[d9h549f34w6]

Phrases like "there's no such thing as reverse racism" seem inherently ambiguous and prone to causing argument, mainly because two very opposed sides can both say the same statement:

- "There's no such thing as reverse racism (because any kind of discrimination based on race is racism and we shouldn't be diminishing some kinds of discrimination)"

- "There's no such thing as reverse racism (because it's impossible to be racist against people who are in the Oppressive Group category)"

It's a namespace collision that can inadvertently give "support to the other side."

Though, it's the same thing with words like "racist." There's a generally universal desire in our society to not want to be "racist" in the sense of "common-usage-racism," discriminating against others based on group identities. Thrown into this mix is a new "academic-racism" definition of "racist," which requires "privilege+power" and demotes anything that doesn't fit into mere "discrimination" (which apparently isn't a bad thing anymore by itself?).

The reason why this new concept (which, let's be honest, is different than the common-usage meaning of racism) has the same name is because there is an ideological/political strength in namespace collisions or identifier overloading. By using the same taboo word for two different concepts, the new meaning can insert itself as the dominant meaning.

[chc]

This is a little off-topic, but discrimination has never been a bad thing by itself. Discrimination means using judgment to differentiate two things or people. There are many ways in which we can discriminate that are useful and entirely valid (e.g. "this guy has a long history of scamming people and no sign he's really changed, so I'm not going to invest my money with him").

[schwarze_pest]

> Thrown into this mix is a new "academic-racism" definition of "racist," which requires "privilege+power" and demotes anything that doesn't fit into mere "discrimination"

Is this "academic-racism" an American thing or is it universally accepted in academia?