One is big and one is small, one has lots of people one has fewer, and they have different histories in their formation. You see China as the victim of the imperial West and Israel as an extension of that imperial West into the Middle East. Got it.
Does any of that mean that itās acceptable to be racist to one but not the other? Does China get more of a hall-pass because of their previous mistreatment? If so, why shouldnāt the Jewish people, who faced an attempted extermination, get that same pass? Why wouldnāt the Kenyan government get a pass for their mistreatment of LGBTQ people since theyāve long been the subject of imperialism and racism too?
Again, this is inconsistent. I hold all governments to the same standard regardless of any previous mistreatment the people have faced. Why should I not? Why fall into the bigotry of low expectations?
You can compare any two things, even things that are wildly different. They donāt have to be a certain level of similar to compare and contrast two things. I can just as easily compare sinophobia to antisemitic as I could antisemitic to anti-black racism. In this case, they are not even that different from each other. Both are bigotries towards a group of people that are based on perceived race and correlated factors.
What more questions would it raise? Why is it forbidden to compare two different kinds of racism against each other? Is one kind ok but the other isnāt? How does any of this relate to bigotry against an institution like a government instead of against people or groups of people? Since they donāt have personhood, what does it even mean to be racist against an institution?
I feel like you wonāt answer because you havenāt so far, but what words have I put in your mouth? If you think I have misunderstood your argument then clarify it.
hang on, why did you feel the need to change my language around israeli and chinese history?
I didnāt say china was a victim of the imperial west. I didnāt say israel was an extension of the same.
thatās what i mean when i keep asking you to stop putting words in my mouth. i type some stuff up in a post in reply to you and you change a few words around to change my meanings and start attacking what you changed around.
iām not going to respond in detail to your post because itās just more of what i described. it really seems like youre trying to get me to fight you on ground you define but you do so in response to things i wrote.
if you want to have a fight with someone about the stuff you wrote, make a post about it and see if anyone takes you up on it instead of mangling my words to suit your desires.
China was an imperial holding of several different states, had its people taken in chattel slavery and gained independence and prosperity during the 20th century. Israel is a European settler state.
And my shortening was:
You see China as the victim of the imperial West and Israel as an extension of that imperial West into the Middle East. Got it.
How are those meaningfully different? Were Chinese people not victims of those imperial holders when they were subjected to chattle slavery? Those holders were in the west right? Therefore they were the victims of imperialism from the west. Israel as a settler state is also the act of an imperial West right? Europe (in the west) used imperialism to settle in the middle east. Those arenāt new words with new ideas in your mouth, it was a restatement of what you said in fewer words. What specifically do you disagree with? You didnāt use the word victim or West, but those are both true logical extensions of what you said, right?
I wanted you to defend your claims the same way I would anyone else. Just because youāve been unwilling to provide any evidence at all doesnāt make it my fault. I provided you evidence yesterday you never even mentioned or responded to. I steel-manned your argument into a syllogism for you just to help you understand the argument you were making, the flaws with it, and how it is being inconsistently applied. I didnāt have to do any of that, I could have just called you a ādumb tankieā and walked away if my goal was to dunk on you or shadow box.
As I said before, the reason I chose to do all that is because claims like you expressed are detrimental to the cause I believe you and I share. Maybe you donāt, I donāt know you, but I certainly get the impression that you and I share similar sentiments towards capitalism, imperialism, and the end goals of improving the lives of everyone on earth through fundamentally different and better institutions than we have today. Claims like the one you made chain us to the worst attempts at making a better world. Defending the authoritarian governments that spawned from them shows an (in my opinion unacceptable) defeatism towards fundamental human rights and freedoms. When claims like yours speak the loudest, we risk being forever bound to those mistakes of the past and being forced to bend over backwards to find reasons to excuse unacceptable behavior.
I wonāt support limiting freedom of information, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, or freedom of protest even if the government is made of people who have been subjected to objectively terrible treatment. Being the victim doesnāt give you the right to victimize your citizens.
