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I cried as a baby the first time I was put in a group with other babies (most likely of the same color as me). I think the word you're looking for is xenophobi

by pluma 10y ago

I cried as a baby the first time I was put in a group with other babies (most likely of the same color as me). I think the word you're looking for is xenophobia. And while xenophobia certainly isn't any less of a problem, calling it racism makes it sound far more grandiose than it really is. Racism is a political (and ideological) issue. Feminists define racism in terms of power dynamics. Supremacists use racism to attribute different qualities to different ethnic groups. Historically racism can be seen as the latent effects of slavery and racial segregation. Xenophobia is just a mental bias that used to give humans an evolutionary advantage but is becoming increasingly counterproductive in a globalised society. It's a flaw in human thinking that leads us to irrational attitudes but that can be overcome with conscious effort and exposing ourselves to that which is foreign to us. Conflating the two is one of the main reasons race is still such a hot topic in the US. The US is culturally and ethnically diverse, yes, but that diversity is not equally distributed. In rural white majority areas "blacks" and "Jews" and "orientals" are still as foreign as ever and calling these people racist because they are afraid or unsympathetic of something they only hear about in news reports and on TV is not only unfair but unproductive, no matter how reassuring it may feel to us educated cosmopolitans who are so very progressive and distant from that backwater mindset. That is why Trump got elected. Republicans who were sick of being told they're racist and Democrats who were disillusioned with the choice of candidates. It didn't even take a record-breaking Republican turnout to get Trump elected, it just took enough Democrats being disinterested in supporting their own candidate. But I digress. I don't even have any skin in the game -- I'm not even in the US.

grzm 10y ago
I think xenophobia is used to express something much stronger than just bias.
- pluma 10y ago
  You're missing the point. "Racist" is no more than an insult at this point. They way it's commonly used it is now either tautological ("Well, yeah, everyone is racist"), an accusation of racial supremacism, or something in between. "Xenophobe" is equally tautological but xenophobia is something you can actually address. If used as an accusation, at worst it accuses someone of hatred, at best it accuses them of an unintentional bias. It doesn't accuse people of being part of a system that maliciously ruins people's lives. Racism, sexism and so on are pathologies. Calling someone a racist is no more productive than calling them a communist. They may agree with the label or not but it doesn't express the actual problem and its cause. Even worse, it implies an intentional choice. It's political. Xenophobia is not political. It can give birth to politics: isolationism, for example, or discrimination. But it's not in itself political or politicised. Of course if you just go around calling people "xenophobes" to avoid saying "racist" you're not making it any better, but xenophobia simply doesn't lend itself to being used as an accusation without making a point of painting yourself as infallible (which is ridiculous).
  - grzm 10y ago
    Xenophobia is an intense, irrational, pathological dislike or fear, and connotes something pathological. Bias (in this case, tribalism bias) is something that's a pretty well ingrained aspect of human psychology, and something everyone has. While a common usage of bias has the connotation of something unfair, it's also used in a stricter sense to indicate these inborn aspects of the human psyche. My original comment was intended to point out this distinction. I should have taken the time to be clearer. As for racism, sexism, and so on, or the political aspects of these, or xenophobia, those are beyond what I was addressing in my first comment, and not a mess I'm interested in digging into right now.

by pluma 10y ago

grzm 10y ago

I think xenophobia is used to express something much stronger than just bias.

pluma 10y ago
You're missing the point. "Racist" is no more than an insult at this point. They way it's commonly used it is now either tautological ("Well, yeah, everyone is racist"), an accusation of racial supremacism, or something in between. "Xenophobe" is equally tautological but xenophobia is something you can actually address. If used as an accusation, at worst it accuses someone of hatred, at best it accuses them of an unintentional bias. It doesn't accuse people of being part of a system that maliciously ruins people's lives. Racism, sexism and so on are pathologies. Calling someone a racist is no more productive than calling them a communist. They may agree with the label or not but it doesn't express the actual problem and its cause. Even worse, it implies an intentional choice. It's political. Xenophobia is not political. It can give birth to politics: isolationism, for example, or discrimination. But it's not in itself political or politicised. Of course if you just go around calling people "xenophobes" to avoid saying "racist" you're not making it any better, but xenophobia simply doesn't lend itself to being used as an accusation without making a point of painting yourself as infallible (which is ridiculous).
- grzm 10y ago
  Xenophobia is an intense, irrational, pathological dislike or fear, and connotes something pathological. Bias (in this case, tribalism bias) is something that's a pretty well ingrained aspect of human psychology, and something everyone has. While a common usage of bias has the connotation of something unfair, it's also used in a stricter sense to indicate these inborn aspects of the human psyche. My original comment was intended to point out this distinction. I should have taken the time to be clearer. As for racism, sexism, and so on, or the political aspects of these, or xenophobia, those are beyond what I was addressing in my first comment, and not a mess I'm interested in digging into right now.