The 'elitist' comment as I saw it explained yesterday is basically a combination of reactions like: 'this is not a sociology community, stop using jargon'*, 'remember we don't all have degrees', and 'I don't know that word and it would help if you explained it but you're too arrogant/rude to bother' (because it's not actually in many dictionaries, and apparently looking up the prefix separately does confuse some people - the threads above seem to bear this out somewhat!). I'm not convinced but I do see where the commenters are coming from, at least, if not where they're going with it!
* The definition of racism as "prejudice plus power" often triggers this one, as it's a specialised sociological one, not the common dictionary definition. It seems to be only US-based commenters who use it (in the community I'm thinking of). Ethnocentrism is another manifestation of privilege, of course. ;-)
Re: A lot of responses crammed together.
* The definition of racism as "prejudice plus power" often triggers this one, as it's a specialised sociological one, not the common dictionary definition. It seems to be only US-based commenters who use it (in the community I'm thinking of). Ethnocentrism is another manifestation of privilege, of course. ;-)