Your position on the matter is irrelevant. When you are trying to redefine a word to suit your narrative you are buckshatting. When a conversation cannot be had because the definition of words cannot be agreed upon, you are buckshatting. When you derail threads with tedious irrelevant points, you are buckshatting.
Except I am not misusing the word. Someone said this...
"I am not denying that racism exists. I question if it is as systemic as it once was, and also believe that as our society continues to become more diverse, it now comes in many shapes and sizes and exhibited by different cultures in other ways."
Agent's response was this...
"It looks less superficially so due to the overton window and general stigma against public displays of racism, but its prominence is rather obvious when the clear white nationalist candidate of choice is not too far from winning the presidency. As you mention, just take a look at the demographics of the people voting for and against him."
He is saying that people are less overt with their racism, but its apparent that racism is still there as exampled by Trump's popularity. I jump in and say that his popularity might be due to other factors. A Trump voter could be a non racist, and still vote Trump for their hatred of Hillary. He shifted the argument from the original point where someone was talking about systemic racism, to saying something else.
So when I point that out, Agent responds with this...
"
No, by pointing out society is generally more demographically diverse than it used to be, he's clearly implying there simply aren't as many racists for it be as systemic. But judging by the demographics of this election, it's pretty obvious all the older white males are voting for the white nationalist candidate."
Now, this is where I question if he understands what systemic racism is. It is possible to have a system run by people that 100% are not racist, and the system still be biased and racist. It would be systemic racism even though none of the people are racist. Its also equally possible to have 100% of the people running the system be racist and the system to not be racist and thus not have systemic racism. His post seems to me to imply that he might think that he is using systemic to mean prevalent which it does not, but often misused as being synonymous.
He then seems to be on the right track when he says this...
"Systemic X is an emergent property of systems with a lot of aggregate X. "
That is to say that if you have systems being built and run by racists, that those racists are likely to make or modify the system to fit their views. Totally logical. So I ask him what system(s) are racist.
He then responds in
this post questioning my understanding and giving a hypothetical example of what he means. The summary of that post is to say that if a large group of people who are racist are in charge of job interviews, they will not pick people of the race they are part of. That is an example of prolific and or widespread racism, but is not an example of systemic. The reason for that is because there is not defined rules and or regulations that discriminate other than the inherent racism of the interviewer. The only way you can claim it to be a system is if you claim Society as the system. In his very next post (
887) he says exactly that.
By saying Society is the system, then literally everything done by people in a society becomes systemic. Because of his previous point that people are not overtly racist because of social pressures, then all of society is racist and it cannot be directly observed. And I am the one being pedantic.