The definition of racism that you cite (“prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior”) is so narrow that many of the things that get called racism nowadays wouldn’t pass muster. For example, the criminalization of marijuana use has often been called racist because it disproportionately targets blacks. But there isn’t a belief that one’s own race is superior here, just a policy that has the effect of sweeping in more blacks than it does others. You could say the same thing about the decision to exclude certain authors from the curriculum or, say, the whole #OscarsSoWhite thing. These are phenomena that are often called racist, but they’re generally not due to any real belief that one’s own race is better than anyone else’s. At worst, it’s just due to a belief that a particular work of art is better than some other particular work of art. Moreover, your definition says that the belief has to be that “one’s own race is superior.” So does that mean there can’t be any black anti-black racists? Or if a white person believe that Asians are superior to blacks, is that not still racism? You’d really have to limit the list of what’s racism very severely to make your definition workable.
Ironically, however, even based on your narrow definition, Tenaja Jordan’s piece would qualify as racism. Look at her statement, the one that was the principal focus of my response to her: “Being friends with white people always involves a fair amount of overlooking ignorance and assuming good intentions. We can’t swear you off altogether because you control too much.” When you, as a black person, assert that being friends with white people involves overlooking their ignorance and assuming good intentions, doesn’t that clearly imply that you think they are “always” ignorant whereas black people, to whom her words plainly don’t apply, are not always ignorant, and white people are also always prone to not have good intentions, since you have to “assume” such intentions to be friends with them (whereas, presumably, Ms. Jordan doesn’t think the same thing about black people, or else she’d just say that being friends with anyone entails assuming good intentions)? So that’s plainly prejudice against whites based on an underlying assumption of the superiority of blacks. That’s racism, pure and simple.
However, even if you’d succeeded in convincing me to step back from the precipice of “racism” and retreat to mere “bigotry,” I’d say that this is just semantics. I don’t really care whether I’m dealing with a bigot or a racist here. Do you? They’re pretty much on the same moral plane, as far as I’m concerned. They are both people making big, incorrect, derogatory generalizations about others based on their race. I’m … well, I’m against that. I’d think that we should all be against that.
I also have no idea what the point is of your saying this:
If you have ever visited Russia, you should definitely know what racism is. They do not have a “PC culture” there and call “blacks”, which includes others, “monkey” to their face. This is one more thing Russia and Ukraine share. I digress.
Yes, I have visited Russia. I was born there. I still have friends who are Russian here. Sure, there’s a lot of racism there (more among older generations, as you’d expect), just like in much of Europe (especially Eastern and Southern Europe) and Asia and throughout the Middle East, but I do not know anyone who calls black people “monkeys” to their face. Maybe this is because I’m originally from St. Petersburg, which is a big, cosmopolitan, international city, so there’s more of a culture of etiquette, and those antisocial instincts are more under the surface. But, again, what does this have to do with anything? I’m not denying and have never denied that racism exists in places all over the world, and in some more than others.
You conclude with this:
Why so personal? Wow, why are you so invested in this subject? Your ancestors did not own Black Americans. Did they?
No, of course, since I wasn’t even born here, my ancestors didn’t own black Americans. Maybe if my ancestors had owned slaves, I’d feel irrationally guilty for something, but because I have absolutely nothing to do with this whole period of American history, even indirectly, i.e., via my ancestors, I don’t feel remotely guilty or constrained by the kinds of repressive dogmas that keep some guilt-ridden white liberals caged. And so I feel at liberty to speak my mind.
But you’re asking a different, broader question: why am I so invested in the subject of racism? And that’s a fair question, because I agree that I am invested in this subject, except that I’d put the issue of what I’m invested in more generally. It’s not just racism. It’s identity politics. It’s P.C. culture. It’s the forces that are tearing this country apart, attacking everything that’s great and good (along with a few things that are actually bad) in the name of superficial power politics. My investment in this stuff started as an English major at Yale. See, for me, the greatest thing in the world is high culture, which means great literature, great art, great music, great philosophy and that sort of thing. It’s what I still spend most of my spare time engaging in in one way or another. And I saw works of art that were unquestionably great and that I loved that were being unceremoniously elbowed out of curricula by inferior, second-rate works that had little going for them other than the fact that they were created by someone who could check a certain favored demographic box on a survey. That kind of dumbing-down was outrageous and offensive, and over time, the demands became more and more outrageous and offensive. As the representatives of what the noted literature professor Harold Bloom (whom I studied with for a few years) calls the “schools of resentment” (Philistines interested in power rather than literature) began to take over the professional academic ranks, the cancer of inferior works displacing great works spread, and we witnessed a mass dumbing-down of faculty and students alike. As this generation is now in the workforce and in positions of power, another generation is in the workforce and newer generations are coming of age, we are seeing a larger dumbing-down of America. We are witnessing the onset of a culture of trash, of people with no attention span, of smug jerks who judge others based on their most superficial aspects and have no ability to reason, no capacity for subtle distinctions and no patience for nuanced arguments. This is a big part of why our political life is in shambles, why we have crazed conservatives, despite all the evidence to the contrary, insisting Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim and crazed liberals, despite all the evidence to the contrary, insisting that there’s an epidemic of cops killing blacks, why we cannot abide disagreement and live in filter bubbles and have to “block” people who take issue with our bigotry. I could go for a long time like this, as you might imagine, but this is already far more than you wanted to hear, so I’ll stop here for now.
