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The problem with banning things like "racism" is that words change meaning over time. Maybe some time in the future, any reference to "White Privlege" may be co

The problem with banning things like "racism" is that words change meaning over time. Maybe some time in the future, any reference to "White Privlege" may be considered racist, for instance.

gonzo41 5y ago
- sharikous 5y ago
  It's more about the political undertone. Your definition of racism is one of many. Today there is a strong push to define racism only as discrimination against historically oppressed racial minorities. It's a loaded term now, not a neutral one.
- heurisko 5y ago
  White working class boys in the UK are amongst the least likely to go to university in the UK, they don't have a privilege for being white. I think terms like white privilege drive resentment and are divisive. "In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race..." Barack Obama. https://constitutioncenter.org/amoreperfectunion/ https://constitutioncenter.org/amoreperfectunion/
  - matthewmacleod 5y ago
    they don't have a privilege for being white. As a white (and formerly working class) boy from the UK, I can confidently say that nobody has at any point in my life discriminated against me on the basis of my ethnic background. That is the extent of what this expression means – it does not mean that any individual to whom it applied is in a superior position relative to others, but only that they do not suffer from disadvantage due to one specific thing. There is a stubborn desire to ignore this distinction, and the reason that these terms become divisive is because people are too often manipulated into misrepresenting them.
    - heurisko 5y ago
      > it does not mean that any individual to whom it applied is in a superior position relative to others, but only that they do not suffer from disadvantage due to one specific thing. That's not the way it's taught to children. They're encouraged to think of their "privilege" entirely in terms of race, which determines whether they win or lose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg > There is a stubborn desire to ignore this distinction Because the distinction isn't made.
    - mlindner 5y ago
      The lack of having been discriminated against is by definition not a "privilege". What's wrong isn't the lack of discrimination, but the idea that lack of discrimination should be called a "privledge" rather than a "norm". It attacks people for not having hardship, namely turning something that's good int o something that's bad. The use of the term "white privledge" fundamentally applies that to make things "equal" we must discriminate against white people as much as we discriminate (as a society) against non-white people. Namely, bring people doing well down to the level of someone doing badly, rather than elevating the people doing poorly up to the level of "normal". It's a fundamentally bad phase to use.
      - a_shovel 5y ago
        Each sentence, though individually false, comes together to produce an overall point that is also false. A lack of a disadvantage others have is a privilege. The point of calling it a privilege is to emphasize that white people benefit from racism against other groups even when they don't do anything racist themselves. Benefitting knowingly from discrimination against others while doing nothing to end it is complicity. The term "privilege" is not an attack on white people, it is an attack on racism. It absolutely does not imply that we should bring down white people or be racist to them. Privilege will end when discrimination against non-white people ends. At least set up a monthly donation to an anti-racism organization, or something like that.
        akomtu 5y ago
  - gonzo41 5y ago
    It sucks being poor regardless of race (I grew up poor in Australia, so pretty wealthy by some perspectives), but having to contend with race is an additional burden to those who are not white in predominately white countries because there's another difference for them to overcome. WRT the white working class boys, They are not being held back by terms like white privilege. They are being held back by the very white house of lords denying them opportunities. In an American context, how often do you hear about social policies to round up Canadians who overstay work visas in order to deport them?
  - OwlsParlay 5y ago
