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Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

Preference.

See Wikipedia.

"Racism consists of both prejudice and discrimination based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples" ... "In sociology and psychology, some definitions only include consciously malignant forms of discrimination.[4][5] While some consider any assumption that a person's behavior is tied to their racial categorization is inherently racist, regardless of whether the action is intentionally harmful or pejorative, because stereotyping necessarily subordinates individual identity to group identity"

So if you just prefer one group, that's not racist, as far as I can tell. If you make claims about a group's behavior based on race, that's racist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

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"because stereotyping necessarily subordinates individual identity to group identity"

No it doesn't. Many stereotypes are useful when you have very little information about a person. You're only subordinating individual identity to group identity if you refuse to update your beliefs about a person after receiving new evidence about him.

So I guess the KKK isn't racist. Interesting...

> "We're not racists," Chambers told CNN Monday. "We just want to be with white people. If that's a crime, then I don't know. It's all right to be black and Latino and proud, but you can't be white and proud. I don't understand it."

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/12/a-kinder-gentler-k...

That statement is not racist. I doubt that statement is the full extent of the KKKs racism...

> We just want to be with white people.

I don't know. If someone told me "I just want to be with white people", I would think they were racist. That said, the word racism definitely has multiple and nuanced meanings at this point, so it could be more a part of my interpretation than the more established official definition.

Most racists are xenophobes, but not all xenophobes are automatically racists.

Of course, there's nothing racist in that statement. Their actions don't seem to be in accord with their words, though.

Indeed. I think you can safely label a person or an organization if their actions are predominantly racist (like, oh, public lynching of minorities).

Oh really? To play devil's advocate for a moment, why don't you extend the same courtesy to them that the left do to Islam? I'm sure those lynchers were just a few bad apples, a few extremists, and you can't judge the whole organization for their actions. Right? Or maybe not.

Yes if the percentage of extremists relative to the size of the whole organisation is minuscule (there are 1.7 BILLION muslims). Not to mention the muslim community (if there is such a thing) is much more diverse then the KKK.

This is like saying that because there is a KKK that all white people are racist.

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