I am Thinking about Being More Careful with the Term “Racist”

Now that I have whittled down many of the trolls that were clogging my feed as opposed to people with genuine differences of opinion or misunderstanding, and my life had a lot less stress, I’m beginning to once again see patterns in miscommunication and confusion people are having.  An example of this is using the term racism.  Any time an issue involving race including microaggressions pop up, we label it as racist.  

The thing is we get people mad at us and reply angrily for being called racist, and the funny thing is, both of us are right, but it depends on the bubble we are in.  One of the things that bubble cults do is have a set of jargon that makes it harder to communicate with people outside of that bubble.  

SJWs are not a bubble cult, they are more like ivory tower academia and if they get too deep into nuance and jargon it can make them completely unable to communicate with the outside world.   Academic jargon is incredibly useful in academia it is the best way to get on the same page and analyze deep concepts.  Bu when you cross the academic/colloquial barrier things can break down fast.

In any scientific paper if you use a term that has extra meaning beyond the dictionary or deeply known jargon of the field you must define your term, after that you can use it all you want    Problem is so many SJWs don’t define their terms when stepping out of the SJW bubble which can offend a lot of people.

Racism by all dictionary definitions requires the motivation to be coming from a point of racial supremacy.   In sociology and academia, racism is a lot more complex, systemic and unconscious.  An unconscious racial bias is according to sociology racism.  According to the dictionary, it is not.  

Many of the people we are calling racist don’t think they are racially superior to minorities, they may have racial prejudice, or cultural supremacy, but they don’t believe they are genetically superior to them at all.  By Dictionary definition that makes them not a racist.  It can make them prejudiced and bigoted, but not a racist and for people who are not in academia, the dictionary is their bible and go to reference point of how to communicate.  

Race realists are racists, nazis are racists, people who unconsciously favor a white person over a black person are not racist, they are racially prejudiced thanks to inherent biases of the system.  But they are sociologically racist.  

We are often making the same mistake creationists do when they try to come into a science discussion and push their colloquial definition of theory on us,   When crossing that academic/colloquial barrier, we must define our terms and which definition we mean or expect an angry defensive backlash from people.   Add to that fact that racism begins to lose its social stigma when the phrase “we are all a little racist” is used.  It doesn’t mean we are all a little racial supremacist, it means our biases gets in the way, and the system reinforces them.  This may have helped to weaken the taboo of being an actual racist.

I’ve had discussions with fellow SJWs and some claimed that the dictionary was written by white males and words are fluid and sociological racism is a better definition than the dictionary definition.   You may have a point, and it may not be fair to have had white men define you words, but words made by white men control the language at this point. and if you want to use the language to let people understand stuff you either have to define your terms every time you talk to a different person or use the dictionary definition until the dictionary changes as it does over time to catch up with society.   Sadly thanks to the fact that we are a democracy, on top of being oppressed, the oppressed have had to do the long difficult work of communicating in language the oppressors understand, to gain allies and votes.  In the discussions neither of us were able to convince each other, but this is my list of arguments about it.  

Scientists have discovered that when they use certain primed terms it triggers a mental shutdown in discussion.  Evolution, climate change, global warming, these triggers cause people to mentally shut down and prevent them from listening to anything any further.  They found that if they dropped the use of these trigger terms and explained it without them, people were more likely to have their position changed.  Using the sociological term for racism, as opposed to the dictionary definition of racism, without defining your terms may be triggering people to mentally shut down as they feel you are insulting them and comparing them to Nazis.  We had a lot of cultural kick back from using the word privilege but for the most part, its definition seems to have permeated the culture better than sociological racism did, because it’s probably half as offensive as being called a racist.  Also there really sadly isn’t another word to encapsulate that definition though perhaps there should have been to make the medicine go down a little easier.

When talking to anyone about racism, defining your terms is essential or you will be talking past each other, once the terms are defined you can use them all day long.  Sociological racism, racial prejudice, racial biases, systematic racism may be better terms to use, on the outset of a discussion on sociological racism until the term is defined, or at least you can link people to the concept so they can understand what you mean.

It may do nothing, it may be splitting hairs but if we can increase dialog in any way to change minds, I’m going to try it.  These people aren’t monsters, they just have some deep seated ideals that haven’t been challenged, and the harder we make it for them to challenge those ideas and create a distressful paradigm shift the harder our fight will be.

