The rationale for the first one is that people who are not commonly subject to racism may not recognise forms of it which are not overt & need to learn to recognise it so the foundations which support it can be addressed. A failure to do so means it can never end.
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The rationale for the second one is that racism is reliant on social norms and therefore can be most effectively addressed if society ceases to attach social or moral significance to race and frowns upon people who do so.
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The first way is identity politics and the second way is universal liberalism. Often the difference between them comes down to beliefs for & against cultural constructivism but not this time. Both anti-racist approaches accept that racism is a cultural construct.
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Our tendency towards tribalism is innate, of course, but applying this to skin colour is not. In fact, race is something we forget about fast when part of a group with shared aims whilst always remaining conscious of sex. (Pietraszewski et al. 2015)
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The IdPol lot actually come closer to believing racism to being innate in this case tho they don't think it is biological. They think it is so deeply embedded in culture that we simply can't help being racist. Therefore, addressing the symptoms won't help. Have to get at the root
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The universal liberals are not convinced of this. We tend to think that by making expressions of racism socially unacceptable, cultural change can happen pretty fast and this does, in fact, appear to be what has happened in the last 60 years re: sexism, racism & homophobia.
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Therefore they fear that identity politics which seek to renormalise thinking in terms of race is likely to be counterproductive & serve only to reignite racial tribalisms which were being overcome.
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When uncharitable, the universal liberals will accuse the IdPols of being racist and the Idpols will accuse the UniLibs of pretending problems don't exist because they themselves are not personally affected by them.
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Sometimes these accusations can be justified but more often they can't and both groups genuinely seek the end of racism but just disagree on how to achieve that. So much conflict between the identitarian left and the universal liberals comes down this.
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Replying to @JoshNaatjes and
@HPluckrose I prefer option 2, but without poisoning the well with "casual racism." -
Well, casual racism did and does exist. It has become much less prevalent because people frowned on it. Of course, people have made false claims about what constitutes casual racism.
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I'm all for making it socially unacceptable as long as its done socially not legally. Laws intended to force social behavior, no matter how well meaning, often lead to disaster. And yes, the micro aggression mentality has definitely overdone it.
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Yes, people have the right to be racist and other people have the right to dislike them for it. We made good progress on making it generally understood that 'not racist' was an integral part of being seen as a good person.
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Well, then you have the problem of who defines what "racism" is. I have been called racist for argueing with someone about Islam, for instance.
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Yes, that's the very problem I am discussing.
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I am certainly not claiming that everyone is being reasonable about it. But we did make a lot of progress with a general consensus that evaluating people as superior or inferior because of their race was a bad thing.
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We have made a lot of progress, but I fear that the pendulum has swung to far. The majority of the people speaking on the issue seem to be completely unaware that racial supremecy exists outside of the white race- in Japan or with the Black Panthers, for instance.
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As far as I'm concerned Helen, until recently we'd achieved "2)". It's only the forced "diversity" agenda that insists organisations must reflect the population they are drawn from, that has messed it all up And set us back decades.
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I've tried to explain to my 21-year-old son that when I was a kid we'd pretty much achieved "2)". He didn't believe me. These kids are soaking in identity politics.
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When were you a kid? I'm 44, and I've yet to see (2) achieved in the US, although there have been hopeful signs that we're heading in that direction along the way.
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Ageism is real. I'm not going to give away my age.
But I was born and raised in Canada. Nice place here. -
Fair enough!

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