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Comment by drhayes9 | Hacker News Reader

Argh, Jesus, I'm sick of people misrepresenting this tweet!

She's not saying that black people can't make racist statements and that they get a completely free pass when it comes to being racists. She's not. Stop saying that she is.

She's defining racism with a particularly sociological bent. She's saying that racism is an act by an oppressor towards the oppressed. When an oppressed person insults an oppressor they are operating within a power structure that has them at a disadvantage.

When she says "black people can't be racist towards white people" she is saying "the oppressed cannot, themselves, oppress their oppressors". That's why they're called "the oppressed".

Regardless of what you or I may say about her character, dragging this tweet out as evidence of her hypocrisy smacks of willful ignorance.

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> When she says "black people can't be racist towards white people" she is saying "the oppressed cannot, themselves, oppress their oppressors". That's why they're called "the oppressed".

Then why didn't she just say it like that?

Because that re-definition is always used to attempt to silence or de-rail whoever points out that racism is not exclusive to the white race.

The word racism is already clearly defined. There is no need to enhance it, or re-target it. Use another word, or just state the concept/idea you have.

And on your logic -

Can women be sexist towards men? By your train-of-thought, since men have had that power traditionally, then absolutly the answer is - no. Which is absurd.

But, then they can't push their agenda with loaded language! Did you consider that?

Why didn't she just say it like that? She did! What do you think "racism is a position of the oppressor who has the power" meant?

No one said that racism is exclusive to any race. Of course not. That'd be stupid. But it also seems deliberately bull-headed of you to say that "racism" is clearly defined when there are entire academic fields devoted to sussing out what it is. Whole journals. Lotsa books. So, no, let's proceed as though "racism" is not well-defined.

There is a difference between racism and prejudice. When someone says "Mexicans are lazy" they are exhibiting both. When a white person is surprised that a Mexican would work so hard - that's racism. When a Mexican woman bleaches her hair and wears light-colored contacts - that's another form of racism, called "internalizing the oppressor". If you've never heard of that, yet the definition of racism encompasses it, then maybe the definition of racism isn't so clear cut?

When a woman thinks other women should stay home and raise children - that's sexism, of course it it is. Just like if the woman said that the man shouldn't stay home to raise his kids because that's her job. Yes, that's sexism. Of course it is. It's sexism because she's applying the logic of the oppressor, the traditional male.

So, really, I'm not sure where you're coming from here. Have you ever read anything about racism? Ever had long talks with people who hold opposing viewpoints on race? When you say "use another word" -- which word would that be besides the one we already have whose definition you don't know?

> What do you think "racism is a position of the oppressor who has the power" meant?

She said that right after saying - Black people CANNOT be racist against White people - not before, on Twitter, for everyone to see. Come on...

That was a clear re-definition attempt of the word.

I know where and when that "re-definition" is always used / what its context is. It's designed to de-rail anyone who is pointing out that whites don't hold exclusivity on racism. Every. Single. Time.

Been there. Seen it.

She never said - I have an argument, and let's just use this definition of this word (and throw out the common usage) when we are talking about it. She clearly wants that word to mean one thing and one thing only.

> But it also seems deliberately bull-headed of you to say that "racism" is clearly defined when there are entire academic fields devoted to sussing out what it is. Whole journals. Lotsa books. So, no, let's proceed as though "racism" is not well-defined.

The word is clearly defined. It's the same definition it was 1000 years ago. It's in the dictionary. Just about every one of them.

Please stop pretending that activists with agendas (and PHDs) can re-define words for the rest of us to better suit their personal ideas and projects.

Your redefinition of the word is not a common one and many more disagree with it than agree with it.

Argh, Baal, Lord of Darkness, I am sick of people justifying her shit.

> "the oppressed cannot, themselves, oppress their oppressors"

Let me re-define the concepts that tell you are story. But you can't argue that I am telling you bullshit because I redefined basic concepts.

But ok, let's adopt her definition. There are situations based on places, times, locations where black people outnumber the white people (could be a certain organization, a club, workplace, street, city). In that case she is dead wrong as the oppressed oppressor labels get reversed. But you know what this is mental gymnastics bullshit.

