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Suleiman -> RE: Racism? (12/8/2004 5:30:05 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: happypervert
quote:
If you didn't have *ANY* bias. . .we'd sleep with ANYONE
or all you have to be is a guy, and if the testosterone isn't enough to make you, um, . . . "unbiased", just add a few beers.
Harumph! I am quite biased about whom I sleep with, thank you, and no amount of intoxication has ever changed my criteria for whom I sleep with. Of course, since my criteria has more to do with intellect, education, and interests, than any specific body type, I suppose my input is tangental to the conversation at hand.
Or maybe it isn't. It is a serious bias. I will only become physically intimate with those whom I consider to be my intellectual equals or my superiors. An inferior mind, an undisciplined mind, is of no interest to me, and frequently becomes an annoyance. While not racist, I am elitist, and a similar rhetorical line can be drawn from this parallel.
I would consider it an act of hypocracy to proclaim an elitist preference in one sentence, and then decry that same elitism in the next paragraph. I suppose the same might be said for a profile that spends some time extolling the virtues of marxism, after first demanding that all slaves provide monetary tribute. It's not that the belief system is wrong, or that the kink is wrong, just that put together they come off sounding rather two-faced.
However, I feel obliged to expound upon a point that others have made. You use the dictionary meaning of racism, when that word is far more highly charged than Webster's gives it credit for. Negro is simply the latin word for black, after all, so why don't we use that word to describe anything that fits the epithet? Because it is a word highly charged with other meaning. I could say that I have negro hair. It's quite dark (what parts haven't turned grey). But if I said that, it would immediately imply that I have hair like a black person's, and while my hair is curly, it is nothing like that. Likewise, the word racism has connotations which far exceed the literal meaning of that word, and it is that additional subtext to which the respondants are reacting.
When people say that they do not think your cited example is racist, they are giving a response based upon the full cultural, contextural meaning of racism, not just the webster's definition of it. Within that fuller context, I would have to agree with them.
Similarly, once this deeper contextual meaning to the term "racist" is taken into account, you can see that there is no contradiction involved. The person should have used the term bigot, which is more accurate, but in the modern era, racist and bigot have esssentially interchangeable meanings. Context is key to communication, especially when utilizing the woefully inadequate english language, which places far more emphasis on contextualization than actual syntax, grammar, or definition. New words are coined all the time, and frequently become installed within the english lexicon in the span of only a few years, because we learn the meaning and utilization of the new word from contextual inference. Our language is constantly mutating because of this, to the point that there are not only regional variations, but generational dialects as well. This is wonderful for poets, but a horror story for technicians.
But hey, what do I know? For me, "thingee" is a technical term. The sad thing is I can make myself understood using such highly technical references.
::sigh:: I'm rambling again. I've gotta stop staying up so late. I'm pretty sure I answered the original question somewhere in here.
~S
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