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Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> Bruce Schlickbernd wrote:
> >
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Edward Sanburn writes:
> > > Larry,
> > >
> > >
> > > Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> > >
> > > > NO WAY! You can only be a racist if you're a male WASP. Everyone else is • part
> > > > of the oppressed, and therefore, by definition, can't be a racist. Right?
> > >
> > > According to liberal thinking, yes!
> >
> >
> > I can't recall a single liberal in my acquaintance that thinks this way. Yes,
> > you will run into this line of reasoning in some black studies courses, but I
> > don't think you will find too many people who buy into it.
>
> Outside of academia. See, most of the people you and I know are fairly
> reasonable, fairly rational (not perfect, mind you)... we both
> presumably know mostly normal mainstream people. But in the bastions of
> orthodoxy where this stuff emanates, that kind of thinking appears to be
> Revealed Truth. Or so it seems to me.
Not true, even *in* academia. Certainly not among any of the African Studies people
I know, and I'm in just such a supposed "bastion of orthodoxy." The people who deny
racism can exist among minorities make an easy foil, but they're far rarer among
academics than detractors would have everyone believe.
Granted, the academy's a big place. Even a tiny minority of academics is still a
pretty substantial number, and we do roll our eyes at them. ;)
That said, racism by the majority is in fact different from the same thing by a
minority--not in raw definition or even in rhetoric, but in the meaning of
expression and the overall effect of the racist's actions. For the dominant group,
greater vigilance is required because the relative power and consequent damage
potential is also greater. The question of just what the dominant group is, is very
open to interpretation--and defining it by "race" propigates the same categories
everyone claims to want to do away with.
(BTW: my two cents, for those who know about the Sharpton-sprung-from-jail thing:
the NAACP voted to get Al Sharpton--a racist by every definition of the word--out of
jail after two hours because if he stayed in for the full ten days, he would have
emerged more powerful and with a wider audience for his inflammatory views. Despite
all of its problems, I'll take the NAACP over Al Simpleton anyday.)
best
Lindsay
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Wench as a word
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| (...) Outside of academia. See, most of the people you and I know are fairly reasonable, fairly rational (not perfect, mind you)... we both presumably know mostly normal mainstream people. But in the bastions of orthodoxy where this stuff emanates, (...) (24 years ago, 25-Mar-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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