I think you're very confused. The idea that rational people have to engage thoughtfully with irrational bigots is pure nonsense. It is not the duty or obligation of anybody to engage with those who hate them.
The reason we get bigots in office by the way is not because trolls are banned. It's because powerful interested want bigots in office. Bigotry sells. It's very easy to screw people over if you can distract them by having them hate on some out group. It is naive to think that taking with bigots will change this.
And here is the point: social change doesn't proceed through rational discussion. Never has, never will. Real change requires organization and solidarity and protesting and marching and uncompromising demands.
If you want to waste time engaging with trolls have at it. You will find that these people have nothing but contempt for discussion and no interest in being swayed by logic. For the rest of us we have far better things to do and banning trolls and bigots is the obvious choice.
Disagreed. Any form of discrimination or ignorance should be challenged with more dialogue instead of less. Take whatever abhorrent ideological position you can think of and I will tell you that we should discuss it publicly, challenge it publicly, and destroy it intellectually in a public forum.
This has the advantages of:
* the person who held these thoughts outs themselves as a bigot as opposed to being a toxic agent
* a corpus of knowledge how to dispel/combat such positions is formed
* people who may be in the beginning stages of harboring such ideas are either discouraged due to strong public pushback or are helped to realize how wrong that position is
History seems to disagree. The views being expressed openly today couldn't have been expressed openly in the past. The KKK is still a thing. I'm not advocating we parade these ideas around, I'm firmly a believer in refusing to give bigotry a platform, but that's not the bit I'm focusing on.
People are wildly variant in their experiences and cognition but we all decipher meaning from layers in speech. It's possible for a person to fail to comprehend, fail to obtain the necessary context, fail to connect their actions to harm, but succeed in receiving the hostility encoded in speech. Eventually a person walks away with a model of the world that a person disagrees not because they see something but because they just don't like you. You can see this everywhere in that every criticism the left has of the right they turn it around on the left.
> Big changes mostly come from waiting for bigots to die out, and not replacing them with new ones.
Bigotry never dies out. It's a natural facet of our existence and our current methodology for addressing it exacerbates the problem because we live in a world where a person defeated in argument can rally with others. There is no making a minority of bigotry in an endlessly connected world.
I agree that rational debate is good, but in this case the rational debate has to include judgment because the one side of the debate is arguing that the other side (say, racism), is evil. That prevents it from being a perfectly calm, rational debate because the other side ends up (accurately) feeling judged and condemned. That's exactly the thing the author dislikes here--that the people supporting the non-mainstream views on these issues feel that it's not socially acceptable to have those views, so they feel they can't speak up.
So, how can people argue that bigotry is unacceptable and wrong without making it harder for bigots to speak up?
Racism, sexism and homophobia are not issues the government need have a monopoly on. More good is done when attitudes are changed and hearts are won. I'm not sure the current approach of vilifying opponents will work. But most people have more compassion than they're given credit for. Engaging with people challenging false ideas and encouraging good ones can improve things. But in order for that to happen people from the differing views need to have contact and meaningful dialogue. I fear society is stratifying. Telling people they need to love people of other races, genders, sexual orientation and faiths while calling them nasty bigots sends mixed messages.
Framing bigots as "political opponents" has some efficacy as a tactic too, given people's allergy to politics. It's sad that this has, especially recently, become equated to politics. "How should we organize government", or "are certain functions better handled by government" are reasonable questions of politics. "Should we treat some people as less than other people" is not a question of politics, it's a question of humanity, that should be orthogonal to politics. It's possible to be toxic anywhere on the political spectrum, and it's possible to be decent anywhere on the political spectrum.
I'm trying to address this in good faith but it's difficult to see any serious participation on your end. I imagine you're fully capable of reading and understanding the comment you replied to. My comment said in no uncertain terms that I was fine with the concept of freedom of association. I also completely understood that black people and racists aren't going to want to spend time together. The claim I made was that when picking between minorities and bigots, excluding bigots is 100% fine. I said in my top comment I've yet to hear a good argument for making bigot-friendly compromises, and your meritless "This claim is self-refuting" and then changing the subject without addressing my point is very much an example of bad argument.
