> I did not call him a racist. I said his statement could be understood as racist
This postmodern redefinition of racism really needs to be discarded. It’s done so much damage by giving actual racists cover, since if everyone is racist then racism isn’t a problem.
>> Negative racial stereotype as a definition of racism is the classical definition of racism
>It wasn’t racial stereotyping. It was stereotyping a country’s population as sad and desperate. Saying X country’s quality of life sucks isn’t racist.
>If they’d said or implied Cambodian Americans are also sad and desperate, sure. But they didn’t.
This is a distinction without a difference. A negative stereotype about the people of a country is a stereotype about that country's dominant ethnic group. Their geographic location is irrelevant.
By this logic, saying "All Japanese people are [X]" is not a racial stereotype as long as you're only talking about the ones in Japan. It only magically becomes a racial stereotype when they are "Japanese Americans." This doesn't make sense.
There's a fundamental difference between:
Criticizing a state: "Cambodia's economy is struggling and its government is corrupt."
Stereotyping a people: "The people of Cambodia are inherently sad and desperate."
The original comment did the latter. That is, by definition, a negative ethnic stereotype.
Could you please stop perpetuating this flamewar? Other commenters are doing it too, of course, but you've done it the most. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I totally get that you have good reasons for feeling so strongly about Cambodia, Vietnam, and so on, and I also get (to some extent) how the root comment was provocative. It did sound like it was putting down an entire population, or at least was easy to take that way.
But going into aggressive abstract argument is not a helpful way to respond. It just degrades the discussion, poisons community further, and causes everyone to dig in.
A more helpful way to correct any misperception in the OP would be to share something of your own background that leads you to perceive things differently, i.e. to express your own personal experience and what it has taught you, that's relevant to the topic.
You don't have to do that, of course—it's just an option. But we do need you to respect the site guidelines when posting here, and you've been breaking them badly in this thread. That's not ok, even if your views are entirely correct and your feelings entirely justified.