    Do you think white people who lived during the time of segregation or redlining had white privilege? Because there's plenty of those people still living today. The kids shouting slurs at Ruby Bridges are still alive. Now yes, obviously white privilege is not the only axis of oppression and both in the UK and US class privilege is overlooked to a massive degree but pretending white privilege is a racist term is stupid.
    - twofornone 5y ago
      >Do you think white people who lived during the time of segregation or redlining had white privilege Whites were 80-90% of the population during that time, assigning a vague notion of "privilege" to an entire race of people as a basis for reverse racism is not only useless, but misleading, because these "privileged" people were still in competition with other whites (and non-redlined minorities). The implication is that they collectively derived benefit from unfair rules against blacks, but frankly this is a dishonest assertion. >but pretending white privilege is a racist term is stupid. >Racist: discriminatory especially on the basis of race or religion You're playing wordgames to resolve the cognitive dissonance that comes with claiming to be anti-racist while using intrinsically racist terminology. Especially when the implication of "white privilege" is that there is an unfair advantage based on race which needs to be corrected based on race. Reverse racism is still racism, even if merriam-webster tries to redefine the term.
      - OwlsParlay 5y ago
        > Whites were 80-90% of the population during that time, assigning a vague notion of "privilege" to an entire race of people as a basis for reverse racism is not only useless, but misleading, because these "privileged" people were still in competition with other whites (and non-redlined minorities). The implication is that they collectively derived benefit from unfair rules against blacks, but frankly this is a dishonest assertion. They absolutlely did derive a collective benefit, i'm astounded anyone can deny this. Are you just ignorant of just how badly treated black people were compared to white people in that period?
        5y ago
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Privilege is multidimensional, for crying out loud.
    - fleddr 5y ago
      Which makes the term completely useless in everyday use.
- account42 5y ago
  If you make up excuses for racisim it does not stop being racism.
- akomtu 5y ago
  The so-called "white privilege" is the abstract invisible but ever present enemy that's present in every cult. People in North Korea believe that spies and greedy capitalists are trying to invade their great country, and only the wise and pure leader Kim is going to save them. Orthodox muslims believe that the christian non-believers are the absolute evil, and the orthodox christians think the same about muslims. Different christian cults believe they are surrounded by fake christian cults and only they have the true understanding of what's right and what's wrong. The so-called woke believe in the ever-present whiteness evil and only their anti-racist doctrine will save them. My point is that if someone insists that you're surrounded by enemies, and the only way to save your soul is to blindly accept the Teaching, you're in a cult. The enemies part is what makes cult a cult, because the cult organisers want they followers to have a shallow us-vs-them mentality.
hwers 5y ago
Or that these days even people of color saying the n word is condemned, whereas just a few years ago (months?) it was sort of accepted. Making that into a legal doctrine would be quite tricky.
- rgoulter 5y ago
  John McWhorter wrote an article discussing the word. e.g. The head of the NAACP used the word in 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/john-mcwhorter-n-word-unsayable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/john-mcwhorter-n-...
mlindner 5y ago
Well "white privledge" IS racist. So that's already the case. Just some people don't consider it that way.
- anotherhue 5y ago
  The distinction between what is and what is considered so is rather important.
- nailer 5y ago
  It depends. Judging people's lived experienced based on their skin color may be racism under the MLK definition, but the far left has created a new definition of racism that allows one to discriminate against others based on the color of their skin, for paler colors of skin.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  Only if you're defining both terms to mean something different than in the contexts in which they normally are used. Privilege is concept that certain attributes a person has confer relative advantages in the ways they interact with the world and the outcomes thereof. Acknowledging that is not and cannot be bigotry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege Unless you're saying that white privilege is a consequence of racism, which would be correct, but not really relevant to the discussion here.
