Alan Spector <spector@calumet.purdue.edu> writes:>
>
> The word "racist" can be an adjective as well
> as a noun, and to say that someone is making a "racist" error does not
mean
> that one is being condemned as "a racist" (noun). Anyone can make a
racist
> error; it is not a sin. It is, however, an error. <snips> ...In all the
"name
> calling", none of the racialists have yet offered any serious biological
> evidence to support their folklore conceptions of biological race.
Here Alan introduces a word still in use, marginally I would think, in
English English, but almost extinct in American: racialist.
Racialist used to be a person who believed in the inequality of people of
different races, whatever that means, meant, etc. Racist was a neutral
term, simply meaning having to do with questions of race.
I think this distinction is now pretty much by the board. In the same
generation we also lost the use of the word discrimination, as it came to
be generally thought the same as prejudice.
-dlj.