Okay, so you’ve made several points, and they mostly bespeak the fact that you are misinformed and prove, just like you said, that “even well educated people can have terrible blind spots which allow them to spout completely fallacious arguments and think they are saying something brilliant.”
First, as far as the definition of racism goes, I just responded to someone else who used the same definition of racism that you did, and while I personally have no issue with that definition, I also explained there why that particular definition is too limiting to account for our conventional notion of racism the way the term is commonly used, and I also explain in that response why Ms. Jordan’s post, even under that definition, presupposes the superiority of blacks to whites and, therefore, exhibits racism, pure and simple. So, in lieu of rewriting what I wrote there, I’ll just refer you to the first three paragraphs of this.
Second, perhaps you didn’t notice this, but you completely contradict yourself when you start by saying that racism is “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior” and then, just a bit later, claim that a black person can be prejudiced but can’t be racist because “until we live in a society where African Americans make up over 96% of the top 1%, and control 81% of the seats in Congress, one cannot call black prejudice racism.” If you just read and apply your definition of “racism,” racism is “prejudice…directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” So explain to me exactly how, based on that definition, a black person can be prejudiced against whites based on the belief that blacks are superior and yet, somehow not be racist? You seem to be surreptitiously smuggling a second element into the definition, which is the element of power. In other words, when it’s no longer convenient for your purposes, you implicitly disagree with the definition you’ve cited and redefine racism as prejudice plus power. This is reflective of a popular attempt to redefine “racism” in order to avoid the charge of “reverse racism” that would otherwise be leveled at people like Ms. Jordan making outrageous generalizations about all whites that would never pass muster if they were made about blacks. However, such an attempt to redefine racism, while perfectly fine as advocacy, is, to the extent it claims that racism simply is (rather than should be) prejudice + power, a violation of the most basic tenets of how words mean what they mean. Explaining this would require me to delve into the philosophy of language, which I won’t do here but which I’ve specifically done here, where I discuss this very issue. I explain in that article why your implicit “prejudice + power” notion is not actually the definition of racism, and I also explain there why the attempt to redefine it as such runs into innumerable problems.
You also traffic in several misconceptions about blacks getting “shot by police,” etc. The notion that blacks are getting disproportionately killed (or even brutalized) by cops is actually one that’s been repeatedly empirically rebutted, but few on the left want to hear this. I discuss some of the evidence here, but if you want to take a deep dive into the numbers, I really commend to you this super-detailed analysis by David Shuey. (David, by the way, is not conservative (and nor am I, for that matter); he’s just an honest liberal.) I don’t know you so I won’t make any assumptions, but if you’re not just some dug-in political hack or ideologue and are committed to finding your way to the truth about this issue, whatever it may be, I challenge you to read David’s piece and see what you think. (It does require some engagement, but it also rewards it in spades.) I think you’ll find his piece to be completely bereft of rhetoric and, rather, just deeply engaged with a dispassionate analysis of the numbers.
Finally, I’ll turn to this:
Unlike your personal attacks against [Ms. Jordan], I have simply pointed out your misunderstanding of the nature of racism, and how your false starting point has colored everything you wrote.
In no way have I accused you of being a racist shit head using the code language of white supremacists who wrap themselves in the flag of free speech, a gas-lighting macho asshole who can’t allow a woman to express fears that you will never be able to comprehend, or just a whiny narcissistic bitch screaming for attention by coattail starfucking™ off an article that received massive attention.
However, your response will probably tell us all we need to know about who you really are as a person.
My response to Ms. Jordan was not in any way a personal attack. Her own words were sufficient to conclude that she is an embittered anti-white racist, and I merely pointed that out. If she can’t handle that truth and wants to say nasty things about all white people and then block me for calling her on it, that’s her business, of course, and my only issue is with the way Medium allows “blocks” to make responses to an article disappear for all practical purposes, even for other readers (unless they happen to be followers of mine or come upon it some other way).
As for you, obviously, your paragraph about what you’ve allegedly not “accused [me] of” is a backhanded way of accusing me of all the things you list, but I’m going to pretend I don’t understand that for the purpose of keeping the discussion substantive rather than personal. And I also hope that my response did, just as you say, “tell us [who exactly is us?] all we need to know about who [I] really [am] as a person.” And I hope what it told you is that I’m actually not at all interested in ad hominems and name-calling and am making an effort to engage your substantive points and respond to them. If you want to respond in kind, you’re obviously welcome to do so.
