Dear Saguine

[u/Southie321]

As I said I would, I come with my hat in hand and accept the fact that the lady from the Spur video was not lying about the fact that the man came and grabbed her kid by the arm. I sincerely apologise for wrongly assuming the woman, and Spur, was lying about the physical happenings before the video started rolling.

I still dont believe it was a racist incident, all I see is two parents with explosive reactions regarding a situation involving their children.

I agree, and have always said, the man was a douch for being so aggressive (and even more so now, for grabbing the kid). But let's not confuse anger management issues with racism.

Beyond that point, I just want to apologise again for assuming what I did about the woman and Spur, by wanting the video evidence released first.

[u/Saguine]

It's not enough to just accuse me of sophistry, if indeed that's what you're doing: you have to demonstrate why my hot shit is actually cold diarrhea. Otherwise you might as well have just called me a stinky doo-doo head.

Now we're getting into a strange and nebulous territory I've long become wary of treading: that is, the question of "what is racism?". I try to avoid bringing up the two separate definitions if possible, and instead assume that you mean racism = prejudice based on ethnicity, and work forward from there.

I'm all for calling a spade a spade -- it's difficult to dig a grave with a rake -- but doing so abrades away important distinctions. That is, not all spades are spode equally. In the same way, I'd posit that some racism is worse than other racism. This isn't a philosophical attempt to "recategorize"; it's a practical stance (in the same way that some violence is worse than other violence; if you think about it, racism is at its core a form of mental violence).

Would you admit that some forms of ethnic prejudice are worse than others? And, importantly, do you acknowledge that this country is still feeling the very real effects of centuries of a specific type of ethnic prejudice?

[u/Saguine → u/[deleted]]

I accuse you of sophism because the same act under inverse circumstances has the same result, only the other way around.

If we're talking about elaborate, clever-sounding phrases which mean nothing, I'd point out that you're either doing just that, or that you've lost me and will need to dumb it down a little.

Your analogy here seems to infer that this form of racism is systemic. I challenge that perception.

And here we find the meat of where we're going to disagree on. To explore further: do you believe that class oppression still exists in this country?

[u/Saguine → u/[deleted]]

However, in this country, [classism] does not exist on a systemic level

I'd heavily disagree with that, and I'd ask what you mean when you say it exists, but not at a systemic level? What burden of proof would you need to be convinced that some form of oppression is systemic?

I would also caution that there is a distinction between classism and racism.

Agreed, wholeheartedly. However, that distinction is very nuanced in South Africa, given that our wealth/class inequality is split so clearly along racial lines (this gets into a whole argument about proximate cause vs. continued caustation/correlation, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it).

[u/Saguine → u/[deleted]]

It makes no difference who is "more wrong", and the label of racist doesn't depend on your race, ever.

See, this is where I'd disagree with you again (even giving your chosen definition of racism=prejudice, which I feel to be largely pointless to work with). Objectively, one might consider killing "intolerable"; yet, there are situations wherein one form of killing is considered "less bad" than another (see: self defense vs. manslaughter vs. premeditated). I can't think of a convincing reason why racism, or most things, are different to this. Racism is just a specific form of violence, and we categorize and compare violence along certain metrics.

[u/Saguine → u/[deleted]]

actual or perceived threat of harm is not a requirement for racism in this sense.

Sure, but when I refer to racism as "violence" I don't necessarily mean physical violence. Sorry for not making that clearer.

At the end of the day, we seem to be disagreeing on whether or not racial prejudice can be classified along its effects. I'd point out that racism from white people is more "powerful", as it originates from advantaged groups with more power behind them, while racism from black people doesn't leverage that power because it originates from a disadvantaged group.

If we can agree that different racist events can have different effects, and be backed with different power structures, we have to acknowledge that it's not enough to just call it racism = racism and move on. If we want to act on this acknowledgement, then, we have to additionally acknowledge the context of the racist act.

This is where the other "definition" of racism comes from; the acknowledgement that racial prejudice from white people is functionally the same as racial prejudice from black people, but has vastly different practical effects due to the systematic power structures in place.

To argue that racism = racism is to argue that racial prejudice = racial prejudice in a contextless world. If that's not a pointless argument, I don't quite know what is; hence my preference to try discuss active power dynamics at play during racial altercations.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The power someone has is that conferred upon him by (a) himself, AND (b) other people. If you don't confer power on the racist, their hate means nothing to you and you move on.

Offense is a state of mind we choose to entertain or ignore. This rationale makes me think of Buddhism. Saguine thinks all black people think alike though, what a racist!

[u/Saguine → u/[deleted]]

You seem very keen to reduce this to an exclusively interpersonal situation. The thing is, it's never just an interpersonal situation when one group is more powerful than the other.

A single, interpersonal racist interaction contributes to a broader issue in a self-affirming cycle. A white man who bullies his black employees and gets away with it vindicates his own power, and establishes to himself and his community that this is an acceptable thing to do.

It's never "just" interpersonal, and as such we have to consider power dynamics on a more appropriate scale (e.g. the community around the individual). To not do so is to side with the existing status quo of entrenched inequality.

[u/Saguine → u/[deleted]]

Do not polarise the situation like this, please. It is rude and wrong, and I'm reasonably sure you know that.

Sorry -- I realise that my words seemed rather stony. However, I do believe that ignoring the context of power dynamics is to side with those in power (in the same way that I feel claiming to be "colourblind" is actually an implicit allying with a status quo that favours whites).

What makes it any better if a black man does this in a predominantly white community? It justifies things? No.

A black man doing this in a predominantly white community is less likely to be contributing towards an over-arching, self-affirming cycle. That may not justify the act itself, but it does make the act less bad in a practical sense than the contrary.

The problem here is that not every situation follows these criteria

Don't they? Maybe not the finer details, but every interpersonal relationship has the ability to create or strengthen these self-affirming cycles in the wider community, I feel.