Trayvon Martin

[Quovatis]

Um, by definition, a black cop profiling a black suspect cannot be racist.

Racism means believing that one race is superior to another. It's impossible for a black person to believe that his own race (black) is superior to blacks. That is logically impossible. The only way it can make sense is to take the stance that the black cop thinks that whites are superior to blacks, despite himself being black. That's most likely not going to be the case. Thus my point many pages ago that the word "racist" has lost it's meaning. Nobody really understands what it means now and throws it around like a battle cry. And yeah profiling does not equal racism.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Quovatis

Nobody really understands what it means now and throws it around like a battle cry. And yeah profiling does not equal racism.

Actually, I think you too are confused. You define racism as pure racial hatred/superiority believes. Racism however, is the assigning a person traits whether positive, neutral or negative based on this person's race alone.

The problem is that racial selection is a form of racial discrimination. So is racial hatred (that which you define as racism). The latter though is simply an extreme form of racism, typically combined with extreme nationalism.

The consequences, motives and intentions are different, but in the end you are making a racial discriminating pre-selection within a group based on superficial qualities where skin colour is a race trait, not a social-economic trait. Even more accurately, racial profiling typically involves creating racial stereotypes to make the "bias" a bit more refinement. It is still a bias.

It would make more sense for crime fighting to focus on social-economic qualities, such as people with lacking incomes, high debts, bad household live etc. That's however harder to do based on superficial qualities than skincolour.

So yes, it's racist to some degree, even if just with the intend to increase efficiency due to a majority of a certain group being in that social-economic circumstance.



Of course it's insulting to people that are on the edge of the racial stereotype to be included in the stereotype and suffer under those that actually are the target group of the profiling. To them, I can well imagine it coming over as racist. Especially if they used to feel prosecuted as a group by that same entity or institute, in this case the police and governments of Southern States. They're not treated as individuals, after all.

[Quovatis]

Originally Posted by Figment

Actually, I think you too are confused. You define racism as pure racial hatred/superiority believes. Racism however, is the assigning a person traits whether positive, neutral or negative based on this person's race alone.

No, that is not the dictionary definition. By your definition it seems even calling someone "white" or "black" is racist. Is the statement "black people typically have black hair" racist? By your definition, it seems so. By the dictionary definition, it is not, as it carries no statement of superiority or hatred. It may be a stereotype, but it's not a racist statement.