By Sadib Khan

Contributor

“Only white people can be racist.” “Only men can be sexist.” Have you heard either of these statements before and not used ironically?

I certainly have not, until I attended a lecture at our campus Gender Equity Center earlier this semester. Before the lecture I thought that racism and sexism were simply defined as the discriminations based on race and sex respectively. The GEC kindly explained that their definitions of the words, which I understand is also taught in some Women’s Studies courses, also include a power component.

Simply put, since white people and men are in charge of the world, only they are allowed to be racist and sexist respectively. According to that logic, since I did not have the foresight of being born into a white family, I can say whatever I want about any race without being considered racist because my discrimination is not backed up by an institution.

This article isn’t about debating whether these definitions have any validity. If you want that answered, check a dictionary. It shouldn’t matter who wrote the dictionary. I am also not accusing the members of the Gender Equity Center of any intentional wrongdoing. I know most of them, and they are very nice people. Although, what they are preaching is essentially just a way for people to rationalize racism and sexism by calling them something that sounds less severe.

The notion that only men can be sexist and that only white people can be racist is based on the assumption that an individual who comes from a group with power is better off than an individual who doesn’t. Inductive reasoning has never been a very sound form of logic. Inductive reasoning is the root of racism, sexism and the belief that tables are dogs because they both have four legs.

Think of this hypothetical scenario: A white child commits suicide after getting bullied every day for the last year for being the sole white person in an all-black school. Now think of the same scenario, but with the words white and black switched around. Both scenarios should be valued as equal tragedies, but some people do not see it that way. “Well, the second scenario was definitely racism, but the first one was only discrimination based on race.” Why should there even be a distinction? Do you expect me, or anyone else, to believe that those terms can be separate but still equal? If you read a quote that said, “All [insert race here] need to be set on fire,” do you need to know who the speaker was to figure out if the quote was racist or simply only discriminatory?

I believe that equality is about balancing the scales, not tipping them to the other side by deliberately rebranding racism and sexism to fit an agenda. I wholeheartedly believe that whoever coined those definitions doesn’t care about equality at all, because trivializing discrimination doesn’t solve anything.