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A belief in inherent collective inferiority of a particular group, to the point of ignoring any individual characteristics that contradict that belief about the collective. Broadly, because I can imagine examples that aren't about inferiority, strictly speaking.
This seems like it’s designed to exclude basically every modern instantiation of what every racially-aware person today believes. Like, if you’re not a Madison Grant level “Africa begins at Calais” Nordicist TND advocate, you’re not a racist? What does “inferiority” mean in this context? What percentage of blacks do I need to believe are “exceptions to the rule” before I’m no longer a racist? (W.E.B. Dubois, one of the great black thought leaders in American history, spoke of “the talented tenth” of blacks needing to paternalistically care for the other 90% of them who are not cognitively capable of measuring up to Western civilization. Was Dubois racist against black people?)
You asked a one line question, am I supposed to give you a doctoral dissertation with strict definitions, and guidelines on how to apply categorize each instance, or is a broad answer enough? Like I said it's not even strictly speaking about inferiority. If you want a "no blacks allowed, no matter what other hoops you jump through" club (which, by the sound of it, you do) that seems pretty straight-forwardly racist to me as well.
This isn't going to work as an objection either. Remember that drama around "race norming" from the NFL, that Hlynka pointed "hey, isn't it weird that they're doing 'norming' at all, when they have individual-level IQ-tests"? It doesn't matter if you believe it's only 3% of blacks that are an exception to the rule, if you're against "race norming" you're not racist. It similarly doesn't matter if you think it's the 97% that are the exception to the rule (I know this is non-sense mathematically speaking, just go with it rethorically), if you're for "rece norming", you're still racist.
Then what is it about? You’re talking in circles. I asked you what racism is, and you said it’s about believing in broad racial inferiority, except actually it’s not really about inferiority. Is it just about treating everyone as an atomized individual and consciously avoiding making probabilistic judgments about people given limited information?
Can you articulate why?
Your original comment said that noticing racial differences isn’t racist. Now you appear to be saying that actually it is.
I don’t think you’ve thought very deeply about this word, where it comes from, and why we should or shouldn’t use it.
If you want a bit more precision, I'm game (though I did give specific examples, so I'm not sure what more you want), but if you telling me I'm talking in circles, then it starts to sound a lot like the hair-splitting progressives do, with questions like "what is white".
Inferiority would be the most central and glaring example. There could also other cases not, strictly speaking, about inferiority (I recall someone here saying he wouldn't want to marry a black woman, because he wants to have his kids "look like him" or something), but would still fit my criterion. Instead of fighting over the less-central examples, I think it's better to take care of the more-central ones.
Because it's applying collective-level characterizations to the individual. The thing that you were, just a moment ago, claiming happens almost never.
Where? I said you're not racist regardless of your beliefs about the group, so you can notice all the differences you want. You can even act on them, as long as your collective-level belief does not override the individual-level evidence.
Good! Progressives are correct to demand precision! Categories should be deconstructed as a sanity check, to make sure they’re actually coherent. I am instinctively a splitter rather than a lumper - I want to understand fine-grained distinctions.
My contention here is that “racist” is an overloaded category. It’s combining too many disparate phenomena, and adding an unjustified layer of pathologization on top. We need to throw the word out entirely. It was never useful or valid as anything other than a tool in the anti-white progressive tool kit.
You have combined at least three disparate phenomena:
Belief that some races are “inherently inferior” to others. This is describing an internal, epistemological phenomenon.
Wanting to effect or enforce separate social/professional/political spheres for different racial groups. This is an active, practical policy decision. It might be motivated by the internal beliefs featured at in Phenomenon #1, but certainly doesn’t have to be. (Do you think the only reason some individuals might establish or join a Jewish Student Union is that they believe non-Jews are inferior to Jews?)
Failing to update one’s assessment of an individual based on receiving new and specific information. I’m imagining a situation like this:
Now, leave aside that there are still perfectly legitimate reasons for me to prefer my daughter to date someone who is culturally similar to our family, has similar customs, isn’t going to introduce in-laws into our family dynamic who have very different cultural norms than ours, etc. I agree with you that failing to update priors when confronted with trustworthy new evidence is indeed an epistemic failure! I don’t know if it’s a moral failure, although certainly I’d have a lot of sympathy for DeShawn in this scenario. (You do everything right, defy every negative stereotype, and still get treated like a nigger?) I just don’t see any necessary connection between this phenomenon and the other two.
I'm a fan of sanity checks as well, but you must have noticed by now that there is no category that you cannot split out of existence, just by asking "why?" enough times.
In general discourse? Without a doubt. I'd like to imagine that I'm not really overloading it - when we went by the examples I gave, I think I was applying the same principle, anyway.
I guess that's going to depend on your moral framework. I'm not really here to change your mind on that.
In case of Jewish people the question is intertwined with it also being a group with a distinct culture and religion. I agree it's awfully convenient for them that they were so insular over so many years, that there's nearly 100% correlation with their ethnic group.
Sounds quite a bit like "defy every negative stereotype, and still get treated like a nigger", or am I missing something?
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What does "ignoring any individual characteristics that contradict that belief about the collective" mean? If I meet a few Jews with short noses but don't change my belief that Jews collectively have longer than average noses, am I being racist?
No. But if you think Jews are collectively conspiring globohomo on the world, and you meet a few Jews who have devoted their lives to opposing globohomo at every step, and consider them sus because they're Jewish, that would be pretty racist. Contra @Hoffmeister25, I think that's a relatively common occurrence.
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