Can making an odservation make you racist/sext/whatever....

[HYHYBT]

Having race be a way you file someone away for short-term reference . . . It's still racism, and it's still bad

Why is it either? I don't mean in any specific example, but as an always thing.

[Hyena Dandy]

Why is it either? I don't mean in any specific example, but as an always thing.

It continues to define people by their race, something out of their control. This, I feel, is bad in all cases. bad.

It states that someone's race is the most remarkable thing about them.

People should not be defined by something beyond their control. Thus, it is bad. It is not AS bad.

It's like biting your fingernails. Bad. Not horrible. It doesn't make you a bad person. It's just a bad thing that people do. They should not, but they don't. They don't deserve to be yelled at over it, but that doesn't mean they should keep doing it.

[siead_lietrathua]

It continues to define people by their race, something out of their control. This, I feel, is bad in all cases. bad.

i hate pulling the dictionary card out but

define °To express the essential nature of something.
describe °To represent in words.

describing someone, even in your mind =/= defining them.
if i was to describe my husband, for example, i would say a white guy with shaggy dark hair and glasses.
if i was to define my husband it would be with terms like kind, funny, or asshole (depending on the day)

maybe thats half the reason for so much back and forth in this thread. mixing up the two "d" terms.

[the_std]

I, too, don't feel it's racist to describe someone by their race as long as there's nothing derogatory about it. I have about ten coworkers out of eighty that could be described as the "big, heavy built guy who laughs a lot". Out of those ten, eight of them are bald. Out of those eight, seven of them wear the same uniform. Two even have the same name. But there is only one black guy, and it'll save me about two minutes of description to say "for help with that item, you'll have to talk to (name omitted), he's the big black guy in (this department)".

In an area such as mine, where the population is pretty overwhelmingly white, race can be a big time saver when describing someone. To keep using my store as an example, out of eighty-some coworkers, I only have three who are Asian, two who are Middle-Eastern, and one who is black. Every other worker in the store is white. So you can see how using race as a descriptor is simply handy and not used with any intention of deprecation or definition.

That being said, I will use other identifying factors if they're handier. Female/male, tall/short, bald/long-haired, any other physical description that will make it easy to separate someone out of the crowd quickly and with little confusion. The simple fact of the matter is that their skin is a different colour, and we as humans can see that and tell them apart from other people by that colour.

[guywithashovel]

maybe not but personally I'd wonder why skin color was the first thing you thought of as a descriptor.

my coworker Shawn is just that, my coworker Shawn, as are Ben, Karrie, Marlo, and Mikki.

one is African(as in born in Nigeria), one is American(southern), one is Cherokee, and one is Japanese. Two are also Irish, two are German, one is French-canadian, two are hunters, three are gamers,one is single the rest are married(though one has a same-gender partner) and one was in the army and went to military school. I don't say my Nigerian coworker, or my Cherokee coworker, because to me they don't need a descriptor, or a label beyond coworker if I'm telling you a story about Ben or Mikki, or Marlo does it really matter?

I think of it for the same reason I would think of describing them by their hair color, height, or eye color. Because it's there, and because it's there, I notice it. Skin color and ethnicity are just two of many features we all have.

Maybe you don't say "Nigerian coworker," but you could if you wanted to, and unless there was something in your tone of voice or body language to suggest you meant something bad about it, there would be nothing wrong with it. There's nothing sinister about the fact that we notice a person's skin color or ethnicity. Those features are there for us to see, and it's fine to notice that.

[HYHYBT]

That's the point: it's *not* "defining" anyone by anything. It's grabbing on to a convenient, readily-apparent descriptor. If there are a lot of people, it simply works best to pick the most noticeable thing that doesn't apply to others. "The woman with all those kids," "the guy sitting by the door," "the black woman"... or, in other contexts, describing the car rather than the driver. It's not making a judgement of any kind; it's just finding a (essentially neutral) label convenient to the current purpose.

So, taking that as the pure fact that it is in at least some cases, what reason remains for saying that using race as a descriptor is *necessarily* racist?

[Andara Bledin]

If you are specifically pointing someone out to another, and their skin tone is the most obvious difference, then it's not.

If, however, you choose to mention race when it is completely irrelevant to the discussion, then it absolutely is. The vast majority of forum posts and chat comments that mention race have no reason to do so other than to associate that race with the activity being described, both positive and negative.

And, yes, that would include political commentary about how the US is run by a bunch of old white guys. Not every older white male has the negative qualities being ascribed, nor are all of those involved old, white, or male.

^-.-^

[HYHYBT]

Thanks; that's really all I was going for.