Comment on Don't Get Offended

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 21:53:20 GMT

Does it become racist/sexist if one attempts to speculate on the cause of these differences?

Racism has three definitions:

1) The belief that there are implicit (read: genetic) differences between races which give rise to behavioral differences.

2) The belief that different races have different worth and/or aught to be treated differently because of these differences.

3) An actual act of treating a race differently which stems from explicit or implicit negative opinions about that race.

Sexism mostly lies only in the domain of (2) and (3) with (1) often seeming like a gray area because believing (1) almost always implies (2) or (3).

So you would be racist (1) if you proposed that the IQ differences are genetic.

The reason people say "you are being racist" is because people often implicitly do (3) and implicitly believe (1) and (2) without explicitly stating the belief. The intent behind telling someone they are racist is to make the underlying belief explicit.

The moral connotations of being racist/sexist continue to be implicitly bad or wrong. So now, if the person wishes to continue justifying the initial belief, they have to defend the moral good or factual correctness of certain types of racism / sexism.

To summarize the point: For the majority of individuals in your culture, System 1 is racist/sexist while System 2 believes racism and sexism are bad. The intent of saying "statement x is racist" is to initiate a shift to system 2.

You didn't state your views, but if your system 2 holds some racist/sexist beliefs as well (as in, you actually think racial IQ differences are genetic) than you would misinterpret "you are racist" as being analogous to "I don't like your argument". What's really happening is that the person who you are arguing with believes that your racism is coming out of system 1, and wants to notify system 2 of that fact.

(I know this is a bit of an abuse of dual process theory and a horrible oversimplification even otherwise but I'm trying to be at least somewhat succinct - apologies)

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