Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 9847815" data-attributes="member: 177">Well, let me try.Not quite.Bigotry is what you think it is - It is a recognized feeling of dislike, hatred, or intolerance for a person or people due to their race, creed, nation of origin, gender presentation, sexual orientation, and so on.  Bigoted actions are intentional.In the past, racism was considered just racial bigotry.  But, as I understand in more modern use, that was found to miss a bunch of stuff.  There is systemic racism, and unconscious racism, for example, that are not intentional, but matters of structure or habit.Which brought about what I understand to be the newer usage - a thing is racist if it has disparate impact on people of various racial demographics whether or not it was intentional.  So, for example, a person who opposes rezoning for multi-family homes in their neighborhood may not realize that this means that people of color are unlikely to be able to afford to move into the community - the policy is racist even if the person was only thinking in terms of traffic and population density.The benefit of the usage is that it allows conversations about the world in which you can say, "That is racist," without having to say, "You are racist."  We can then leave  off some of the identity confrontation, and can keep the person reasoning instead of reacting to a personal accusation.Looping back to the original comment - In the Northeast, there are probably a lot of people who fit into those spaces of unconscious racism, or supporting systemically racist policies, but who aren't intentional bigots.</blockquote>

Verification