What is a racist?
Like nervous children who hear a monster in every creaking floor, many journalists and academics see a racist in every joke or story that does not conform to current progressive sensitivities.
Written by Bo Winegard.
Racist.
Few epithets inspire more terror in Western societies. To be a racist is one of the great evils of our time, a sin so dark and deplorable that it not only defiles the racist himself but also those who have associated with him. Because of this talismanic power, “racist” is an ideologically useful accusation, a smear like “communist” or “groomer” that is used to stifle debate by sullying a person’s reputation rather than addressing his arguments. But despite its popularity in mainstream outlets and conversations, its meaning is so vague and protean that it is virtually useless for serious intellectual discourse.
The haziness of racist is not caused solely by malice or subterfuge. Satisfactorily defining terms is notoriously difficult, a fact long ago highlighted by Socrates, the famous Athenian gadfly, who consistently vexed those who claimed to have knowledge by interrogating and deconstructing the meaning of pivotal words such as “justice,” “knowledge,” or “courage.” Those who have watched or participated in modern philosophical debates know that the Socratic method remains popular. Definitions are offered, inspected, debated, updated, again inspected, again debated, and so on. At times, the Sisyphean task of establishing semantic uniformity can become almost droll in its futility, a fact which inspired Ambrose Bierce’s sardonic definition of philosophy as a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.