Talk:racist

RFV discussion: January–February 2020
Rfv-sense: "A person who competes in races (e.g. an athlete)." I really wonder who would actually write this under "Occupation" meaning exactly this? --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:08, 8 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Just got to be a troll. Equinox ◑ 04:26, 9 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Maybe it'd be used by non-native speakers? Ha. If this gets cited, it should be moved to a separate etymology section... and I should start a section of User:-sche/exceptional, or at least a section on the talk page, for surprisingly-attested "literal" senses of things; I know I've come across more than just . (? what are others?) - -sche (discuss) 07:21, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Remove obvious nonsense. SemperBlotto (talk) 10:19, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Why even RFV this? Seems like obvious vandalism. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 14:25, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It was added by an Israeli IP, who made a second edit to fix the formatting. It's entirely possible that it was a sincere, but clueless attempt at reverse-engineering English by a non-native speaker. Either that, or someone seeing what sort of nonsense they could slip in by being subtle. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:14, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I should add that all the other edits from that IP range seem to be serious and helpful- no vandalism. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:16, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
 * racist and racism, in any meaning, did not appear in Webster's 2nd International Dictionary (1936). The Online Etymology Dictionary has racist as attested in 1932 and racism (rarely) from about 1900. DCDuring (talk) 19:08, 9 January 2020 (UTC)


 * It does seem at least plausible that a non-native speaker might use this—compare vandalist—but if so, it doesn't seem to have made it into books or Usenet, which I searched for "racist(s)" + "racer(s)" or "racing", to no avail. No hits for "fast racist", either, and the hits for "successful racist" are all ethnicity- rather than athletics-related. I did notice, in the other direction, that on the undurable web "racer" can (rarely) be found in an ethnicity-related sense (structurally like "birther" and "truther"); I didn't spot any durable uses of that, either. - -sche (discuss) 22:59, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm gutted, I so wanted this sense to make -sche's list :-) Oh well, let the process run its course or delete it ASAP? --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:06, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 20:10, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: April 2022
Rfv-sense noted that this sense was a bit odd in 2018; I'd just like to see quotes on this. Too sensitive for me to participate beyond this request. See also. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:34, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
 * This is blatant trolling. It shouldn't have lasted five minutes, let alone four years. Blatant trolling doesn't need to be put through RfV. There are better uses of editors' time and energy. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 20:23, 2 April 2022 (UTC)


 * (e/c) One question is what this can be used for. Looking at the usex, if it's only used for things like "They don't allow Muslims? That's racist" where the people discriminating do think in racial terms (and hence also assume on sight that brown Sikhs or Palestinian Christians are Muslims, or in e.g. Balkan contexts assume the atheist grandkids of Muslims are Muslims), that might be better as a usage note, that in some contexts some people conflate (certain) religions and race. If people really say "They don't allow gays? That's racist" using "racist" to mean "discriminatory" about things unconnected to race, outside of consciously/jocularly wrong usage, that might have a stronger claim for being a sense. - -sche (discuss) 20:28, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I definitely agree with making a usage note on that point as that's how I've seen it used as well. AG202 (talk) 23:42, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
 * If racism is unambiguously and reasonably frequently used to mean "discrimination" on grounds other than racism (or racism + ethnicity), then our first definition of racist would suffice. Any usage note would then belong at a further extended definition at racism. DCDuring (talk) 14:28, 3 April 2022 (UTC)


 * What DCDuring says. No, it is no trolling, but the old problem of “is there is such a thing as ‘simply wrong’ usage?”. Well there is, in spontaneous speech, which would be edited out in edited publications; as hardly a conscious meaning “if you think things through”, although I think I have used it or come close to that meaning a few times for hyperbole—but you need a lot of context, and making the distinction with religions does not afford enough contrast for a different meaning. Fay Freak (talk) 15:53, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * There are two separate things here:

