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Re: Racism

Subject: Re: Racism
From: "Brian M. Scott" <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:49:02 -0500
Newsgroups: sci.lang
On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:00:19 +0200, "Jukka K. Korpela"
<jkorpela@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:0jBlh.12967$wI4.10939@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
sci.lang:

> Scripsit Brian M. Scott:

>>> No, these days "racism" is a general-purpose curse word
>>> that has no  denotation; it expresses its user's strongly
>>> emotional disapproval of  something.

>> Depends very much on who's using it;

> Not any more. As soon as a word has been widely taken into
> curse use, it  becomes virtually impossible to use it in
> any other way, except perhaps in  limited circles, such
> as scholars who can really agree on using such a word  as
> a term.

While it has certainly started down that road, I don't agree
that 'racist' has reached that point.  'Fascist', yes;
'racist', no.

[...]

>> I know a fair number of people, myself included, who
>> haven't even generalized it as far as Joachim suggests.

> You still cannot use the word "racism" without being
> understood as expressing just your disapproval of
> something. 

That's bullshit.  To be more precise, it's an
over-generalization.

[...]

Brian

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