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Conversation

The redefinition of the word ‘racist’ freaks me out. We went through centuries of rationalizing it any way we could to finally figure out that ‘discrimination based on race’ was a horrible thing regardless of justification. But redefinition is just another justification! 1/

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Do you think the racists back in the day that went around enslaving people didn’t have justifications? That they were holding hands in their ships singing the “we are evil” song? No! They were like “this is good for them”. Literally, this is what they thought. 2/

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And the only way we made this stop is by going no, your justifications aren’t valid. You personally thinking this is a good thing for whatever damn reason, no matter how compelling, isn’t cutting it. Treating people terribly based on their race is bad, full stop, no exceptions. 3

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And fast forward to today, where somehow we’ve got enough people justifying racism it that they literally got the dictionary definition of racism changed to only apply to certain groups of people. What. The fuck.

10:41 PM · Jan 16, 2021

Replying to

No, I don’t care what the justifications were for racism back in the day, and I don’t care what the justifications are for it now. Discriminating against anyone on the basis of their race is horrible, I don’t care if they’re more powerful than you or if this is good for them. 5/

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If you’re buying into arguments why it’s ok to treat other people like shit today, then you probably would have bought into arguments why it’s okay to treat slaves like shit if you’d been born white a few hundred years ago. From the inside, it feels like it makes sense. 6/

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I wonder how much of this comes from people being totally unable to empathize with evil. If you think evil is this other thing out there, done by monsters, something you’re never capable of, then you won’t guard against it in yourself - and this is exactly how atrocities happen.

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I know this well myself. I was raised evangelical Christian and went around calling gay people fags. I know what it’s like to believe a terrible thing - and from the inside, it feels like exactly the way you feel right now. It’s comfortable, justified, it makes the most sense.

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You should be just as wary and skeptical of yourself as you are of other people. You *are* other people.

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Replying to

As a linguist, I'd say this assault on clear language offends me more than the politics. Activists have also doctored the definition of "fascism."

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