Redefining Racism
How the extreme left found a way to be vile racists without consequences.
As one of the most morally charged words in the English language, racism has always been defined as “prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group.” And as an extension, we had the phrase systemic racism to refer to “a form of racism that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society, organization or institution.”
These were two very precise defintions, describing two very different subjects. And it’s important to make the distinction between individual and systemic racism, because the latter exclusively favors the ruling class majority over people of a minority — meaning; in the predominantly white US, only white people can enforce and/or be beneficiaries of systemic racism and not the other way around, i.e: white privilege. But individual racism is and always have been a different breed. It can manifest among any and all sorts of people, therefore the word individual racism was rightfully colorblind. Up until now.
The Nazis considered the Jewish people an inferior race, even though their skin color was similar. The Hutus of Rwanda committed ethnic genocide against their fellow Tutsi population even though there was no ethnic, linguistic or even religious difference between them. And China currently has 1.8 million of its own citizens detained in concentration camps. Prejudice, bigotry, and racism are not exclusive to any group of people. It’s not nature, it’s nurture, and any individual can nurture hatred in their heart. We once understood this.
But recently, post-modernist demagogues like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo proudly championed the idea of merging the definition of individual and systemic racism. And when a 22 years old Missouri woman, Kennedy Mitchum, emailed the Merriam-Webster organization that she felt like the definition of racism was inadequate, in one of the most astounding displays of virtue signaling, the organization complied, the definition was revised, and their decision was widely hailed.
Mitchum’s argument was that she felt the former definition was missing the explanation of systemic oppression. (Which was exactly the point of having a different term for it…) Now, the new definition of individual racism is basically ‘prejudice + social and institutional power’. So the obvious implication is that since white people occupy the majority of institutional leadership roles in America, only white people can be racists. If we also accept the post-modernist dogma that all white people have either consciously or unconsciously prejudiced, this new term basically means that all white people are inherently and unalterably racist from birth. And any real, perceived, or made-up micro-agression they commit, it can easily constitute as “racism” — one of the most disgusting act known to our society. While at the same time — since people of color generally don’t hold overwhelming social or political power in America — they can display even the vilest hatred toward another ethnicity, they’re off the hook and can hide behind what’s considered a much less heinous act: “just being prejudiced”. It’s a purposeful hijacking of a low-impact and a high-impact word to brand one group of people, and give a free pass to another. But how exactly this new double standard is going to help us usher in a racial healing is anybody’s guess.
And if you think a tweak in a definition doesn’t spill over to the general culture, and the overall discourse, let me show you a clip from Netflix’s “Dear White People”.
It’s a perfect linguistic trap that ends up killing any honest and meaningful conversation around the subject.It forces us into straw-man arguments and only encourages more polarisation and racial division. In her letter to Merriam-Webster, Mitchum said she grew tired of having conversations about racial injustice, just to have people point to the dictionary as a defense for why they’re not racist… This new definition will probably simplify it for her to label people, but it won’t accomplish much else to actually abolish racism.
It’s sad to see that we had long-existing and very precise terms that we could’ve used to target and dismantle systemic racism, while the term for individual racism could’ve been the warning sign for people of all ethnicities to not become perpetrators in the process. But instead of waging war on racism this way, the woke progressives decided to wage war on language, simply to gain a free pass to attack white people, and to shrug off any accusations of becoming racists themselves.
In her thesis book, White Fragility, DiAngelo even shuts down any loopholes for white people to even dispute the revised definition of racism. In an eerily similar fashion to Asimov’s three laws of robotics, DiAngelo’s three laws of racism is;
- All white people are racists.
- Non-white people can never be racist.
- If you dispute the first two you are either racist or if do that as part of a marginalized group you have internalized racism.
It’s a genius construct since there’s no arguing with it. If you’re white, you either agree to be a racist, or you dispute it and become a racist.
But another post-modernist ideologue, Ijeoma Oluo, went even further to support the movement’s narrative. She twisted the phrase “white supremacy” when she stated that any white-majority country is essentially white supremacy. And that “if you are white in a white supremacist society, you are racist.” Of course, one could poke a few holes in her argument by asking whether a country with a black majority should be considered black supremacy too. And what to do with the pale white Slavic people of Eastern Europe when even the word slave derives from the very name of their ethnic group? When we go down the rabbit hole with these so-called thought leaders, somehow the only thing we can learn is that their teachings are either incoherent and stupid, or smart but insidious. But as Willam Lutz puts it; “Doublespeak is not a slip of the tongue or mistaken use of language. It’s exactly the opposite. It’s language used by people who are very intelligent, very sophisticated, and know that you can do an awful lot with it.”
The main problem is that weaponized language is not inherently bad or exploitative. It’s actually a very important tool in a society to give voice to disenfranchised, marginalized, or victimized people. Words like racism, sexism, abuse, victim, privilege, and white supremacy are incredibly powerful words because historically they had very specific meanings that we all understood. When somebody speaks those words it has weight and it has consequences. The great lie of the current progressive movement is that our societies were ignorant and oblivious to these words before their revolution came along. Yet the woke word-trickery works precisely because it preys on our good moral compass and our strong emotional reaction when we hear those words. Our understanding of their meaning is what gives them power and that’s exactly why they can be easily weaponized. That’s what the woke movement is recklessly exploiting.
