We are against racism.
I am utterly astonished that you might not be aware of that.
Setting aside the question of whether or not racism is distinct from racial prejudice/bigotry (not because I don’t think it’s a worthy discussion, but to get more to the point here), does all racist/bigoted commentary get a warning, or is it just racist/bigoted comments in GD and Politics/Elections? The Pit aside, I’ve reported blatantly racist posts before and gotten no action. In fact, whereas the post that sparked this thread seems to have been in favor of so-called “white genocide” (to use the term as it is used by the kind of people who are… concerned about such things), the post I reported (the one that comes to mind) argued that white genocide was a thing, and therefore a reason to enact racist policies in immigration.
So is the board against all racism, or only racism in GD and Politics/Elections, rest of the board is free reign?
Why? You keep chanting “history and context” like it’s some magical incantation that protects you from the consequences of being racist, but you’ve never explained why they matter here in this extremely liberal message board where the conversations are curated.
Also, if blatant racism can be shrugged off with vague allusions to “history and context”, is there any reason why it should only apply to racism against white Americans? Should Irish posters be allowed to call the English a “disease” because of the Potato Famine? Or is there some reason why that “history and context” doesn’t count? Should a Palestinian poster be allowed to say Jews are a “disease”, because of the West Bank settlements? If not, why not? The Palestinians are “oppressed”, right? And the Israelis - their “oppressors” - are all Jews, right? So why shouldn’t the history and context of the Israel-Palestine conflict be sufficiently exculpatory if a Palestinian poster decides to call Jews vermin, or whatever? And while you’re answering those questions, here’s a third: do you really want to be part of a message board where you need to answer these types of questions? Because I don’t.
The whole racism = prejudice + power thing is a nonsense dogma that’s only believed by liberal racists in certain parts of academia. It has nothing to do with how real people in the real world define or understand racism. It is in itself, a racist doctrine which positions POC as being unable to live up to the same ethical standards expected of whites.
This is a classic example of the problem. The constitution wasn’t written by “an ethnicity”. Why are you so allergic to levelling your criticisms at individuals.
Laughs sarcastically in sub-70 IQ
I’m not sure if the line needs to be further defined, but the post definitely veered much further into unacceptability than the usual “lol white men amirite?” microaggressions that happen every day at the Dope. I’d like to see less of those, but it’s difficult to say which ones are over the line because each individual microaggression is not big enough to warrant moderation by itself (as opposed to the post we’re discussing here.)
That’s not my question. And so far, most of this thread has only been about half of my OP - the part about ambiguous moderator instructions has mostly been ignored.
The part about racism (and I’m assuming this post is confirming that the post in question was moderated due to racism) is not “are you against racism”, but (to phrase it in yet another way) “what kind of nuance do you see when it comes to difficult and complicated issues such as criticizing whiteness”? Maybe the post in question was just about killing white people - if so, then I certainly agree with the moderation (and indeed that is very bad and possibly worth a suspension). But if it was about fighting whiteness, then I think it’s reasonable sentiment.
So not only do whites perpetrate racism, they dictate to people of color the rules for expressing their frustrations about being on the receiving end of it.
Kafkatrap. Your definition of racism is spurious. To insinuate that disagreeing with your definition of racism is, in itself, evidence of racism is just a ploy designed to place your definition beyond criticism. Importantly, this isn’t a fallacy, it’s a deliberately dishonest tactic intended to relieve you of the burden of actually justifying your definition. I see you.
Say, funny story. A black person just told me that the true definition of racism is ”anything asahi says or does from now until the end of time”. I trust you won’t dare disagree. After all, you wouldn’t want to dictate to people of colour the rules for expressing their frustrations about being on the receiving end of racism, would you?
It’s not just my definition of racism; I am paraphrasing a definition of racism that people who have experienced racism have expressed in the past - perhaps on SDMB, perhaps not, but certainly elsewhere. You do realize that racism is an experience, so any definition of racism shouldn’t be limited to whatever you find on Google or dictionary.com’s website. It’s an experience, which means that people who’ve had that experience ought to be the ones who define what it means to feel racism and what racism really is, not you.
If your female friend is raped and she tells you that she has a hard time trusting men – all men – and that men suck, is she a sexist? Is she a misandrist? If you say “Hey, I understand that you were raped, but you shouldn’t hold all men responsible,” what would her response be?
