power. It is never the case that a group has no power whatsoever. Anyone who uses their power out of racial animus is a racist. What you're proposing is like when feminists claim that anyone who is for equality is a feminist, but then in practice self-described feminists care much more about the gender disparity in corporate officers than the gender disparity in prison. It's a bait and switch. Which causes reasonable people to object to the equality-for-me-not-for-thee feminism and start a civil war with other people who also actually want equality, because the leaders lie about who they are and what they want. When racism is defined as "power exercised under racial animus" then everyone can agree that it's wrong. As soon as you try to redefine it as "power exercised by white people", you're not going to be able to convince white people that that is wrong. Acceptance of your definition of racism will cause white people to stop accepting racism as wrong. That is not OK.

To give you another example, then: Pre-Apartheid, Mahatma Ghandi campaigned for improved rights for Indians. Only. He explicitly did not support giving blacks the same rights he wanted for Indians, and explicitly accepted continued white supremacy. Indians in South Africa at the time were an oppressed group, with substantially curtailed rights - they were by no means part of the "majority establishment". I am sympathetic to threat expressions by oppressed groups with more leniency, but trying to redefine racism to avoid labelling it as such I find extremely offensive - it does not just affect the "majority establishment", but also other minority groups.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

> I'm not sure I follow your logic - are you equating 'majority establishment' with 'majority'? Are you not equating it? A demographic majority is an enormous source of power. It seems like you're trying to avoid the dynamic and highly local nature of power by putting everything on "institutions" to paper over all the subtlety. Institutions are not monolithic, are not all aligned with one another, and are not the sole source of all power. It is never the case that a group has no power whatsoever. Anyone who uses their power out of racial animus is a racist. What you're proposing is like when feminists claim that anyone who is for equality is a feminist, but then in practice self-described feminists care much more about the gender disparity in corporate officers than the gender disparity in prison. It's a bait and switch. Which causes reasonable people to object to the equality-for-me-not-for-thee feminism and start a civil war with other people who also actually want equality, because the leaders lie about who they are and what they want. When racism is defined as "power exercised under racial animus" then everyone can agree that it's wrong. As soon as you try to redefine it as "power exercised by white people", you're not going to be able to convince white people that that is wrong. Acceptance of your definition of racism will cause white people to stop accepting racism as wrong. That is not OK.