by Dualta on Thu Feb 26, 2015 10:02 pm
I'm not trying to be preachy or lecturing here, but I'd like to share what I understand about racism. Some of you might find it of benefit, and others may not.
Racism is a complicated term and isn't necessarily restricted to discrimination based on 'race'. There is certainly no definitive definition of the term. Whole books and many academic papers have been written trying to define it, and still there is no consensus about its meaning.
Firstly, there is absolutely no scientific basis for the assertion that humans are divided into biologically distinct races. There is no such thing as the white race, or the black race, or the yellow, red, brown or whatever race. And it should also be stated clearly that there are no national groups that can be described as a race, like the German race, the Irish race, the Chinese race, and so on. Early understandings of the term racism considered it to be discrimination on the basis of the understanding that, not only were humans divided into various biologically distinct groups, but that these groups were hierachically ordered in terms of superior and inferior physical, intellectual and moral traits.
However, since scientists debunked the doctrine of biological races, efforts to find better ways to understand the differences in human society arrived at the concept of ethnicity, which is a much more encompassing theory. There are several factors which can define a group as an ethnic group: of course, physical attributes such as skin colour, facial shape, physical stature and so on, but also language, nationality, religion, culture and traditions, and, very importantly, a sense of shared history.
The problem about the term racism is that not everybodythese days understands these concepts. There are a lot of people who still believe that there are biological races, and many of those people still believe that some 'races' are superior to others in terms of physical, intellectual, moral and cultural traits. There are those amongst us who still see biological races, but see race as being the whole package of phenotype, religion, culture and so on, so when they discriminate against someone on the basis of their religion or a cultural practice or trait, they are being racist, insofar as they think the person belongs to another 'race'.
So was Betiko being racist when he typed, "Christian terrorist"? Well, if Betiko is white, most likely not. Would an Arab, a Pakistani or an Indonesian be making a racist statement if he called someone a Muslim terrorist? Not many people would think so. I suppose it's a little like a black person using the n-word.
Was Runeldo being racist? Well, he was certainly being bigoted. If Runeldo equates being Muslim with non-whites, then yes, he was being racist, but we don't know if he does. There was no reasonable context to use the term Muslim terrorist in that particular game chat. It was obviously intended as an insult, given that he had launched into a tirade of insults against subprime, and being an insult, we can conclude that he thinks being Muslim is in some way inferior to him, so check the second box for what classifies as racist.
It should also be noted that he called Runeldo a "disabled idiot", which is just as bad as calling him a Mulsim terrorist and should also be a part of this report.
For what it's worth, I think the term 'hate speech' has a lot to offer. It helps to clear up this argument over whether insults diercted at religious and cultural traits, and nationalities can be classified as racism or not.
Sorry for the long post, but, as I said, some of you might find it useful or interesting.
Last edited by
Dualta on Thu Feb 26, 2015 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
).