You donāt have to respond, no one is making you, but I keep trying to get you to back up your original claim and you just canāt seem to do it.
I didnāt say China was a victim of the imperial west because a person would at the very least have to include Japan in the west for that to make any sense. A person could make that statement but I didnāt.
I didnāt say that Israel was an extension of the imperial west because that would condense the interactions between Zionist formations before its creation and Israel as a state afterwards and the Anglosphere and Europe into an unhelpful mess.
I didnāt use language like āI seeā because opinion or perspective donāt enter into the conversation. Anyone can look at those statements and recognize that theyāre true and relatively uncolored by āpoliticalā thought. That Israel is a settler state might bug some liberals, but I was careful to try and use neutral language.
I did that because I think it should be clear to anyone that a comparison between Sinophobia and antisemitism is absurd. A person doesnāt need to be a Marxist to recognize that. A doctrinaire liberal would recognize it. Nazis literally made whole branches of race science to accommodate the fact that they recognized it.
The nations and people are wildly different and responding to someone pointing that out when you try to draw parallels between discrimination and hate leveled at them by saying that person is handwaving is deeply unserious.
I didnāt say China was a victim of the imperial west because a person would at the very least have to include Japan in the west for that to make any sense. A person could make that statement but I didnāt.
Thatās fair enough. The reason why I didnāt include that is that most people I know include modern day Japan in āthe westā since thatās where they have the closest ties and it was more modern than I thought you were talking about given the talk of the long history of the region vs Israel.
I didnāt say that Israel was an extension of the imperial west because that would condense the interactions between Zionist formations before its creation and Israel as a state afterwards and the Anglosphere and Europe into an unhelpful mess.
I didnāt use language like āI seeā because opinion or perspective donāt enter into the conversation. Anyone can look at those statements and recognize that theyāre true and relatively uncolored by āpoliticalā thought. That Israel is a settler state might bug some liberals, but I was careful to try and use neutral language.
Thatās fine. The history of that area of the world more than most others is a complicated mess. Itās reasonably neutral language and I agree with the accuracy of history being referenced.
I did that because I think it should be clear to anyone that a comparison between Sinophobia and antisemitism is absurd. A person doesnāt need to be a Marxist to recognize that. A doctrinaire liberal would recognize it. Nazis literally made whole branches of race science to accommodate the fact that they recognized it.
So here is part of where you are losing me.
First, how exactly does this connect to the previous statements about their histories? What about their histories being different precludes us from comparing and contrasting them. Is it only in the context of historical racism that we canāt compare them? Could I compare their GDPs? Can I compare their government structures? I am not seeing the connection you are trying to draw between the differences in their history and our inability to compare the racism their peoples have / are facing.
As stated before, I also donāt see the connection you are trying to to draw between the people who make up the majority of a particular institution and the institution itself. I have no reason to think institutions have feelings or personhood. I donāt care about the instructions themselves other than the good they do for their people and the people around them. Other than making up some or most of the workers in that institution, what is the connection between the instruction itself and the people?
Second, why is it absurd to compare two similar things? We can easily compare the racism faced by Chinese people with racism faced by Jewish people with racism faced by black people. And how does this tie into the correlation I believe you are drawing between the people and the government? Is it that you believe one group is overall on the receiving end of the mistreatment and the other is overall on the giving side of mistreatment?
I donāt agree that anyone or even most people would find it absurd to compare two things with so much overlap. Both China and Israel are countries. Both have predominate people groups that have faced historical racism and mistreatment. Sinophobia and antisemitism are both objectively bad things that cause harm based on inherited characteristics. I donāt see why this is so preposterous to you. And I donāt see how the history of their mistreatment changes anything?
If I can ask directly, does being the victim of racism or any other mistreatment give you any more leeway in causing harm to others? If not then I donāt understand why bringing up their history matters. And if so, why should I let people who have been victims victimize others? Again, isnāt this just bigotry of low expectations?
The nations and people are wildly different and responding to someone pointing that out when you try to draw parallels between discrimination and hate leveled at them by saying that person is handwaving is deeply unserious.
The reason I said hand waving is because you have answered very few questions directly. To your credit, you have done so in this reply.
What it sounds like you are saying (you can correct me if youād like) is that itās unfair to compare the actions of these two governments because their histories are so different. That itās fair to criticize Israel and doing so isnāt antisemitic, but not fair to criticize China and doing so is sinophobic. And the reason for that (again as far as I can tell) is their different histories of oppression. My problem here is I donāt agree that criticism of a government = criticism of a people group and I donāt agree that people groups who have historically faced oppression should be less open to being criticized for bad actions.
When people say āapples and orangesā itās not because two things are irreconcilably different, itās because accepting and recognizing their differences and describing them on their own terms is much more important than using one to talk about the other.
Both apples and oranges are round, both grow on trees, both are fruits. I could probably think for a while and list off a bunch of similarities. Theyāre also fundamentally different to the point that a person canāt effectively use an understanding on one to transmit an understanding of the other.
I canāt tell you about the flavor, texture or smell of an orange using your understanding of the flavor, texture or smell of an apple as a baseline. I could try but ultimately the better way would be for you to bite into an orange. My comparison wouldnāt be useful.
You can and did compare antisemitism and Sinophobia. I responded that the comparison isnāt useful because of the vast differences. We went back and forth about this and here we are.
I said that it wouldnāt be useful to compare the two because it wouldnāt transmit understanding. With each parallel a person tries to draw, myriad differences and fractal relationships arise and must be dealt with.
We send a simple particle into the cloud chamber and an array of arcs, lines and spirals must now be accounted for.
I do not think itās unfair to compare the two, I think itās not useful. The context of that usefulness is our discussion and the measure of that usefulness is the comparisons ability to transmit understanding. As evidence Iād present our discussion in which it does not transmit understanding.
I chose not to just say the same thing someone else said but: there are plenty of criticisms of the Israeli and Chinese governments with varying degrees of antisemitism and Sinophobia as their underpinnings.
āChinese people canāt talk about tiannamenā isnāt one whose underpinnings have zero degrees of Sinophobia. I explained how a while back.
Thatās a great analogy and it certainly helps clear up your view!
there are plenty of criticisms of the Israeli and Chinese governments with varying degrees of antisemitism and Sinophobia as their underpinnings.
By āunderpinningsā, are you saying racism is the underlying cause for the criticism / the public statement of that criticism or just one of the underlying causes. Is it a ābut-forā in that a person wouldnāt make those criticisms but-for their underlying racism? Would it be possible for a person without those underlying racist attitudes or feelings to have the same criticisms of the actions of that government?
So, here is what I believe you are saying: People have underlying racism towards Chinese people that motivates them to make criticisms of the Chinese government (that they couldnāt or wouldnāt make but-for that underlying racism?).
Depending on a lot of specifics I could agree. If a but-for is what you are arguing, I donāt think I could agree with that, at least in the specific context of the original claim regarding TS. You have pointed to some racist attitudes towards Chinese people that correlate or overlap with the TS claim (not knowing their history, not standing up against an unfair government, etc) but, in my opinion, those are tangentially related. The lack of historical knowledge would be a direct result of the actions of the government in repressing that knowledge. The claim is not that the information is freely available without consequences or attempts to hide / manipulate it and the people are putting their fingers in their ears and saying āla la laā. Not standing up to an unjust government could be argued from the perspective of today but was exactly what the people in TS were trying to do. It wouldnāt make sense for someone who really believed Chinese people were too docile to stand up to a government to claim they stood up to the government and now the government is hiding the information about it. The expected outcome from that belief doesnāt match the nature of this claim.
If itās not a but-for, then it could just as easily be valid criticism of the Chinese government that, by happenstance alone, overlaps with racist claims. You may find this unlikely, but if itās possible for a person without that animus to have the same criticisms then you would need to believe you understand that specific personās motivates to make the claim. It would no longer be a blanket-true statement that these claims are coming from racist attitudes.
That said, itās theoretically possible for there to be a claim that is but-for the underlying racism. I would have to give an analogy that might muddy the waters again, but Iām sure you could imagine one given any people group and racist claims. The issue here is that I donāt believe you have sufficiently shown that it would not be possible for a person absent racist animus to claim that the Chinese government attempts to hide and discourage open and free discussions, information, and memorials surrounding the events of TS. Their mere proximity to those racist attitudes isnāt sufficient.
Underpinning is both a noun and a verb. When a structure is internally sound, but is in danger of falling over maybe because the ground underneath it is washed away or unstable, a person might install supports called underpinnings in a process calledā¦ underpinning.
I did not say that racism is the underlying cause of people making statements about China. In the sentence directly after the one you quoted I specified how what I said related explicitly to our topic of conversation.
I want to push back some on your language regarding racism. Racism exists in forms that do not show animosity and instead simply reify existing racist ideas, structures, history and values. A person doesnāt need animus to exhibit racism. A long time ago in this very thread I stated that fact.
This was your original comment (parts that are struck-out are not relevant):
I think there were two links to the gore page people post and a couple of responses saying you couldnāt even talk about tiannamen square.
The first is clear what it is, Iād call the second one sinophobic because itās patently untrue and is basically an anti-china buzzword now. Idk why mods did what they did.
Your argument was that the statement, āyou couldnāt even talk about tiannamen squareā was sinophobic. And the reason provided was that itās:
patently untrue
basically an anti-china buzzword now.
Saying āthat statement isnāt one that has zero sinophobic underpinningsā is quite a bit different. I am not arguing that there are 0 racist āunderpinningsā. But, if the standard for racism is āhas at least one racist underpinningsā then I think you may have an easier time writing the list of statements that are not racist. If that is the standard, then saying something is racist risks losing all meaning since almost everything would be.
I have been saying that it is not sinophobic because it is:
not demonstrated to be untrue, much less patently. You havenāt provided any evidence for it being untrue and itās certainly not clearly, or without a doubt, untrue.
at best anti-ccp not anti-chinese. It is a popular criticism of China pointed to by both those who have clearly racist motivations and intents and those who do not.
a bad framework to determine if something is sinophobic/racist or not. The truthfulness of a statement doesnāt impact its racism. There are true things that have racist underpinnings and false things that do not. Even if something is a popular buzzword used predominantly by people who have the worst motives, it would not be inherently racist.
Youāre correct that animus is not required for something to be racist. However, itās hard to imagine that you intended to mean āthe claim is sinophobic because itās patently untrue and has a non-zero number of racist underpinnings but without animus.ā
One is big and one is small, one has lots of people one has fewer, and they have different histories in their formation. You see China as the victim of the imperial West and Israel as an extension of that imperial West into the Middle East. Got it.
Does any of that mean that itās acceptable to be racist to one but not the other? Does China get more of a hall-pass because of their previous mistreatment? If so, why shouldnāt the Jewish people, who faced an attempted extermination, get that same pass? Why wouldnāt the Kenyan government get a pass for their mistreatment of LGBTQ people since theyāve long been the subject of imperialism and racism too?
Again, this is inconsistent. I hold all governments to the same standard regardless of any previous mistreatment the people have faced. Why should I not? Why fall into the bigotry of low expectations?
You can compare any two things, even things that are wildly different. They donāt have to be a certain level of similar to compare and contrast two things. I can just as easily compare sinophobia to antisemitic as I could antisemitic to anti-black racism. In this case, they are not even that different from each other. Both are bigotries towards a group of people that are based on perceived race and correlated factors.
What more questions would it raise? Why is it forbidden to compare two different kinds of racism against each other? Is one kind ok but the other isnāt? How does any of this relate to bigotry against an institution like a government instead of against people or groups of people? Since they donāt have personhood, what does it even mean to be racist against an institution?
I feel like you wonāt answer because you havenāt so far, but what words have I put in your mouth? If you think I have misunderstood your argument then clarify it.
hang on, why did you feel the need to change my language around israeli and chinese history?
I didnāt say china was a victim of the imperial west. I didnāt say israel was an extension of the same.
thatās what i mean when i keep asking you to stop putting words in my mouth. i type some stuff up in a post in reply to you and you change a few words around to change my meanings and start attacking what you changed around.
iām not going to respond in detail to your post because itās just more of what i described. it really seems like youre trying to get me to fight you on ground you define but you do so in response to things i wrote.
if you want to have a fight with someone about the stuff you wrote, make a post about it and see if anyone takes you up on it instead of mangling my words to suit your desires.
You said:
And my shortening was:
How are those meaningfully different? Were Chinese people not victims of those imperial holders when they were subjected to chattle slavery? Those holders were in the west right? Therefore they were the victims of imperialism from the west. Israel as a settler state is also the act of an imperial West right? Europe (in the west) used imperialism to settle in the middle east. Those arenāt new words with new ideas in your mouth, it was a restatement of what you said in fewer words. What specifically do you disagree with? You didnāt use the word victim or West, but those are both true logical extensions of what you said, right?
I wanted you to defend your claims the same way I would anyone else. Just because youāve been unwilling to provide any evidence at all doesnāt make it my fault. I provided you evidence yesterday you never even mentioned or responded to. I steel-manned your argument into a syllogism for you just to help you understand the argument you were making, the flaws with it, and how it is being inconsistently applied. I didnāt have to do any of that, I could have just called you a ādumb tankieā and walked away if my goal was to dunk on you or shadow box.
As I said before, the reason I chose to do all that is because claims like you expressed are detrimental to the cause I believe you and I share. Maybe you donāt, I donāt know you, but I certainly get the impression that you and I share similar sentiments towards capitalism, imperialism, and the end goals of improving the lives of everyone on earth through fundamentally different and better institutions than we have today. Claims like the one you made chain us to the worst attempts at making a better world. Defending the authoritarian governments that spawned from them shows an (in my opinion unacceptable) defeatism towards fundamental human rights and freedoms. When claims like yours speak the loudest, we risk being forever bound to those mistakes of the past and being forced to bend over backwards to find reasons to excuse unacceptable behavior.
I wonāt support limiting freedom of information, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, or freedom of protest even if the government is made of people who have been subjected to objectively terrible treatment. Being the victim doesnāt give you the right to victimize your citizens.
You donāt have to respond, no one is making you, but I keep trying to get you to back up your original claim and you just canāt seem to do it.
I didnāt say China was a victim of the imperial west because a person would at the very least have to include Japan in the west for that to make any sense. A person could make that statement but I didnāt.
I didnāt say that Israel was an extension of the imperial west because that would condense the interactions between Zionist formations before its creation and Israel as a state afterwards and the Anglosphere and Europe into an unhelpful mess.
I didnāt use language like āI seeā because opinion or perspective donāt enter into the conversation. Anyone can look at those statements and recognize that theyāre true and relatively uncolored by āpoliticalā thought. That Israel is a settler state might bug some liberals, but I was careful to try and use neutral language.
I did that because I think it should be clear to anyone that a comparison between Sinophobia and antisemitism is absurd. A person doesnāt need to be a Marxist to recognize that. A doctrinaire liberal would recognize it. Nazis literally made whole branches of race science to accommodate the fact that they recognized it.
The nations and people are wildly different and responding to someone pointing that out when you try to draw parallels between discrimination and hate leveled at them by saying that person is handwaving is deeply unserious.
Thatās fair enough. The reason why I didnāt include that is that most people I know include modern day Japan in āthe westā since thatās where they have the closest ties and it was more modern than I thought you were talking about given the talk of the long history of the region vs Israel.
