As interesting as that was, I was even more interested in one particular thing on that page. There was a link to the Southern Poverty Law Center--the group that was cited repeatedly as proving that Chick-fil-A was giving money to a hate group. But here, what they said was not ridiculous, and
it might be the most startling thing this debate could hear:
In fact, that page repeatedly referred to the New Black Panther Party or their views as racist. So I guess we must either accept that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the old Black Panther Party simply do not know what racism is, or that maybe, just maybe, the words "institutional" or "systemic" are worth attaching to the word "racism" when one wants to describe that type of racism, instead of pretending that is the only meaning worth attaching to the term.
First of all, I challenge your application of the phrase "the lay definition" and expressly refer you to the statement I quoted from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Second, I decided to look at the RationalWiki link first, and, aside from the very pleasant surprise that Bill Clinton is listed as having provided perhaps the worse example, I found this:
First, this suggests there are good reasons to avoid using a term in a way that few people understand. That is an important point to which I will return in a later segment.
Second, it says a dictionary proves nothing, but its wording guarantees that there is one thing a (reliable) dictionary can prove: Ironically, it is the same thing SILVER XD did use it to prove; namely, that a given word's usage is not so restricted. This is (ironically) identical to the difficulties that RationalWiki page mentioned as being associated with the words "feminism" and "feminist." The definition is not restricted to people who believe in gender equality, no matter how much some people in the various Serebii Forums threads relevant to the topic might want it to only apply to them and not to people advocating the idea that women are (or should be treated as) superior. To borrow the terminology of that article, nothing changes about reality if we decide that "racism" only refers to what some would call systemic or institutionalized racism. Thus ironically (to become annoying by repeating this word to much), the people who cite "the" alleged sociological definition and accuse others of being wrong are the ones engaging in the
argumentum ad dictionarium fallacy. This means I pretty much couldn't have found a better source with which to respond to Blazekickblaziken and your previous comments which implied "dictionary or sociologists, not both." You are to be commended for the good things in your new, more nuanced argument.
I plan to edit this post to address some things, ranging from bad to extremely good, in the other links. But it is past midnight, so I must leave off. If somebody else posts before me, I'll probably just make a new post. Good night!
