By that standard then, you could put out a racist cartoon, disclaim any intention of it being racist
Yes you could lie. If was inspired by or connect to racist thought on your part, you could say it wasn't. Whatever standard you have people can lie about how they meet it.
ignore the fact that a chimpanzee has been used as a racist symbol characture of african american people for decades, and then just do the dirty deed.
If you use it BECAUSE its been used as a racist symbol, then its probably racist. But the only way to be certain is for the person who uses it to admit it, or to have a strong history of racism.
Racism simply doesn't equal "using a symbol that others have used for racist purposes". Racism is about hate for, disdain for, discrimination against, or desire to harm or unfairly treat people due to their race. Using a symbol that was commonly used by racists, is probably a foolish thing to do, and maybe either careless or insensitive, but it isn't automatically racist. It can be racist, or it can be intentionally pandering to racists (which is worthy of severe criticism but isn't the same as racism), or it can indicate ignorance of the history of the symbol, or it can indicate carelessness in using the symbol without really thinking about it, or it can indicate some sort of desire to "reclaim the symbol from the racists", or it could indicate something else. Speculation as to whether or not it was racist requires speculation on the thoughts of the person who used the symbol, not the mere presence of the symbol. |
