On specificity and sneaking on connotations; useful for the liberal-minded among us:
I think, with racism and sexism and 'isms' generally, there's a sort of confusion of terminology.
A "Racist1" is someone, who, like a majority of people in this society, has subconsciously internalized some negative attitudes about minority racial groups. If a Racist1 takes the Implicit Association Test, her score shows she's biased against black people, like the majority of people (of all races) who took the test. Chances are, whether you know it or not, you're a Racist1.
A "Racist2" is someone who's kind of an insensitive jerk about race. The kind of guy who calls Obama the "Food Stamp President." Someone you wouldn't want your sister dating.
A "Racist3" is a neo-Nazi. You can never be quite sure that one day he won't snap and kill someone. He's clearly a social deviant.
People use the word "Racist" for all three things, and I think that's the source of a lot of arguments. When people get accused of being racists, they evade responsibility by saying, "Hey, I'm not a Racist3!" when in fact you were only saying they were Racist1 or Racist2. But some of the responsibility is on the accusers too -- if you say "That Republican's a racist" with the implication of "a jerk" and then backtrack and change the meaning to "vulnerable to unconscious bias", then you're arguing in bad faith. Never mind that some laws and rules which were meant to protect people from Racist3's are in fact deployed against Racist2's.
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I actually hate that practice of math teachers - encouraging students to "write something down" so they can give partial credit. Often this means that when students run into a particularly difficult problem, at some point they stop actually trying to solve the problem and start intentionally making mistakes so that they come up with some sort of answer - you know, they make shit up. This does not seem to be a skill that teachers should encourage students to develop. I don't even want to think about how many points I've gotten on exams for writing down things that I knew were patently false.
This may be the intuitive line of thinking, but in the course of life, action seems to be incredibly more effective than non-action. There have been many times where I haven't done anything and I've kicked myself in the butt for not at least putting forth some sort of effort vaguely aimed at the goal because even that little bit would have been better than the alternative. It doesn't seem like bad pragmatic advice to suggest people to move to action rather than sit passively, as we all know how one can "Fake it till they make it," and while that does not build the most efficient system, it does give the person a chance to stay afloat where otherwise, if they did nothing, they would sink.