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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

by 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

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.