Is there a form we fill out giving our gender/sex, preferred pronouns and race? I don’t think most people have identified their race.
never mind
Max_S, what clarity would you like me to provide? You raised an interesting question in your OP. A lively debate ensued. You made some posts others regarded as racist and evidently you got pitted for it. We didn’t mod you that I can see. We also didn’t mod people for pitting you. Do you think this was unfair?
I don’t want to be sanctioned, but it’s not clear to me whether the same behavior would get me sanctioned for hate speech under your new guidance.
Specifically when you write,
Once the community - or even mods - decides a post is in fact racist speech, it is not clear if mods will step in and sanction it as hate speech.
I ask because a) this is something that has been asked for repeatedly and with some justification, and b) if the mods will step in going forward, I’ll refrain from such sensitive debates rather than risk being warned.
~Max
If you’re asking whether we’re going to take a vote among SDMB users before we mod someone, the answer is no. If you’re asking whether the staff tries to arrive at an internal consensus on difficult cases, the answer is yes, that’s our standard practice.
The core question is whether racism itself is considered hate speech, even when no pejorative remarks or factual claims are made - such as questions about my own identity, or of my own morals. I don’t consider myself a racist, but I know some of my opinions go right up to the line. I can avoid slurs and disparaging remarks and still state my positions. But if racism itself is against the rules, I would rather just keep my mouth shut than risk being warned.
I understand that you don’t like working in hypotheticals, so I provided an actual example. But now I fear there will not be a straight answer.
~Max
There’s ignorant racism, and aggressive racism. I can’t see the former as hate speech, but the latter certainly is.
I’ve been modded for this, when not using any slurs.
That’s how I read it, too. For instance, this would make scientific racism debates allowable again:
My feeling exactly.
Debating the inferiority of me and mine is a nice privilege to have, I’m sure.
I can point to at least one Mod who explicitly, openly did not. This is a nice myth, but no, you have not always modded it. And that leaves open the question of what does constitute hate speech.
But has shown itself to be very bad at identifying what’s racist. FFS, I once had to point out that a username contained a racist slur. And I got a mound of uphill for it.
The response to Cartooniverse’s racist speech was inadequate. This has already been pointed out. What is the response going to be?
FWIW, I read it as saying that people who don’t want to, say, debate the inherent humanity of their own group, are just not as interested in intelligent debate as the racists who do.
Or, in other words, racists are the real intellectuals here and the minorities who object to that are here merely to stir shit up by exposing their hurt feelings as a way of shutting debate down for those intellectuals.
“Too sensitive” is just a step away from “snowflake”, IMO.
never mind, saw that part I skimmed over that referenced scientific racism
From the remarks so far it’s evident some people feel the restated rules are reasonably clear, some think they go too far, some think they don’t go far enough, and some aren’t sure. We’ll just have to see. To repeat, if you see what you consider instances of hate speech or unambiguous racism on this board and you feel the staff’s response is inadequate, please bring the matter to our attention and we’ll go from there.
Having done what we can do for now, I’m closing this thread.