Re: Whiteness?

Adrian Morgan wrote:
> For this reason I would expect the
> cultural identity of black Americans to be a strong one. As often as not
> this leads to a preference for the oldest and most established title.
Well, I think the problem was the similarity to the "other" N-word.

> I understand that in America
> the term is meant in the literal sense of someone who considers one race
> superior to another.
There's no one usage of the word.  Some use it for that, but it's has
other uses, for instance, some people call affirmative action "racist",
defining racist as "attitudes or actions that give preference to one
race over another".  In fact, it seems to me that many arguments over
whether something is "racist" or not hinge on the use of different
definitions by each party!

> In Australia it's not as useful to have a word for
> that attitude, so we usually adopt the term 'racism' to mean what you
> might call 'culturalism' or something -- the belief that it is harmful to
> compromise (ahem) the established (ahem) white community with too many
> people of other cultures.
That's another use of the word.

--
"Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor