This is one of those ideas that sounds really good in theory. However, in practice, things don’t tend to go this way.
In actual practice, a poster saying something like this is more likely an agenda pusher, or a troll here to stir up shit. It’s just not that likely that they’re utterly clueless about this. Even if they just heard or read someone else saying it, the context is pretty much going to talk about it being perceived as racist.
That said, knowing this board, there will likely be some attempt to answer their question. There may also be some rumbling in the Troll thread in the Pit, but we go out of our way to not alert the poster of this. A normal, non-trolling poster doesn’t tend to check those threads. And, even if they did, most Internet savvy people would be understanding of being wary of trolls.
The point where people start actively trying to push the poster away will be when the poster gets stubborn and won’t listen, or gives more clues that indicate they were posting disingenuously. It’ll be past the point where anything else can be said to convince them.
You talk of how the discussion will be unpleasant. But you act like our goal should be to put this one guy over everything else. The main argument for getting rid of this stuff is that there’s little chance of convincing people, and a huge downside of making their targets feel unwelcome. The more accommodating you are to a bigot, the less accommodating you are to those who face bigotry.
What I recommended at one time was just that we link the poster to the numerous threads on the topic, and tell them read them and come back if they think they have something new to add. PM a mod to open the thread again.
Sure, debunking a societal belief is hard. But that’s not what we’re doing with this obvious stuff. Society has moved on from thinking that black people are better athletes. This is a single person, who may not even be legitimately asking. And we can’t ignore the downsides of this discussion.
I can’t speak for any black people on whether or not having that question around would make them feel unweclcome. But I can say that bigotry in general tend to make the minority targets feel unwelcome.
That’s the type of stuff that I don’t want here. I don’t like that people have said they left the board due to how we wouldn’t deal with misogyny, transphobia, etc. I’d rather risk pushing away the posters who engage in that stuff than to keep pushing away minorities.
That’s what gets left out in these things that sound good. We think about the rare possibility of maybe actually getting to the root and resolving a bigoted action. It may be “unpleasant” to those of us who aren’t directly affected, but it can be a lot more to others.
There’s a reason why most places with civility rules just blanketly prohibit this type of bigotry.
