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Wikipedia contains interesting sections on the etymology of both "racism" and "sexism". "Racism" (and the older term, "racialism") have been around since at lea
by xaa 10y ago
Wikipedia contains interesting sections on the etymology of both "racism" and "sexism". "Racism" (and the older term, "racialism") have been around since at least 1900. It originally seemed to have mostly related to pseudo-scientific methods of categorizing people by race, and circa WWII, acquired its now most-familiar meaning of "belief in the superiority of a particular race".
"Sexism" was coined by analogy to "racism" in the 1960s, within an academic context, but had not yet acquired the additional connotation you're talking about (the "systemic" part). The first occurrence in print defines it thusly: "Sexism is judging people by their sex when sex doesn't matter." No apparent mention of institutional or systemic effects; those probably came later.
So what we have here is a word, "racism", which acquired a well-known public meaning c. WWII that meant what we would now call "extreme, overt racism", and a word, "sexism" defined by analogy to it in the 1960s. It seems plain to me that much of the public is still going by these older definitions.
The fundamental problem is that, under the old definitions, calling someone "racist" (and probably "sexist"), is a very serious accusation. There is a reason Nazis seemingly come up in every discussion about racism: they are the ones who gave the word its modern, common meaning. In some ways, calling someone "racist" is therefore a direct, linguistic analogy comparing someone to a Nazi.
Academics later refined and repurposed these words. If they, and media surrogates explaining their ideas to the public, had stuck to terms like "(institutional) bias/prejudice", we wouldn't have nearly the degree of problems we have. Certainly it is important to distinguish between implicit, explicit, and systemic biases, which is exactly why we shouldn't use the same word for all of them. And if the goal is progress and understanding, we probably shouldn't use an emotionally charged word that gained its modern definitions from the Nazis.
We cannot realistically expect the public to read academic publications before voting. I'm in biology, and it would surely be nice if voters would read my papers so that they understand issues in medicine better (maybe they would increase NIH funding!), but that's completely unrealistic. No, it is up to academics and media to communicate clearly with the public, and I am arguing sociologists have failed miserably in this regard.
- pron 10y ago> We cannot realistically expect the public to read academic publications before voting. No, but we can hope that people would at least listen to those who dedicate their lives to a rigorous study of society rather than dismiss their views based on nothing of the sort. Academics (and journalists) don't explain those terms and the reasoning behind them only in academic publications.
- grzm 10y agoThere's been so much open questioning of experts and authorities that often people no longer trust someone who claims to be an expert. Think of controversial topics such as tobacco, climate change, anti-vaccination, GMOs. Skepticism is great, healthy, and necessary. When those who are honest about the role of skepticism, what "theory" means, and the limits of what they're able to show meet with those who are willing to politicize the debate and speak in absolutes, or at least disingenuously widen the gaps of doubt beyond what's reasonable, who's likely to win that argument in a television sound bite? Couple this with false balance in reporting, and you have a culture of people who don't know who to believe, and understandably may default to believing evidence that confirms what they already do. This of course is not a criticism of your comment. This is a situation that I see playing out every day, and it honestly scares me. I don't know how we come back from this.
- pron 10y agoI totally agree. I think that ironically this has created an atmosphere where manipulating people is easier than when the elites had more influence. It may be harder to manipulate all of the people in the same direction, but it's easier to manipulate a large group.
- xaa 10y agoI agree wholeheartedly with grzm. And I do believe the skepticism he is talking about has generated one positive result: if you want people to believe in expertise now, you have to not just define terms and explain reasoning, but show concrete proof. People believe (mostly) in modern medicine not because of our fancy jargon, or our explained logic about why the cell does this or that, but because it obviously works. I am a liberal living in a conservative state, with many conservative friends and family. I can assure you that many of them have never heard the reasoning and arguments you're referring to. Sure, you can find it on Slate. But they don't read Slate. But if and when these conservatives are confronted with these arguments, they will mostly agree that implicit bias exists, and accept data about unconscious associations, police profiling, etc. But they do NOT accept the conclusion drawn from it -- that we are all therefore "racist". Because to them that term is as much or more a political tool for moral condemnation as it is a description of objective reality. And we liberals (I assume) would be kidding ourselves if we didn't admit it has been used this way frequently. And they also tend to resist the conclusion that we ought to do this or that about it -- because science, if sociology claims to be one, never does or can tell us what we ought to do, only what is reality (the is-ought problem). Once we start talking about what we should do, we are completely outside the realm of science.