Nope. If I walk in a bar and 5 people shout “hey asshole, get the hell out of here,” I don’t really care if the other 95 tell me I should stay. I’m turning around and walking out.
No, because it even being allowed would tell them that the people in charge of moderation are okay with allowing people to push those ideas. The fact that the rest of the community isn’t okay with it doesn’t change that those in charge are. Those in the community don’t have the power to actually stop the racist poster from being racist.
And thus anyone who wants to post in that community knows they will have to put up with racism. This not only is unwelcoming to people of the non-majority race, but to those in the majority who are trying to stop it.
I know there is some gray area on racism. But, in the places where we can pretty much all agree, I see no reason for it to be allowed.
No. People get tired of abuse. People like to hang out in places where they aren’t subject to abuse. Yes, if you need to be there, better to know that a bunch of other people have your back. But if you don’t need to be there, why bother?
I thought this was the idea behind a relatively recent revamp: some debates are considered settled on this board.
We don’t need yet another discussion on some of these subjects.
Problem re the OP is the word deliberate. Accurately ascribing intent is tricky especially since many, maybe most, racist statements are made by people who honestly do not perceive themselves or the statements made as racist.
If I go to a place where somebody calls me subhuman, and someone else says, “You’re wrong, let’s have a civil, reasoned conversation about whether LHoD is human or not,” no, actually, the second person isn’t making me feel welcome.
Is this all from the Will Smith thread where an offensive post suggested that racial bias was a factor because the producer, Will Packer, is Black? Not a “Blacks are subhuman,” statement, but rather “Blacks are biased in favor of Blacks…who hit…other Blacks (?)”
People get damn tired of having to say “I am a human being!” over, and over, and over, and over.
Especially people who are already having to do so in the rest of their lives. Why come on a message board only to have to keep doing it there, too?
Good grief, no. This is probably conversation number 357,275 on the subject, or thereabouts. I’ve only been here a couple of years, and I’ve seen a number of them. I gather it used to be worse.
But, in Café Society?
~Max
I’d rather live in a place with virtually no crime than in a place with substantial crime and “great cops.”
YMMV.
No. We do not.
I have never seen this board as a welcoming place for minorities, especially PoCs. I’m here in spite of that.
Yeah, that’s a bit like saying a klan rally is a welcoming place so long as the protestors outnumber the racists.
…and it’s a rally where the police are protecting the Klan and arresting the protestors, because the protestors dared to called the Grand Wizard a racist but the Klansmen never said the word “nigger” out loud.
The moderation around here has always been racist-favouring. I’ve resigned myself to that years ago. Not made my peace with it, but just completely dropped my expectations of any meaningful change. The thrice-told-tales rule for scientific racism for GD was a pleasant surprise, but yet, here we still are with people dropping little racist turds in the punchbowl and yet remaining unwarned for it. When the mods admit they see the racism.
Guess how “welcomed” that makes me feel.
And don’t quote a hypothetical Grand Wizard using the word “nigger” because that’s going too far.
We’ve come far, saying bad words gets you, even in proper context, moderated but endorsing the meaning of bad words, in polite language of course, is more than tolerated.
I’m just now actually going through the thread, because I knew some responses would piss me off. And this is definitely one of them.
First off, I already explained what the problem is. We want this board to be welcoming to people who are not white. Allowing blatantly racist posts makes it unwelcome. Posters arguing against it doesn’t change the fact that the people in charge are saying “Dehumanizing people of color is a permitted topic of discussion.” And that is of course not welcoming.
You also do that frustrating thing where a poster brings up a specific topic, and you try to generalize it to its least offensive form. It particularly tends to happen when someone talks about bigotry, which gets generalized to just discussion or offensiveness or disagreement. When someone is discussing a possible exception to something, it makes no sense to bring up the general case.
I also notice the “freedom of speech” argument. But we are on a moderated message board. As such, the freedom of speech is inherently limited. On this board, there is a civility rule, “Don’t be a jerk.” Hence I can argue that something is not civil.
Speaking of which, this also explains why your argument about giving someone grief for saying something horrible is insufficient. We are limited in what we can do. The mods actually stepped in and stopped people from responding to Cartooniverse. The only place you can respond is in the Pit, and it is absolutely trivial to simply not read what’s in the Pit.
But, if you did read his pit thread, you’d have a second reason for why this isn’t a valid tactic. Cartooniverse has as history of posts like this. Clearly people’s responses did not change anything. And now they have direct mod permission to still continue. There is very little chance they will actually stop.
This is what why I wind up angry on this topic. I go out of my way to narrowly tailor the topic. I go out of my way to provide several arguments for that topic. And yet, inevitably I get someone who ignores most of my arguments and widens the topic beyond what is under discussion.
I gave specific reasons why this specific action should fall under the “don’t be a jerk” rule. I did not argue that people should not be able to argue things that are wrong or offensive in general. I’m talking about something the poster clearly knew was so racist as to be something he would likely be modded for.
People should not be able to come to this board (or any other place that is moderated and believes racism is wrong) and claim that someone did something wrong because they are black. Not even if they play games and try to speak in code.
Go back and look at the OP, and not what Princester widened the topic into. I am talking about something rather specific: “deliberate racism” and “deliberately offensive racism.” I did not say anything about discussion of racially based motives.
Obviously I want a chilling effect on deliberate racism. And if you can’t discuss the topic without being deliberately racist, then yeah, I want a chilling effect on that, too.
