= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wnoise comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1329)
Yes, it does, by definition. If you disagree, define racism in a way such that someone who believes different races have different distributions of attributes is not racist.
The problem is we have two meanings of "racist". One is "a person who believes the distribution of traits differs among races". The other is, roughly, "a person who hates members of other races". Most people believe these are equivalent.
The first is a singularly useless definition satisfied by everyone. Everyone believes that the distribution of skin color differs between black people and white people.
I'd propose a third definition: "someone who treats different people differently based on their race."
Suggested alternate that captures what I think Phil means by the first definition "a person who believes the distribution of traits differs among races in a way that matters in some deep sense." That doesn't make it much more precise but I think it captures what he is trying to say in terms of your objection.
I think this makes the first definition a singularly useful one, because people who think about it and try to be consistent must either find some way in which skin color is a qualitatively different kind of property than every other property people have, or they must admit they are racists.
It's useful as a polemical tool, not useful in describing the ordinary meaning of the word, that describes actual clusters of common characteristics observed out in the world. I'm uninterested in using definitions constructed for polemical purposes instead of describing empirically observed clusters.