Be Careful of Agitprop, Even If It Is 100% True

At the moment thanks to the internet, we have become more and more aware of our nation’s dark history and current flaws.   Some people for the first time are woke and see how awful our nation is and always has been and if you only look at the bad, this nation should burn down to the ground.  

History is great because you can spin it to say whatever you want it to because it is so dense and there is so much of it.  For the most part US history in schools tells you all the amazing things about america and glosses over the bad parts of history that America did.  The amount of attention spent on a subject indicates how important it is. The thing is, for the most part, all of those good things done are true but all the bad things done are also true and just as real and paradigm shifts are harsh and people can freak out and lose perspective.   

I follow a group called “shit bootlickers say” on facebook.  It is an anarchist group that makes fun of anyone not them. I follow them because as I’ve said before I 75% agree with them and I learn some bits of info you won’t get from the usual liberal outlets.  However 2 things i hate about the group is the level of pro-violence they call for and the use of the liberal as a whipping boy for licking to boots of corporations

 

 

Agitprop is a term that is a shortened form of agitation propaganda.   This was used by the soviet union but also used in WWII against the germans by the british of using misinformation and pointing out the the faults of the government they are attacking in stark contrast, while appearing to be one of them.   There are many methods of doing this.  

One is destroying or bringing into question cultural norms and things the average person takes for granted. For example, the demonizing of once iconic heroes like columbus or Teddy roosevelt or Jefferson.  The same is true with turning history on its head when the Government was long believed to being the good guy and it turns out they did some horrible things in the process.  Questioning police brutality.  All of these things are good advancements in our coming to terms with the truth of reality.  Our founder fathers were 50% great men and 50% horrible monsters, and throughout time our goal is to change that percentage difference to all great men and women.  But the world is complicated and there are often forces outside of a leader’s control.   

Black lives matter and antifa hate the police but they are attacking the wrong body when they attack the federal government.  State and local governments hire and maintain cops, but you will see in a lot of anarch, BLM and antifa groups the federal government blamed while state and local involvement and elections continue to draw anemic crowds which is the only way to end police brutality.  So they encourage the idea of using violence because cops are racists.   This is where agitprop take facts and neglects other facts to try and get people to cross the line into violence.

 They also use the fear of racism in our nation to encourage violence and stoke fear.   Nazis aren’t on our doorstep, 1/3rd voted for trump, a majority for racist reasons but they wanted deportation not death or mexicans they deemed illegally here and muslims they were fed since 9/11 were going to kill them.  Only a tiny tiny minority of trump supporters have a nazi level of racism, and the law will still in the end see them brought to justice if they exact violence on a minority.  If it doesn’t happen then voting in state and local is the only way to fix that.  

Tired of Spoonfeeding and Handholding Conservatives? Thats too Damn Bad.

I had someone block me after complaining he was tired of having to handhold and spoon-feed facts to the rest of america, but he didn’t know the basic differences between single payer and public option.   This indicates a belief of serious intellectual superiority of many people, who believe themselves to have figured out the best way of doing things and are tired of explaining things to people as if it was brand new.  It should be just natural to everyone by now because it makes so much sense obviously.  

Every group has people like this.  They think because they get it, other people who don’t get it are just idiots.  They should just smarten up or I should give up explaining anything to them because they are stupid anyway or just assholes.   I see this alot with people who claim there is no point in engaging racists, we should just punch them.  For one thing most racists in america are sociologically racist because of their biases and not white supremacist nazis.    

Most of them just fear what they don’t understand, and are made uncomfortable by it.  Most fear mexicans from taking their jobs and muslims coming to bomb them.  It is fear that drives racism, that and decline in wages, which studies show decreases IQ, and decreased IQ increases racism.  Most of the trump voters don’t consider themselves nazis, or feel they are genetically superior to blacks, mexicans or muslims, they feel they are culturally superior to them. And if they would just pull their pants up or stay in their own country and fix it they wouldn’t have to come to my country with their drugs and crime even though all the data shows everything about these assumptions are wrong.

