[powrtoch]

I'm not complaining about the type of racism, but the general trend of presupposing that all arguments against you will be of a certain misguided type and therefore illegitimate.

Like if I said "Mac is better than PC, and if anyone disagrees with me, it can only because that person is a pedophile". Obviously that example is unrealistic, but you see the issue.

[dgabriel]

That's a non-sequitur. In the context of racial appearance of drawn characters, and the incorrect attribution of race based on the viewers biases, it's an appropriate, if somewhat incendiary, term.

If someone counters that Japanese definitely draw white people because Japanese people think Americans are awesome (and there are some arguments of this type floating around out there), then it's a culturally myopic, borderline racist stance.

[powrtoch]

Sigh. Alright, last try, then I'm done with this time-sink discussion.

Forget racism. I said nothing about whether "racist" was an appropriate term for the kinds of people he has in mind. The problem is in equating "the people I have in mind" with "everyone who could possibly think I'm wrong". The problem is that he has assumed, before anyone has even had the chance to argue with him, that any arguments he gets will be motivated by some particular flaw he expects to encounter. The problem is that he dismisses all disagreement as "racist" before even hearing that disagreement.

Yes, if a bunch of people speak up and disagree with his points, some of them will probably do so because of some underlying racist beliefs. But that doesn't authorize him to declare that everyone who disagrees with him must therefore be a racist. That's wrong, descriptively and normatively.

For example, if I linked to an article where the top 50 Japanese anime authors had explicitly stated "Yup, we just draw white people", that wouldn't make me a racist. It would make him wrong, and me right to disagree. I don't expect to find an article like that, and I find the author's main point in the article quite plausible. The issue is just that there are conceivable legitimate objections (particularly any based on actual evidence, which, as has been noted, this article lacks), a possibility he has refused to even acknowledge with a wave of his hand.

I seem to be talking right past you, but I don't know how to spell this out any more plainly.

[dgabriel]

Thanks for the condescension.

The author states in the last paragraph that he is referring to the Americans who make that argument. Perhaps that was not clear to you, but it was clear to me.