So you think it is okay to make such a serious accusation over something unintentional or debatable? Remember we are talking about calling a person racist, not just something they said.
Do you think a given person is either “a racist” or “not a racist”?
If you do, then I regret to inform you that you are missing a lot of nuance.
If you do not, then your post is ridiculous.
Nah, it’s my bad. TroutMan is right… I shouldn’t have said ‘the left’. That’s not fair, or accurate. I should have said “some activists on the left”.
Because maybe it’s not racism? For example, I think some here would consider opposition to affirmative action to be racist.
If I want to complain about lowering standards for minority applicants, that’s likely to get me tagged a racist by some.
If I say that a big part of the problem in the Black community in inner cities is that they have adopted values and behaviours that don’t work for them (perhaps because we built the incentives that caused it), that could be an honest belief with the intent of trying to help those communities, but that still won’t stop someone from accusing me of racism, because maybe in their social circles it’s accepted that questioning ANY reasons for Black under-performance other than ‘structural racism’ or ‘white privilege’ is evidence of racist thinking - especially if they kmow I am on the ‘right’, because they have pre-judged peoole on the right to be racist almost by default.
On the other side, I actually think lowering standards for minorities IS racist, but I wouldn’t call someone who advocates for it a racist, because they likely don’t see it that way at all. They may have other reasons for supporting it that I haven’t considered, or we may just disagree. Most people on the right think that CRT is a horribly racist philosophy, but the left disagrees.
An example from a less contentious issue: I was taken to task some time ago for using the word ‘Democrat’ instead of ‘Democratic’ (as in, ‘The Democrat Party’) I totally didn’t get it, and neither did lots of people. We split down the middle between people who said, "oh yeah, that’s an obvious slur’, and half who responded essentually ‘huh?’ Apparently, ‘Democrat’ is used by some to mean ‘DemocRAT’ or something. But only a portion of the members even knew that was a thing, while others were bewildered. But it was assumed that since I am on the ‘right’ I intended it as a malicious slur.
Another example is calling someone a racist for not capitalizing ‘Black’. While I am sure there are racists out there who intentionally use lower case ‘black’ out of spite or something, there are a lot more who simply don’t pay much attention to the latest trends in left-wing spelling and punctuation rules, and don’t read the kinds of sites that would make an issue out of it, so simply have no clue that it’s even a thing. People who immerse themselves in anti-racist doctrine and such may think it’s obvious, but others may just not even see the issue.
As an American with such a deep interest in American politics you should be very aware of the fact that there is no American political party named the Democrat Party.
Did you mean as a Canadian?
I was giving him an out.
Heh. Heh.
There isn’t a ‘Democrat Party’ in Canada either
This touches on the problem as I see it. Calling out racism or calling someone a racist shouldn’t be an insult, but it obviously is today. To use your example, there’s a worthwhile discussion that can be had about affirmative action and how some opinions on it reflect racist bias, and others don’t. But we’re forced to tread lightly to avoid insulting anyone. This would be much easier if we could call out those racist biases in a thread, and instead of being insulted, the person could say “oops, you’re right, my bad,” or “no, let me explain where I’m coming from.” But we can’t, thus the Pit.
In fairness, I’m a Democrat and I think this is the most idiotic distinction ever, and I had no clue it was an insult until very recent years. But if Sam_Stone pled ignorance after using the term, apologized, and didn’t repeat his mistake, I’d be surprised if he continued to catch grief about it. I’d also be surprised if he’s seeing a lot of people being called racist for unintentionally not capitalizing Black.
I’m guessing you meant ‘Canadian’. But again, it was something I never really thought about. There are Republicans, and there are Democrats. Republicans belong to the Republican party, so Democrats belong to the Democrat party.
Whether that is technically correct or not, lots of people just wouldn’t get the distinction, or even know that ‘Democrat’ is supposedly a slur while ‘Democratic’ is not.
This is a perfect example of a,category error. From your side, it may be incredibly obvious that it’s ‘Democratic Party’, and any time some yahoo has said ‘DemocRAT’ it makes the rounds of left-wing sites as an example of terrible Republican behaviour. So ‘everyone knows it.’ But if you aren’t very political, or you are on the right and your sources are more National Review than Breitbart, you may never have seen sanyone use the term or complain about it in that way.
So if you see me write ‘Democrat party’ you already jump to the conclusion that I’m doing it maliciously and obviously so, because ‘everyone knows’ about the DemocRAT slur. In the meantime, I had no idea what anyone was talking about.
I did change the way I reference Democrats after that, though, because once I knew it bothered people I didn’t want to be a jerk. But I truly was blindsided by the complaint and had never heard it before - whether you want to believe it or not.
That’s awesome!
No, seriously, that’s fantastic, thank you for taking other people into account (and I say that as someone who also hadn’t heard of the “Democrat party” as an insult until I saw it here on the Dope).
It’s not a DemocRAT slur, it’s a ‘There’s nothing democratic about the Democrat Party’ slur . . . and the origins of this have been posted so many times no one has an excuse anymore to not know the history of this, unless they don’t want to know of course.
You say you don’t want people to shrug off an accusation of racism; that it’s a serious matter. But you also don’t think people should be insulted at being accused of such a serious wrong. Don’t you see the inconsistency there?
Agreed. Liberal democrat here, and I have zero problem with the democrat party unless it’s obviously being used that way as a slur. And even then, so what? Some people don’t like democrats, some don’t like republicans.
I also don’t capitalize races except maybe if I’m referring to a cultural in-group. So black people and a black guy but the Black community. I think I picked that distinction up from the deaf people in the Deaf community.
Meh, I’ll disagree with this. My cite is this XKCD comic:
Imagine this, but instead of finding out about something cool like coke and mentos, you’re finding out that something you haven’t given much thought to has a long and racist history.
(I’ll share a personal example. I used the term “sacred cow” earlier after not even thinking of it for years and years, and realized for the first time that some Hindu people might be offended by it. It had never occurred to me before because I had originally heard the expression in Hebrew and assumed it referred to the Golden Calf story in the Bible, not to Hindus not wanting to harm cows - but after using the term it occurred to me that it fits Hindus a lot better and therefore might be offensive).
There is no inconsistency there. He wants people who are accused of racism to take it seriously and examine their opinions to see if they might be racist, doing so thoughtfully and with care, rather than knee-jerking to taking offense.
No, it is not inconsistent. If I tell you, “don’t walk too close to the edge, it might crumble and you’ll fall,” that is serious - I want you to pay attention and not shrug it off. But it is in no way insulting.
If I tell you that your comment is racist, I want you to seriously consider that, and maybe change your behavior. If I call (generic) you a racist, I want you to seriously consider that you are showing a pattern of such racist comments. Ideally, you wouldn’t take it as an insult, but it’s on you if you do.
Well, you just had a fellow left-wing poster admit that they never heard of the controversy either.
Again, your certainty about how everyone must know what you know is exactly how category errors get made - and why the board needs other voices so you don’t spend your time in an echo chamber that breeds such errors - whether on the right or left.
It’s one of the reasons why I still post here rather than posting on a site full of conservatives who would never challenge my thinking or provide alternative thoughts. It’s more fun to get high fives than pile-ons. But I’d learn nothing, and I’d have no incentive to sharpen my arguments and check my own thinking.
Thank you. Sincerely.
Well, one of the small benefits of having lived through Newt Gingrich reign as enfant terrible of the House is knowing that piece of history.
The other small benefit is knowing that it was a not insignificant part of Newt’s strategy to soil the Democrats with whatever mud he and the party could sling . . . and that’s why using it was important to Republicans/conservatives.