We can't expect people whose lives are, in great part, defined by the societal oppression they face, to be at the forefront of trying to erase the distinctions the bigots hold over them – not least because it'd be ineffective, serving only to hide the abuse. The categorisation schemes used by bigots (e.g. racists) do have predictive power: for the behaviour of bigots, and the resulting effects on the social context of people's lives.

People being loud and proud about their marginalised identities is not a problem. The pushback, and the pushback-to-the-pushback, and the pushback-to-the-pushback-to-the-pushback (the so-called "culture war") is a problem to the extent it gets in the way of solving the root problem (marginalisation, bigotry, and abuse), but statements of pride help address the root problem.

Rather than criticise "drawing these cultural battle lines", please fight the fight you think people should be fighting. You won't find yourself short of allies, should you make the effort. (Effort includes educating yourself about the relevant issues: it's pretty easy to find highly-specific resources. If you're completely stuck, and somehow have lost access to Wikipedia, visit your local library.)

Being proud of your identity and culture is not a problem at all!

The thing that I feel that this silly AI bot draws into sharp contrast is the idea that there can simultaneously be "asian/white/black culture" - as a generalised thing, not a person's experience in a neighbourhood or a country, literally just "white/black/asianness" (or whatever), and obviously the connotation there is that skin colour is intrinsically linked to culture, but then we expect people to pretend that skin colour has no correlation.

You can't have it both ways, it's a contradiction.

And here we have, err, a computer program, or the output of one, pulling in all of this stuff and claiming that it has a culture based on experiences of being a skin colour that it doesn't and can't even have.

It's just madness on every level!

> and obviously the connotation there is that skin colour is intrinsically linked to culture

No, the "intrinsically" connotation is not there. Read any book (or Wikipedia article) on the subject, or at least explain your reasoning in enough detail that someone can explain to you why you're wrong.

(I do agree that the AI bots were farcical.)

DWB exists because people (police in this case) think skin colour has predictive power. It's the same thing.

(I'm not saying that it's a good thing, responders seem to be assuming that).

Meh, whatever, one day maybe we'll be able to have sane discussions about this. Probably not.

> But that's what racists are, people who think the race of a person has predictive power with regard to their nature, culture etc.

I didn't think that's how the term racist is normally used. A definition:

a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group

Big difference.

You're right, but in practice I don't really consider it as being too fundamentally different because it's the logical conclusion from strong enough predictive power.

There is nothing "logical" about the progression from my appearance and ancestry is something I'm entitled to be proud of; also there might actually be such a thing as Black American culture to racial epithets and Jim Crow laws. Or indeed using "predictive power" to assess people's intellectual ability or criminal propensity from their melanin content.

I mean, do you believe that people should expect to be subjected to the weirdest and most hostile takes on gender relations and treated as potential rapists or sluts unless and until everyone uses gender neutral pronouns (even silly bots mostly identify as male and female at the moment)? If not, what is it about racism that obliges victims not to affirm their identity if they wish to cease to become victims?

To be fair, how the term is normally used depends entirely on the group within which the term is being used. For many, racism is strictly “prejudice + power”, which logically concludes in the [in my opinion rather warped] idea that some groups are incapable of racism, which is at odds with the definition you’re citing

> the idea that some groups are incapable of racism, which is at odds with the definition you’re citing

I disagree, because one can powerless while simultaneously being prejudiced and antagonistic to others. Which means that anyone can be racist.