Except it’s not, obviously: after all, you’re here debating, not in ATMB complaining. So, you must see some value in engaging in debate, without issuing an immediate opinion ban.
I, on the other hand, readily admit that in certain cases, removal is the most sensible option. It’s only when it becomes the default that it becomes a problem.
I would say that it is far less prevalent than it was in the 60’s, then 70’s, the 80’s, even the 90’s. There were a lot of reasons that people voted for Trump, being racist was only one of them. Tolerating racism for short term gain was the majority.
So your point is that it is better to have pervasive racism? I don’t agree.
Right, that was what I was saying. And I do think that a huge part of that is because it’s not socially acceptable to be a racist in public.
Then I don’t know what it is that you are saying. We are not throwing out anyone becuase we disagree on one issue.
Okay, I will continue not doing that.
If you look hard enough, you can find anything that you want to see.
I quite am, thank you, and so should you. And that’s the whole point, we are free to speak our minds. I’m not sure I understand what it is that you are wanting other than asking us to censor ourselves when we criticize people or ideas that we think are wrong.
No, I am not. I am for free speech. That is why I do not wish to censor those who would criticize others for the ideas that they put into the public sphere.
Then tell employers not to be reactionary and to give due diligence to complaints against their employees. Don’t tell people to stop complaining. Like I said earlier, I’ve had people want to fire me, and as a manager, I’ve had people ask me to fire employees. You know what I did, I listened to their concerns, and acted appropriately. By not firing them.
So, you want to write an open letter to employers, by all means, go ahead. If you want to demand that people stop criticizing people and ideas, that’s a different story.
Who is afraid of who in this situation that cannot speak up?
Sometimes it is; sometimes it isn’t. Depends on the circumstances. If someone gives David Duke a column, that warrants removal – both of Duke and those that gave him a column. I think Fox News should fire Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity for dishonesty, bigotry, hypocrisy, inaccuracy, and much more, as another couple of examples.
I disagree with Steve Schmidt on MSNBC sometimes, but I don’t have a problem with him being employed by them.
So the answer is that it depends.
Who is a public figure in this situation?
Of course I see value in debate, otherwise, I’d be doing something far more productive that I really should be doing right now.
It is when someone is using their power to squash debate that I have issues. If I felt that a moderator was racist or bigoted, and abusing their position to advance racist or bigoted views, I probably would raise that in ATMB. But why would I do that with a poster, who has no more power than I?
I disagree that it has become the default. I think that there have been a small handful of high profile cases that have been largely distorted that are being offered as an example that this is a problem, but I see lots of people with questionable views on a number of things who still have jobs, still hold positions of power and influence.
Like I said, if your concern is about people being fired over trivialities, then address your concerns to the employers, not to the people.
Here in the UK hate speech laws mean it can be a crime to quote a rap lyric. No doubt the new breed of ‘leftists’ would be pushing for these laws in the US too if they could.
What I want is the same thing as HMHW: debate people instead of trying to de-platform them or get them fired or even calling them names. I’m not saying you personally are doing any of those things, but enough people on the left are that it’s interfering with research and with the exchange of ideas. It needs to be opposed.
Indeed. If you are in a position of executive authority you should not take the easy way out by reactively folding like a cheap umbrella at first sign of pushback. Be willing and able to take some heat, dammit.
There are some ideas that are not debatable. I do not believe that anything productive can be had on a debate on scientific racism, or a number of such subjects.
To debate someone who believes that science says that black people are inferior is only to amplify their own voice. They don’t have to debate fairly, they can be disingenuous, they can Gish Gallop all over. There is no exchange of ideas there, so I am simply opposed to having that debate, period.
It is far easier to tell a lie than it is to prove it wrong. So those who are willing to be dishonest have an advantage. That people notice this and speak out about it is a good thing, it is the only weapon that can be used to combat such fallacious rhetoric.
I think there’s an element that Fox news presenters and talk radio presenters are appealing to a totally separate audience and so they are able to ignore what leftists think. It’s people who are closer, who could be or were allies who are vulnerable to being cancelled if they step out of line. Though that’s not totally true when it comes to platforms like Twitter or giving talks in public.
It was in universities that this madness began, I found a nice quote: “since the late 1960s, while the Right has been busy taking the White House, the Left has been marching on the English department.”
I brought up the Shirley Sherrod story for exactly this reason. She got “canceled” because Brietbart went after her, and functionaries in the Obama administration were terrified of the optics that they were being smeared with. They proactively fired her as quickly as possible, because they knew that by the time O’Reilley came on, he was going to tear them apart. And he did so, he called for her termination, even though she already had been. I’m sure that there were those who patted themselves on the back for getting out ahead of the controversy. It didn’t hurt that the head of the NAACP also came out against her.