Nothing I have said would be a problem with someone who accidentally said something racist, was told about it, and apologized and clarified. But that isn’t what happened here. Nothing I am advocating would do anything to prohibit discussions of race-based discussions.
In fact, they could probably go more freely, because we wouldn’t have to be worried someone would say something so racist. And, heck, maybe we could up the diversity on this board so we’d have a lot more people who knew what they were talking about on racial issues.
The classic authoritarian strategy is to cry “paedophilia!” or “terrorism!” and thereby get laws passed that become generalised in usage even though they gained approval by focusing on specific instances.
In other words not only did I “do that frustrating thing whereby you brought up a specific topic and I tried to generalise it” I did it on purpose and I stand by doing so.
Further, using “offensiveness” as the benchmark is also a classic passive aggressive tactic - there is no universal agreement on what is offensive. To misquote Lewis Carroll -
“Offensive is just what I choose it to be," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “neither more nor less.”
“The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can be offended by so many different things.”
"The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘whether I am to be master — that’s all.”
The end result is that discussions are changed from whether a position is defensible to whether someone or some body of people consider it offensive; and if you think that is a good idea you might want to ponder some history about things that have been considered offensive at various times.
Better to stick to the bedrock of what is factually and rationally defensible, than to rely on “offence” as the basis for deciding what is and is not permissible.
This is just question begging. Stating that freedom of speech here is inherently limited gives no guidance as to the point of contention, which is how limited it should be. Nobody is saying you can’t argue that it should be more limited than it is. The question is – is it a good idea?
Yes. Yes we are - which is why it is such a joke that you think that imposing restrictions as you propose will do anything more than is achieved by Zaphod Beeblebrox’s Peril-Sensitive-Sunglasses.
As to the rest, instead of assuming that I am inappropriately wandering from your supposedly narrow point, or ignoring your arguments, consider that perhaps I think your narrow point should not be considered in isolation because it has broader implications, and that I have considered your arguments and think they are unconvincing.
Well, no. That’s not how argument works. It is irrelevant that you find things “unconvincing” if you don’t then explain your reasoning. In fact, refusing to do so generally is a sign that you don’t think your counterarguments will stand up to scrutiny. Otherwise you would make them out loud rather than only insinuate them.
Even now, you do it. You’re deflecting from my actual counterarguments. You previously argued that posters can effectively discourage this sort of blatant racism. I showed that this doesn’t really seem to work. You apparently have no counterargument.
If you continue to refuse to make a case for why my arguments are wrong, I have no reason whatsoever to think that they are.
And, no, that one part of my argument isn’t question begging. You are taking it out of context. I simply used that to show that the “freedom of speech” aspect of your argument doesn’t hold water. I didn’t use it to then argue why certain speech shouldn’t be allowed. That’s in my OP and the part of the post you ignored.
The point about offensiveness is also something I covered. RACISM IS NOT WRONG BECAUSE IT OFFENDS PEOPLE. It is wrong because it causes harm to people of color. Switching from racism to offensiveness is moving the goalposts, to keep us from talking about whether we should forbid racism.
And I already covered the issue about the blinders, when I pointed out that my goal is for non-white people to feel welcome here. In fact, since you don’t counter that claim, my assumption is that you don’t care, and are okay with this board being hostile towards people of color.
This is a thing that I’ve seen all over the net. You will see the person pushing that we need to actually have debate and arguments on certain topics. But when I point out things that are inconvenient to their views that they can’t debunk, suddenly they don’t care to actually engage in argument. They instead try to change the topic to one they think they can win.
It’s an unfortunately effective tactic, which is why I fight back on it so strongly on issues that actually matter. You are free to think what you want, but if you’re going to state it here, then I am going to poke holes through it, and you can’t deflect by refusing to acknowledge those holes.
From the outside looking in, you and Princhester seem to be talking at cross purposes. Your goal is to discourage deliberate racism. You want it gone from the boards. Princhester’s goal seems to be to simply discredit it in the eyes of the community, not to prevent it. His opinion seems to be, so long as the community at large isn’t racist, and so long as any racism is duly ostracized, we don’t have a problem. I don’t believe he ever argued that members could effectively discourage racism, that is, shame a racist so much that they stop being racist.
~Max
A community that tolerates racism can’t be not racist. And this community definitely tolerates racism. Especially the kind of genteel White supremacy that hides itself in politeness and “well, it’s their culture” crap. The idea that this community of largely middle-aged and older White men is somehow immune from Whiteness is, quite frankly, laughable.
Potential ostracism is not enough, especially here where you can find more than enough people willing to fight the idea that any particular post or wording or dogwhistle isn’t really racist.
I’ll believe the idea that this “community at large” isn’t racist the first time all the White people (And the half-Whites) just shut the fuck up and listen when a PoC says that something is racist. Which has never, ever happened here.
If you are talking about tangible discrimination, like bank loans or hiring practices, I would agree with you. If we were talking about deliberately racist moderator actions I would agree, too. But we’re talking about “tolerating” (allowing to go officially unpunished) member posts on a message board, mere pontifications, so I must disagree. I see this as more like a town meeting, where it is asked, “should saying racist things be grounds to kick someone out of town?” I don’t think the town is racist if it decides “no, but it deserves a heckling”.
Though I should reiterate, I think deliberate racism should be banned in Café Society under the jerk rule. If I run the Café and you’re spewing racist drivel, you get asked to STFU once. After that you get the boot.
I think that’s outside the scope of this thread. Presumably BigT is talking about situations where it is agreed by all that the post is racist.
~Max