Quote:
Originally Posted by Mat Sklansky
It looks like I get a pass. So why don't people want to be called racists if they are racist?
Do they just not like the term? Is it a matter of evasiveness? Are they in denial about their own beliefs?
I would really love to see comments from people who feel they have been unfairly branded racists on these forums. I'm assuming adios is in this category?
Well, thanks to heroic efforts, tremendous suffering endured, and great loss of life, we've finally learned that lynchings, cross burnings, and the use of racial slurs is not socially acceptable. Those things are racist, and ~everyone now rejects them. But that hasn't eliminated sentiments that racial minorities are inferior or that they shouldn't be treated as second class citizens, or that people prejudge others based on race.
Everyone has irrational impulses and even makes irrational judgments. You said you do, I do, etc. Some people make an effort to recognize them and reject them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shark Sandwich
4.97 40 yd at the combine. Yikes. Not sure why I thought he was faster than that so I'll just chalk it up to racism.
Others would just rather accept the validity of their thought and fight the label. Part of this has always seemed to be based on the misconception that if someone says something racist, then they are "a racist," and racists are racist through and through, up to and including the use of racial slurs and lynchings. They haven't used a slur, and they haven't lynched anybody, and they don't actively hate all minorities when they see those minorities, ergo they can't be a racist. People think they can't be racist because they don't conform to some racist caricature that they've concocted, and that if they're called racist, that's the same as calling them the caricature.
And that's all the while while they're defending positions like "black people are easily agitated by rabble rousers but white people see through the ruse for the truth." But people who want to say racist things have been caught, so they switch their language to things like "
Those people are easily agitated by rabble rousers, but
we see through the ruse for the truth." Now they think they have plausible deniability. They didn't mention race, how could they be racist?
We see it time and time again. People don't want to be called racist, because they know that's unacceptable in polite society. But people do want to have their beliefs supported and validated by others, so we have this ongoing game where racists try to find right where the line is so that they say what they think without getting called racist. They make no effort to examine those beliefs for racism.