Talk:Prejudice plus power/Archive1
How prevalent is this definition in academia? Does anyone know? I normally have a deep respect for the opinions of academics, but in this particular case it just seems incredibly stupid and fallacious. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 09:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- Well, the presentation is also stupid and fallacious, so it kind of balances out... I'm going to clean it up later.
- Oh, and there's at least one user on this wiki who's probably going to defend the concept at length. (No, I'm not talking about me.) Let's see if we can keep the argument productive.--ZooGuard (talk) 11:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- I ain't touching this with a ten-foot pole. What I do not need as I take breaks from writing about race and racism is arguing about race and racism, especially with the types of editors who tend to engage in these things without having read any/much of the relevant literature. Listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing "Baby, if I'm the bottom, you're the top" is very different after reading Dan Savage's column..
15:21, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- Yeah, I don't really like this definition either, but this is poorly written. It also heavily implies some of the favorite tropes used by right-wing scolds -- anti-racists are the real racists/Feminists are the real sexists and complaining about "Critical Theorists". Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 15:57, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- I ain't touching this with a ten-foot pole. What I do not need as I take breaks from writing about race and racism is arguing about race and racism, especially with the types of editors who tend to engage in these things without having read any/much of the relevant literature. Listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing "Baby, if I'm the bottom, you're the top" is very different after reading Dan Savage's column..
"How prevalent is this definition in academia? Does anyone know?"
- I don't know, is Tumblr considered academia yet? According to advocates, "The definition used in anti-racist circles is the accepted sociological definition", and therefore you can't question it, while someone else says "It is no longer used widely in academic circles because it is simplistic". So... yeah. Hmmph (talk) 01:34, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- The day Tumblr is part of academia is the day Ann Coulter votes for a Democrat. Not saying the users are unintelligent, but it's a blog site. It's not professional and never will be. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 01:41, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- That was a joke. Hmmph (talk) 02:01, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- Ah, sorry. I'm not good at detecting sarcasm over the Internet. Normally I rely on tone of voice. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 02:10, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- That was a joke. Hmmph (talk) 02:01, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- From my own personal experience I can tell you that it is dominant among the anti-imperialist crowd and quite common among the academics studying post-colonialism. I remember one particularly telling quote from a book by a Mr. James Toth which basically justifies Sayyid Qutb's Occidentalist worldview by declaring it to be a form of resistance against Imperialism because of and I quote "the power imbalance between the West and Egypt." Furthermore, anti-imperialists and post-Colonialists tend to use the definition to legitimize nationalism in non-western countries. For instance: Zionism (which is for all intents and purposes Jewish Nationalism) is racism not because it is a "Nationalist" ideology but because it is a "Colonialist" one. Whereas Arab Nationalism is not racism because Arabs don't have power. So while the Copts, Berbers, South Sudanese, Darfurians, and Assyrians suffer indignities in the name of Arab Nationalism and Islamic Fundamentalism (in the case of the Copts and Assyrians) these events do inspire nearly as much protest or emotion as the plight of the Palestinians because Arab nationalism is seen as a legitimate form of resistance against imperialism and the very idea that they themselves could be espousing an equally intolerant ideology is dismissed out of the inconvenience it would cause and the implications it would create for political movements in the Arab world. 74.97.30.242 (talk) 16:41, 7 July 2014 (UTC) Alex
Contents |
[edit] Really?