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    It is used as a racist rhetorical cudgel however, a "shut up your opinion doesn't matter because of your race" to mark someone as wrong without addressing their point at all. Related the concept is so terribly named it seems meant to raise conflict. Privledge implies that it should be optional. It invites the previously mentioned abuse.
    - LordDragonfang 5y ago
      priv·i·lege noun a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. It's named perfectly fine, it's just people willfully misinterpret it. As far as being a "racist rhetorical cudgel", I'm sorry if you've felt that way, but the majority of times I've seen it used, it's to point out that a person's privilege does work to invalidate their opinion on a matter. Most often, this is when someone is claiming that some form of discrimination doesn't exist, or isn't that bad, or that it happens the same to everyone and the people complaining should just get over it. Privilege affects one's lived experience in ways that it's difficult to notice, because you have only your own lived experience to rely on. As a man, I was privileged not to experience harassment, and like many men I thought my female friends were exaggerating how bad it was. Then I took a series of subway rides with a friend who was harassed every time, and later got personally harassed by a creepy coworker. My privilege blinded me to the reality of the situation. The same thing applies to race. I see a lot of white people who never personally witness racism making these broad statements about how, for example, you should just do what the police say and you'll be fine, when they've never had a cop drag them out of a car for no reason because they look like someone who might deal drugs. Because of their differences in societal privilege, their lived experience of dealing with cops has been wildly different, and the people with privilege shouldn't be talking over the people pointing out issues.
prmoustache 5y ago
This is the reason justice system has the concept of prescription. You cannot be prosecuted for something that wasn´t deem unlawful in the past and even if there was already a law about it we can't condemn you if we failed to do so within a not distant past. It pretty much cover you in case meaning change over time.
namelessoracle 5y ago
The OK hand sign is racist now. There's rumbles of milk being racist. The scary thing that should terrify everyone is we are going to come to a point where being called racist no longer matters or nobody cares, and then your gonna see REAL racism come back with a fury and force you wont like.
- jimmyjazz14 5y ago
  Wait, milk?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    People of European decent tend to be much better at digesting milk (lactose) as adults and there's a meme that if you can't chug a bottle of milk you have to get out. Or something silly like that. Turns out groups of people with ancestry in east Africa have the gene for lactose as well. So, milk could become a symbol of this if used within that context. People are paranoid enough today that if a picture of someone enjoying a glass of a milk was published, they could assume it was a signal of this. And it could be, to be sure.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    These are just pranks made by 4chan and their ilk. The circle of life on this sort of thing, I think, goes something like: Come up with a contrived reason milk could be considered racist, film a video or whatever about chugging milk while making a racist screed, get criticized for being a weirdo, and then some reactionary clickbait site can have the headline "Internet user called 'racist' for drinking milk." It is dumb, don't worry about it.
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      Didn't 4chan also create the OK hand sign racist as well? Now there are people who genuinely believe the OK sign is racist.
celdon25 5y ago
> Maybe some time in the future, any reference to "White Privlege" may be considered racist, for instance. Who says that's not already the case outside of the coastal cities?

