ISMS

Over at The American Conservative an interesting piece on Ken Burn's latest documentary sparked the usual imputations of racism.  Given that the subject was the false conviction of the five Central Park "Wilders."  of about 20 years ago, this was bound to happen.  In a nutshell, Burns chronicles the fate of five young black thugs who were convicted of raping and savaging a white woman.  They were convicted in large measure due to their reluctance to confess to other crimes they committed in the same area on the same night.  In due course they were acquitted.  Come TAC comenters consider any recognition of the general nastiness of the defendants racism incarnate.  

This led me to re-examine an old thought about isms.  Do we really examine how we order our understanding of such things?  Is an ism an actual school of thought?  Sometimes, when it has backers.  Other times an ism is just a negative epithet.  Hence my comment.

Odd is it not that one can get a PhD in Marxism or Feminism or Environmentalism and the like, but you just can’t find funding or a career path in Racism. A curious Ism this Racism. Now personally, I think if we are to keep referring to any consciousness of group differences as Racism, then we ought to endow a few chairs in academic Racism. Perhaps curricula in the contributions of racism to labor relations would be appropriate.

On the other hand we can speak of bigotry, the unreasoned vilification of others. Note “Unreasoned.”