I get that rational wiki likes to take a critical approach to concepts to help highlight irrationality, but half the "consequences" section ignores that many of those cases are, in fact, people with power to kill and harm their victims and prejudice driving the action. Are we really okay with such an self-aware article? It seems to embrace the idea that popularity or population are the definition of power, until a political figure comes into the discussion, then its perspective on the situation dramatically reverses itself. I'm not really a frequently rational wiki editor, but is their a policy for dealing with schlock? 159.45.129.17 (talk) 15:12, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- It's reductio ad absurdum (though it could be reworded to make this more clear), and "prejudice plus power" is explicitly about institutional power, not one-on-one physical force. Hmmph (talk) 01:35, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- No, it's about social power and is not synonymous with institutional racism. Ŵêâŝêîôîď
Methinks it is a Weasel 01:41, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- Please clarify the difference between "social power" and "institutional power". Hmmph (talk) 01:59, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- One exists in societies and one in institutions. Ŵêâŝêîôîď
Methinks it is a Weasel 02:18, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- So racism is prejudice plus social power, then? Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 02:19, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- One exists in societies and one in institutions. Ŵêâŝêîôîď
- Please clarify the difference between "social power" and "institutional power". Hmmph (talk) 01:59, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- No, it's about social power and is not synonymous with institutional racism. Ŵêâŝêîôîď
- The people who are against the re-definition of racism are making a purely semantic argument. Acknowledging that institutional racism exists can be done without re-defining a word. There's plenty of negative consequences to doing so when you factor in hypothetical reasons for said re-definition, or it is at best pointless and regardless oversimplifies things.— Unsigned, by: NoBody / talk / contribs 01:34, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
[edit] "Consequences"
That said -- do it right. Each of those items needs a cite. I removed the "sites" about the murders because they were from Wikipedia, which is against the guidelines. We need cites there that say that race was a factor in the killings, AND that people have denied that racism was a factor in the killings. Listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing "Baby, if I'm the bottom, you're the top" is very different after reading Dan Savage's column..
15:25, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- I think that the "consequences" section is intended as a reductio ad absurdum (i.e. overblown alleged logical consequences, not causal consequences of applying the formulation or actual claims of its proponents).
- Also, which guidelines?--ZooGuard (talk) 15:33, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- It's not clear that that's what's happening in the section -- to me it reads as though someone is making empirical claims. And these guidelines. Listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing "Baby, if I'm the bottom, you're the top" is very different after reading Dan Savage's column..
15:56, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- I don't see how these could be taken as empirical, when they clearly follow logically from the premise. If power is a prerequisite to racism, then powerless people are not racist, American neo-Nazis included. It's a simple syllogism. Snarky but logically valid.
- I think a social justice advocate would probably counter that this is an oversimplification, perhaps that our society is inherently racist and that therefore American Nazis are more powerful than you'd think. Or just that the idea was never supposed to be applied to individuals but only societies. I don't know, I'm kind of going off the top of my head at this point, but I still don't think those need any citations. They're more snark than anything and I'd rather see them removed than left as they are now. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 08:10, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
- Done. Wēāŝēīōīď
Methinks it is a Weasel 11:04, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
- To my knowledge, they see it as a societal thing. Whilst neo-nazi groups are in no way accepted, they still perceive that as a manifestation of institutional racism de-facto. People have different minimum standards.— Unsigned, by: NoBody / talk / contribs 01:33, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
- Done. Wēāŝēīōīď
- It's not clear that that's what's happening in the section -- to me it reads as though someone is making empirical claims. And these guidelines. Listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing "Baby, if I'm the bottom, you're the top" is very different after reading Dan Savage's column..
