Is This An Example Of Racism Or Not?

Racism is a term which can be overused, employed as a weapon to attack those with different opinions &/or experiences. I certainly wouldn't regard any of the people in this video as racist & got no impression that they viewed white people as automatically inferior. I'm not a huge fan of the concept of "privilege" used by a couple of them as it tends to be an enormously simplistic lens through which to view the world, ignoring other differences such as class. However, most seemed to understand that people's identities, particularly in a colonially constructed society such as the US or Australia can be extremely complex things.

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

"People of colour" can be as racist as anybody else - why can they not be?

There are many people promoting a redefinition of racism (they often don't acknowledge that it's a redefinition in my experience) that racism is "discrimination/prejudice plus power" so "people of colour" cannot be racist because they are disadvantaged due to their demographic and don't wield the power to make their discrimination harmful. I think this is stupid for a variety of reasons.

1: most people (guess, but I'm sure it's accurate) do no agree with this definition. If you randomly asked people if non white people can be racist the vast majority would say yes. Redefining a word so that people don't agree on the definition is just making language less useful.

2: it excuses or minimises bad behaviour on the part of ethnic minorities for no good reason. If an Asian (for example) is discriminating based on race, using the redefinition you couldn't say "stop being a racist ****" because they can't be racist. Racism is obviously massively negative for society and victims of it. This has been recognised in recent decades so why give a get out clause to anyone who isn't white? There's no benefit.

3: ethnic minorities being racist towards other minorities or the ethnic majority can be very harmful independent of historical or demographically power structures and ethnic minorities can have more economic power than the ethnic majority in certain areas or industries. The ethnically Pakistani rape gangs operating in Britain engaged in racist behaviour and had more economic power than their white victims. Why not call their racist behaviour racist? Again, there's no benefit to that.

4: it's divisive. It's promoting a "one rule for us and another for them" mentality which is never going to be a good thing. I think is actually likely to lead to more racist attitudes among white people.

5: I know this was contained in a few of my points but: there's no benefit to it! There's no logical reason to redefine a word away from its accepted definition that everyone except some sociology students already agree on. If it's at odds with the definition contained in the most used dictionaries, and it's because the redefinition is out of step with general use rather than the dictionary being out of step, then it's not the definition!

orubiru wrote: »

So what am I missing here?

You're missing the "white guilt" complex that videos like this are trying to promote.

It's not racist, it's just incredibly stupid.

I think the bigger problem is that I just clicked on a video and gave Buzzfeed 1 extra view.

Eurgh, feel so dirty!!

As for the video, I don't care about these carefully edited click-baiting pieces of cynical garbage, especially from Buzzfeed. It's only ever in these kinds of videos or the likes of The Guardian that I hear about my supposed privilege as a white male.

If someone was to say how privileged I was to my face they'd be told to fúck right off for making assumptions about someone they know absolutely zero about.