I once got into an extremely ill advised twitter exchange (completely my fault) with a black woman who used to work at Google where I objected to doofuses at Google on Google mailing lists quoting science about race to her as automatic “white supremacists.” I completely agreed that what they said was racist and should not have been tolerated but I just can’t see how that automatically meant there was a secret cult of white supremacy inside Google. Her point was that these were “data points consistently associated with white supremacists” but I dunno, I feel like people can be garden variety dumbass racists (or say racist things) without automatically existing to further the primacy of the white race, whatever the hell that even means.
I have to admit that for a long time I didn’t take racism seriously, I just thought of it as so obviously stupid and abhorrent that nobody could take it seriously.
The deeper point, as noted in the upstream article:
A black person continually asked to consider — just hypothetically, just for a moment — whether she was possibly inferior to other humans would have to be masochistically broad-minded to entertain this challenge more than a few times before dismissing it, and the sort of people who presented it, forever.
But then again it is easy to ignore things that do not directly affect you, and as a rich white dude almost nothing affects me because I am playing on easy mode. And sweet Jebus in the era of Trump it is so clear to me now that we have a lot of work left to do in this area.
Racists and misogynists can’t have substantive discussions because if they started talking about what they truly believed they would get instabanned out of sheer disgust. So their arguments end up being repetitive and circular, since they cannot go any deeper.
Okay, so you wrote a lot about things I didn’t say at all. I didn’t even mention white men, and I didn’t mention them for a reason.Heck, I didn’t even mention Trump. What I am saying is that fights against racism, sexism, and bigots is not some sort of liberal agenda item. It’s not just a made up thing to fight the right. Women and members of minority groups can and are part of the conservative groups, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fighting against racism, sexism and bigots. These are not inherently party line items. So when someone tries to lump the push to afford all people the same basic rights and not willing to negotiate out of that, like an unwillingness to agree to anyone suggesting there is inferiority, it’s not some sort of progressive failing.
So to refute Strollen, while i am not right on everything, and my beliefs are not perfect, I am 100% certain I am not inferior because of what I am. There is no one who is going to convince me otherwise, and when they try that, I will absolutely call them racist. The solution for them is to stop believing I am inferior, not me tolerate them more. And that’s not a progressive position to take; it’s the one and only humane one to take.
Both sides are guilty of this conflation though. Progressive and liberal economic and diplomatic goals are recast as matters of discrimination so that anyone who disagrees can be labelled racist.
I do agree with your central point though. It’s become all too easy to use partisan tribalism to rally supporters to defend what should be indefensible.
Look at the sentence I quoted. It’s very close to the last time you said the same thought. Women and minority groups are part of conservative groups but that doesn’t mean they are not fighting against racism. Not “people” or “individuals” or other inclusive wording. You specifically called out that women and minorities were fighting against racism and no one else.
I really like that essay. It’s a good analogy (I love good analogies that explain abstract concepts). Yet it also seems so much like a common sense restatement of what I think of as our shared American generic cultural upbringing.
Life’s not fair. We all start at different points and with different advantages and disadvantages. You don’t have to apologize for this but see the next point.
Live by the rules and play fair; they aren’t quite the same but both are important. Own up to the results of your actions both good and bad.
Don’t judge others. In the first place we’re all equal and in the second you don’t know their starting point, advantages, disadvantages, and experiences. Judge actions instead but even then remember that you don’t know everything.
The last one is tough but I’ve always thought of it as similar to “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”, It’s also where I know privilege has influenced my moral/philosophical compass
Yes. And I think, wumpus is indicating that too. There are some fine points to debate still but overall, these are not and should not be partisan matters.
It is very easy to forget that small advantages snowball together and amplify over time, to become systemic.
In general I feel it is the role and obligation of the powerful to use that power to help others, not to crush others under their bootheels and reinforce the status quo.
@Nesrie I’m completely confused here. You could have said “Clifford Simak” and it would have made as much sense to me… I’m sure it makes sense to you but I’m missing something. Completely unsarcastically I’ll claim all the fault but when I look at your sentence, your comment that you never mentioned white men, and your sentence again and I can’t logically see how you are not specifically singling out white men as not fighting racism since everyone else is either a woman or a minority. Since I happen to have the World Cup on it feels like you have said the forwards and center backs are great for Russia. I’m left with the assumption that you intentionally meant to leave out the midfielders because you don’t think they are great.
If you mean exactly what you said I’ll accept it. I’ll disagree both ideologically and from lived experience but that isn’t a big deal. If you are just rolling your eyes and saying “of course I meant men too even if it is unlikely” I’ll accept that also. BTW, the only reason I write accept is that I can’t think of another term for the inner of thank you for an insight into another person’s thoughts.
There is clearly no need for you to explain your comment.
Not everything in this world is about white men. I’ll say that again, just in case it didn’t stick. Not everything in this world is about white men. I am not talking about their perspective at all, and I don’t have to. I am talking about women and minority groups. The fact you can’t pivot to understand that might explain why you find this all so “trigger” worthy.
Racism, sexism and bigotry are not progressive and liberal only issues. They don’t exist simply because liberals want them to. They are human issues. You claim to have awareness, but you can’t even discuss the perspectives from other groups without being “triggered”.
The NY Times article specifically used liberal and conservative political examples in describing an observation concerning communication. Wumpus also brought in other related progressive versus conservative issues. So, when I replied I used, the examples given.
Perhaps that wasn’t the best, however my point, and the trigger, was not the specific examples. It was the fact that not only is online discourse becoming more polarized this movement seems to be celebrated and encouraged. The important bit from the Time is repeated below.
But as the definition has expanded, even honest critics — people who earnestly disagree with their peers, even by a very little bit — can find themselves accused of discursive sabotage.
As a person who does not like sweeping all of the complexities of life into a few broad labels, this is a problem. As someone who feels passionately that anything carried to extremes breeds its opposite, this is a problem. As someone who is not 100% convinced but feels there could be something to the idea that the moral foundation findings on the difference between conservatives and progressives might be consistent across cultures which seems to cause an ideological conflict between “all people are created equal” and “some major subset of people are just automatically wrong”, this is a problem.
It was not about white men; you invented that by subdividing a group via binary terms. The only time I mentioned white men was when I mentioned being one. Which is why I went off on you (with a lot of careful wording because I do not want to ever put words into someone’s mouth). I suspect I agree with your positions on fighting racism, sexism, and bigotry somewhere between 95-100%.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that I have no desire and limited patience with just saying Racism is bad, or Trump is Evil, or whatever. I don’t go around loudly announcing Gravity Works! (actually I do in class but that is because I teach physics to ninth graders some times) or even a more controversial Index Funds beat Managed Funds over the long term! They are all basic assumptions.
Perhaps you don’t like the label because you are the default, and you don’t need them in order to be heard. Also known as, the labels exist for others, not for you. When someone says everyone is equal, but we know, we know, that is not true, then you have to talk about the other groups that are literally not being treated equally and then you get to discuss why. Requiring discourse like “everyone” and “people” just allows the majority to feel comfortable, but it does nothing to actually address the issues at hand.
Maybe instead focusing on being triggered because you dislike the way the discourse is going, you might realize the reason you dislike the way the discourse is going is because there is an actual problem, this should not be but it is. Perhaps one day we don’t need these labels, but that day is not today.
No you mentioned white men because I did not mention them. You tried to shift the conversation to a group that I never addressed by getting unhappy that I didn’t mention them and now you are claiming you didn’t do that.
Stop and listen. Stop trying to to concoct some masterful argument in the hopes of running around some liberal agenda you think exists and just listen. You’ve approached this with extreme aggression, and I guess you think that’s okay because you said you were triggered, but you don’t’ actually have to “go-off” on anyone.
I am not addressing some liberal checklist or whatever it is you think is out there that exist. I am talking about this in the context of what wupmus started with… it doesn’t matter how civil you are about racism, racism is racism, sexism is sexism and there is no polite way to say someone is inferior because of these characteristics. And yes, they’ve learned not to run around screaming nigger to avoid bans.
I don’t see it as an attack but I have no fucking clue what this guy is actually trying to say. I have given several specific real world examples of stuff that I have directly observed or has happened to me. I suggest he do the same.
I respect your feeling. I agree that it can be the role of the powerful but I disagree that it is the obligation. While examples got me in trouble with Nesrie I’ll use an example. I’m very much in favor of some level of differentiated state funding to school districts to attempt to smooth out the differences in SES between school systems. I would be opposed to a system in which the state figured out some amount and said no school district could have a larger budget as I think this invalidates a community’s right to tax themselves (or potentially raise donations from industries in the community) and, even as an educator, I am not convinced that it is a good idea to raise state taxes enough to make every school districts budget equal to the highest in the stat (per capita basis of course).
Yes, it is an issue that small advantages can build over time. But everything is a trade off. Using Scalzi’s Real Life RPG I’m more interested in getting everyone to the same difficulty level then I am in making sure everyone starts with the same stats.
Let me start by saying that I’m really having trouble following this conversation. You’re obviously really… I can’t think of a good word, maybe “motivated” or “bothered”… by this conversation, but I’m really having trouble understanding what you’re trying to say. It sounds like you’re pretty progressive but just don’t like the discourse that people are currently having over civil rights and social justice?
But this I really want to respond to. Because I was totally with you until very recently (probably 2016). Sort of a “everyone knows Nazism and racism and sexism is wrong, why do you keep shouting that when we’re discussing something else” or whatever.
