I mean, just definitionally, "racism" requires a notion of superiority. I know we use that word to serve a million tiny, individual purposes now, but "I don't like Americans because my country was once involved in a horrific war with Americans" isn't racism.
Again, just definitionally; that's not what that word means.
> I mean, just definitionally, "racism" requires a notion of superiority
Viewing an identity group as morally inferior (and yours, therefore, as superior) based on what some members of that identity group did in the past does involve a notion of superiority.
This plainly doesn't follow. Again, just using the ordinary definitions of ordinary words, not liking Americans because your country once fought a horrific war with them does not imply that you think you're a superior race of people.
On the one hand, this is a very silly debate and I don't know why I'm having it. But on the other, I don't really understand this new impulse to widen the tent doors of racism so that we can definitionally have more of it and maybe if I did understand that I'd have less to disagree about with people on the Left with whom I'm otherwise politically sympatico.
Really? I don’t believe you. “I don’t like Americans because my country was once involved in a horrific war with Americans” is the same to you as “the African people are genetically fit to be slaves”?
When everything is equally bad, then nothing’s any worse than anything else. I think that second statement is clearly worse than the first and, as an ideology, has implications that are orders of magnitude more awful.
Never did I equate any of those things; please don't put words in my mouth. Bigotry is also bad, but in different ways. Systemic racism is in general worse, but that doesn't make bigotry ok or ignorable.
Again, just definitionally; that's not what that word means.