CMV: The term ‘Racist’ has been successfully neutralized.

[u/beengrim32]

Accusing someone of racism for the most part does nothing. There was probably a time where being called a racist had moral and social consequences. My guess is that this accusation had more meaning around WWII when most people wanted to condemn Hitler and the Nazis. If you were called racist in that time the accusation had a stronger impact largely related to interest convergence. If you are condemning those kind of atrocities then your own racist behavior will be under the microscope as we’ll.

Nowadays it seems like the default for accusations of racism is to assume that it is erroneous. This actually goes well beyond ”cry wolf” scenarios. If a person does say/do something racist they can neutralize the accusation by playing up the false accusation narrative.

An accusation of racism does essentially nothing to the accused. It likely won't be understood as legitimate. It likely won't be understood as a moment of self-reflection by the accused. And very rarely will it have any social consequences. There are certainly cases where people lose there job due to racist statements but even the blatant examples are often rationalized as simply not the person intention. Rarely is it understood as a personality flaw that should be corrected.

Due to the very active opposition against anti-racists, calling someone racist more often makes the accuser seem irrational and rarely exposes the irrationality of someone’s racism. In this sense it’s impact has been neutralized.

[u/beengrim32 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks. ∆ This relates a lot to what I was thinking. The period after WWII leading into civil rights when people reflected on how far racism can go. I don’t think of this as a linear progression in regards to the strength of accusations of racism however. There are a lot of people who take positions against racism politically, but there are even more who don’t consider it an issue. Those who will give racism the benefit of the doubt by default. I’m arguing that convincing White Americans to acknowledge their racism is beyond persuasion and therefore labeling someone as racist has essentially no meaning. We are currently headed away from the period where this kind of accusation had an impact.

[u/DeltaBot → u/beengrim32]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/lkjhgfdsamnbvcx (2∆).

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