The problem with banning things like "racism" is that words change meaning over time. Maybe some time in the future, any reference to "White Privlege" may be considered racist, for instance.
The scary thing that should terrify everyone is we are going to come to a point where being called racist no longer matters or nobody cares, and then your gonna see REAL racism come back with a fury and force you wont like.
So, milk could become a symbol of this if used within that context. People are paranoid enough today that if a picture of someone enjoying a glass of a milk was published, they could assume it was a signal of this. And it could be, to be sure.
The circle of life on this sort of thing, I think, goes something like:
Come up with a contrived reason milk could be considered racist, film a video or whatever about chugging milk while making a racist screed, get criticized for being a weirdo, and then some reactionary clickbait site can have the headline "Internet user called 'racist' for drinking milk."
It is dumb, don't worry about it.
They spread the rumor that the OK symbol is racist.
Some people go to racist rallies and make the gesture.
Is it now a racist gesture? A gesture can't really be racist I don't think, it is the intent behind it. In the case of OK, it doesn't provide much extra information, right? If somebody is making it at a racist rally I guess it is a bit redundant. If somebody makes it while scuba diving I guess they are really indicating "OK."
The OK gesture was an effective pick because, it has mostly been supplanted by thumbs up to indicate all's good anyway. So it doesn't have much counter-pressure. I don't think milk consumption is going anywhere.
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...
https://theconversation.com/milk-a-symbol-of-neo-nazi-hate-8...
These kinds of statements are the result of a wretched game of Telephone. "White supremacists are using the OK sign as an identifying signal" became "Crazy leftists say the OK sign is racist". It's an effective recruiting tool on the uninformed.
I have, however, heard the term 'racist' accurately used to describe people making an inverted OK sign when said people happen to be standing at a Proud Boys rally, or by people who otherwise spend their time hanging out with, or trolling as, white supremacists. [^1]
Same deal with milk. It's only racist when it's being used as a symbol by people who are intentionally being racist:
> "One slide Dr. Novembre has folded into his recent talks depicts a group of white nationalists chugging milk at a 2017 gathering to draw attention to a genetic trait known to be more common in white people than others — the ability to digest lactose as adults." [^2]
That doesn't mean "milk is racist", or that drinking milk is racist; it means unabashed racists seem to enjoy co-opting common symbols as code for their secret clubs.
[^1]: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/okay-h...
[^2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/white-supremacists-sci...
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...
Who says that's not already the case outside of the coastal cities?
Making that into a legal doctrine would be quite tricky.
e.g. The head of the NAACP used the word in 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/john-mcwhorter-n-...
Privilege is concept that certain attributes a person has confer relative advantages in the ways they interact with the world and the outcomes thereof. Acknowledging that is not and cannot be bigotry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_privilege
Unless you're saying that white privilege is a consequence of racism, which would be correct, but not really relevant to the discussion here.
Related the concept is so terribly named it seems meant to raise conflict. Privledge implies that it should be optional. It invites the previously mentioned abuse.
noun
a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.
It's named perfectly fine, it's just people willfully misinterpret it.
As far as being a "racist rhetorical cudgel", I'm sorry if you've felt that way, but the majority of times I've seen it used, it's to point out that a person's privilege does work to invalidate their opinion on a matter.
Most often, this is when someone is claiming that some form of discrimination doesn't exist, or isn't that bad, or that it happens the same to everyone and the people complaining should just get over it.
Privilege affects one's lived experience in ways that it's difficult to notice, because you have only your own lived experience to rely on. As a man, I was privileged not to experience harassment, and like many men I thought my female friends were exaggerating how bad it was. Then I took a series of subway rides with a friend who was harassed every time, and later got personally harassed by a creepy coworker. My privilege blinded me to the reality of the situation.
The same thing applies to race. I see a lot of white people who never personally witness racism making these broad statements about how, for example, you should just do what the police say and you'll be fine, when they've never had a cop drag them out of a car for no reason because they look like someone who might deal drugs. Because of their differences in societal privilege, their lived experience of dealing with cops has been wildly different, and the people with privilege shouldn't be talking over the people pointing out issues.
[1] https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116
White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and in-
sulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protec-
tion builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering
the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility.
White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress be-
comes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include
the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such
as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behav-
iors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.Also, while I haven't read DiAngelo's greater oeuvre, that's a pretty poor quote to pull. The symptoms (anger and fear particularly) and strategies he gives of a white person experiencing "white fragility" could just as easily be applied to a black person experiencing racism! Which honestly is in accord with my wider experience with the anti-racist movement. Its most ardent supporters tend to say things that, as a non-American (and non-European before you make that assumption), are almost indistinguishable to me from white supremacy. I find myself agreeing greatly with John McWhorter (https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-po...) over Ibram X. Kendi.