Let’s be blunt, when people complain about lack of a diversity of thought/opinion, it’s almost always a complaint that they can’t be a bigot. Of course nobody says that so directly- they use dog whistles so that people who are being attacked know to leave while the bigots retain a veinier of civility so they can radicalize others by saying “look how hostile and irrational that group got over my innocuous sounding statement.”
Maybe you think spaces would be better if we allowed unmoderated bigotry in the name of free speech, but a practical consequence is that when the bigots move in, the people that they are targeting go away. The end result isn’t “diversity of thought” and it was never intended to be- it just ends up being one more space where people get bullied into leaving.
I don't have the hat or the beliefs, but way to illustrate that you can't even imagine someone being able to understand opposing positions. You certainly don't sound open minded or rational, since you're assuming bigotry could be the only possible root belief for similar policy goals.
How you want to react is your business, but again, you should be aware that it's going to impact how effective your fight against those views is.
These are baseless assertions, absurd on their face, supporting hate. Why is that important to you? If you think you are fighting a political war, avoid the mistake that many before you have made - becoming so caught up in the mob dynamics, the cause, the obsession - that you disregard the consequences. Don't say later, 'I didn't think' - that's fine for a night out, but it's not good enough when people's lives and welfare is at stake.
Everyone faces prejudices from some others; should everyone act on them? What kind of society will we have? On a practical level, how does that bring freedom and economic opportunity.
You have a great model that has been far more successful than anything in the history of humanity, the free world, based on universal human rights and equality. The (general) lack of prejudice where I live works wonderfully; the bigotry - almost always from outsiders who have no experience with the people they hate - is the only problem. If they all went away, we'd have one less problem.
I agree that at the core most people want the same thing but there are bigoted beliefs that are inherently difficult to be a minority around and it's harder to handle. For example, the guy whose face has been punched often recently, he desires an ethnic cleansing in order to accomplish safety, purpose, etc. Should we expect the people who are targets of his rhetoric(the people he wishes to ethnically cleanse) to feel safe talking to him or interacting with him? I don't know, and I don't know if he'll even listen to those people. Has it worked for you with people you've met?
Bigotry is a belief structure. Discrimination and harassment are actions, which may or may not be based in bigotry. I am in no way advocating that it is okay to discriminate against or harass people based on their identity. Speech can be an action, but it can also just be speech. It's not a simple line, but I think it's well defined in the law and well understood in society the difference between a statement of opinion, which may or may not be bigoted, and harassment.
Also, I'd like to point out that you're awfully focused on my statements around bigotry. Bigotry is a consequence of humanity, but it's also something that can be changed through education and discussion. The very reason why it's important to protect dissenting speech, is because it's a protection for society against bigotry. The movement that's currently happening around "safe spaces" is not merely a reaction to bigotry, it's also a reaction to dissenting opinions, ignoring the latter for the former because the former makes an easy target to argue against due to its inappropriateness and unpopularity does not change the facts of the matter.
I think part of our misunderstanding is that we disagree on what is entailed in a "discussion" and what is entailed in the term "safe space". To me, a discussion must have, among other things, diversity of thought or position. This implies that there will be dissent. In the usage of the term "safe space" that I've experienced, dissent was not allowed, in fact it was in some cases violently rejected. If there is no room for dissent, then what exists within is not a discussion, it's a group affirmation. You do not walk away from a group affirmation having learned anything, although it might make you feel better about yourself. A discussion provides the possibility of learning something, gaining awareness of other viewpoints, understanding of someone who is different than you, and perhaps the possibility of convincing someone else to change their viewpoint to share yours.
On a university campus in a shared space, I'd very much hope that any discussion that occurs about any topic, but especially topics of politics and social mores has room for dissent. For instance, I'd hope that my dissenting opinion regarding the existence or establishment of "safe spaces" would be welcome, if not applauded in a discussion about identity politics on a university campus. At the same time, if I were on said campus and I heard someone expressing a grossly bigoted opinion, such as something which is blatantly racist or sexist, I would confront them and provide them my dissenting viewpoint to their bigotry and hope that it were welcomed, if not embraced by the person who I was having the disagreement with. University life is supposed to be about having your viewpoints that you grew up with challenged, meeting new people who are different than you, finding out about the vast diversity of opinions and thought that exists in the world, and opening your mind to the possibilities that life holds. When we use social means to censure people and demand the cessation of dissent in the name of not causing offense, we trade away the possibility of teaching students about the vast possibilities of the world in favor of not rocking the boat.
