4 ms·
You've misunderstood what racism is if you think it's defined by whether or not the victim is aware of racism. Of course that's often very relevant but absolute
by swores 4y ago
You've misunderstood what racism is if you think it's defined by whether or not the victim is aware of racism. Of course that's often very relevant but absolutely not necessarily.
If I walk into a friend's business, and say "woah, I did not know you hired a <derogative racist term>, they're all stupid you should fire him" and the friend immediately goes "ooh I forgot to be racist, yea I'll fire them immediately" then their firing would absolutely be racist despite the person being fired not witnessing the racist logic that causes it.
Equally with voter ID laws, they're not racist because they put mean racist message onto the ID cards or something, and whether or not victims of that sort of racist politics notice doesn't mean racism isn't involved. If somebody says "I don't think we need voter IDs, but in my district only the <some race of people> don't have photo IDs and they would all want to vote for my opponent, so let's require ID to vote!" then those people have had a racist and very unfair thing happen against them, regardless of whether they are "thinking of racism".
edit: and as a slightly easier example, if I edited a newspaper and decided that for every negative story about one skin colour would get front page billing, and every negative story about my own skin colour would get binned rather than published, then all my paper's readers might be able to look at every single article without seeing any racism in them - but their not knowing doesn't change that my theoretical editing was racist.
- fareesh 4y ago- Indian is not a race (see my other comment) - Even if you use the broader definition to include nationality, in this case, the "hackers" are physically located in the geopolitical boundaries of India - Nearly every major country with a large enough population has people in whitehat/blackhat infosec professions. It is an incredible reach to suggest that newspapers should not identify the national origin of these individuals because of what some racist readers might start to believe or become biased towards, by drawing non-existent lines to patterns that don't exist except in their own bubbles. Editorial standards and responsibility should not be driven by the weakest minds.
- watwut 4y agoDefinition of racism that includes nationality is not "broader". It is the definition of racism. It is also very common form of racism worldwide.
- fareesh 4y agoThe only prominent definition one could cite which includes national origin is the one used by the United Nations Popular dictionaries (Webster/Oxford) don't include national origin
- alex_smart 4y ago"Indian" is not just an national identity but also an ethnic one. A person of Indian origin born in America or the UK is still very easily identifiable and is identified by their Indian identity. The usage of the word "racism" to include xenophobia is common enough in a casual context that I cannot believe that you are simply not aware of that usage. By choosing to argue over the semantics of the word racism over usage you probably already are familiar with, you are diverting attention from what really matters here: that said racism or xenophobia exists and negatively affects real human beings.
- fareesh 4y agoIt is not an ethnic identity (see my other comment)
- alex_smart 4y agoDid you read my justification for saying that it is also an ethnic identity. It was literally the next sentence.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoIf you need such a broad term, use the word 'bias'. Racism has a specific meaning, people are holding to account for a reason.
- swores 4y agoI wasn't making any argument about this specific case (which I didn't mention at all), just pointing out that "recipient of racism (or anything similar like sexism or xenophobia) doesn't notice = there was no racism" isn't a valid argument.