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Comment by dugidugout | Hacker News Reader

They are not being pedantic here, they are establishing a meaningful difference in words to help distinguish a shared phenomena. I think the original comment was unnecessary and certainly bigoted, but I would need more to say racism. The "grammar" guy clarified twice the semantic difference they personally observed (note they did not labor on syntax like you wish to suggest).

All that said, I make this comment as I believe the other commenter's worry is on display im this comment here...

> Again you seem more concerned with grammar than, y'know, condemning racism, prejudice, or bigotry. They're all equally bad and closely related concepts

These are _not_ all equally bad. Prejudice is foundational to understanding, there is no escape from this. In this understanding, we should treat particular postures of prejudice more serious than collapsing any "bad prejudice" under the same label.

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> I think the original comment was unnecessary and certainly bigoted, but I would need more to say racism

Do you think racism is worse than bigotry? Why? I understand that the first word has a more emotional charge in our times. But as far as "bad things to do" go they're equal in gravity. Racism is just a subset of bigotry.

> These are _not_ all equally bad

Why not?

> Prejudice is foundational to understanding

That's one definition of the word - "judging without knowing the facts".

But there's another definition - "an irrational hostile attitude, fear, or hatred towards a particular group, race, or religion" - which was the one we are operating with in this thread.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prejudice#English

I didn't flag your reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50198992 and I thought you made some good points.

> I have these arguments with people I love who are right in spirit and still dig in the moment the word “racism” lands, because to them it names a thing they’re sure they aren’t

Like I said, it's because of how emotionally charged the word is. People think if they label unfairly discriminatory or prejudiced behavior as something other than racism, it's somehow not as bad as racist behavior.

They are wrong.

I spent some time crafting that response. Unfortunate for me. Thank you for the follow up, I do agree with this.

Forgot one more thing.

> Everyone in this sub-thread could easily agree it was out of line (and no one directly says otherwise).

I don't think everyone agreed it was out of line. There were only 2 comments calling zoobab's original comment racism. One of them spawned this thread about which words to use, rather than agreement with the condemnation.

The other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50196949 that called it racist still looks gray and downvoted to me.

That's why I fight about stuff like this. It's all too easy to brush it under the "not racism, totally cool" carpet otherwise.

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