The problem with left’s effort to redefine racism
comes to the language they use. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
The notion that racism is about institutionalized white power simply doesn’t compute for most Americans. In common parlance, racism means prejudice or bigotry on account of race or skin color. Period.
If a neo-Nazi paints a swastika on a Jew’s front door, no decent person withholds judgment pending an audit of the victim’s social or institutional power. We just call it anti-Semitism. Would you wait for a clever explanation if someone launched the hash tag #KillAllJews or #CancelBlackPeople?
Even if we were to accept that “racism” means structural oppression by whites, we’d still need a word for hating or degrading people solely on account of their race. Why reinvent the wheel?
Think of it this way: Would you want your kids to go to a school where the white kids were taught that the slightest racial insensitivity was a profound sin but all the non-white kids were free to say whatever they wanted about the white kids?
It is right and proper to teach kids that bigotry against blacks or other particular groups is especially evil for historical reasons. But it is morally daft to celebrate or condescendingly explain away bigotry against whites as some sort of historical comeuppance for the sins — real or alleged — of their ancestors. (It’s also counterproductive: There’s ample evidence that calling non-racist people racist actually makes them more racist.)
Double standards breed resentment and rage, regardless of ideological orientation. There’s a reason white supremacists co-opt the language of the left, demanding identity politics for white people. “I consider myself a civil and human rights advocate focusing on the underrepresented Caucasian demographic,” Jordan Kessler, the racist Unite the Right rally organizer, told NPR.
The double standard that says the left can say whatever it damn well pleases, but the right must constantly check its privilege, fuels hateful buffoons like Kessler.