Most people have a basic definition of racism. Redefining the terms to support her stupid comment -- smacks of dis-ingenuity.

> dragging this tweet out as evidence of her hypocrisy smacks of willful ignorance.

So is doing complicated mental acrobatics to support her.

She didn't redefine them. As someone[0] linked upthread (which you should have seen if you're down here) racism has a sociological definition as well as a colloquial definition. A dictionary does not define words; it records their common usage. It is, by its very nature, out of date.

Regarding your example of white people in areas with a higher black population, it doesn't quite work out. Almost any other environment, you have the advantage being white. A black person doesn't have the same luxury. They can't scoot away and suddenly go back to being privileged.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5420178

"Black people CANNOT be racist against White people." Sounds a lot like a free pass to me. If she is using the sociological definition to racism she is taking a narrow-minded approach to a very broad issue to suit her ideals. Claiming this statement as a truth based on one of the many different definitions of racism is naive.

You're trying very hard to fight for her. Fight the good fight. But it's delusional. She's clearly making a moronic statement. It is stupid on many levels, including rigorous and sociological levels. Many racists, even if they are white, which apparently under your's and her paradigm are the only ones that can be racist, are not in any position of power. If you take some old white, filthy, dirt poor racist, and compare to someone of another "race" in a vastly superior social position and so forth; it seems hard to make the case that the dirty white racist is in a position of power or in any real sense "oppresses" the other person in any other way but in terms of racial hatred.

These issues are not as simple as you think they are. Race and gender are at least as complicated as, say, physics or programming. Unless you've done substantial and reasonably formal study of these topics, it turns out that you're going to misunderstand a lot of things. (At the very least, just as physicists use very specific, formal definitions of concepts like "work" and "energy", people who study race and gender use very specific definitions of their terms, too.)

I'm not an expert and I can't possibly explain even the basics of this topic in a comment here; heck, it was only a couple of years ago that I used to make comments a lot like what you said above. But in a nutshell, members of a broadly less privileged group (like "blacks" or "women", in our society) are all subjected to a whole range of harmful actions and attitudes that the corresponding more privileged group is mostly unaffected by. So when a rich black guy makes prejudiced comments about the poor white guy, it's one guy being a jerk. When the poor white guy makes prejudiced comments about the rich black guy, he's not just being a jerk, he's reinforcing centuries of racially oppressive behavior and helping to normalize those lingering stereotypes in the minds of everyone who hears him, which in turn encourages further prejudice (often unconsciously) by all of those people (including the rich black guy, by the way: that sort of thing is great at magnifying self-doubt). My understanding is that there's an abundance of formal research showing that this perspective on prejudice and racism is an accurate depiction of reality.

So maybe you object to the experts on this stuff re-using the colloquial word "racism" to refer specifically to this narrower concept of "prejudice plus (group) power" rather than just being a synonym for prejudice. I can't blame you for that frustration, since it does make informal conversations difficult; my physics students often have similar issues when I tell them that "momentum" has a somewhat different formal meaning than it has in everyday language. But I'll say this: to my eye, the more formal, narrow definition of "racism" is one heck of a lot more relevant to everyday conversations that use the word than the formal definition of "momentum" is!

I spent a considerable amount of time studying the existential feminism of Simone de Beauvoir; not sure that matters here. I think it's simpler than you claim! I wasn't aware Adria Richard's ridiculous tweet had such intellectual depth.

My example was not that the rich guy was the racist; it was that the dirty white guy was the racist but that he had no oppressive power, in a meaningful sense other than the actual bigotry, over the rich guy, as you put it.

Adria Richards was not making as far reaching statements as you claim. This was not an epistle on sociological performances. This was a statement that "X" group "CANNOT" be racist. I understand the position you want to make, and claiming "the experts on this stuff" doesn't really impress me. I am not denying any such concepts as institutional racism or anything of the kind. You can have all the racial performances you want, that's fine. But the idea that X group cannot be racist is just stupid. The idea that only one group can ever be in a position of power is flawed and "position of power" does not only have to refer to status in society as a whole but can be applied to particular communities and so on and so forth.

I'm black and I have no idea what you, or her, are talking about. I don't see how you can say the tweet is misrepresented when you have the weirdest explaination of it.

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