re: Have we discussed Jordan Peeles overtly racist statements?

quote:

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He says he doesn't see himself casting a white dude in a lead role. That he can cast black people in lead roles. That he has nothing against white people, but that he's seen that movie.

That's not racist. That's just saying he'd rather write and direct movies centered around a black protagonist.

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As weird of a statement as this might be - this now depends upon what you define as racism.

If you consider racism to be treating people differently because of their skin color then yes, it is racist. Is it a primary obstruction for the white people who might otherwise have more opportunity for movies they want to see or movie roles they wish to be considered for? No, not in a meaningful way.

Should we worry about this? I think that's a personal decision. If you disagree enough with the intersectional definition of racism to avoid his movies then I think you should because you are avoiding this in the same way people who dislike Chick-fil-A in the 2000s or South African apartheid in the 80s wished to withhold their support from behaviors they regard as wrong.

At some level personal decisions will sometimes be altered by race. People have a tendency to have an impression of a personal interaction or a political event or a work of art be altered by the racial and other demographic characteristics of the parties involved. Technically that is racism - or at least an application of some discrimination in the process of forming an opinion.

Everyone is guilty of this at some level unless they are unable to mentally categorize groups.

So the approach of people to discussing racism in general is probably not likely to be useful if they consider the lack of racism to be a theoretical situation in which race was not a variable - because by that logic we indeed are all racists. I agree however that intersectional arguments which assume only people in power can be racists are also wrong because they devalue the importance of good behavior at the individual or collective level. People also do not lose all social or interpersonal power if those people happen to be minorities - in fact, sometimes they gain power and indeed we all can be considered minorities in some demographic respects (so this rapidly becomes a useless oppression competition because social advantage can be received by pointing out the ways in which every group or individual is a minority).