• surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    One racially motivated act (say hitting someone because of their skin color) is not any more or less racist depending on the race of the victim.

    This is only true if you don’t think the severity of the damage correlates to the severity of the racism. If we go with your definition, then all racism is equivalent, and we can’t tell any apart. That seems like an arbitrarily limiting and useless way to think about it. Why would we not want to be able to compare how severe each racist act is?

    But anyone trying to say it’s more or less appropriate to hate on any single group is just demonstrating their own implicit and explicit racial biases.

    This is only true if you think all groups are equally strong and equally oppressed by each other and the system. But if that’s not the case, then I would say it’s OK to be mean to the ones who are stronger or less oppressed. It’s a means of coping with the inequality. Just like we normal folks like to mock billionaires, while they’re actively causing suffering.

    • GONADS125@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If one person engages in a racially motivated attack on another individual, it is not any more or less racist if the victim was black or white.

      If a man was walking down the street and was beaten to death by an angry mob based entirely on the individual’s race, is it less racially motivated if the victim was one race over another?

      Are we punishing people for the sins of our ancestors? Does historic racism against one race justify mistreatment of another thru a retributivist mindset?

      This backwards hypervigilant, hypersensitivity and hypocritically encouraging implicit and explicit racism as morally permissible retributivist actions needs to stop. Racism is racism. We need to respect each other as equals if we want racism to stop. You’re calling for unequal treatment/enforcement of social policies based on one’s race. Fuck that noise.

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If one person engages in a racially motivated attack on another individual, it is not any more or less racist if the victim was black or white.

        Ok, so you’re conflating the terms “racist” and “racially motivated”. Yeah, if you do that, then your point makes sense.

        Two different actions with different impacts can be different amounts of racist, but both could be equally racially motivated. For example, it’s way more racist for someone to want to murder a black person than it is for someone to be afraid of a black person and cross the street when they’re coming. Both are equally racially motivated, but different amounts of racist. See the point? More impact = more racism.

        And if we can agree that it’s the ‘impact’ that makes something more/less racist, then we can see how a white person saying X and a black person saying X could be different amounts of racist, depending on the impact. If a Latino would call a white person the N word, that’s less racist than calling a black person that. Right?

        Does historic racism against one race justify mistreatment of another thru a retributivist mindset?

        I couldn’t tell you. All of the racism that’s present today, and still ongoing, means we don’t know the answer to that. Find me a place where this happens and I’m happy to learn.