On being multi-lingual
Thought I'd try putting this across in more palatable fashion.
Bean, at Alas, A Blog, offers
this statement in the comments to her
original post:
Men can be affected by prejudice against because they are male. This is not sexism.
Similarly, white people can be affected by prejudice against because they are white. This is not racism.
Sexism and racism are more than individual actions -- they are systemic. Without the systemic aspect, it is not sexism or racism, it is prejudice.
I do not support prejudice in any of it's manifestations -- but I do and will recognize the difference between individual prejudice and systemic sexism/racism.
Ampersand's responses:
I'd prefer to say "both people of color and whites are sometimes victims of individual racism, but only people of color experience systematic racism." I think the important distinction to be made isn't between "prejudice" and "racism," but between things that happen on a individual level and things that happen on a systematic level.
and
Bean and I don't disagree on substance here - merely on which words to use. In my experience - and maybe Bean has found otherwise - my wording is more useful for explaining feminist and anti-racist positions in everyday life. Most people - especially people who have never taken a women's studies class - will find it easier to understand the distinction between "individual-level racism" and "systematic racism," but will resist making the distinction Bean suggests between "prejudice" and "racism."
(Why do people resist it? Because no one likes being told they don't know what everyday words mean. To ask people to distinguish between "individual racism" and "systematic racism" isn't asking them to accept new definitions for words they already know. But to tell someone that someone who says "all white people are stupid and shouldn't be allowed to breed" isn't a racist is to tell them that they don't know what the word "racist" means. And that bugs people, understandably.)
are fine but they bring other, perhaps related, thoughts to mind specific to the discussion of race and racism.
You see, I use Ampersand's definitions and distinctions myself when I talk to well-meaning white people about racial issues. Racism, initially used to mean anti-Black prejudice and discrimination, has been redefined in the public discussion space to mean any reference to race at all. So now we have to specify the target of the racism under discussion, whether it was consciously invoked and specifically directed toward a specific person, granting 20 or so years of reduced entitlements moral equivalence to ten or so generations of oppression.
Ampersand is very correct when he says it's normal to dislike being told you don't know what a term you've used all your life means. I accept this language in practice, though as a person who grew up before the redefinition it all strikes me as an instance of newspeak. The redefinition was not done to benefit me. Trust me, I've know what racism is all along.
It doesn't surprise me that mainstream America would redefine the use of the word racism because Black people have done the same thing with the word that irks us almost as much as being called racist irks white Americans … the infamous
N-Word. First we tried denying all connection with it. Then we generalized the term (aided by cowardly lexicologists who defined the N-Word as "a low class person"). Finally, unable to escape it, we specialized it until we felt it defined a subset of Black people that just happened not to include ourselves. Racism, the word, has gone through two of these three steps and is in the process of completing the third.
Meanwhile, all the assumptions and power relationships that created and are reflected in the N and R words still exist, still influence (though no longer absolutely controls) class, economics and politics in the USofA. I still get that little twisting feeling in my gut when the security guard follows me, still wonder why that person feels relieved that I didn't rob them rather than foolish for fearing I would. I'm afraid I've never seen much reason to accept the redefinition of racism as anything more than a debating tactic.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/30/2003 12:15:28 PM |
Posted by P6 at April 30, 2003 12:15 PM
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