[IanDrake]

I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. Perhaps I haven’t met the right troll?

The odd thing about racism is that we typically see it in the US as a asian/black/white/hispanic issue where historically race was finer grained, especially when talking about a much more homogeneous population.

Historically Brits would consider the French, Irish, or Italians as a different race, and, yes, have racist views about those people.

What I learn from that is, even if the US was 100% “white”, racism would still exist as we would find increasingly small differences to categorize people into races and then discriminate.

The problem is that discrimination based on categorization is how the human brain works.

[insickness]

> I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist.

The anti-affirmative action argument doesn't say that racism doesn't exist. The argument against affirmative action is that society should aim for equal opportunity rather than equal outcome.

[IanDrake]

Affirmative action IS institutional racism in that it codifies advantage to one race over another.

One could argue about the intention of affirmative action, but I don’t think one could argue that it’s not racist, using the dictionary’s definition of racism.

[RasputinsBro]

> One could argue about the intention of affirmative action, but I don’t think one could argue that it’s not racist, using the dictionary’s definition of racism.

As is often the case, the dictionary gives multiple definitions.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/racism

You're using definition number 2, the person you were responding to was maybe using definition number 3.

(Although we get it, your point still stands.)

[IanDrake]

That’s fair, thanks.

What I was trying to say, without saying it, is that rasism is not what the cultural Marxist are trying to sell - “power + privilege”.

[cimmanom]

And those in favor of affirmative action would say that it's a way to support equal opportunity later in the pipeline when earlier stages of the pipeline have failed to do so.

[tripletao]

Intra-white racism was totally a thing in the USA. Jacob Riis ("How the Other Half Lives") is sometimes considered to have had progressive views on race, because he didn't consider black people to be strictly worse than white; but that probably just reflects his low opinion of Southern Europeans.

Such racism is mostly dead now, because generations of generic-white intermarriage would make it hopelessly confusing. My suspicion is that as long as distinct races are perceived, racism will continue, and the absence of that intermarriage is simultaneously evidence of that racism and a cause of it.

[RasputinsBro]

> I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. Perhaps I haven’t met the right troll?

I think you haven't met the right troll.

If you ask "are you saying that racism doesn't exist?", the sophisticated troll will not give you a yes or no answer. If he said yes he would lose because there are so many examples that it exists and he would be unmasked as an obvious troll, if he said no he would lose because then you would have some justification in whatever your claim was.

> The problem is that discrimination based on categorization is how the human brain works.

Yes, I think that is right.