The problem with banning things like "racism" is that words change meaning over time. Maybe some time in the future, any reference to "White Privlege" may be considered racist, for instance.

gonzo41 5y ago

sharikous 5y ago
It's more about the political undertone. Your definition of racism is one of many. Today there is a strong push to define racism only as discrimination against historically oppressed racial minorities. It's a loaded term now, not a neutral one.
heurisko 5y ago
White working class boys in the UK are amongst the least likely to go to university in the UK, they don't have a privilege for being white. I think terms like white privilege drive resentment and are divisive. "In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race..." Barack Obama. https://constitutioncenter.org/amoreperfectunion/ https://constitutioncenter.org/amoreperfectunion/
- matthewmacleod 5y ago
  they don't have a privilege for being white. As a white (and formerly working class) boy from the UK, I can confidently say that nobody has at any point in my life discriminated against me on the basis of my ethnic background. That is the extent of what this expression means – it does not mean that any individual to whom it applied is in a superior position relative to others, but only that they do not suffer from disadvantage due to one specific thing. There is a stubborn desire to ignore this distinction, and the reason that these terms become divisive is because people are too often manipulated into misrepresenting them.
  - heurisko 5y ago
    > it does not mean that any individual to whom it applied is in a superior position relative to others, but only that they do not suffer from disadvantage due to one specific thing. That's not the way it's taught to children. They're encouraged to think of their "privilege" entirely in terms of race, which determines whether they win or lose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg > There is a stubborn desire to ignore this distinction Because the distinction isn't made.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    The lack of having been discriminated against is by definition not a "privilege". What's wrong isn't the lack of discrimination, but the idea that lack of discrimination should be called a "privledge" rather than a "norm". It attacks people for not having hardship, namely turning something that's good int o something that's bad. The use of the term "white privledge" fundamentally applies that to make things "equal" we must discriminate against white people as much as we discriminate (as a society) against non-white people. Namely, bring people doing well down to the level of someone doing badly, rather than elevating the people doing poorly up to the level of "normal". It's a fundamentally bad phase to use.
    - a_shovel 5y ago
      Each sentence, though individually false, comes together to produce an overall point that is also false. A lack of a disadvantage others have is a privilege. The point of calling it a privilege is to emphasize that white people benefit from racism against other groups even when they don't do anything racist themselves. Benefitting knowingly from discrimination against others while doing nothing to end it is complicity. The term "privilege" is not an attack on white people, it is an attack on racism. It absolutely does not imply that we should bring down white people or be racist to them. Privilege will end when discrimination against non-white people ends. At least set up a monthly donation to an anti-racism organization, or something like that.
      - akomtu 5y ago
- gonzo41 5y ago
  It sucks being poor regardless of race (I grew up poor in Australia, so pretty wealthy by some perspectives), but having to contend with race is an additional burden to those who are not white in predominately white countries because there's another difference for them to overcome. WRT the white working class boys, They are not being held back by terms like white privilege. They are being held back by the very white house of lords denying them opportunities. In an American context, how often do you hear about social policies to round up Canadians who overstay work visas in order to deport them?
- OwlsParlay 5y ago
  Do you think white people who lived during the time of segregation or redlining had white privilege? Because there's plenty of those people still living today. The kids shouting slurs at Ruby Bridges are still alive. Now yes, obviously white privilege is not the only axis of oppression and both in the UK and US class privilege is overlooked to a massive degree but pretending white privilege is a racist term is stupid.
  - twofornone 5y ago
    >Do you think white people who lived during the time of segregation or redlining had white privilege Whites were 80-90% of the population during that time, assigning a vague notion of "privilege" to an entire race of people as a basis for reverse racism is not only useless, but misleading, because these "privileged" people were still in competition with other whites (and non-redlined minorities). The implication is that they collectively derived benefit from unfair rules against blacks, but frankly this is a dishonest assertion. >but pretending white privilege is a racist term is stupid. >Racist: discriminatory especially on the basis of race or religion You're playing wordgames to resolve the cognitive dissonance that comes with claiming to be anti-racist while using intrinsically racist terminology. Especially when the implication of "white privilege" is that there is an unfair advantage based on race which needs to be corrected based on race. Reverse racism is still racism, even if merriam-webster tries to redefine the term.
    - OwlsParlay 5y ago
      > Whites were 80-90% of the population during that time, assigning a vague notion of "privilege" to an entire race of people as a basis for reverse racism is not only useless, but misleading, because these "privileged" people were still in competition with other whites (and non-redlined minorities). The implication is that they collectively derived benefit from unfair rules against blacks, but frankly this is a dishonest assertion. They absolutlely did derive a collective benefit, i'm astounded anyone can deny this. Are you just ignorant of just how badly treated black people were compared to white people in that period?
      - 5y ago
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Privilege is multidimensional, for crying out loud.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Which makes the term completely useless in everyday use.
account42 5y ago
If you make up excuses for racisim it does not stop being racism.
akomtu 5y ago
The so-called "white privilege" is the abstract invisible but ever present enemy that's present in every cult. People in North Korea believe that spies and greedy capitalists are trying to invade their great country, and only the wise and pure leader Kim is going to save them. Orthodox muslims believe that the christian non-believers are the absolute evil, and the orthodox christians think the same about muslims. Different christian cults believe they are surrounded by fake christian cults and only they have the true understanding of what's right and what's wrong. The so-called woke believe in the ever-present whiteness evil and only their anti-racist doctrine will save them. My point is that if someone insists that you're surrounded by enemies, and the only way to save your soul is to blindly accept the Teaching, you're in a cult. The enemies part is what makes cult a cult, because the cult organisers want they followers to have a shallow us-vs-them mentality.

hwers 5y ago

Or that these days even people of color saying the n word is condemned, whereas just a few years ago (months?) it was sort of accepted. Making that into a legal doctrine would be quite tricky.

