The Question (Participation Requested)

It all started with this post by local hate-monger, Dave Neiwert. I guess that I hadn’t been called a bigot or a fascist in a while and needed some abuse, so I stopped by his place, where there is no shortage of it for those who don’t subscribe to his very narrow point of view or play sycophant to his discussion points.

In the above linked post, Neiwert plays apologist for the racist group, MEChA, in saying that the charges of racism levelled against MEChA by Glenn Reynolds were ‘almost entirely groundless’.

His reasoning for his clearing of the slate for the group seems basically to stem from the fact that they aren’t Anglos. Go ahead and read the post and his links and see if you can glean any further reasoning from it than I. Though, if you start, make sure that you finish the whole as you will need his customized three-plus paragraph definition of racism contained within one of the links to see his reasoning. I’d tell you which link it was, but I’m not going to read through the mental gymnastics Neiwert requires in order for his point to be proven (gymnastics which, btw, change depending on which group he is speaking of) any more than I have to. 

But that isn’t the question I have. It is contained below the fold and a bit of a ways down. If I could have you all think it over and give me your reactions, I’d be most appreciative.

Unlike Neiwert, I see racism as a simple idea: Any act that discounts one race over another, whether malicious or not.

If the word racism is broken down to its roots we get the following: Race–noun: 1= a family, tribe, people or nation of same stock. Ism–noun (suffix): 1 = act; practice; process. 2: a manner of action or behavior characteristic of a person or thing. 3 = doctrine; theory; cult. 4 = adherence to a set of principles. 5 = prejudice or discrimination on the basis of an attribute.

The word Racist breaks down the same way only that instead of focusing on the abstract, the suffix Ist focuses on the individual.

So the textbook definition of the words Racism and Racist would seem to be on my side.

However, Webster’s defines Racism as a noun meaning: a belief that some races are by nature superior to others. And Racist as: discrimination based on such a belief.

Clearly, the english language isn’t on the side of Webster’s, who has prefered to use only the more popular definition, a pejorative, rather than the one which uses the actual rules of language to define it.

I could easily blame this on the liberalization of academia and their control over the lingusitics departments where the employees for publishing houses come are made, but I would only have to point out that the top linguist in America is a man named Chomsky, and that would be much too easy. On a side note, I do find it quite hilarious that the left hangs on the man’s every word and treats his sentences as gospel, all the while ignoring that he is, by profession, a linguist; a master of language. I would no more trust a linguist to tell me how to think than a psycologist telling me how to talk. Of course a linguist is going to be able to come up with a convicing argument, he’s a master of language. If he couldn’t convince me of his point, he is either incompetent or his arguments are insane; Chomsky has both of those working against him: He doesn’t follow the rules of language properly and his line (of thought) switch is malfunctioning.

The dumbing down of America I will blame on academia, for the word ‘Bigot’ has been around for hundreds of years and exactly matches the definition of the pejorative use of the word racist, but it, for some reason, isn’t as popular. I blame academia for twisting the language and making a possibly neutral term into a specialized word for race bigot, just as they specialized ‘Sexism’ to describe sex-based bigotry. Being a heterosexual is to be sexist. Thinking a woman can’t be as good as a man in most fields of employment is sex-based bigotry.

I could also place some of the blame for the redefining of words in complete discordance with the rules of language on the laziness of average Americans and their twisted need to conform. All it took for the word ‘Ironic’ to be popularly misused was a Top 10 hit single (thanks, Alanis Morissette, and thanks to the Canadian school system for improperly educating her). Though, in all honesty, I can’t really blame the average American. They’re so busy working to keep the government up to their necks in money that they don’t really have time to pay attention to the small stuff.

But enough about blame, why is it that the word racist is only seen as negative, when the organizations and people who are obviously racist, but do some good things not seen as racists (the NAACP and their employees, as an example)?

Isn’t a white male who prefers to only have relations with asian women a racist, just as is a black male who prefers to only have relations with white women? No one is being harmed by these selections (unless one of the males in question is actually serial killer), but the decisions are based on racial preferences.

Unfortunately, due to the popularization of the pejorative use of racist, only white males who object to interracial dating are considered racists (oddly enough, black males who don’t like white men dating black women get a pass on their prejudice, but that is another story I’ll save for another day).

But the true show of the hypocrisy of the left is Affirmative Action; an institutionalized system of preferences based solely on race which benefits one person over another on the grounds of nothing other than what the skin color of their biological parents was.

Sound like race based bigotry pure and simple to me, and if it benefitted whites, you can guarantee that it would be called as such. Yet if you ask a dedicated leftist, Affirmative Action was “A Good Thing” that was dissolved by “The Evil, Racist Right”.

Whenever I think I’m getting too serious, that one argument is one that always makes me laugh and come back down to earth.

While I’m not trying to be too serious here, I am rambling on here. So let’s get down to the actual question: Am I out of my gotdam mind to think like I am about the definition of racism?

No simple yes or no responses, please. Help me help myself here.

After my initial response to Neiwert, I brough the topic up with the Analog Wife. The college educated Analog Wife. She has trouble seeing past the pejorative and stands her ground right there, rather well in light of my insistence and physical proof that racism can be neutral as well as negative. And that is why I’m bringing it up here.

On a side note…

In the comments in one of my posts this weekend, my talented co-blogger, David, said something very poignent:

as a kid I watched Sanford & Son religiously, and the nature of my upbringing was such that I didn’t know Redd Foxx was a black man until I was in college. I’d just always assumed that he was a guy with skin his color, and his son had darker skin, just like I have blue eyes and my Mom doesn’t. Race was simply not ever a significant topic in our house. We didn’t categorize people by skin color, race, or anything else other than their behavior.

I still think that’s a pretty darn good way to raise a kid.

It is a darn good way to raise a kid. It was the way I was raised and it would be the way I would raise my children if I had the urge to foist the ultimate evil upon this earth (which I have so far decided would be a textbook “Bad Idea”).

Unfortunately for the caucasian left, while they would like to think they are raising their kids this way, they instead feed them that all minorities are people who cannot make their own way in the world and are dependant upon the charity of ‘politically aware white people’. Also known as “Racism”.