> troublesome white men Replace "white" with any race or colour and it's racism. Why is this different?
The short answer is because they're different. The angry answer is that you may as well be asking why there isn't a "white history month" (I mean, if all we're doing is swapping colors, it should be good, right?).
The longer answer from scholars who study racism is that talking about race boundaries without talking about power structures is a con game. At best it's facile. The people who study it the most (historians and philosophers of race) define racism not just in terms of skin color prejudice but primarily in terms of power structures that protect the interests of the dominant group and discriminate against minorities. In those terms, while an individual can be prejudiced against white men, no political or economic power actively oppresses white men as a class.
Instead of thinking only about skin color prejudice, you can consider racism to be a condition in society in which a dominant racial group benefits from the oppression of others. Racist behavior is thus those behaviors that perpetuate, propagate, and preserve the oppression of racial minorities.
[I guess someone doesn't like my answer. Man, HN is really tiresome sometimes.]
The problem with such reasoning is that whites do not benefit equally or wholly. A key component to English-style racism is that it was intended to keep all poor people down by splitting them along racial lines. Poor whites had it slightly better by design to keep them from joining up with other poor peoples in part for fear of losing what they had. The systems we have in place today are descended from that system (and when you know how to look for it, other similar systems not having to do with race are obvious). When you use phrases that, however true of some whites, impugns all whites, you’re perpetuating that system. This is true regardless of how complicit those whites have been. Even from a pragmatic view, it certainly doesn’t win any allies. To then defend such slurs by pointing to systemic racism is both somewhat ironic and also unconvincing to anyone who already finds it distasteful.
This is extremely narrow minded world view, America is not the world. Id you really think so you should rethink your imperialistic world view and do better, if you don't then stop using the white skin color in your sentences and do some traveling.
The short answer is because they're different. The angry answer is that you may as well be asking why there isn't a "white history month" (I mean, if all we're doing is swapping colors, it should be good, right?).
The longer answer from scholars who study racism is that talking about race boundaries without talking about power structures is a con game. At best it's facile. The people who study it the most (historians and philosophers of race) define racism not just in terms of skin color prejudice but primarily in terms of power structures that protect the interests of the dominant group and discriminate against minorities. In those terms, while an individual can be prejudiced against white men, no political or economic power actively oppresses white men as a class.
Instead of thinking only about skin color prejudice, you can consider racism to be a condition in society in which a dominant racial group benefits from the oppression of others. Racist behavior is thus those behaviors that perpetuate, propagate, and preserve the oppression of racial minorities.
[I guess someone doesn't like my answer. Man, HN is really tiresome sometimes.]