Here’s the takeaway: There are situations in which indiscriminate anger is actually a very rational feeling and response to being violated. I’m sorry you don’t like it, and it’s uncomfortable for me to read, see, and hear is well. But I’m not going to tell people that they can’t, within reasonable boundaries, express that frustration from time to time. If we want to say that there’s a time and a place, I can probably agree with that. Maybe the debate or politics forums weren’t the place, but I think that if we’re really and truly interested in fighting ignorance, let’s be a little more flexible in allowing people who’ve experienced racism firsthand to explain to the rest of us who’ve not had that experience what racism means to them, on their terms, not yours.
A silly-ass example because no person who’s experienced racism uses that definition and everyone reading this thread knows it.
Oh, when it’s about white men, suddenly “microaggression” isn’t just woke SJW-speak. Cool, cool, good to know…
Yes. She’s sexist. The sexism is ameliorated by the trauma, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sexism, it doesn’t mean she’s justified, and it doesn’t mean she’s beyond criticism. Lots of rape victims in the world. Most of them aren’t bigots.
Question for you: If she was white, and she got raped by a black man, and had a hard time trusting black men, and went out of her way to avoid being alone with them, would she be a racist? Or would the fact she was raped by a black man mean she simply couldn’t be racist to them and her avoidant behaviour was justified and couldn’t be criticised?
I noticed you didn’t answer my questions from earlier. Should a Palestinian poster have free rein to call Jews a disease because of the “history and context” of the West Bank Settlement program? Would an Irish poster be free to call English posters diseased because of the troubles? If a gay ex-Muslim escapes a country where being gay carries a death sentence, is he allowed to call Muslims backward savages? If not, why not? His trauma is every bit as real as the trauma of your rape victim. So if she can generalise about an entire diverse group then why can’t he?
These are just a few examples I came up with off the top of my head. I could give you a thousand more. And please note you’re the only one who has to answer these questions. You’re the only one who has to break out a graph book and do these weird oppression equations to figure out where you stand. I don’t. I have a simple rule: Generalising about a racial, religious, or gender identity is always wrong. No exceptions. Some instances may be more wrong than others, but all are wrong to greater or lesser degrees and all should be condemned. And anyone who thinks otherwise can just go fuck themselves. Their input isn’t needed. It’s a good rule, and what it lacks in pointless hairsplitting it makes up for in simplicity, directness, and effectiveness.
And you’re exacerbating the obfuscation by conflating two different sense of the word “meaning”. Yes, only people who have experienced something can know what it “means” in the sense of what it feels like. But that’s a different sense of the word “meaning” than semantic meaning, and the notion that only somebody who has experienced something may have anything valid to say about clarity of language is complete nonsense. If someone says that they were bit by a stray dog, but it turns out it was a feral coyote, must we start calling coyotes dogs?
In any event, the well-known attempt to re-define the word racism (contrary to common usage) to mean something like “prejudice+power” did not arise from some grass-roots groundswell of opinion among POC, it was an explicit effort by social theory academics. The intent was to restrict the use of the word racism to mean only institutional racism. Under this redefinition, if we say that POC cannot be racist, what that means is that no individual person can change the entire cultural mileu and redistribute power, whatever they say or do. Of course that’s true.
But the problem is, this is not the common definition of racism. The common definition encompasses the chosen disposition of an individual person, something that is under their individual control. So it’s extremely common for people to hear “POC cannot be racist” under the academic re-definition, and infer that this means POC cannot be racist in the colloquial sense of racism, that a POC cannot (as individuals) choose whether or not to have a racist disposition, something that is clearly nonsense.
It’s true that no-one uses my definition. But almost no-one uses yours, so they’re not that different.
Almost nobody you know, that is.
Accuracy matters.
Yeah, I caught that as well.
lol
Your definition of racism is pretty well unheard of outside academia.
:rolleyes:
That might be true, but that doesn’t make it invalid.
There was a time when education, trying to view things outside of the usual mainstream perspective was considered a good thing.
Times have changed, I reckon. White people, the ones who perpetrate racism, are the victims, and black people who voice frustration at living with racism are the racists.
Ignorance fought.