from FB group Orange Talk
Shelly Holder
Okay, take your “normal to be racist” sentence. If you look at something that is common or normal to a group of people and give it a pejorative name, such as racist, then you’ve become a condemner of that group, and you’re not any better than the group you’ve condemned. Racist is this term that has taken the place of another term that was previously used, racial prejudice. Everyone shows some prejudice, in their race, religion, groups they associate with, who their friends are, who they choose as a spouse, etc. If the person develops their prejudice into hatred and tries to spread their hatred to others, then the issue of being a word with “ist” or “ism” at the end comes up. The word could be racist or extremist or socialist or communist or populist or fascist or any of many similar words. Now what? There are groups that are hated by most people such as “skinheads” who catch a lot of flak from most people but due to freedom of speech have the right to speak out about what they believe. I can see calling them racists. But those of us who don’t belong to an institution and happen to believe that all people of an ethnic group are to be avoided because they have had a bad experience with on or a few are not racists. They are not trying to convince others to believe in racism. If anything, they are just fearful of a certain ethnic group.
So there’s a clear difference between racial prejudice and racism.