I have to say that 70.172 has found some excellent cites and as far as I am concerned, the linguistic phenomenon we are looking at has definitely been documented to some degree; the details can be hammered out in more specificity in the light of the cites from 70.172. I am proud to have asked the hard questions and the dictionary project is better off for everyone having participated here. Again I specially commend 70.172 for adding these cites. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:45, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * "racist against Muslims": Although Muslims are not a race, as has been noted before, people who use this may erroneously think of them as a racial/ethnic group. Hispanic people would be another similar case, defined by language and geographic origin rather than skin color. We could add a usage note to cover this broader definition, or add a second sense specifying that it can be used for ethnoreligious groups more broadly; or simply trust that readers can figure it out from the first sense.
 * "racist against gay people": This is indeed a completely different sense, if it can be attested. I have in fact heard this used, but it it's non-standard, and may even be used for humorous effect (feigning stupidity, etc.). I'll see if I can find attestations. 70.172.194.25 22:13, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * It looks to me that there is one thing here: an abstraction/generalization from discrimination by race to successively include ethnicity (as in our principal definition of racism, and membership in certain historically disadvantaged groups, sometimes overlapping with ethnicity (eg, Muslim, Judaism), sometimes not (LGBTQ+). Discrimination against the poor generally and women generally doesn't seem to be included (yet?).
 * What does "non-standard" mean in this context? I'm sure there are plenty of native English speakers who don't think this is an error. It looks to me like a moment in the evolution of meaning. DCDuring (talk) 12:21, 4 April 2022 (UTC)


 * RFD-passed. ·~   dictátor · mundꟾ  17:38, 8 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Before this gets archived off this page, I just want to ask whether anyone wants to see if racism also has an extended sense like this (...actually, there are already some citations in the usage notes which could be converted into a sense). - -sche (discuss) 15:14, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

RFV discussion: August–November 2022
Chinese. Very few hits for "俾人racist". — justin(r)leung { (t...) 16:19, 30 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Don't think this is very few hits. (Please bear with any mislinks or duplicates, it's very late for me) There's probably a few more uses, especially the ones out on Facebook and Instagram, but it's too much of a bother for me. It's probably a widespread word, but I should note that the examples are extremely concentrated to LIHKG, but there are a couple of reasons: 1) LIHKG is one of the most popular forums in Hong Kong in the recent years; 2) the portion of the HKC speakers that are actively introducing loanwords from English, mostly coincide with the population of users of LIHKG; 3) there is significant amount of political/left/right debate on LIHKG, so a word tied to politics will have more uses on LIHKG; 4) LIHKG is better indexed by Google than other forums, e.g. HKGolden. (also I don't see how entries with only Usenet quotes would qualify but not ones with LIHKG) –Wpi31 (talk) 18:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Don't think this is very few hits. (Please bear with any mislinks or duplicates, it's very late for me) There's probably a few more uses, especially the ones out on Facebook and Instagram, but it's too much of a bother for me. It's probably a widespread word, but I should note that the examples are extremely concentrated to LIHKG, but there are a couple of reasons: 1) LIHKG is one of the most popular forums in Hong Kong in the recent years; 2) the portion of the HKC speakers that are actively introducing loanwords from English, mostly coincide with the population of users of LIHKG; 3) there is significant amount of political/left/right debate on LIHKG, so a word tied to politics will have more uses on LIHKG; 4) LIHKG is better indexed by Google than other forums, e.g. HKGolden. (also I don't see how entries with only Usenet quotes would qualify but not ones with LIHKG) –Wpi31 (talk) 18:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot (and don't compromise your sleep over RFV stuff next time)! I think some of the cites may not be the transitive usage. I wonder if that should be included in the Chinese entry as well, since it's less clear to me that that is not just codeswitching. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 18:53, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * From what I see, it's usually a transitive verb, but since it's a pretty new word, the usage might still fluctuate a bit. Most of the cites are in passive (俾人racist/比人racist), so the object is implied. For most (if not all) of the rest of the cites, they are in active voice, and they all have a subject, or that the subject could be implied from the context (I have omitted parts that could provide the context for the subject to avoid having extremely long quotes, which might have brought some confusion), so the intransitive usage is probably nonexistent.
 * Also from my personal experience, it could also mean "to discriminate" by extension (which is why I simply used that as the definition), though there doesn't seem to be enough cites to support this, so I guess I'll ditch that. – Wpi31 (talk) 11:20, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I've added some of these to Citations:racist (a max of 4 quotes per year with a good range of syntactic constructions). Thanks for finding all these. I think this should be counted as cited. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 02:41, 3 November 2022 (UTC)


 * RFV passed. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 19:15, 13 November 2022 (UTC)