- I specifically linked to the Wikipedia articles about the murders because of Wikipedia's NPOV and not wanting to accidentally link to white supremacist bullshit. I added a news article reference and references for where all the others came from. Better? Hmmph (talk) 01:19, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- No, it's still awful. You're grossly missing the point that this issue is about de facto power or privilege held by demographic groups, not about specific positions held by individuals. In the USA, white people are overwhelmingly the most privileged group and black people among the least - this is the kind of "power" that this adage is intended to reflect. The fact that some black individuals, like the President, are in positions of authority, or that some white individuals are in positions of poverty doesn't mean that white vs black racism is somehow "not racist" when it involves these individuals, since it clearly still draws on the tradition of whites denigrating blacks as inferior. Wēāŝēīōīď
Methinks it is a Weasel 01:40, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
- No, it's still awful. You're grossly missing the point that this issue is about de facto power or privilege held by demographic groups, not about specific positions held by individuals. In the USA, white people are overwhelmingly the most privileged group and black people among the least - this is the kind of "power" that this adage is intended to reflect. The fact that some black individuals, like the President, are in positions of authority, or that some white individuals are in positions of poverty doesn't mean that white vs black racism is somehow "not racist" when it involves these individuals, since it clearly still draws on the tradition of whites denigrating blacks as inferior. Wēāŝēīōīď
- I'll grant that white people hating Obama for his race is racism by any definition. That still leaves the issue that apparently African Americans can't be racist, which is absurd and amounts to arguing over semantics rather than actually combating genuine social ills. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 02:17, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
[edit] the majority of racism in the US is against minorities by whites
Is there any study supporting this claim? FBI statistics on hate crimes tell a different history. -190.140.192.193 (talk) 21:20, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
- "Of the 5,331 known offenders, 54.6 percent were white and 23.3 percent were black." Thanks for clearing that up for us. SophieWilder
21:45, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
- That doesn't actually clear it up because not all hate crimes are racial. If you look at the actually-relevant statistics at that site, only 41.3% of racial hate crimes in 2012 were attributed to whites acting against racial minorities. Of course, since not all racism involves documented hate crimes, it's a loose measure at best, but if that statement is to stay in the article, it should have a citation that actually supports it. 96.61.58.35 (talk) 19:57, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
[edit] This article is trash.
And the citations are trashier. Prejudice plus power isn't used by "some" academic types and "some" social justice people RW seems to hate according to this article-- I mean enthusiasts. It's basic shit you can learn in even the least prestigious USA community college in Social Inequality in the United States or even Sociology 1 fucking 01. The idea that racism is saying mean things about other people based on race because that's the "common definition" is as wrong as saying that an acid is a substance that is bright green and dissolves metal like on saturday morning cartoons because that's how many children who have never taken a chemistry course know what it is. We trust researchers of nearly every other topic to be more authorities on that topic than the dictionary and the layman; why are hundreds of sociologists somehow inferior to common people's desire to have a definition that means people with privilege can call people with less racial privilege racist?
rather, prejudice plus power is NOT a band-aid or excuse or a cover-up so black people can't be racist (what kind of america-centric bullshit is this, the entire black diaspora isn't treated the same everywhere, fuck off). Black people and other racial minorities can be racist to those who have less racial privilege than them, or a different axis of racial privilege. People of color can be racist against their own demographics due to internalized racism inflicted upon them by others and society, and merely repeated by themselves. Racism in different countries works differently than it does in the USA, almost all over the world. Prejudice plus power is a way to summarize the common thread of ALL of these racist relationships: a racial group with more political or social favor is able to marginalize a group with less, and cause that group with less to internalize their own oppression.
Whoever wrote this article should be fucking ashamed of themselves. This bullshit is humiliating to rationalwiki with assertions that this is some kind of nonwhite plot to make white people feel bad and never be called racist (?!), horrid statements such as "Whilst it is true that acts like slavery and segregation require one group to be privileged, to be consistent one must say it is worse to kill a black person for being black than to kill a white person for being white, or even more absurdly, to claim calling a black person the n-word is worse than killing a white person for being white. All of these acts can be committed without privilege." (one of these is a systematic occurrence, black people are murdered every day in the USA with race as part of their axis of WHY that was, white people hardly ever are! of COURSE one is worse, because only one is an actual problem in the USA! The other is a by-comparison freak occurrence!) as well as "This is obviously not the case to a morally sane person" (when does RW police morality or sanity? Are is this article calling people who have gone to fucking university and learned what the actual power dynamic about racism is 'irrational?!' Drink!). This is humiliating and shameful, the article seems more to be the deranged babblings of somebody upset that they were called a cracker and doesn't understand they were literally being called the demographic that cracked the slave-owning whip over blacks, a position of stolen power. ±
KnightOfTL;DRcritical thinking is the key to success! 12:02, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
- I wrote the "offending" text in question. I will concede I could have written parts of it better and more neutrally, but I will elaborate on my points. This is fundamentally a semantic argument. Comparing using the term racism without the "+power" to believing in cartoon acid is a false equivocation.
