Re: racist vs racialist?

Tristan wrote:
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>>What's wrong with "islamism"? The word, not the phenomenon, that is.
>
>Honest question here: is Islamism a (redundent) word for 'Islam', or
>does it mean discrimination against/within/between Islamic
>faiths/adherents thereof?
Well, the way I learnt it, it's neither. It denotes a political movement or
ideology that wishes to give Islam, usually in a strict and conservative
interpretation thereof, a dominant role in politics and society. Islamists
typically want to have the Sharia as the foundation of secular law.

>And John Cowan took it upon himself (or perhaps someone else, but to the
>same effect) to type:
>
>>This is an equivoque on the two meanings of "racism": personal distrust
>>or hatred of members of other races vs. institutionalized discrimination
>>based on race.  I myself find it leads to fewer confusions if "racism"
>>is used in the latter sense only, which means indeed that whites are not
>>subject to racism anywhere (AFAIK; Haiti is a special case).  For the
>>other sense I speak of "race hatred".
>>
>What about that stuff that happened with the white farmers in that
>African country whose name eludes me? Isn't that institutionalised
>discrimination based on race?
You're thinking of Zimbabwe. And while dissident blacks (including black
commerical farmers) also are getting represed, I think it's fair to say that
Zimbabwe's white are being subjected to both kinds of racism defined above.

Tangentially, I, when feeling the need for a distinction, would
ratherreserve "racism" for what Mr Cowan calls "race hatred", and use
"racial discrimination" for the institutionalized discrimination.



Andreas

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