“Racist” · 10:57pm Apr 23rd, 2021
This will not be about the BLM protests. This is not about the reports of police brutality that seem to be getting more and more frequent with every passing day. I don’t want to come out of here with opinions on that stuff all high and mighty saying “They should do this”. I’m white, so I can’t speak for how the black community is feeling about all the recent events. That’s not my place to talk.
I instead want to talk about what I feel like the word ‘racist’ has become.
Racist means a person who considers themselves superior to other races. In recent years, this definition has changed to people who tend to make (usually unflattering) assumptions and stereotypes about other races. I mean, that’s fine, it’s still keeping the spirit.
However, in even more recent times (literally a couple months), I feel like that the word ‘racist’ has lost all its meaning.
I just want to say that this will probably be my most controversial blog post so far, if you want to write a strongly worded complaint, you can at least take the time to be civil.
It started when people started writing up the Georgia voting law as degrading to minorities. As far as I can tell, the new Georgia voting law is generally unnecessary and ridiculously inconvenient to everyone. Mail-in voting time is shortened, you aren’t allowed food and drink in line, and you can only early vote at certain places, needing an appointment. This law is ridiculous in general.
Sure, Georgia is a very diverse state, but that doesn’t exclusively make the law racist. It doesn’t degrade minorities any more than everyone else. The Georgia law is useless and inconvenient in general, calling it ‘racist’ is cherry-picking from everyone it inconveniences to focus on a single minority group that is also inconvenienced. It’s like looking at a burning church and only being concerned about the pews.
As usual, I tend to have multiple examples before I write these things to make sure it’s a real thing I want to talk about.
I was browsing AllSides.com, where I get most of my news, when I saw a news article from Forbes. Democrat Mondaire Jones called the Republican push against making DC the first state “racist trash.”
I fully admit that that might not be the full quote. You never know nowadays. In addition, Jones here is actually black. However, I still think the usage of the word is misguided.
So what even is the push to make DC an actual state? Well, Democrats are pushing to make DC an actual state presumably to further Democrat representation, as well as really just accepting that DC’s basically considered a state anyways. Republicans are pushing back against this, claiming that making DC a state is eating into Maryland’s land, as well as trying to keep the Democrats from getting a whole 2 people in the Senate.
I can see where both sides are coming from here. However, preventing DC from becoming the first state isn’t racist in any stretch of the word.
Like, the dude in the White House is white. Sure, he has a diverse cabinet, but as far as America is concerned, the dude in the White House is white. For all intents and purposes, DC has an equal amount of white and black people living in it (there’s .1% more white people, but saying there’s more white people than black people is grasping at straws, much like saying Denver is ‘majority white’ when it’s a 2% majority). It’s not racist to be against DC becoming a state, it’s merely being against DC becoming a state.
That’s what I feel like the word is becoming. Racist is becoming a buzzword to describe people you don’t like, much like ‘Commie’ was in the 60’s. I’m afraid of it losing all its meaning and tearing the country apart further.
The best way to achieve equality isn’t tearing the privileged down by calling them buzzwords that may not even be true, that leads to Apartheid, it’s pulling the marginalized up. Will it fix everything? Definitely not. However, it’ll sow less division then the former.
It impacts primarily poor people, especially since voting isnt a national holiday and Republicans just *love* gerreymandering and closing polling locations in primarily democrat voting areas, read, areas where black and poor people live.
You cant lift people up to be privileged. Being privileged is an exclusionary position especially in a capitalist system that survives on worked exploitation.
Republicans also dont want DC to be a state because it'll lead to two new democratic senators who will likely support 'them nasty queer folk' and 'gawddamn minorities' that 'dont know whats good for em electing demonrats and not veneratin muh jeezus!'.
The short version is that you're not wrong. The long version is that this has been happening for a long time, and to many other words besides. "Racist" tends to be the best example, but the same applies to pretty much any label with an inherent social stigma that can be used against the political right (though similar has happened to things like "commie" or "socialist", I mention the right since it seems most prominently abused).
So, "racist" is one, another would be "Nazi" or "fascist". While the base meaning of the words describe terrible/reprehensible ideologies, the casual nature of their modern use has degraded their inherent value as identifiers to the point of uselessness. It's not uncommon in right wing spaces to immediately dismiss claims that someone is a Nazi or racist because the value of the terms has gone to zero. This is best understood by this question: "Is he racist, or is he legitimately racist?" The value of the label has been so thoroughly demolished that it requires the modifier of "legitimate" in front of it for it to be understood as serious and credible. If anyone to the right of Mao can be called an "alt-right neo-nazi" then the term has no value.
The words no longer have the same immediate reaction of disgust and offense, because their cultural value has been diminished. Immediately labeling something that contravenes leftist dogmas as "racist, nazi, fascist, transphobe, etc." has led to the predictable result of crying wolf. Another aspect is the "racism" has been redefined not just in how you described it, as a severe watering down of the term, but also literally: the newspeak definition is that racism is "prejudice plus institutional power." This neatly defines racism as a uniquely and inherently Caucasian phenomenon; since blacks/minorities supposedly have little/no institutional power, they cannot be racist.
Obviously, it's bullshit.
I can't speak to the Georgia law, but it's commonly understood on the left that minorities (especially African Americans) simply aren't capable of doing the same things as other people, especially in regards to voting. "They can't find their way to the DMV, or they can't afford photo ID, or they don't know how to use the internet." It's incredibly degrading and insulting, and you'll probably hear it referred to as "The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations."
DC statehood is, much like the recent push to add seats to the Supreme Court, an incredibly cynical power grab. The Constitution explicitly forbids it, for one, but they understand that DC is a largely democrat-controlled area, much like most big cities. Adding 2 votes that will be guaranteed to go blue is about as blatant as you can get. If they're concerned about representation, they can just assign parts of DC to vote in Maryland or Virginia, excluding federal buildings.
But they want those two seats, and if they can bully someone into voting for it for fear of being falsely accused of racism, then they'll do it. Thankfully, the right learned that lesson a while ago and accusations of racism are such old hat now that... well. I risk repeating myself, and you already get the idea.
You're entitled to your opinions, and be damned to anyone who'd tell you otherwise.
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I see you have a point here, but it’s also buried underneath a lot of anti-conservative hate. I want this blog to be a place where everyone can share their opinions, and we can better understand each other, which in turn, would lead to less division. Openly hating on every conservative and stereotyping them as ‘anti-LGBT, bigoted, Christians’ is not how that is accomplished, regardless of how much water that idea can hold.
I’m from Indiana, not every conservative is the exact same, hell, there’s trans and black conservatives out there. Some of them just honest-to-goodness hate the idea of an easy power grab, I wouldn’t even consider myself conservative and I don’t like the idea of DC becoming a state because it’s an easy power grab.
I’m not going to delete this comment, because it’s rare to see normal right views and normal left views sharing a comments section without starting a war. I’m just saying that stereotyping them isn’t going to get you anywhere.