- Firstly, when it comes to deciphering what the "correct" definition of a word is, common usage is a completely valid metric, in fact I would argue it trumps most other usages. The dictionary definition generally follows common usage, and historically that has been the go-to way of defining a word. That is it. A definition is not incorrect in the same way, say, creationism is false, for instance. I mean, if you want to apply a huge occam's razor, you could say no definition is objectively correct over any other, because semantics is not really based on objective fact. Saying prejudice plus power is the only correct definition of racism is an argument from authority. I don't care if every single intellectual in existence believes that is the correct definition. If the definition of a word is totally up to ivory tower types that may set a negative precedent.
- The main point though is there is really no justification to use a definition of a word few people use at least in common parlance. The point of a word is to communicate a concept. If you use a definition separate from the common one in a conversation with common people, the definition just becomes awkward and does not help with conveying the idea, and ironically tends to end up derailing the discussion into semantics debates or accusations of anti-white bias (which is funny to me because Social Justice activists complain about derailment all the time). Saying someone does not understand what "racism" is because they use the common definition (something I hear a lot) is about as nonsensical as saying that someone who speaks German and uses the term "gift" to mean "poison" doesn't understand what a "gift" is. It sounds like an extreme analogy but it is a valid one. What fundamentally matters is what people mean, not what they literally say. If you know what someone means, plus you know it is a common definition, what is the point of derailing it into a semantics debate or worse? A person who uses the term "racism" to simply mean prejudice based on race is not implicitly denying the existence of institutional racism. They may not know of its existence, but that is a different subject. In practice, the usage of the prejudice+power definition outside of academic circles is of no pragmatic benefit to anyone, including Social Justice activists. I would wager that the vast majority of people who would agree with the p+p definition would not "need" it redefined in the first place. Every single time I see someone contest the p+p definition of racism to a social justice person, they make it into more than a semantics debate when it is fundamentally a semantics debate - and note, the equivalent to the "burden of proof" is on the person using the minority definition.
- To elaborate on some specific points you contest, the general idea I get from people who use racism to mean "prejudice+power" is that they are more trying to take advantage of the negative emotional stigma "racist" and "racism" tend to carry, ergo they wish to use it only for things they consider "worse" than other forms of prejudice. My point of contention is merely having power does not inherently make the net effect of any prejudiced action one may take worse than one committed by someone with less "power". If that is the reason you choose to use the p+p definition, be aware that you are implicitly implying killing a white person for being white is less terrible than killing a black person for being black, or even calling them the n-word. Emotional stigma is not precise or technical, never mind subjective to different people. Remember, you predicated the definition on the power, not the action. For the sake of this argument let us assume everything you said about white on black hate murders being higher than visa versa are true. I know the common rebuttal to what I said is "well it happens more so it IS worse" or something or other, something you more or less said and I have heard many times before. Well, I think this is flawed logic and we are talking about different things here. One black person being murdered in a hate crime is not worse than one white person being murdered in a hate crime because more black people are murdered in hate crimes, because we are talking about that one black person being murdered versus this one white person being murdered, not all anti-black hate murders versus all anti-white hate murders. People who use the p+p definition will still use it to compare individual events.