In, 2010, the New York Times used the term “white supremacist” on 75 occasions, but in 2020, they used it over 700 times. Part of the reason of course is the rising fascism on the political right, but it also shows the changing political landscape that’s not afraid to use fighting words to make a point.
The problem with calling every white person racist is not that it makes white people feel bad or that it’s an objectively false, ugly, and regressive statement. The problem is that then the word slowly going lose its meaning, weight, and relevance. So, abusing and exploiting the most powerful words, and turning them into advocacy buzzwords is an incredibly irresponsible and harmful game in the long run. As society gets numb to these words, marginalized and truly victimized people won’t be able to bring awareness to real injustices they suffer. Their claims and accusations will be met with ignorance, and even if people will pay attention, nobody will be able to agree on what their words even mean. These words should be restricted to express very specific power dynamics and they should never be tossed around just to win a debate or to make us feel virtuous. Because it’s an enormous problem if a society loses its words for the most heinous crimes.
But word-twisting and claiming outlandish things serve a very specific purpose if we look at it through the lens of the thought-leaders/cult-leaders who fuel the culture war. But the purpose is not to create progress, unity, or racial healing as they claim it. It’s indoctrination. In one of the most famous scenes of 1984, an Inner Party member, O’Brien, tests the protagonist, Winston Smith’s loyalty to the Party. O’Brien holds up his hand with four fingers extended and asks Smith how many fingers he sees. When Smith replies “Four! Four! What can I say? Four!” O’Brien inflicts excruciating pain on him. After Smith finally claims to see five fingers, O’Brien emphasizes that saying “five” is not enough. “No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four.” And so the enhanced interrogation continues to make Winston actually believe that four fingers are actually five. The idea behind the scene is that the ultimate power over another human being is when you can force them to stop believing in objective reality.
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” — George Orwell.
Of course, even 1984 and the phrase “Orwellian” became trivialized and powerless as people used the reference to drive home any political argument since the book’s release. And making a connection between the torture scene and the woke movement could raise a few questions too. After all, one could point out that there’s no physical pain inflicted on anyone in case they don’t subscribe to the woke ideology. Yet, the mechanism is similar. It’s just not our physical well-being that’s being threatened. Instead, to enforce obedience, the woke movement reaches back to their linguistic wizardry once again to prey on our good moral compass. The American Orwellian first divorces words from meaning, then uses them to brand people. So the way we’ve seen it with DiAngelo’s linguistic trap, anyone who questions the dogmas of the woke movement will be branded and smeared by the punitive vengeance of an unforgiving society. And even though there’s no physical threat, how they force us to comply is by threatening our careers, social status, and reputation.
So, at this point, it’s important to ask whether this never-ending culture war actually achieved anything other than turning the conversation on racism into mindless fingerpointing. It certainly seems like forcing this vindictive ideology on people causes more polarisation, anger, and avoidance of solving the actual issues. And it makes sense. If we use exclusively resentful language without an opportunity for reconciliation, then people on both sides will radicalise, or just simply tune out. And it’s not just due to the volatile and uncomfortable nature of the conversation around social justice issues. Lutz theorizes that even the very use of doublespeak eventually leads to cynicism and resentment by the voters and make them withdraw from the political process altogether. In fact, he believes there’s a correlation between the prevalence of doublespeak in political language and a decline in voting.
The use of these Orwellian linguistics is one the most dishonest and sinister games with a goal to further entrench us in all-out warfare with a them vs. us mentality instead of helping communities build bridges to solve their problems. Issues like race or gender are historically loaded and complex, but if we can’t even agree on the language surrounding them, we can never have nuanced conversations to overcome them. So, for example, now that we’ve made it impossible to talk objectively about individual and systemic racism, we‘re seeing more conversations about who is a racist than on how to abolish racism. Because if only the preachers and their followers know what their words mean, then we’re building cults and not countries.
People who don’t share the same language define reality differently — and in a way — they actually live in different realities. And if the people can’t agree on an objective reality, how could they build a community together? While on the surface we can see some long overdue progress being made — and the original social justice ideologies can rightfully take some credit for them — we can’t solve major political issues in a bubble. We might have rightfully bullied leftist Hollywood into giving more opportunities to people of minorities after many decades of white prevalence, but we didn’t even scratch the surface on how to dismantle the systemic racism sowed into the fabric of American institutions. Winning linguistic wars with our own political tribes did not help stopping the extreme right from undermining the electoral process, overturning Roe v. Wade, stripping minorities of voting rights, and gerrymandering districts to further disenfranchise their opposition.
And this confusion of tongues has a terrifying implication for the future too. When people feel confused, threatened, and/or desensitized, they tend to either tune out, or turn to demagogues and populists to protect them. We can already see this everywhere. The extremists are running amok, and the moderate majority is too afraid or too baffled to make their voice heard and make the pendulum swing back. That’s what happens when ideologues on both sides decide to vandalize language to make a stronger point. And that’s why the story of the Tower of Babel was never just a cool myth, but a cautionary tale.
So, if waging a no-holds-barred culture war was supposed to be about the end justifying the means, in retrospect, the more accurate saying would be that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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