Is racism intent or perception?

[bailey_187]

is something racism when it is intended to discriminate on skin colour etc, or is it when it is perceived as offensive by and/or to someone due to skin colour etc?

Obviously when someone is attacked on the street for their race, the intent is racism and it is very clearly something racist

but what about if someone says something that i perceived offensive by someone due to that persons race?

or is this a false dictonomy of however u spell it, and both are racist? But is it fair to say they are different things?

[Franz Fanonipants]

racism is a supporting structure of capitalism. it isn't any of the above.

[tachosomoza]

Racism and religion (and its nasty partner, misogyny) are constructs indoctrinated into the working class to accomplish the bourgeois goal of division and conquest of the workingman.

[Tim Finnegan]

Racism is an ideology system which poses people of a certain ethnicity, ancestry or "race" as innately superior to those of another. As such, both perceptions and actions can be racist, in that they are both generated by and sustain this ideology system.


racism is a supporting structure of capitalism. it isn't any of the above.

Racism and religion (and its nasty partner, misogyny) are constructs indoctrinated into the working class to accomplish the bourgeois goal of division and conquest of the workingman.
The dynamics are more complex than that. They're certainly used in this fashion, yes, but as ideological systems they remain apart from the direct control of the bourgeoisie, and may even, on occasion, act in a less than fully productive, even counter-productive manner. The bourgeoisie play the greatest role in defining the hegemonic ideology, because of their own societal, economic and political hegemony, but they do not spin it whole like a tapestry, but rather cobble it together from bits and pieces of whatever is lying around, hence its tendency to be jumbled, incoherent, and self-contradictory ("Big government off my medicare!" being a recently notorious example.)
It is important, when addressing issues like racism, sexism, and so on, not to indulge in the notion of a pure, innocent worker, corrupted by the influence of some vile bourgeois serpent, but to accept the role that the working class are often capable of playing in generating and sustaining these ideologies, even as those same ideologies do untold damage to them and their cause. The bourgeoisie are, very often, ideological opportunists, grabbing onto whatever likely rhetoric or sentiment passes by; their role in these matters is as often to arrange and formalise a spontaneously generated popular sentiment as it is to generate one of their own.

[Lobotomy]

I don't think racism needs to have hatred behind it in order for it to be racism. It can be in the form of simple prejudices too. For example, here in the US there's a stereotype of Asian people having above average intelligence. People who perpetuate that stereotype probably don't hate Asians, but they're still racist.

[Decolonize The Left]

racism


The belief that each race has distinct and intrinsic attributes.
The belief that one race is superior to all others.
Prejudice or discrimination based upon race.

Next question.

- August