(Background on me: I do think a lot of the people in the Michael brown threads are indeed racists or at least very afraid of black people)

So how responsible should individuals that work in industries and institutions that may perpetuate racism in this way be? Is the CEO of Starbucks and all Starbucks employees perpetuating racism by selling Atlantis morrisette CDs instead of other popular music preferred by ethnic minorities that may even be the majority population around said Starbucks?

What it comes down to is that inequality in this country is extreme and minorities are disproportionately effected by this and seeps into our institutions and infects the way people see things. It's part of the owners job to make the most money he possibly can and if that means targeting a specific demographic bc they spend more money that's what he has to do.
It makes us feel gross and that makes us want to punish somebody, but you can't punish an institution so you break your pitchforks and extreme colorful language against individuals like this guy who probably don't deserve it.


"Maintaining an ethnic clean zone"...chill out guy, he isn't turning the arena into a death camp.

The STFU was for your use of race-baiters.

I keep saying this and people aren't addressing it.

Having Bonjovi play because he's popular is fine. But this guy was saying to appeal to whites by making blacks invisible. That's gross even if it's what marketing professionals do.

People keep saying this is totally normal business practice -- but they aren't challenging the argument that it perpetuates racism.

Of course it's normal. That's the problem.

That's not the argument I'm making. I'm just saying not to pander to the Negro panic that infests the suburbs.

Financially-motivated racial pandering is not equivalent to ethnic cleansing. Your over-the-top language is making it harder to take you seriously.

You can certainly argue that engaging in practices that indirectly perpetuate racism is objectionable on any number of grounds. But as to the original question of whether this person can fairly be called a racist, I think motivation is a critical factor.

The language is only slightly heated for effect. The Hawks owner states his intentions clearly. The problem isn't my language being over the top, it's the marketing euphemisms that are below the reality.

The problem with this narrow definition is that it is really a decision to give marketers a pass on their pernicious behavior. In fact, it gives a pass to the most damaging class of racial slights since low income crackers have few opportunities to discriminate -- business practices are the bigger problem.

The purpose of calling someone a racist is to stigmatize their behavior. By including people who benefit from and perpetuate racism, even though their personal feelings are different, we make the rhetoric more useful.

But let's complicate your narrow approach further. Imagine a cotton planter in 1880 who hires convict labor. Now this guy may truly prefer the company of his black mistress, have no time for Lost Cause blowhards, and be perfectly willing to hire white work gangs. But the reality is he benefits from a system that replaced slavery's control of labor with the criminalization of blackness. The Jim Crow laws weren't about keeping freed slaves out of restaurants, they ensnared workers in a massive prison labor system that was hired out to farmers. It solved the same problem as slavery -- retaining labor when other horizons beckoned.

But by the definition you use, since Jim Crow laws were primarily an economic measure, it wasn't racism it was just business. If I objected to six month prison terms for loitering as racist, the realists would explain how hard it was to keep cotton hands when there was so much work out west.

Money is at the heart of racism. If it is taken out of the definition, anti-racism is at best a parlor conversation for limousine liberals. But usually it's cover for unreconstructed racists who feel oppressed by the word.

Convict labor is no longer a pillar of Southern agriculture, but we've got other problems. Police who see a criminal class, not individuals, and behave accordingly. Employers who toss job applications from black-sounding names. Teachers who chuckle and humor a young Neil Degrass Tyson who says he wants to be an astrophysicist. All those problem are addressable with integration of the social sphere. That's why the Hawks owner is a rat ***k.

So Bill, what's the tipping point for you?

Let's pretend you know the 6-8 things he mentioned that could be changed to turn things around pertaining to race/culture (race of cheerleaders, music played during games, race of halftime show participants, etc.) are executed, and profits go up 20%. Worth it? How about 30%? 60%?

Businesses have shareholders and shareholders demand profits, not social change sponsorship. You're asking an owner of a failing business to make decisions that could disrupt the money flow because #socialjustice. I admire your intentions, but think you're missing the causal mechanisms and aiming your gun in the wrong direction.

