people have got to stop with this "so you're calling so-and-so A Racist" crap. that's the most counterproductive possible way to think about racism.https://twitter.com/dpshow/status/1409537922978754562 …
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(NB all of this is with reference to a US context) 1.5) now that's kind of a mouthful for casual conversation, so I more often use terms like "structural white supremacism" or "anti-Black white supremacy"*. "racism" is not a good term IMO, because it attempts to be "neutral."
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1.75) *I prefer "supremacism" rather than "supremacy", because I feel like it's clearer that the former refers to an ideology, a belief system, while the second sounds like it purports to describe a fact.
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2) everyone who grows up in a structurally white supremacist society is, necessarily, indoctrinated with white supremacist ideology; of course it's much easier for the people who are most harmed by it to resist and reject that indoctrination, and harder for those who benefit most
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2.5) and even white people certainly _can_ reject that indoctrination, but it's harder for us and takes constant work. the point is that being "racist" isn't a binary, on-off switch, and it isn't an existential condition that one either Is or Isn't.
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3) so it doesn't make sense to say someone is or isn't "A Racist," which (as
@jsmooth995 explained long ago) also leads us down useless rabbit-holes about what they "really" feel or believe in their Heart Of Hearts.Show this thread -
4) people are racist in varying degrees, accordingly as they hold racist beliefs, but what anyone else ~truly~ believes is always unknowable. people's _words and deeds_ are racist to the extent they support/reinforce/align with structural anti-Black white supremacism.
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5) so it's useful to talk about whether an action is racist, whether what someone said was racist, and it's particularly useful to connect that to the ways that our society _is organized_ to benefit whites and hurt everyone else, especially Black people.
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6) of course all of this applies to "sexism" (i.e. patriarchy—note how "sexism" implies a false neutrality, eliding the actual hierarchy), homophobia and transphobia (patriarchy again), ableism, capitalism, etc., all these structures overlap and interact.
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7) that is, after all, what Kimberlé Crenshaw was talking about with the idea of intersectionality, and what bell hooks was talking about with the idea of white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.
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End of conversation
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