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For the most part, the racism in these RaceFail thingies is NOT of the "I hate blacks/Latinos/women/whatever" type. It's a far more subtle form -- "I don't THINK about blacks/Latinos/women/whatever -- they're just not part of my mental model." There's no hostility, there's "just" ignorance.
When talking about GLBT issues, there are two terms: homophobia (which, let's not forget, means aversion to gay topics, not fear -- "-phobia" is NOT a terms which refers only to fear, but also to any other form of aversion, such as disgust, formulated as "that's not natural"), and heteronormativity.
People who are familiar with and study racism are aware that "racism" includes actions and attitudes which are analogous to both of those terms. People who aren't familiar with it are only familiar with the first term.
In nearly every case in these RaceFail iterations, the racism is of the second form: not even THINKING about minorities, and just assuming that the white male experience is universal -- that whatever is true for me as a white male is universally true for everybody. It involves no hatred or aversion -- it simply involves just plain not thinking about the issue in the first place.
And in all those cases, when the person has that pointed out, they point out that weren't working out of hatred, aversion, or malice, and that they are therefore not racist, and that those calling them racist are totally off-base.
Would there be an advantage to adding another term to the debate, more clearly similar to "heteronormative", to avoid this confusion? I have no idea what that term would be, but it seems to me that it might be useful.
When talking about GLBT issues, there are two terms: homophobia (which, let's not forget, means aversion to gay topics, not fear -- "-phobia" is NOT a terms which refers only to fear, but also to any other form of aversion, such as disgust, formulated as "that's not natural"), and heteronormativity.
People who are familiar with and study racism are aware that "racism" includes actions and attitudes which are analogous to both of those terms. People who aren't familiar with it are only familiar with the first term.
In nearly every case in these RaceFail iterations, the racism is of the second form: not even THINKING about minorities, and just assuming that the white male experience is universal -- that whatever is true for me as a white male is universally true for everybody. It involves no hatred or aversion -- it simply involves just plain not thinking about the issue in the first place.
And in all those cases, when the person has that pointed out, they point out that weren't working out of hatred, aversion, or malice, and that they are therefore not racist, and that those calling them racist are totally off-base.
Would there be an advantage to adding another term to the debate, more clearly similar to "heteronormative", to avoid this confusion? I have no idea what that term would be, but it seems to me that it might be useful.