George Rebane
We recently took a look at an operational definition of Socialist; this is an attempt to serve up the same treatment for ‘Racist’. The notions of racism and racists have been bandied about in the public forum with ever increasing frequency since the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Had we been playing racist paintball instead, I suspect that almost all of us would have a splatter or two that hit us from more directions than we can count. Calling someone a racist has become a national pastime to the point that the label is now almost irrelevant for understanding.
The respected American Heritage (unabridged) Dictionary defines ‘race’ as –
1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.
2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution.
3. A genealogical line; a lineage.
And ‘racism’ is defined as –
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
‘Racist’ is not explicitly defined, but it is pretty clear that a racist is a person who believes in or practices racism as defined above.
Like many (most?) dictionary definitions, the above are pretty low grade ore. Most of them seem to be written by people who are innumerate, have poor critical thinking skills, and don’t get out much.
Take the race1 definition – “distinguished” by whom to what level of reliability? “more or less distinct”??!! Moving on to race2 – “united or classified together” by whom? Is my defining a set of humans and giving them a label the same as yours? And from race3 – “A genealogical line” is a binary tree with you as the root that expands into the past for, say, N generations and yields 2 to the Nth power ‘lines’; Seven generations back gives you 128 lines. Which line did you pick? Which one did I? What’s Obama?
And then there’s racism1 – “accounts for differences”; does that mean all, or any, or some, or … ? You’d be a bit deficient if you said that race, as defined above, did NOT contribute to some differences in “character or ability”, or anything else for that matter, in any given human being. Science shrieks when asked to prove such a negative proposition. And note that racism1 includes the logical “and” to weld in the “superior” assessment. It is almost certain that given some social utility function, certain differences, perhaps not all known, will make one ‘race’ superior to one or more of the others. Again, you’d be foolish to argue a reasonable basis for the negative.
For racism2 we run smack dab into the political correctness that has robbed English of so much of its elegance and semantic precision. ‘Discriminate’ is now one of those newspeak words that no longer means just the ability to tell this from that. So if you notice that the arrangement of the gluteus maximus muscles of certain ‘black’ guys is a hell of a lot better for jumping than those of ‘white’ guys, and happen to point that out, you’re splattered with a racist paintball.
And similarly if you notice the unusually high fractions of Jews of east European Ashkenazi descent populating the professions ranging from art through business to science, and happen to note that or make a (Bayesian) decision on that assessment, you’re a racist according to what we’ve read. Oh yes, and if, for example, you know nothing more of two candidates – one a Jew and the other a Muslim – for a position in, say, business, and with that information you have to pick one, you’re a prejudiced racist if you prejudge them both and pick the Jew.
With this kind of formal support to guide us into the heart of the matter, race, racism, and racist, in and of themselves, become meaningless hot air. To the extent that they claim meaning, they may mean anything and everything that the speaker chooses. (The Red Queen from Carroll’s Alice comes to mind.) The stupid, the politicians, and people in the law industry (not necessarily orthogonal sets) use the words willy-nilly for excitement and profit.
So until there is some further clarification coming down the pike, I am a racist. And so are you, … now what are we going to do?
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment