Love. This. I get SO annoyed, cranky, upset when I hear this one. But, I have never known how to rebut it.

Response: I don’t feel like you explicitly answered any of my questions. It’s sort of like all your answers were very political… I get the impression that you don’t want to put any limitations on the subject in question.

Asking about the first definition was just a check… to see if you’d avoid saying, unequivocally,”no, the definition doesn’t apply to that.”… which, in fact, you did as I expected… which confirms, in my opinion, a level of deceit, IMO.

Pan stated: How is the source disreputable?

Response: Copyright date of the dictionary that comes from and the fact that it’s the only dictionary which carries the definition in question. It’s a copy of the “Newspeak” dictionary. You have to be cautious of dictionaries.

Pan stated: but you have no reason to assume that, out of all the definitions of defensive, that’s the one meant to be used in racism 101

Response: Well, beyond this, I don’t think there’s any reason to continue this conversation. I don’t feel that you’ve been honest… if the psychology definition was truly the definition intended to be used, you’d of had no reason to cite the other definitions (or have this long of a conversation on this topic) because there’d be no phrases like “I feel it means this”, etc. You’d simply cite the definition that’s being used. However, because, for you, I believe it’s more about being right than being forthright, you never just admitted that you didn’t know.

Regarding the definition chosen, that’s really not possible either. That’s a specialized use of the term. Use in this situation is out of context.

I kind of feel sorry for you guys for buying into this stuff. I know racism is real. However, that you’re hiding behind what amounts to nonsense (by definition because there’s no clarity of definitions) just seems to be self-fulfilling… At this moment, as a person open to hear the more nuanced perspectives on racism, I’m walking away from this with a sense that it’s over-thought excuse making.

Thanks for taking the time and best of luck to you all.

The first definition on freedic is “1. Intended or appropriate for defending; protective.” Is it an example of “privilege” if one is defensive in this way?

Response: With all due respect, it doesn’t matter what you hear. The definition of the word is what matters. If the person making the statement wishes to convey a certain concept, isn’t it irresponsible to use words that convey a different concept?

Are you agreeing with my previous statement? “It sounds to me like a number of contingencies have been added. (Ultimately, what I think you’re saying is that closed-mindedness regarding reports of racism is racist… Which is light-years in different from the original.)”

In the white lens, if you say “drug dealer” a non-white person comes to mind although drug dealers and users are disproportionately white. In the white lense, discussing teenagers having casual sex or using drugs or bringing weapons to school brings a picture of an urban school to mind while these things happen more frequently in suburban white schools. In the white lens big black men are scary, casually dressed black men in jerseys are thugs, baggy pants are ignorant but minnie skirts on white girls or low rider jeans doesn’t evoke the same derision. In the white lens you worry about weapons of mass destruction but don’t care that Navajos have a cancer arate 1600% higher than the mainstream b/c of uranium mining on the lands to which they were forced. The white lens sees problems such as racism in healthcare, employment, housing, credit, or criminal justice not as anti-American problems that are the concern of all citiziens but as the pet projects of minorities.

Even though minorities have huge experience with racism, when a poc presents an example of racism to a person looking through the white lens automatically assumes that they can’t be racist, the person must be wrong, minorities are over sensitive, and refuses to even consider the validity of the claim. However — white lens and white skin are too different things. Most whites admit to using a white lens to look through the world, but there are whites who don’t and non-whites who do.

whites admitting to the white lens http://timwise.org/:

According to a National Opinion Research Center survey in the early ’90s, over sixty percent of whites believe that blacks are generally lazier than other groups, fifty-six percent say that blacks are generally more prone to violence, and over half say that blacks are generally less intelligent than other groups (1). What makes these beliefs racist is that by assuming that blacks are more “prone” to violence and “less intelligent,” respondents are not merely signaling that blacks have higher crime rates, or score lower on various indicia of academic achievement–both of which are true, for reasons owing to the opportunity structure and the location of black communities relative to that structure–but instead are making assumptions about the inherent abilities and characters of black people.

A similar survey from 1993, conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, found that three in four whites accept as true at least one racist stereotype about African Americans, regarding such items as general laziness, propensity to criminality and violence, intelligence, or work ethic. And according to a 2001 survey, sixty percent of whites, approximately, admit that they believe at least one negative and racist stereotype of blacks: for example, that they are generally lazy, generally aggressive or violent, or prefer to live on welfare rather than work for a living (2). In fact, the belief in black preference for welfare over work is typically the most commonly believed of the stereotypes; this, despite the fact that only a very small percentage of African Americans–and for that matter, a minority of even poor African Americans–receive benefits from programs typically considered “welfare.”

Interestingly, whites often deny the importance of racism in determining the life chances of blacks, even as they give voice to beliefs that are themselves evidence of the very racial prejudice they deny. So, for instance, in one of the more respected opinion surveys from the 1990s, six in ten whites said that discrimination was less important in determining the position of blacks in society, than the “fact” that blacks “just don’t have the motivation or will power to pull themselves up out of poverty.” But if most whites believe that blacks as a group are unmotivated or lazy, that is itself a racial generalization amounting to racism: ascribing a negative characterological trait to blacks as a group. Of course the irony should be apparent to all: on the one hand, whites are saying that blacks are lazy, but on the other they insist that racism–including the kind that holds African Americans in this low regard–would be of very little consequence to their ability to succeed; as if people imbued with that kind of bias would be able to fairly evaluate job applicants or students who were members of the presumed defective group!

Research has suggested, for example, that many persons will feign a more liberal and non-prejudicial attitude than that to which they actually adhere, when asked questions about racial “others” on opinion surveys. Meaning that if roughly six in ten whites are willing to admit to serious anti-black prejudices of one form or another, the real percentages holding those beliefs are likely quite a bit larger.

Implicit Association Tests are even more decisive as to the extent of internalized and often subconscious, but nonetheless real, white racism. These tests, which measure response time to visual stimuli–specifically testing how quickly respondents associate briefly shown images of blacks or whites with either positive or negative words that are also briefly flashed on a screen–suggest that the typical white person does indeed harbor racial biases against African Americans. According to the research:

“…when given a test of unconscious stereotyping, nearly ninety percent of whites who have taken the test implicitly associate the faces of black Americans with negative words and traits such as evil character or failure. That is, they have more trouble linking black faces to pleasant words and positive features than they do for white faces. Most whites show an antiblack, pro-white bias on psychological tests. In addition, when whites are shown photos of black faces, even for only thirty milliseconds, key areas of their brains that are designed to respond to perceived threats light up automatically.” (3)
On the other hand, if I ask people to envision an “all-American boy or girl,” or even worse, God, they invariably admit to envisioning white images (in the latter case, even those who admit to being atheists, because of the symbolic conditioning to which they have been subjected). Confirming my own experiments, researchers who have asked white focus group members to envision a “typical drug user,” report that upwards of 95 percent of whites report envisioning a black person, despite the fact that blacks only represent thirteen percent of all drug users, according to the Centers for Disease Control and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, while whites comprise approximately 70 percent of all drug users (4).

This is why it was ultimately so easy for whites to believe the stories coming out of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which suggested that black folks were raping and killing people en masse in the Superdome and Convention Center. These reports, all of which turned out to be false, and which were exposed as false by the media about a month after the city flooded (retractions that many Americans never heard, it should be noted), were never questioned at the time they were being reported by any mainstream media outlet. Needless to say, were a hurricane to take out Nantucket, or destroy the summer homes of the white and wealthy who vacation on Cape Cod, and were the media to broadcast rumors to the effect that rich white folks were raping and killing people in the local Episcopal church, no one would believe the reports without evidence, without bodies, without proof. But because of racism, you can say anything you like about black people, especially when they’re poor, and others will believe it, every word of it, without question.

1) Tom W. Smith, “Ethnic Images,” GSS Technical Report No. 19, Chicago: NORC, January 1991

(2) Lawrence Bobo, “Inequalities That Endure? Racial Ideology, American Politics, and the Peculiar Role of the Social Sciences,” in Maria Krysan and Amanda Lewis, eds. The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity. Russell Sage Foundation: 2004: 19-20

(3) Joe Feagin, Systemic Racism. NY: Routledge, 2006: 26

(4) B.W. Burston, D. Jones, and P. Robertson-Saunders, “Drug use and African-Americans: Myth versus reality.” Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education. 40(2), 1995:19-39.

When I hear the word “defensive” I don’t think that means someone defending themselves rationally after taking the time to consider the legitimacy of the other person’s position. I think of someone assuming a priori innocence and defending themselves without analyzing the situation because they have the (white) privilege of not having to consider the views of poc’s.

Response: I appreciate you giving your time to explain.

Pan stated: and better at removing their white lenses.

Response: What is a white lens?

At this point, just so I’m clear, would you re-explain “Defensive responses to issues voiced by people of color are invocations of privilege”? It sounds to me like a number of contingencies have been added. (Ultimately, what I think you’re saying is that closed-mindedness regarding reports of racism is racist… Which is light-years in different from the original.)