But even if they were primarily an economic measure, they weren't exclusively one. Obviously they rested on a deep-seated foundation of actual white-supremacist racism. I haven't seen any evidence that Levenson's motivation was anything other than purely economic. So I think your analogy falls apart a little there.

Having said that, your post was good and actually quite thought-provoking. I'm not sure I can buy into this:

My gut reaction is that we don't get to twist the meaning of words in order to serve a higher political agenda (i.e., "make the rhetoric more useful"). It seems like your advocating a sort of linguistic extortion. Accuracy and precision should be the highest virtues when dealing with language. I'm going to think about it some more.

Reread his email. Some of it has nothing to do with socioeconomic outcomes.

You are right about the differences but the point I was making is that if we exempt the profit motive from criticism we give a pass to one of the most powerful drivers of discrimination.

I actually agree with that partly but there's no escaping that words are a social convention and inevitably a subject of political negotiation. And you yourself are immediately ensnared in the dilemma as soon as you start advocating a different definition for racism. But I think the meaning I'm advocating is still defensible in terms of sensible language usage. Unquestionably, the word racism is used to label something as objectionable. Economics are a huge part of what creates the hateful attitudes. Removing profiteering from the definition guts the concept.

You are asking how much should businesses be expected to shoulder. Even if a precise tipping point could be contrived it would never be nailed because these are highly messy, sloppy, social negotiations. The Hawks memo is egregious so we jump on it and see how far we can take the issue. Other examples may be less compelling and might backfire. The definition of acceptable behavior will change by the decade.

So what are the real causes to aim at, and why can't we go after corporate profiteering as well as whatever you're about to say? And I think there's been a fairly clear description of how pure business decisions can be a cause.

I think AAs have been proper ****ed for the vast majority of time that they've been on this continent, and continue to be ****ed, albeit more subtly, to this very day.

Top of the list would be boosting the social safety net and reversing damage that was done by Reagan and others. Next, I've read that as much as 30% of racial wealth inequality can really be attributed to housing; AAs being less likely to have inheritance which otherwise could go towards down payments, real estate constituting over half of AA's net worth despite owning far less real estate than whites, etc. Another more obvious problem is income inequality.

Businesses have a responsibility to show profits. While studying the racial demographics of your customers and making adjustments accordingly is not racism at work, the existence of such vast racial divides in wealth IS. Targeting the causal mechanisms for the divide and making changes there is by far the best way to right the ship.

I'm not a racist I just profit by pandering to racism.

All this reminds me of a dude on my FB feed who legit believes Pixar, Disney, etc are immoral companies because they produce cartoon movies which don't reflect the exact racial complexion of contemporary USA.

As an example, he was really bent out of shape that the producers of Brave (like feudal Scotland, mind you) didn't ensure 13% of chars were black and 17% Hispanic or w/e. Hand waved away any reasons why they'd choose for the chars to be almost exclusively ginger. Guy is special.

It's not like he's filling his arena with kkk members.

White people want to be around white people, and white people like white music and white cheerleaders. Rich want to be around rich, blacks hang out with blacks. Humans segregate naturally.

A white person is not likely to show up to a club with 90% black, playing hip hop music, with the bartenders all black. Doesn't make that person racist at all.

This is just not true for reasonable people. That you think it is true says a lot about you.

An apologist for segregation perhaps? This perspective doesn't take into account the observable outcomes of de- segregation and in-roads to human society beyond racial appearances.

Data from my Urban economics class suggests Tien is half right. It suggested that white wanted to live with whites. But blacks wanted to live in mixed neighborhoods.

Ignoring the fact that races naturally and unnaturally group together is silly. I read recently that around 90 or 95% of peoples' friends are people of the same race.

Who people live near and associate with doesn't directly speak to whether or not they think society, government, and law is equal for everybody.

When people can see the reflection of equality in society, the need for racial terms is diminished.

That person's potential political desire to mold society based on poorly-reasoned beliefs is objectionable.

Isn't this letter actually discussing integration, not segregation?

Dancing on the head of a needle about potential intention here.

Race politics has an element, like poker, where deception is an intentional tool.

A poorly written email about integration or a slyly crafted email of segregation?

Either way a mistake.