So I had a somewhat interesting dialogue with my sister last night. I don't remember exactly how it began, but it quickly became a discussion of racism. I'm fairly certain that I brought up the term, whereupon my sister objected to its usage -- "racism", she said, entails by definition a pronounced hatred for the object of one's racist feelings, whereas she felt that "stereotyping" more properly corresponded to the position that I was describing. She admitted that in most cases racism is a consequence of stereotyping -- for example, Person A believes a certain stereotype about a group and therefore hates that group -- but that stereotypes are not necessary to justify racist beliefs because the primary criterion for racism is hated -- and hatred can occur without justification.
In my view, however, all stereotypes concerning "race", insofar as people largely believe them to obtain in all cases, constitute racism. For example, even if Person B believes that all persons of Asian descent are fantastic at math and harbors no ill will towards Asians as a result (Person B may even enthusiastically seek out an Asian tutor for his multivariable calculus course), I would maintain that Person B holds a racist belief because Person B believes that "race" is a necessary determinant of certain personality traits and individual strengths, thereby alleging that attention to the color of a person's skin or his/her apparent ethnic background is an effective way of learning more about him/her. (In most modern cases, the emphasis is placed on "culture" rather than "race" -- but given that most people who make these arguments appear to believe that "race" and "culture" are necessarily linked, that does not resolve the difficulty.)
So much like a fundamentalist believes in the value and worth of various fundamental tenets, I use the term "racist" to describe someone who believes in the value and worth of "race" as a means of categorizing individuals. For example, I would argue that even a relatively empty statement like "I hate all black people" -- even if this hatred is unjustified even in the mind of the speaker -- is racist, not because it voices hatred but because it asserts that the color of a person's skin is sufficient motivation for responding to that individual in any predetermined fashion. And though hateful attitudes and harmful effects are not necessary criteria for racist statements, I maintain that all such statements are necessarily damaging because they devalue the worth of individuals and preclude the possibility of a great many personal relationships that rely upon mutual understanding between individuals. But I've said this before, yes? (more...)