Thatās fine. The history of that area of the world more than most others is a complicated mess. Itās reasonably neutral language and I agree with the accuracy of history being referenced.
So here is part of where you are losing me.
First, how exactly does this connect to the previous statements about their histories? What about their histories being different precludes us from comparing and contrasting them. Is it only in the context of historical racism that we canāt compare them? Could I compare their GDPs? Can I compare their government structures? I am not seeing the connection you are trying to draw between the differences in their history and our inability to compare the racism their peoples have / are facing.
As stated before, I also donāt see the connection you are trying to to draw between the people who make up the majority of a particular institution and the institution itself. I have no reason to think institutions have feelings or personhood. I donāt care about the instructions themselves other than the good they do for their people and the people around them. Other than making up some or most of the workers in that institution, what is the connection between the instruction itself and the people?
Second, why is it absurd to compare two similar things? We can easily compare the racism faced by Chinese people with racism faced by Jewish people with racism faced by black people. And how does this tie into the correlation I believe you are drawing between the people and the government? Is it that you believe one group is overall on the receiving end of the mistreatment and the other is overall on the giving side of mistreatment?
I donāt agree that anyone or even most people would find it absurd to compare two things with so much overlap. Both China and Israel are countries. Both have predominate people groups that have faced historical racism and mistreatment. Sinophobia and antisemitism are both objectively bad things that cause harm based on inherited characteristics. I donāt see why this is so preposterous to you. And I donāt see how the history of their mistreatment changes anything?
If I can ask directly, does being the victim of racism or any other mistreatment give you any more leeway in causing harm to others? If not then I donāt understand why bringing up their history matters. And if so, why should I let people who have been victims victimize others? Again, isnāt this just bigotry of low expectations?
The reason I said hand waving is because you have answered very few questions directly. To your credit, you have done so in this reply.
What it sounds like you are saying (you can correct me if youād like) is that itās unfair to compare the actions of these two governments because their histories are so different. That itās fair to criticize Israel and doing so isnāt antisemitic, but not fair to criticize China and doing so is sinophobic. And the reason for that (again as far as I can tell) is their different histories of oppression. My problem here is I donāt agree that criticism of a government = criticism of a people group and I donāt agree that people groups who have historically faced oppression should be less open to being criticized for bad actions.
When people say āapples and orangesā itās not because two things are irreconcilably different, itās because accepting and recognizing their differences and describing them on their own terms is much more important than using one to talk about the other.
Both apples and oranges are round, both grow on trees, both are fruits. I could probably think for a while and list off a bunch of similarities. Theyāre also fundamentally different to the point that a person canāt effectively use an understanding on one to transmit an understanding of the other.
I canāt tell you about the flavor, texture or smell of an orange using your understanding of the flavor, texture or smell of an apple as a baseline. I could try but ultimately the better way would be for you to bite into an orange. My comparison wouldnāt be useful.
You can and did compare antisemitism and Sinophobia. I responded that the comparison isnāt useful because of the vast differences. We went back and forth about this and here we are.
I said that it wouldnāt be useful to compare the two because it wouldnāt transmit understanding. With each parallel a person tries to draw, myriad differences and fractal relationships arise and must be dealt with.
We send a simple particle into the cloud chamber and an array of arcs, lines and spirals must now be accounted for.
I do not think itās unfair to compare the two, I think itās not useful. The context of that usefulness is our discussion and the measure of that usefulness is the comparisons ability to transmit understanding. As evidence Iād present our discussion in which it does not transmit understanding.
I chose not to just say the same thing someone else said but: there are plenty of criticisms of the Israeli and Chinese governments with varying degrees of antisemitism and Sinophobia as their underpinnings.
āChinese people canāt talk about tiannamenā isnāt one whose underpinnings have zero degrees of Sinophobia. I explained how a while back.
Thatās a great analogy and it certainly helps clear up your view!
