Quote:
Originally Posted by Yamer
This is where I think careful use of more precise language would be beneficial.
The majority of these racial or cultural generalizations are simply stereotyping, which is a pretty typical human process we use to organize and make sense of the world. Some of them are useful, some of them are benign, and some of them are harmful.
A problem I have is the saturation of the term racism and how its overuse is providing a defense of or for actual racism/racists.
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The problem with restricting the use of the term racism to stereotypes that are harmful is it requires knowing what is going on in the mind of a racist to work out what is racist, the vast majority of hatred by racists to Chinese and East Indians is because they think that Asians are taking their jobs because they work hard and are good at maths, personally I think all racial stereotypes are inherently racist but not all do harm, I'm English, I have spent my whole life in Canada having to go along with jokes about my teeth, its mildly racist but I can live with it, it isnt really much different than making jokes about another races lips but that is highly offensive, I dont think you can parse one from the other, it's all racist in the end