by It is illustrated perfectly by this news story here.So a Mexican restaurant at a British university hands out sombreros to students as a “celebration of Mexican culture” (according to none other than the restaurant’s general manager). In our truly bizarre politically-correct culture, this is condemned as “racist.”This is an utter abuse of the term “racist,” and an insult to people who have genuinely experienced real racism.What is racism, if it is to have any coherent, sensible and defensible meaning?It is as follows: (1) the view that a certain group of human beings regarded as a “race” (whether the term is scientifically defensible or not) is significantly morally or intellectually inferior to other “races” because of genetics and heredity and these differences are ineradicable.(2) an irrational hatred or phobia of all people who are defined as, or regarded as, belonging to a particular “race,” very often on the basis of skin colour. Now racism, as we all know, has historically led to terrible and unjustifiable racial discrimination, even though technically this is a different, even if strongly related, concept, because a person might be privately racist in sense (1) or (2) but not engage in outward behaviour that is racially discriminatory.
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Lord Keynes considers the following as important: meaning, racism, regressive left, word racist
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So a Mexican restaurant at a British university hands out sombreros to students as a “celebration of Mexican culture” (according to none other than the restaurant’s general manager). In our truly bizarre politically-correct culture, this is condemned as “racist.”
This is an utter abuse of the term “racist,” and an insult to people who have genuinely experienced real racism.
What is racism, if it is to have any coherent, sensible and defensible meaning?
It is as follows:
Now racism, as we all know, has historically led to terrible and unjustifiable racial discrimination, even though technically this is a different, even if strongly related, concept, because a person might be privately racist in sense (1) or (2) but not engage in outward behaviour that is racially discriminatory. But some people are racist in sense (1) or (2) and engage in irrational racially discriminatory behaviour that cannot be justified in any way at all.(1) the view that a certain group of human beings regarded as a “race” (whether the term is scientifically defensible or not) is significantly morally or intellectually inferior to other “races” because of genetics and heredity and these differences are ineradicable.
(2) an irrational hatred or phobia of all people who are defined as, or regarded as, belonging to a particular “race,” very often on the basis of skin colour.
Most other senses of the word “racist” today tend to be rhetorical tricks or smears, or gross perversions of the word’s legitimate senses. What is termed “racist” often tends to be merely bigotry and prejudice against some nationality or religious group (which are not races).
Above all, the regressive left conflates culture with race – a truly bizarre and outrageous trick that is actually opposed to what the left has historically believed about human progress: namely, that many of the problems in the world are caused by bad environment, not by genes or biology.
Culture is not race. So many cultural ideas are not biologically determined, and are flexible and changeable, and bad cultural ideas must be criticised and fought so that they will change.
E.g., misogyny, honour killing, female genital mutilation, homophobia, etc. These cultural ideas are not in the genes and people on the left who scream “racism” when they hear criticism of a particular culture for these ideas are actually guilty of a bizarre and insidious racism in reverse: the implication that misogyny, honour killing, female genital mutilation, etc. are caused by genetics or heredity, when this is clearly not the case.