By āunderpinningsā, are you saying racism is the underlying cause for the criticism / the public statement of that criticism or just one of the underlying causes. Is it a ābut-forā in that a person wouldnāt make those criticisms but-for their underlying racism? Would it be possible for a person without those underlying racist attitudes or feelings to have the same criticisms of the actions of that government?
So, here is what I believe you are saying: People have underlying racism towards Chinese people that motivates them to make criticisms of the Chinese government (that they couldnāt or wouldnāt make but-for that underlying racism?).
Depending on a lot of specifics I could agree. If a but-for is what you are arguing, I donāt think I could agree with that, at least in the specific context of the original claim regarding TS. You have pointed to some racist attitudes towards Chinese people that correlate or overlap with the TS claim (not knowing their history, not standing up against an unfair government, etc) but, in my opinion, those are tangentially related. The lack of historical knowledge would be a direct result of the actions of the government in repressing that knowledge. The claim is not that the information is freely available without consequences or attempts to hide / manipulate it and the people are putting their fingers in their ears and saying āla la laā. Not standing up to an unjust government could be argued from the perspective of today but was exactly what the people in TS were trying to do. It wouldnāt make sense for someone who really believed Chinese people were too docile to stand up to a government to claim they stood up to the government and now the government is hiding the information about it. The expected outcome from that belief doesnāt match the nature of this claim.
If itās not a but-for, then it could just as easily be valid criticism of the Chinese government that, by happenstance alone, overlaps with racist claims. You may find this unlikely, but if itās possible for a person without that animus to have the same criticisms then you would need to believe you understand that specific personās motivates to make the claim. It would no longer be a blanket-true statement that these claims are coming from racist attitudes.
That said, itās theoretically possible for there to be a claim that is but-for the underlying racism. I would have to give an analogy that might muddy the waters again, but Iām sure you could imagine one given any people group and racist claims. The issue here is that I donāt believe you have sufficiently shown that it would not be possible for a person absent racist animus to claim that the Chinese government attempts to hide and discourage open and free discussions, information, and memorials surrounding the events of TS. Their mere proximity to those racist attitudes isnāt sufficient.
Underpinning is both a noun and a verb. When a structure is internally sound, but is in danger of falling over maybe because the ground underneath it is washed away or unstable, a person might install supports called underpinnings in a process calledā¦ underpinning.
I did not say that racism is the underlying cause of people making statements about China. In the sentence directly after the one you quoted I specified how what I said related explicitly to our topic of conversation.
I want to push back some on your language regarding racism. Racism exists in forms that do not show animosity and instead simply reify existing racist ideas, structures, history and values. A person doesnāt need animus to exhibit racism. A long time ago in this very thread I stated that fact.
This was your original comment (parts that are struck-out are not relevant):
Your argument was that the statement, āyou couldnāt even talk about tiannamen squareā was sinophobic. And the reason provided was that itās:
patently untrue
basically an anti-china buzzword now.
Saying āthat statement isnāt one that has zero sinophobic underpinningsā is quite a bit different. I am not arguing that there are 0 racist āunderpinningsā. But, if the standard for racism is āhas at least one racist underpinningsā then I think you may have an easier time writing the list of statements that are not racist. If that is the standard, then saying something is racist risks losing all meaning since almost everything would be.
I have been saying that it is not sinophobic because it is:
not demonstrated to be untrue, much less patently. You havenāt provided any evidence for it being untrue and itās certainly not clearly, or without a doubt, untrue.
at best anti-ccp not anti-chinese. It is a popular criticism of China pointed to by both those who have clearly racist motivations and intents and those who do not.
a bad framework to determine if something is sinophobic/racist or not. The truthfulness of a statement doesnāt impact its racism. There are true things that have racist underpinnings and false things that do not. Even if something is a popular buzzword used predominantly by people who have the worst motives, it would not be inherently racist.
Youāre correct that animus is not required for something to be racist. However, itās hard to imagine that you intended to mean āthe claim is sinophobic because itās patently untrue and has a non-zero number of racist underpinnings but without animus.ā