I think you're spot on in that it's fair to say there are probably 'levels' of racism... and that the reasoning for being racist may vary from person to person, movement to movement, or even time period to time period... and that may therefore color the way they go about their racism... I don't know how I'd go toward classifying that, if it does or doesn't need classification, etc. But like... I mean I probably wouldn't quite feel the same towards two racists side by side if I found that one was racist cause his daddy told him to be... and another person was racist because like... someone of another race killed their dad. In one instance the person just 'went with the flow' into being a shit human being, in the other you can at least see the roadmap from point A to point B and marginally empathize (without condoning of course)Damselbinder wrote: ↑3 years agoI think to say that someone can't be racist against a white person is completely absurd. Of course they can, and therefore one would be a fool to deny it.
Nevertheless, I think there is some virtue in saying that there are different "types" of racism. I attended an interesting exhibition at the Jewish museum in London where they talked about how antisemitism was in some ways different from racism in European countries against black people, in that the racist fantasy about black people tends to imagine them as savages (putting them socially beneath the racist) whereas a lot of the time antisemitism imagines Jews as conspirators and string-pullers in high places (putting them socially above the racist). With that principle, I don't think it's ridiculous to say that there is a *kind* of racism - thoroughgoing, systemic, useful to those in power, perpetuated by systems of power - that is LARGELY not directed at white people in white-majority countries. Racism against white people certainly exists in those countries, but it's a different phenomenon.
(I am not, by the way, necessarily saying that this is a position that I agree with: given the classist overtones, it wouldn't surprise me too much if the way people talk about 'hillbillies' meets the criteria I've talked about. I think that's the sort of thing that would require proper sociological study, though: I do not feel remotely in a position to decide one way or the other).
But your example is a good one as well. Comparing America's systemic racism toward African Americans the kind of racism that was occurring in and around WW2 toward the Jewish... While both are classifiable as racist easily enough, there's no doubt whatsoever to me that the views, opinions and responses to that racism from all parties involved were somewhat different.
"Hillbillies' is more of a classiest than a racist thing I think. I can attest to hillbillies coming in all shapes and sizes and colors anyway, but I have to figure that the mindset isn't THAT far removed from racism as a basic cognitive process. Classism tends to er... vibrate on a lower frequency than racism I think. Slower to turn violent... but by no means barred from such.