Fair point, except that racism is, at its very core, a power infrastructure; therefore anyone without any actual power cannot be a proponent of that system, by definition.
Being more specific, as it pertains to this conversation:
Can the average Black person be just as hateful, bigoted and prejudiced against whites (or anyone else, for that matter) as the average Aryan Brotherhood member is against anyone who is non-white?
Absolutely.
But can that same average Black person be ‘racist’ against Caucasian people?
No, because despite however much hatred that aforementioned average Black person may feel, he or she cannot exert any control over the entire group of people that they hate.
It takes significant monetary and political power to be a true racist, not merely having a surplus of animosity and negativity for someone who is different in some way.
ETA:
They are/were militant, provocateurs and reactionary in nature, certainly; but again, “racist” isn’t a label that I’m willing to just bandy about willy-nilly, because overuse of the term only ends up diluting the actual meaning.
Negativity only begets MORE negativity; and historically speaking in the US, Black people have been on the receiving end of a metric fuckton of it.
So in my humble opinion, any expectation that one may have for ALL Black people to respond to such negativity with as much grace benevolence and decorum as people like MLK or as Gandhi did is highly unrealistic.
Thanks, I dont really speak animated gif well at all.
My above was a bit overly snarky, the core members of PE were to the best of my knowledge never caught on open mic saying anything really overtly prejudiced.(1) Professor Griff, their “minister of information” and leader of their step dancing troupe however seemed to have had some really genuine problems with Jews. When called out on it, he issued the standard textbook “I’m sorry you feel offended” apology and was removed from the PE roster for a while. As I understand from direct second hand information there was no change of heart or anything, it was all public relations.
Really I dont have a problem with PE. They made great records and their production crew set standards that have not been surpassed since then. Sonicly and lyrically they went so far beyond what anyone else at the time was doing. I used to have most all their releases back when I lived in NYC.
in “Bring The Noise” Chuck D has a line “Farakhan’s a prophet and I think you ought to listen to what he can say to you”. Minister Farakhan is in fact a fountain of racial prejudice against white people and Jews. I didnt understand this as Chuck D endorsing prejudice but rather NoI.
That was … interesting… I dont think I’ve ever seen such hair splitting between whether or not a person can be an actual racist or just prejudiced.
Anyway as in my comments to @kimmo above, I will say I went a bit too far with “Racists Against Racism”.