 They were taught to assume the best about the police and the government.  They assume that blacks were asking for it when they get shot and the cop needed to defend himself.  Not because they believe blacks are inferior but because they believe cops are righteous knights of justice and only shoot bad people.  They would rather make excuses for the cop than have this fantasy shattered. Racial Bias just helps make this easier. Systematic racism is much more dangerous than the Klan or Nazis, evil is much more boring and banal. Voting in state and local elections for the people who hire and fire cops is the only way to fix this.

Sadly many people who are for black lives matter don’t understand the importance of voting in state and local elections.  But are sick of explaining it to white people and are ready to punch them and brand them as nazis.  Once you say you can’t reason with someone, especially if they are someone you falsely equate with a non-human or evil villain, you are correct,there is no reasoning with them.  Changing minds does work through communication, but as our schools have failed to teach basic civics and persuasion and communication science, punching and violence begins to seem like the only option to some.

You aren’t as smart as you think you are, this a democracy, not  a purist ideological rule.  Change doesn’t come the more ideologically pure you are, it comes from number of votes, and the way to change votes is to use communication science to spoonfeed your message slowly and carefully to everyone.  How do you think fox news got so good at brainwashing an entire generation?  They have communication science down to an art.  Everyone needs some hand holding and spoon feeding at times, it’s the best way to learn.  At a point when they get it they can pass that info on to others.   The only reason why any of us has the good ideas or changed outlook that we have is because some one spoon fed it to us in a way we could get or we got little snippets of the big picture over a long period of time and we finally were able to put it all together for ourselves.  

  Education, organization, networking and fundraising are the 4 pillars of activism, so get to handholding, and spoonfeeding and stop complaining about other people being uneducated or stupid, the only reason you know what you know is because at some point someone held your hand and helped you learn.

Not voting can literally hurt you and your community.

Voting is a much discussed and much idealized activity in the United States.  However common knowledge in the US of the reasons for voting is only half of what is going on.  Pro-voting campaigns are always so vague and nebulous they completely leave out explaining political will.  They usually use phrases like “let your voice be heard”.  The explanation is all front focused based on currently running candidates.  Many see elections in no way representing them so they view it as a rigged game and a fairytale that politicians listen, and are ignorant of how it affects the candidate’s behavior after the election.   In the last post we discussed political will and how it works.  Even this discussion however has a more abstract impact on you than what impacts you as a person directly.   After this post I hope to convince you that not voting has a direct first-hand impact on you and your community and not doing so will hurt you in very real ways.

In the last post we discussed political will and how it works.  Politicians have a tiered system of people they care about listening to.  Voters, registered voters and non-voters.  They also have voters who give campaign donations, but that is for another discussion.   Numbers are all a candidate cares about or they will not have a job no matter how much advertising they pump in.  Every candidate has a certain amount of money and influence they can spend on helping their constituents, to help generate more votes.    

If our elected officials were able to care about everyone on ideals alone, they would spread the money our evenly.  However in the real world they would lose, due to limited time clout and resources.  So what you do is to direct those resources toward voters and causes they care about.  Politicians have data down to the streets of voters which is free to everyone.   They can also tap gallop polls to find out the average ages and demographics or voters.   If you’ve seen a US representative secure money in a budget for his or her district you can be definitely assured that that money is earmarked for a high voter area.   If your street isn’t plowed or potholes aren’t fixed, (other example) you can definitely be sure that your block is a low voter turnout area.  While there are sometimes other internal political reasons why these could happen, most often it is because people aren’t voting.

The goal of the politician is to make their voters the happiest they can doing the least they have to, just because of a limited about of time and resources.  They roll out the red carpet for high voter areas, and ignore the low-voting areas often leading to those areas also being less affluent areas just because of the long-term economic impact.  If you don’t think that is ethical or fair, guess what? There is zero repercussions for them if they ignore the non-voters as they only way they lose power is to be voted out, your opinion doesn’t matter if you don’t vote.   

Voting is not just about picking the current candidates, voting also works very similar to school attendance day when they count the attendance to see how much funding that school gets.   To not show up that day ensures your local community and in the long term you personally are personally hurt and ignored by your elected leaders.  Not voting is the very least you can do to impact your and other’s life and future campaigns, and hopefully I have convinced you that not voting is also a very stupid and self-harming thing to do.  Vote early and vote often. Vote in primaries if you want to change a party, vote third party or write in if you think no candidate is good, but for your own and your communities sake, please vote.