It's upsetting that some proponents of this administration dismiss its critics because they presume that they dislike him categorically. It is this sort of bigoted presumption and political antagonism that is causing the erosion of political discourse in this country. This issue is not that Obama has critics, it's that some people believe that he shouldn't.
Why is it so difficult for people to accept that those who disagree with them aren't just trying to antagonize them, and may have actual, legitimate political orientations and views?
Instead of dismissing everyone with whom you disagree and painting them as irrational bigots, why don't you attempt to discuss something with them?
well when everything is an offense to someone your going to need a right to offend just to say something they don't agree with.
groups have become adept with identity politics, they use it to stop debate. When your ideas are unpopular you instead lay claim that the attack is bigoted because the disagreement stems from the the identity of the person's whose idea was debated, not their idea. This allows one side to effectively stifle debate and run amok
Absolutely, many people can be convinced and reasoned with, I don't dispute that. What I'm saying is that there are people who are prejudiced to such an extent that there is no reasoning with them. You have never addressed how we deal with that problem. There are people like this in society at large and there are people like this in positions of power in government and in the private sector. Both problems need to be addressed in some way, because the people in government and the private sector derive power from the people in society who support them and we can't tolerate this in a civil society. I don't know what order to solve them in and perhaps solving one would solve the other, but it's a problem that prevents us from working together in a more fundamental way as a society. Ignoring it is not an option.
Problem is plenty of people aren't reasonable, or may be reasonable but refuse to apply reason to some discussions; you can probably thank religion for that.
It is entirely possible that future generations will look back on the debate and just laugh at it as we laugh at people who used to burn witches. You will certainly find people today who would think it was disgusting and offensive to even think of supporting gay marriage and these people have some considerable % of the money and votes so you can't really dismiss them.
So the purpose should not be to enforce views, but to enforce certain actions. So you can be as racist as you want , but you can't refuse somebody a job on the basis of race.
I love how the top response to this article contains the following:
There is plenty of room for debate on many subjects. There is no room at the table for the ideologies masquerading as "conversations" in these circles. These bigots lost their seat at the adults' table long ago. To invite them back with their notions of racial supremacy and their desire for theocracy is a bridge or twenty too far.
But if you listen to people like Dave Rubin, Sam Harris, etc. you see that they fiercely oppose theocracy and institutional racism. The straw man is real. Liberals like this only further alienate people and make the "Intellectual Dark Web" (I don't like that name because it sounds like some underground, illegal activity even though it's all done in the light of day, broadcast on youtube for everyone) grow.
No, I said I don't see it. I asked you to show me. You still haven't made the connection between the links you offered and free speech.
I definitely deal with less homophobia now than I did five or ten years ago, and most of it came from engaging with homophobes and changing their minds. Racism is still almost as bad as ever, but it seems like that's mostly because the instigators (racists) never interact with their targets (people visually and culturally dissimilar from them).
The only difference I see is that one improved more than the other because people engaged with bigots and changed their minds. Which goes against your (as of yet unproven) assertion that engagement makes it worse.
Have you reflected on the fact that all those community spaces have had one thing in common - you moderating them? Perhaps listening to peoples concerns about lack of diversity of thought instead of labeling them bigots would allow you to see things differently. Most people don't feel as strongly about controlling the discourse of others that they end up moderating any not to mention multiple spaces.
The reason we get bigots in office by the way is not because trolls are banned. It's because powerful interested want bigots in office. Bigotry sells. It's very easy to screw people over if you can distract them by having them hate on some out group. It is naive to think that taking with bigots will change this.
And here is the point: social change doesn't proceed through rational discussion. Never has, never will. Real change requires organization and solidarity and protesting and marching and uncompromising demands.
If you want to waste time engaging with trolls have at it. You will find that these people have nothing but contempt for discussion and no interest in being swayed by logic. For the rest of us we have far better things to do and banning trolls and bigots is the obvious choice.
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