Shortly after the backlash began, Mustafa had this to say:
I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men because racism and sexism describe structures of privilege based on race and gender and therefore women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist, since we do not stand to benefit from such a system.This defense met with a flurry of criticisms from bloggers and journalists, but Mustafa was merely restating an idea that has been around for some time. Feminist Frequency's Anita Sarkeesian, noted for her allegations and criticisms of sexism in video games, made a similar claim regarding sexism only being possibly by men against women. I traced this as far back as a paper written in 1995 by Caleb Rosado, though I suspect that it has been expressed in some form earlier than that. You can read the paper in full here.
Discrimination is the unequal treatment of individuals or groups on the basis of some, usually categorical, attribute, such as race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or social class membership. Prejudice is an attitude, however. When it results in an action, it becomes discrimination. Both together form the basis for racism. Prejudice is an attitudinal bias, while discrimination is a behavioral bias.That seems like a very reasonable and cogent description of the difference between prejudice and discrimination. To hold a personal dislike of Jews as a group is prejudice. To try to convince others that Jews are evil or they should act against the interests of Jews is anti-Semitism. The paper goes on:
Racism is a socially constructed reality at the heart of society¹s structures. Racism is the deliberate structuring of privilege by means of an objective, differential and unequal treatment of people, for the purpose of social advantage over scarce resources, resulting in an ideology of supremacy which justifies power of position by placing a negative meaning on perceived or actual biological/cultural differences.At first, I thought that Mr. Rosado was defining racism as being what I and many others would call "institutional racism". This is school segregation, Jim Crow laws, the minimum wage, and South African apartheid. However, later on, he explicitly states that there is more than one kind of racism and defines them:
Individual racism is a belief in the superiority of one's own race over another, and the behavioral enactments that maintain these superior and inferior positions.... Institutional racism is the conscious manipulation of the structures of society's institutions so as to systematically discriminate against people of color by their prestructured practices, policies and power arrangements.... Cultural racism is the individual and institutional expressions of the superiority of one race's cultural heritage over that of another race.This is where I start to scratch my head. It seems to me like he is mixing up terms and definitions. The author defined prejudice as thought and discrimination as action, then further defined racism as discrimination that is institutional, a "deliberate structuring of privilege". Shouldn't "individual racism" be limited to "individual discrimination", according to his own definitions and careful framing of scope?
Minor quibble aside, I'll assume that the author's intention was that individuals who live in a society with institutional racism can choose to utilize those institutions to perpetrate acts of racism. For example, the "Scottsboro Boys" trial is widely considered by scholars to be a miscarriage of justice, and was possible because of institutional racism in the 1930s. The white teenagers who accused the black teens of rape knew that their word would carry greater weight with authorities and the public at large.
So, if you accept and apply the narrow definition of racism outlined in Rosado's paper, that institutional racism is the one and only determinant of whether a given act is racist, then Mustafa is correct. However, I have two points to make out of this.
Firstly, categorizing her actions as racist or not is beside the point. Rosado describes discrimination as action motivated by prejudice. Mustafa put her prejudice on display and turned it into discrimination against white males. I don't see how her actions could somehow become virtuous just because they are not backed up by institutional bias. Her acts were hateful and, in the end, served only to incite a widespread distrust of diversity programs and feminism in general.
Secondly, her implicit claim of institutional bias against her is suspect. A white male in Mustafa's position who chose to exclude women or Muslims and tweeted #killallwomen would likely have faced swifter and greater censure than she did. At least in the context where she took these actions, I think that it is ridiculous to argue that institutional bias would favor a white male. This leads to the equally ludicrous conclusion that #killallwomen is not sexist because it is no less well-tolerated (I argue that it is far less tolerated) than #killallwhitemen.
If you want to make institutional bias a necessary prerequisite to calling something racist or sexist, fine, but in so doing, you have increased the level of proof required to make the claim that a given act is racist, because now you not only point to the action, but you must show how institutions explicitly favor one group over another. Personally, I think that this is a mistake, because it ignores the fact that hate, whether practiced by a group that benefits from bias, or not, is still hate. It still damages relationships and reputations and creates divisions in the minds of observers where none existed before.
In actual practice, I think that it is rare that someone actually takes the time to perform this analysis to find institutional bias. Instead, racism and sexism are assumed to be features of the system that apply everywhere and always. We have a situation where the motte and bailey doctrine is employed, and rather than look for the institutional bias, accusers of racism and sexism merely point to the sex or skin color of a person and choose to condemn or ignore acts of discrimination on that basis alone. These careless accusations are not defensible, but when pressed, those calling for the death of white males retreat back to much more widely accepted claims.
This is where social justice warriors do the most damage to their supposed cause while exposing their true nature through their actions. There is no nuance in their analysis of what constitutes an offense and heavy doses of rationalization to excuse their own hypocrisy. Skin color and sex themselves become the only justification needed for condemning others, and the only way to escape is to join the group's mentality or to remain anonymous. The damage that is done to their own cause is ignored or blamed on institutional bias. They do not understand that there really are bad tactics, and that the choice to use those tactics betrays a greater interest in attacking and hurting their targets than in building empathy and understanding.
