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Whiteness has replaced racism as the problem that bedevils the world (meme fashions)

#1
C C Offline
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and...o-be-white

EXCERPT: [...] This rhetoric may appear at first to be primarily made up of bits of modish jargon drawn from certain academic subfields that have found new life on social media. And it is. But language has power, and a shift in usage has direct and intended consequences. The replacement of “racism” by “whiteness” as the problem that bedevils the world encodes another progressive meme within it: that because racism is “prejudice plus power,” and all structural power is situated in the hands of whiteness, nonwhites may be capable of prejudice—a bad thing to be sure—but they cannot be racists. The default use of the term “whiteness” as the target of opprobrium bakes this contention into the language.

Reprogramming language to achieve a political end is a strategy derived from post-structuralism, which holds that language is a system of difference in which the endless flux of signification is only arrested by the operation of power, and that this power is constitutive of a world (since our social world is constructed out of language) that will elevate some and enslave others, identifying some with truth, rationality, science, progress, justice, law, purpose, power, and agency; and others with emotion, grievance, superstition, particularism, benightedness, and submission: the former born to rule, the latter fit to be ruled. The shift corresponds to a broad turn away from liberal categories of thought and action, which emphasize laws and rights, to a Foucauldian account of a “malleable and insidious” racism, found in “the architecture of expectations, the ranking of authorities, the sway of circumstance, the nudge of defaults, and the grammar of culture. … It’s in the norms, customs, precedents, and incentive structures of institutions, jobs, and roles.”

Liberals think that there’s a way to design a fair system of rules applicable to all people that would induce us to cease judging each other through the lens of the superficial physical traits that mark as off as racially distinct. Postructuralists think that the very idea of a fair system of rules applicable to all is a pernicious mystification disguising the partial interests of the dominant class as universality itself. No such universal position is possible; what remains to be done is the re-engineering of norms, customs, and precedents to favor the marginalized.

This dense and rebarbative account of a racism that pervades the very structure of our shared reality remained largely sequestered in humanities departments until recently....

MORE: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and...o-be-white
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#2
Syne Offline
That's just retaliatory racism. No more noble or righteous than any other racism.
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#3
Magical Realist Offline
(Dec 2, 2017 04:58 AM)Syne Wrote: That's just retaliatory racism. No more noble or righteous than any other racism.


There is no such thing as retaliatory racism. Nobody says: "Well since they think my race is inferior I'm gonna think their race is inferior." Either you already think that your race is superior, or you don't. And that's why black antipathy against whiteness isn't racism. It's simply the anger towards whites being racist and claiming white privilege. And that's not racism.

"rac·ism
ˈrāˌsizəm noun
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."
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#4
Syne Offline
(Dec 2, 2017 07:19 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
(Dec 2, 2017 04:58 AM)Syne Wrote: That's just retaliatory racism. No more noble or righteous than any other racism.


There is no such thing as retaliatory racism. Nobody says: "Well since they think my race is inferior I'm gonna think their race is inferior." Either you already think that your race is superior, or you don't. And that's why the black prejudice against whiteness isn't racism. It's simply the anger towards whites being racist and claiming white privilege. And that's not racism.

"rac·ism
ˈrāˌsizəm noun
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."

You're absolutely right. It's just racism, regardless of any retaliatory justification. Attributing bad characteristics to a whole race (e.g. whiteness) is literally racist.
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#5
C C Offline
Quote:[...] Reprogramming language to achieve a political end is a strategy derived from post-structuralism [...]


“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." --George Orwell

"Don't wait for the victors to rewrite history. Rewrite the language of justice and take away their swords." --Anonymous

"It is because you chose a defender who speaks gibberish to this court, Lord Faw. You see, they don't speak Merdurian in Merduria anymore." --The Untimely Sojourn

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#6
Syne Offline
More like bastardizing language. They've moved from normalizing actual racism, by calling all Republicans racist, to normalizing actual white supremacists, by condemning all whiteness.

Again, if you want to know if something is racist, just change the race. Would it be racist to say, "blackness is the biggest problem in the world"?
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