- This way of thinking is to me the equivalent of saying that if you have two faucets spewing water, and Faucet A is spewing out way more water than Faucet B, that this somehow means a single molecule of water from Faucet A is "more" than a single molecule from Faucet B. A molecule is a molecule, a death is a death. We are not talking about it all, we are talking about single incidences. Factoring in emotional stigma is by nature just going to give very imprecise implications. I may be able to concede that the n-word is generally more offensive than cracker, but even that is not because of the "power" white people possess, it is because of the history of the word. I would argue if in the future blacks gained power over whites, that would not make cracker more offensive than the n-word - based on the same logic most Social Justice activists would use to argue the n-word is worse. But even then, how offensive a word is is subjective from person to person. A black person may not give a crap about the n-word, and a white person may be offended by cracker. If you eliminate how the people "on the ground" feel and replace it with how you think they should feel, well, then you are just pointlessly legislating morality.
- To summarize, the "more correct" definition of a word has generally always been the common usage, there is no pragmatic reason to use the prejudice+power definition of racism because words are primarily meant to communicate concepts and insisting on different definitions is derailment at best and a way of shielding yourself from criticism at worst, and it has moral implications that are just not good. I would also like to add that it is quite possibly one of the most tactically counter-productive ways of combating fringe white nationalist and separatist groups. To them, you are "confirming" what they fear, and probably doing nothing to help inter-racial conflict between real people, just creating spite and divide. I am not a Marxist, but the Marxist some ways below me makes a good point. --NoBody 13 July 2014
- By definition, wiki articles are edited by multiple people. Different parts of the text of an article at any current moment can be attributed to different people who may have had different ideas what the article should cover and how their contributions contributed to that purpose. In a way, wiki articles resemble a wall splattered in graffiti - only the topmost layer of paint at any given point is visible.
- In this case, the brunt of your complaints seem to be against a pair of paragraphs added by NoBody in May 2014: [1] I've taken them out, for a number of reasons. --ZooGuard (talk) 13:06, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure you fully understand the implication of this definition. I wrote a paragraph on this talk page on how post-colonial theorists tend to use this definition to argue that Islamism is a legitimate form of resistance against western imperialism (my IP address is 74.97.30.242, I occasionally forget to log in when posting). In response to accusations that this definition promotes moral relativism you make the following assertion: (one of these is a systematic occurrence, black people are murdered every day in the USA with race as part of their axis of WHY that was, white people hardly ever are! of COURSE one is worse, because only one is an actual problem in the USA! The other is a by-comparison freak occurrence!) not only do you not provide any evidence let alone statistical evidence proving your claim but you have completely missed the point. Even if the assumptions you make are true (in all likelihood they are) you have merely proved that institutional racism is widespread in the United States. As for your horror in how such beliefs appear on rationalwiki I should remind you that a fair number of rationalwiki users have a (traditional) marxist worldview (including myself to an extant). From that perspective the definition of racism being prejudice plus power is semantic nonsense designed by the bourgeois to distract the population from their disparate economic conditions. Hence while it would make more sense to conduct affirmative action programs on the basis of economics rather than race, universities prefer to use race so as to keep the class divide intact. From a purely marxist perspective all of identity politics itself is divisive nonsense and such theories regarding power are flawed because power is merely a means by which wealth is acquired and kept. Power rests with those who have more money what race they happen to be is wholly irrelevant. Alsto003 (talk) 17:24, 7 July 2014 (UTC) Alex
- After reading the last couple of line of your rant I think it is only necessary to apply your logic to another situation regarding an oppressed minority. The director and producer of "The Innocence of Muslims" was from Egypt and is a Coptic Christian. Following your logic the Muslims offended by the film are just upset that they were called ignorant fanatics who follow the teachings of a deranged madman (according to the film). They don't understand that they were literally being called: the followers of a religion which gave Coptic Christians second class status in their own country for nearly fourteen hundred years, a position of stolen power. What say you about Coptic Christians who blaspheme against Islam so far as to mock the entire premise of that religion? Is it islamophobia or simply a expression of the frustration held by a long oppressed minority? Alsto003 (talk) 19:23, 8 July 2014 (UTC) Alex