RE: Re: [MF:Apes] bush slur (sure)... (via /contact form)

>>>>> "jack" == Jack Bornstein <[email protected]> writes:

  >> If he had say "Japs", what would you think?
  >>
  >> Substitute other racial slurs and imagine the results.

  jack> Is "Pakistani" a race? Perhaps if it is compared to black,
  jack> hispanic, caucasian, etc.  But when compared to "Indian"
  jack> (people from India, not Native American) I don't really
  jack> percieve a racial difference there.  Perhaps using the word
  jack> ETHNIC instead of RACIAL would have been more fair.

There is no such thing as "race", biologically speaking.

It's a social construction, which is to say: "race" exists only as an
element of social ideology in which it's thought to be grounded in
biological fact.

People use the term "racist" and "racial" to modify "slur" because
it's a strong term of opprobium.

So the term will continue to be used even if *no* one believes in the
concept of race as biologically real, that is, if the role 'race'
plays in social ideology changes, which is precisely what is
happening. Biologically-based racisms have been and are mutating into
cultural (or, you might prefer, "ethnic") racisms. No one's gonna
switch to the term 'ethnicist', though, and that seems reasonable to
me. (There's are two good essay about this knot of issues in an
anthology, Race and Racism, edited by one of Bijan's professors at
UNC, Bernard Boxill. I'll forward the citation if anyone's
interested.)

Plus, Pakistan and India *don't* neatly break down along ethnic
lines. India is probably more ethnically diverse than any other state
on earth (at least, I doubt there's any place *more* ethnically
diverse; maybe the US...).

We meant "racist slur" to suggest that Bush's actions were racist, and
not to make any comment, one way or the other, about ethnicities,
races, what's biological, what's social, and so on.

I hope that helps.

Kendall