"Racist" is a tough little word

So Ocasio-Cortez gets in that the Squad is composed of women of color. But if Pelosi would likely respond the same way to four Jill Steins, then what is the meaning of the reference to race? Is the idea that Pelosi should hold her tongue simply because the Squad members aren’t white? Ocasio-Cortez is here appealing to another 2.0 meaning of racist—that which is offensive, for any reason, to people of a race. The Squad doesn’t like Pelosi’s critique, understandably. But the question is: Is that critique “racist” because four “racial” women don’t agree with it? Here, Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad allude to the subjectified meaning of racist, which can be hard to square with the core meaning of the word (believing that people of a category are inferior).

When the Squad members feel discriminated against for being told to go home, their feelings are rooted in being genuinely discriminated against, unless Trump would tell Tiger Woods’s children, if they criticized his reign, to go “home” to their mother’s native Sweden. But Ocasio-Cortez’s coded charge against Pelosi is rooted in an idea that the racist must accept the charge simply because she has offended a person of a race. And that definition of racist goes beyond what many even many level-headed people will feel is appropriate.