"Racism" didn't need redefining. It was clear, concise, easy to understand, and universally applicable. They've "redefined" it to be "being white". Full stop. Remember "privilege plus power"? Racism now can be a state of being instead of what you do. In their fucked-up justifications, people who are doing things in a way that did not discriminate by race or just doing things separate from other races, are deemed racist simply by being white while doing so. They also (ACTUALLY racistly) use it to take away agency from members of other races just to blame white people. (for example, saying Asian American hate is profoundly white, despite black people being the majority of anti-Asian hate crime perpetrators). It's despicable, and whenever I hear someone think about racism in this way, I know it's completely lost to every try to have a conversation with them, because they have a complete purposeful misunderstanding of what I'm even saying about true equality and progress.
To me, it becomes clearer all the time that while, yes we had a definition in the 90s, it was no more valid than today's. The word is just an accusation of wrongthink. If you had a misguided idea about race, I wouldn't call you racist -- I'd call you wrong.
Yes, that is the inevitable result. Racism now has nothing to do with being wrong or amoral. They're gliding on people remembering "racism is bad" and hoping they don't connect it to the idea that racism literally isn't what it used to be.
"Racism" didn't need redefining. It was clear, concise, easy to understand, and universally applicable. They've "redefined" it to be "being white". Full stop. Remember "privilege plus power"? Racism now can be a state of being instead of what you do. In their fucked-up justifications, people who are doing things in a way that did not discriminate by race or just doing things separate from other races, are deemed racist simply by being white while doing so. They also (ACTUALLY racistly) use it to take away agency from members of other races just to blame white people. (for example, saying Asian American hate is profoundly white, despite black people being the majority of anti-Asian hate crime perpetrators). It's despicable, and whenever I hear someone think about racism in this way, I know it's completely lost to every try to have a conversation with them, because they have a complete purposeful misunderstanding of what I'm even saying about true equality and progress.
To me, it becomes clearer all the time that while, yes we had a definition in the 90s, it was no more valid than today's. The word is just an accusation of wrongthink. If you had a misguided idea about race, I wouldn't call you racist -- I'd call you wrong.
Yes, that is the inevitable result. Racism now has nothing to do with being wrong or amoral. They're gliding on people remembering "racism is bad" and hoping they don't connect it to the idea that racism literally isn't what it used to be.