rgoulter 5y ago
John McWhorter wrote an article discussing the word. e.g. The head of the NAACP used the word in 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/john-mcwhorter-n-word-unsayable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/john-mcwhorter-n-...

mlindner 5y ago

Well "white privledge" IS racist. So that's already the case. Just some people don't consider it that way.

anotherhue 5y ago
The distinction between what is and what is considered so is rather important.
nailer 5y ago
It depends. Judging people's lived experienced based on their skin color may be racism under the MLK definition, but the far left has created a new definition of racism that allows one to discriminate against others based on the color of their skin, for paler colors of skin.
LordDragonfang 5y ago
Only if you're defining both terms to mean something different than in the contexts in which they normally are used. Privilege is concept that certain attributes a person has confer relative advantages in the ways they interact with the world and the outcomes thereof. Acknowledging that is not and cannot be bigotry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege Unless you're saying that white privilege is a consequence of racism, which would be correct, but not really relevant to the discussion here.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  It is used as a racist rhetorical cudgel however, a "shut up your opinion doesn't matter because of your race" to mark someone as wrong without addressing their point at all. Related the concept is so terribly named it seems meant to raise conflict. Privledge implies that it should be optional. It invites the previously mentioned abuse.
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    priv·i·lege noun a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. It's named perfectly fine, it's just people willfully misinterpret it. As far as being a "racist rhetorical cudgel", I'm sorry if you've felt that way, but the majority of times I've seen it used, it's to point out that a person's privilege does work to invalidate their opinion on a matter. Most often, this is when someone is claiming that some form of discrimination doesn't exist, or isn't that bad, or that it happens the same to everyone and the people complaining should just get over it. Privilege affects one's lived experience in ways that it's difficult to notice, because you have only your own lived experience to rely on. As a man, I was privileged not to experience harassment, and like many men I thought my female friends were exaggerating how bad it was. Then I took a series of subway rides with a friend who was harassed every time, and later got personally harassed by a creepy coworker. My privilege blinded me to the reality of the situation. The same thing applies to race. I see a lot of white people who never personally witness racism making these broad statements about how, for example, you should just do what the police say and you'll be fine, when they've never had a cop drag them out of a car for no reason because they look like someone who might deal drugs. Because of their differences in societal privilege, their lived experience of dealing with cops has been wildly different, and the people with privilege shouldn't be talking over the people pointing out issues.

prmoustache 5y ago

This is the reason justice system has the concept of prescription. You cannot be prosecuted for something that wasn´t deem unlawful in the past and even if there was already a law about it we can't condemn you if we failed to do so within a not distant past. It pretty much cover you in case meaning change over time.

namelessoracle 5y ago

The OK hand sign is racist now. There's rumbles of milk being racist. The scary thing that should terrify everyone is we are going to come to a point where being called racist no longer matters or nobody cares, and then your gonna see REAL racism come back with a fury and force you wont like.

jimmyjazz14 5y ago
Wait, milk?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nemo44x 5y ago
  People of European decent tend to be much better at digesting milk (lactose) as adults and there's a meme that if you can't chug a bottle of milk you have to get out. Or something silly like that. Turns out groups of people with ancestry in east Africa have the gene for lactose as well. So, milk could become a symbol of this if used within that context. People are paranoid enough today that if a picture of someone enjoying a glass of a milk was published, they could assume it was a signal of this. And it could be, to be sure.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  These are just pranks made by 4chan and their ilk. The circle of life on this sort of thing, I think, goes something like: Come up with a contrived reason milk could be considered racist, film a video or whatever about chugging milk while making a racist screed, get criticized for being a weirdo, and then some reactionary clickbait site can have the headline "Internet user called 'racist' for drinking milk." It is dumb, don't worry about it.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Didn't 4chan also create the OK hand sign racist as well? Now there are people who genuinely believe the OK sign is racist.

celdon25 5y ago

> Maybe some time in the future, any reference to "White Privlege" may be considered racist, for instance. Who says that's not already the case outside of the coastal cities?