Good morning FRians! Another Monday is upon us, and so is another Monday morning post from Stephen Hall. Thank you, Stephen.
“Racism: a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.” – The Random House Dictionary (The unabridged edition 1967).
There are a number of academics who have for many years been pushing the idea upon unsuspecting and impressionable students that the definition of racism is different than the definition of racism as it actually appears in the dictionaries but that it must also include the elements of power and privilege of a systemic cultural nature.
While this topic has been covered repeatedly and exhaustively over the past few years from people of all political, ideological, and racial persuasions, it has found its way back into the headlines with the hiring by the New York Times of young Asian racist who is on record expressing her hatred for white people by the name of Sarah Jeong.
Candace Owens had her Twitter account locked because she re-stated Sarah Jeong’s tweets changing the word “white” to “Jewish” or “black”. Twitter then determined that her tweets were racist, while leaving Sarah Jeong’s account remained active.
It is easy to be dissatisfied with any particular definition. For example, there are many flaws in that definition with which I began this very article. The inclusion of the word “usually” and all that follows show that the definition is not clear and concise but vague and open to interpretation.
For instance, there are people like David Duke who attempt to distinguish themselves as “racialists” rather than “racists” stating that they recognize racial differences but make no claim to superiority of one race over another.
Of course that Random House Dictionary does include the word racialist, however makes no such distinction. It would seem a useful distinction to make, but like the other academics, they are trying to tailor the definitions of words to suit their political spin upon their own perspectives.
And further, I’ve seen more than a few white liberals defending this blatant racism against white people, including Sarah Jeong’s statements, so the definition’s qualification that racism promotes one’s own race is obviously an outdated, old fashioned ‘60s notion as there appears to be many white liberals racist against their own race.
I have written many times before about the foolishness of people trying to butcher the English language creating their own foolish and erroneous definitions, as well as occasionally pointing out the inadequacy of even some traditional definitions to make the proper and clear distinctions which a definition ought to make, but that is now actually what this article is attempting to address.
Rather it is the incredibly self-serving nature of modern redefinition of words, introduction of completely novel concepts, and the aggrandizement of wishful thinking which has become not merely some fringe outliers praying for recognition, but mainstream pabulum for mass consumption.
From socialists redefining socialism as if it really means an absence of social classes rather than the government ownership of the means of production, to pretending that the idea has never been tried because it always ends up in a dictatorship, leftist are at the forefront of this self-serving narcissism.
Feminists are not to be left out of re-imagining history as an oppressive patriarchy designed to keep them from having their single parent households with all the resources of a two parent family provided through the government or if they so choose a useless degree for which they don’t have to pay, free contraceptives and abortions upon demand, and not even social judgment upon however bizarre way they choose to live their life.
I could go on with a dozen or more identity groups wanting to have not only the world be the way they imagine that they want it to be, but they want a language which will reflect their passing momentary desires of affirmation.
People want unique personalized pronouns, not merely available for them to use, but mandated that other people be forced to adopt their inventions of language no matter how bizarre and weird they can conceive.
The control of the language is not about the concepts that they are pretending to express, it is a raw show of the power that they think they have to force other people to see the world as they want it to be seen, even if tomorrow they will change again completely.
There is a power game being played in these new definitions of racism, sexism, whateverism, and whoeverphobia of the day. It is the coercive power. They push the idea that they must be allowed to say and do whatever they want and you have to accept it because they have the power.
It is the mentality behind the shadow banning on Twitter, the data mining of Facebook and Google, the politicizing of the FBI, IRS, and DoJ, the demand for open borders, sanctuary city, religious belief in anthropogenic climate change, illegality of plastic straws, vilification of gun owners, and many other leftist cause de jours.
Once they have convinced themselves of their own moral superiority, their bigotry and prejudice comes out in the form of demanding to control the meanings of the language.
Racism against white people becomes acceptable because . . . well . . . they’ll just redefine the word to fit.
Loathing of normal male behavior will become “toxic masculinity” because . . . well . . . they’ll redefine both the meaning of masculinity as well as toxic.
Fear and hatred of heterosexuality becomes acceptable because . . . well . . . they’ll just redefine the word to say that you are sexist . . . or phobic.
It is the language equivalent of forcing a Christian baker to bake a wedding cake for a celebration of what that Christian religion deems an “abomination”, a show of power over others.
Leftist academics refer everything back to a vague, nebulous, undefined concept of “social privilege” as a way to say that the majority is ignorant and incapable of understanding how they are “oppressed”, but they define oppression as the restriction and control of another person’s behavior, actions, and opportunities.
It is no accident that they oppose freedom of speech, because people speaking out freely against their machinations expose their hypocrisy, stupidity, and foolishness. Nothing offends the fool who thinks himself brilliant more than public exposure of his own stupidity.
But, one has to ask, whose actions are being controlled and restricted? Whose words are limited by the idea of not offending their protected classes and whose are not?
By feigning oppression through the control of the language, the invention of new, self-serving definitions, certain leftists seek to exert their power over those rubes they view as inherently morally inferior.
It is not a racism, or a sexism, but it is the same perspective of falsely imagined superiority of faux-intellectualism, of the regressive “progressivism” no different in effect than the racism and sexism they pretend to deride.
And the purpose of “progressivism” is the same as that old racism and sexism these same people used to use, to place themselves as superior to other people, to try to justify their immorality by feigning a moral superiority through words.
