alt Hacker NewsRanting about “Black people cant be racist” is a great way to get most people to ignore everything you say after.
Everyone can be racist. No one wants to debate pedantic redefined terms that liberal arts professors came up with so they could sell books.
Replies
There’s two kinds of racism - systemic, or institutional, racism, and colloquial individual racism.
Of course anyone can be individually racist. But institutionally, no. The American institutions and systems have always been white-focused, black people simply do not have the power to be institutionally racist.
I mean, has there ever been any anti-white law ever written in the US? No, because it’s not possible. The institution which makes, and enforces, the law is itself white.
Should you've stopped at "everyone can be racist", the comment would've been an excellent, if oversimplified, synthesis of the issue.
E:
> No one wants to debate pedantic redefined terms
Some do, and we can give them the space to do that without implying that the effort is automatically deserving of consideration.
> pedantic redefined terms that liberal arts professors came up with so they could sell books
That's a somewhat silly thing to argue. That's not how it really works, and it's not a "liberal" thing, whatever that may mean. (I assume it's an American term meant to designate something that's not conservative.)
Otherwise, what you say is correct.
The whole "X can't be racist" claim is part of the broader class of intellectual ragebait--subverting the original meaning of a term to elicit reaction and thereby garner views (or in the academic realm, citations), but with more refined language and logic than the usual memes ragebait is found in. I find it frustrating and detracting from actual meaningful social/scientific efforts.