LogFAQs > #925389758

red sox 777 posted...

For example, suppose there's a head of a company who systematically pays black people less than white people--predicting that black people are more willing to work for the lower wage. I'm going to describe that person as a racist even if I thought that they personally held no racist beliefs at all and that it was just a profit-driven strategy to spend less money on labor.

This is a great example. The reason is that in this case, it is society which is racist, not that specific CEO. It does no good to attack an individual CEO for doing this, because if he changes, he will just be at a competitive disadvantage to his competitors who don't change. So society will reward actions that hurt black people and punish those who help them - this is a classic case of a racist society.

To change that, you need to change things at a societal level. And that starts by correctly identifying the problem where it is. And you know, we did do something about that in the 1960s - the Civil Rights Act.

The problem being larger than the individual CEO doesn't take away meaning from a factual description of the CEO's actions.

Stepping back from the hypothetical for a minute, it is is obviously possible on an intellectual level to distinguish between "one who believes some races are superior to others" and "one who treats some races better than others". My claim is that the word "racist" applies to both of these hypothetical cases. If what you're saying is that using such a definition dilutes or muddies the meaning of the word "racist", then that's actually something I agree with. I've thought for some time now that there is a need for society to adopt more precise terminology when discussing this issue.
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Oh woops. Putting Advokaiser in my sig like this until I think of something more clever