Words are precisely what I want them to mean. Humpty Dumpty lives and is well.
I can wholeheartedly say that the dictionary definition of racism was written a very long time ago and not by a person of colour. It doesn’t allow us to have a conversation about modern-day racism. If you’re not aware of it, then make yourself aware of it. Racism isn’t just calling someone something, it’s a whole system. If you think we live in an equal society, you’re living in a daydream. You need to recognise that there is such a thing as white privilege and you can be homeless and still have white privilege, because you can still have a better chance of getting out of homelessness than a person of colour in the same position.
There’s an old saying about when in a hole, stop digging. This idiot accused all white people of being racist. What we are seeing here is furious backpedalling rather than an apology or any acceptance that she got it wrong. But the idiocy continues apace. The dictionary – written by whitey – doesn’t accurately define racism. Racism is whatever these “activists” decide that it is. And as for white privilege, that’s just utter bollocks that these morons have made up. The idea that a white homeless person has some sort of privilege is pure idiocy and no one with half a brain will take it seriously.
In short, no, our society is not racist. It is not built on racism and equality is a pipe dream. We are all individuals who each have our own set of talents and attributes and it is up to each of us to make the most of them. There is no such thing as equality and there never will be and nor should there be.
Modern day racism is the stuff that comes from people such as Bergdof when they accuse a whole race of people of being racist, despite living in one of the least racist, most tolerant societies on the planet.
Isn’t the problem that the language is outmoded?
No. There isn’t a problem.
It’s hard to get people on board when “racist” is a loaded catch-all umbrella to describe everything from unconscious biases in the workplace to US neo-Nazis.
Well, of course it is. That’s because it’s bullshit on stilts. Manufactured bullshit on stilts.
“We do have the language,” she says, “but it needs to be out there: unlearning, microaggressions, being complicit, unconscious bias, privilege – these need to be taught, we need to address why syllabuses only teach white history, we need to speak about slavery and the brutality of colonialism.”
This is boilerplate leftist nonsense. So, er, fuck off already. I’m not planning on unlearning anything. And, no, we don’t need to keep digging up slavery. Bergdof has had the opportunity – the privilege if you like – to enter into a lucrative profession, despite this so-called racism. That she is likely to have lost it all is down to her and no one else. I will take no lessons in history or language from this jumped-up pretentious little racist.
Having mislaid my glasses, I initially misread ‘the brutality of colonialism’ as ‘the brutality of cannibalism’, which would put a rather different spin on the whole thing!
Your post got me thinking about word usage and origins in this context, especially that staple of the likes of Ms Bergdorf, ‘microaggression’; apparently, like ‘racism’, it is strictly a one-way street. According to Wikipedia:
‘A microaggression is the casual degradation of any marginalized group’.
Wait – it gets better; ‘microaggressions seem to appear in three forms: microassault, microinsult and microinvalidation.’
And, crucially…
‘Because perpetrators are generally well-meaning and microaggressions are subtle, their recipients often experience attributional ambiguity, which may lead them to dismiss the experience and blame themselves as overly sensitive.’
You don’t say!
Indeed. 😀
Institutional racism is presumably the reason why you never see a dark-skinned person in London.
As for slavery, apart from the fact that the United kingdom ended the Atlantic slave trade, it was the industrial revolution – white men at their evil work yet again – which allowed man-power to be replaced by steam and oil power.
I have just finished Mungo Park’s memoirs of his travels in the Gambia. He estimated that one third of the entire population were slaves held by other blacks. Not only that but the POWs (generational slaves, by contrast, were treated more like retainers and had some legal rights), captured via constant tribal warfare, were sold as slaves to white agents and were told by their black captors that they were being sold as food to cannibal whites. Park told them that they would work in the fields but they didn’t believe him and were shipped to the colonies in mortal terror. I would imagine that their relief upon being given tools instead of being eaten would have been a relief.
The weird emergence of ‘racism’ as a speech suppressor and justification of mass immigration in the west is likely to bite you all. Do you think that Japan, Chinas and other Asian countries believe in this and will sacrifice the countries on the alter of ‘diversity’?
As well why is it so needed to stuff the UK with people?
A few hundred years ago, the same people who scream ‘racist’ would have been screaming ‘heretic’, for many of the same reasons. They are highly invested in a largely useless education (whether priests or SJW’s), and the ones they look down on can’t be bothered to care.