Portland.

[FlayedAngel]

Like I said I'm willing to hear your thoughts on who is setting fires and assaulting people and destroying property in Portland: ghosts, BLM, Antifa, or perhaps the feds are setting the fires themselves? Conspiracy theories abound! Or we can rely on good ol' Occam's razor and say it's Antifa.

I did state that most of the violence is due to antagonization. Collateral damage sometimes happens, beyond that I'm not really in a hurry to attribute it to any particular group... except for maybe ghost cowboys.

Because you're looking at this in a vacuum, like I just chose implicit bias at random. I explained why I felt this way, I'm not just saying words, hence the analogy to a random word like racism doesn't work.

I am also referring to the principle. My problem isn't with the word "implicit" nor "bias" specifically.

In what way am I looking at this in a vacuum? I get that it's difficult to prove or disprove a bias, that doesn't mean they don't exist -- that's why I elaborated to limit to self-examination as a criteria, in fairness.

You don't think it's a pretty serious accusation to accuse someone of treating someone differently based on the color of their skin? I sure as hell think that's a very serious accusation and I want to see evidence to support said accusation. But that's the beauty of implicit bias isn't it? You don't need evidence, you just say it exists and tell everyone they are guilty of it.

So does the word "racist" bear weight, or not? I need a verdict here.

There is nothing to change your mind about when it comes to implicit bias, remember it's something you do unconsciously.

Becoming aware of implicit biases allows you to change your thinking or behavior in a way that's less harmful, both individually and (ultimately) systemically.

This is a fairly gross understanding of what I'm saying. I've read about implicit bias, I know what it's about, I know who pushes it, I happen to disagree with its premise. Me disagreeing with it doesn't mean I live in an echo chamber and limit my exposure to conflicting viewpoints.

I was extemporizing on how implicit biases are formed. I neither made that correlation, nor accused you of limiting your exposure to conflicting viewpoints.

Of course it is, that was my entire point. Everyone reading that list knows exactly which thing I listed you are referring to without you even having to say it, because that's a perfect example of what racism used to mean. But now there is a sizeable segment of the population (even right here on the forums) who would argue all 4 things I listed are examples of racism, and that's the problem.

When you say buying Goya products is comparable to Neo-Nazis then you have taken the bite out of the word "racism." Someone who gladly continues to buy Goya products isn't going to be swayed by accusations of racism anymore because they know they aren't comparable to Neo-Nazis yet they are being compared to one anyways.

Except that your argument there completely disregards any scope or context, which is important, and downplays the complexity of the social issue as a whole; your alleged "fatigue" of the word is only one element, which is its use (or its debatable overuse) as a pejorative. The problem is that if someone observes casual racism in someone else -- even if that someone is devoid of any malicious intent -- such is often treated by both parties (the accused and the accuser) as having the same connotations as the full-blown KKK-imbrued usage of the word. There aren't different words for different "degrees" of racist, which is unfortunate... that's why context matters.