Re: Racism

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 bull***. To be more precise, it's an
over-generalization.

[...]

Brian
.

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