Spike Lee - "Black People Can't Be Racist - Discuss

[tishaLA]

40. Dictionaries are not written in a vacuum

They always come with biases, usually biases that favor white straight men, so pulling out dictionary definitions of complex ideas or phenomena seems like spitting int0 the wind to me.

I'm an academic, so establishing terminological meanings is always important in my work and the work of others--and that's because the same term doesn't mean the same thing in different disciplines or even within a given discipline. For example, there is a general consensus in most academic circles about the meaning of racism that aligns with Mr Lee's definition; this is the definition sociologists, anthropologists, etc tend to use. But some even within those disciplines are even more specific about its meaning, focusing less on the systemic nature of racism than on the effects. And that is just one version of those differences.

In short, nobody has an exclusive hold on the definition, especially not a random dictionary (I'm sure the OED has a different, probably better one), but some definitions, like those established by those who study race and racism, are better than others.