And then my eyes got opened to the other side of the conversation, and I noticed that there are actually a bunch of Nazis, and a ton of racists and sexists. They’re everywhere. We need to keep saying it. It’s not obvious to a large segment of the populace.
Then, after addressing the obvious self-proclaimed racists/sexists/Nazis, we need to talk about the much larger group of people who don’t think they’re racist/sexist because they assume that about themselves (it’s not in their heart or whatever), but still do the same things racists and sexists do. Getting them to understand which behaviors of theirs are sexist/racist so they can address them, which is exhausting and a ton of work. Now I’m rambling so I’ll stop writing.
Basic assumptions to some people. It still needs to be said. If you assume that these basic assumptions are a given you are ignoring the fact that not everyone thinks the way you do. Repeat it. Over and over. Pound it home for the people on the fence.
As well, I think you might be talking here as if the people you are talking to are ninth graders.
Nesrie, could you respond to what I am saying. If you want to say you think I mean something go ahead but at this point you are heading my mind incorrectly. I sound aggressive because you are not reading what I’m writing.
What labels are you talking about? Progressive and conservative? I like the labels well enough but I don’t identify with either group. Is that privilege? I know that not identifying with either group definitely does not do anything positive for my being heard. In the US political system it means I am specifically not heard because my choice is to cast my ballot in a manner that makes it look like I am part of an aggregate whole I do not support in every way.
If you mean black and white I do dislike black in one sense. My students who came to the US but were born overseas, my students who were born in the US but from immigrant parents, and my students who have multiple generations of parents in the US have different situations and experiences. They have often self identified as different from each other. I support that complexity and dislike seeing it swept up into Black. Is that privilege? Ask them.
The comment about labels was not about politics but about most discussion online. I’ve stopped keeping track of music genres. They are both too broad and too specific and don’t distinguish the qualities that matter to me just like Black did not distinguish the qualities that my students felt mattered. I’ll use the labels because they are more or less understood
In a sense I love the direction that the big discussion is going. On the issue of racism, sexism, and associated topics the viewpoint I hold is winning in the social sphere [others might disagree on this depending on which social sphere they are in]. I’m not so happy about the political results right now but that’s a different issue on which I am cautiously optimistic starting in 2020. My view has always been racism is bad, this harm can be compounded over time which leads to all sorts of complications, and people who actually hold such beliefs are a permanent part of their world view are evil. As I said in a response to Wumpus, standing around posting a new comment every time the administration does another racist thing is not my thing. But at times I am willing to discuss if someone posts an actual question or, in this case, an article whose main point is that even the already polarized groups are now enforcing groupthink.
The Times used a good phrase when it refereed to the current situation as a war mode with no room for any questioning. I would guess that’s how you feel. It’s not wrong or bad. I certainly don’t want to change your opinion on that. I don’t happen to feel that racism and sexism need to cause such a war mode. Do I think anyone should stand at a rally and hold a sign saying Maybe? Of course not. On the other hand we are in a gaming forum and talking about war so I’ll bring up WWII. The US and Britain presented a unified front against evil. Yet within the alliance there was discussion, disagreement, and conflict on the best methods. I think that someone can still view racism, sexism, and bigotry as evil without 100 percent agreeing on some of the edge cases, or how best to oppose the evil, or what to do with the people who seem to have been caught up in things without any real commitment.
Privilege? Yeah. But I do not agree that acknowledging that I have privilege means I should have no voice.
I am listening. I hear you putting words in my mouth and not listening to me. Please note that I didn’t respond to Wumpus’s original post. I responded when he linked the NY Times article and the specific point raised in it
even honest critics — people who earnestly disagree with their peers, even by a very little bit — can find themselves accused of discursive sabotage.
You are making their point. As far as I can tell on this topic I hold three views that differ from you.
I believe that there are people who voted for Trump who did so for non-racist reasons. This can be classified as racism by inaction and its not good. Some of the economic reasons might even scream racism to some people. I think these people are not inherently evil or lost and thus it makes sense to not push them further away by demonizing them. I don’t know how to reach them other then one at a time but it seems to me that it should be thought about since I’d guess its 15-25 percent of the US population based on polling about some of Trumps actions.
I believe that we can not get rid of bigotry. I use that word carefully because I mean that we can’t get rid of in groups and out groups. We can’t get rid of self interest either. The combination of those two means there will be bigotry. That’s all I mean by bigotry is the flip side of friendship. We are social creatures and not matter how much we try there will be discrimination between groups. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t denounce and work against racism, sexism, or issues around gender in our current ways of looking at them but there will be something else. Personally my vote is on the worldwide favorite - resources struggle between groups that are not separated by race or ethnicity.
Finally, I believe that it is bad to stifle discussion within a group in the sole interest of promoting group think no matter how noble the cause.
