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personally, i react pretty strongly to arguments that i see as racist--i could go through an list attributes, but i dont have the time at the moment (mea culpa)--i think that perfectly regular, not mean-spirited or inclined to be racist folk can find themselves sliding into problematic areas pretty easily if they construct or adopt a view/argument that enables it.
so in general, if i adopt that tack in a debate, it's directed against the argument--call me pollyanna, but i dont think there are that many people who make such claims who are explicitly racist--in other words, i think that dispositional racism is a subset---but arguments that float out there in the world--especially about categories that i find worthless--and "illegal immigrant" or "illegal alien" is one of them---these structure and enable racist conclusions.
that's my tack anyway.
it often turns out that this distinction--the argument/the speaker--gets lost somehow when everything that is said is taken personally.
i dont take this stuff terribly personally--it's like chess.
taking it personally seems a surefire stressor.
there's enough stressors in the world.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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