[mlyle]

> > You don’t have to knowingly possess a racist motive to be racist.

> I think you do, otherwise this opens the door to anyone and everyone being a "racist" by some secondary, tertiary, or nth order effect.

Surely there's something in-between. Say, perhaps, black people make you uncomfortable, such that you're inclined against hiring them and you preferentially hire whites instead. Then, you wouldn't knowingly possess a racist motive but would be definitely acting racist and perpetuating racism.

Everyone has, from their own point of view, good motives and intentions.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Surely there's something in-between. Say, perhaps, black people make you uncomfortable, such that you're inclined against hiring them and you preferentially hire whites instead. Then, you wouldn't knowingly possess a racist motive but would be definitely acting racist and perpetuating racism.

That seems pretty clearly to be a racist motive. "Black people make you uncomfortable" is literally traditional racism, and action taken based on that motive is racist. Doing something like that without thinking through your intentions too hard doesn't make the act unintentional, because the intent is there whether you consciously evaluate it or not, and it doesn't change the motive. That person wants to be racist, and then directly is.

Someone who buys a chicken sandwich only because they want a chicken sandwich has no such motive or intent.

[mlyle]

> "Black people make you uncomfortable" is literally traditional racism, and action taken based on that motive is racist.

Good, you caught what I was saying.

> Doing something like that without thinking through your intentions too hard doesn't make the act unintentional, because the intent is there whether you consciously evaluate it or not, and it doesn't change the motive.

This seems to require a tortured interpretation of "intentional". Especially as it can be subtle and difficult to tease out the reasons we do things and make snap judgments. When your mind tells you "he just didn't seem like 'an engineer'" or "I don't think he was a culture-fit" or "I got a bad vibe about how he'd treat the rental property" --- we don't necessarily see the chain to [because he's black and not able in this instant to look 3x more professional than would be required of an equivalent white candidate for a positive impression]. There's no intention there, even if the outcome is racist. And in this scenario, it's not impossible for the black person to get hired, but the bar is unconsciously higher. That's one reason why this is all so insidious and so hard.

> Someone who buys a chicken sandwich only because they want a chicken sandwich has no such motive or intent.

Someone might have a hell of a lot more idea why they want a chicken sandwich than why they are making subtly biased decisions against disadvantaged people.

[Frost1x]

I don't think anyone would disagree that what you're highlighting are systemic problems that need to be addressed (well, except racists of course).

The point I was making is that labeling a racist, IMO, should require a conscious action linked to a bias along racial groupings, just like sexism and ageism do as well because it implies so many very negative characteristics that should only be linked to someone making a conscious decision that they hate some race, sex, age, or whatever. I guess I'm arguing how we should go about addressing the underlying problem and I don't agree that classifying someone racist and crucifying them, in the systemic context, is the way to go about making positive change.

I don't think labeling people purely ignorant of these side effects in a directly negative and confrontational way is productive at all, it might instead insight resentment and further entrench these stereotypes.

When you observe an example that was stated above where a hiring person said they "don't look like an engineer" or something to that effect, you may instead ask them to clarify what they mean--force them (politely) to ponder what are those attributes that make someone look like an engineer? What is the stereotyped biased picture they hold in their mind.

Chances are that person just picked up or borrowed a pattern they saw and have nothing consciously against black people or some other race. By pushing someone to consciously identify and quantify those characteristics you bring their biases to light and hopefully a connection quickly clicks and that person now realizes "holy crap, was I stereotyping against that person and not trying to look at it objectively? Did I just unknowingly discriminate against that person based on purely on race?" I've seen this happen many time when people are made aware of their biases and I've seen people genuinely try to change as a result.

Some people may require a bit more directed questioning to make these observations and surfacing the stereotype alone won't get you all the way there.

This is how you stamp out these biases: you make people consciously aware of their biases. Once they're aware of the bias, it becomes a conscious act of deciding if they want to reject that bias or continue to adopt it. If they reject the bias, they're probably not what I would call a racist. If they accept the bias, then that's a racist. We're all surrounded by bias and I'd argue there are biases deeply embedded in humans previously used as survival shortcuts that no longer apply or run counter to modern cultures and rules of societies. What matters is how we consciously identify such biases and how we then act on those observations and work to improve ourselves to become less biased, especially when the bias harms others for no good reason.

[lliamander]

> Everyone has, from their own point of view, good motives and intentions.

And you will almost always make more progress by addressing those sincere motives than you will by labeling them racist.

[mlyle]

If the outcome is racist, it's a problem that needs to be confronted and that the people involved need to be educated about in that context.

Without the systematically bad outcome for a group of disadvantaged people, there is no big problem, after all.

So call it what it is. If the intentions look good, go about it in a gentle way.