Then it turns out that it was a bit more complicated than that. That if they had looked a bit more into the complaints that they had received, then they would have seen that those complaints were utterly without merit, and were just pure maliciousness.
If that is what is being asked, if it is being asked that people look a bit more into complaints before acting on them, that, I will agree with wholeheartedly.
But I will not agree with anyone that says that it was wrong to make a sincere complaint in the first place.
I’m not interested in having a debate on scientific racism, or several other topics. But I do strongly believe that all ideas are debatable. There are other areas that are not so clear cut where research and debate is also being shut down. Good policy relies on knowing the facts.
All ideas are debatable.
Not all debates are productive.
But who is that? Who are these people that are terrified of being “canceled” for stepping out of line? It’s such a nebulous complaint, such an ambiguous assertion that you are weighing against the very real harms that comes of censorship.
The problem here is that the examples that have been proffered have all been people of power and influence, and yet, the stated concern is for the everyman.
Let’s try this as an example, see if it is the sort of thing that you are worried about.
Mr. A is at the water cooler, telling racist jokes and asserting the inferiority of women.
Ms. B objects to this. Should Ms. B engage Mr. A in debate, or should she go to HR and ask them to ask him to stop it. If he doesn’t stop it, should he be “canceled”?
If Mr. B gets fired, just for expressing his opinion, is this an example of cancel culture?
Someone got fired because of Brietbart and you still don’t think it’s a problem?
This is a big part of the problem. People reacting without checking the facts and going so OTT employers prefer to just fire the person concerned.
And just as those people reacted without paying attention to the entirety of the situation, so have you.
Did you not see the rest of my post? Did you not see how I agree that employers should put some thought into it?
The entirety of the reason for my post was to show that employers are catching on, they are checking into complaints.
There were a few others that got canned in the Obama admin early on due to something that they had said or done years back that got dug up by the right. She was the last, as the right showed that it was not making these complaints in good faith, they were not sincere concerns.
If “cancel culture” overplays its hand then it cancels itself.
The sort of thing I am worried about is “researcher wants to investigate contentious issue X, university tells them not to because they are afraid of the reaction”. “Journalist wants to write about issue Y, editor refuses to let them because it will lead to bad publicity.” “Government tries policy Z, and evidence shows it doesn’t work, but supporters really wanted it to work, so no one talks about it and they continue.” And “Joe Public is concerned about immigration, but one party says that means he must be racist, so he votes for the other one.”
Wasn’t a guy fired last week for an essay he wrote 20 years ago? I really hope employers are learning better, but the general public has to take some responsibility too.
Those are all very simple concerns that have easy enough solutions.
Do you actually have concrete examples of such?
I would agree that if a researcher wanted to investigate scientific racism, then the university should very well refuse to fund that. If a journalist wants to write about how black people are harming the US by their very existence, then I do think an editor should say no.
As far as your Government example, it is having a chilling effect on the people being afraid to speak up against those in power for fear of being labeled “cancel culture” that would prevent anyone from speaking out about it.
If Joe personalizes things to the degree that he accepts the title of racist due to his concerns about racism, then that is on Joe. He was looking for a reason to vote for the other one. He wasn’t driven away.
There are racists who oppose immigration, and calling them racists is in no way wrong. It is, however, against what you think is productive, because Joe will see someone being called a racist for being anti-immigration, and presume that that label is being applied to him. I can’t control how Joe reacts to the world, and if he would rather join a party that is openly racist simply because he thinks that someone somewhere might think that he may be racist, then that is not on those who oppose racism.
Once again, when you simplify things and leave out relevant details, you can make anything sound bad. It depends on what your motive is.
If your motive is to have an actual productive debate, then you would look at the whole of things, and see the whole story as to why a particular CEO got an extremely generous severance package as it was determined that he was no longer the right fit for the company going forward. You would also see that that particular CEO didn’t just write that decades ago, he never evolved from that position, and you could see the influence that that attitude had in the toxic culture of the company.
You see how you wrote a single sentence, and I had to write an entire paragraph to even begin to unpack it and give it context that a reader would understand? You see how uphill a “debate” like this can be?
That’s why there are some debates that are not productive. If only one side is actually interested in substance, and the other side is only interested in scoring points and gotcha’s, then the side that is not actually taking things seriously has a severe advantage. The entire point is to wear down the opposition with irrelevancies and implications.
Anyway, this has certainly stopped being productive, and I actually do have much more important things to do, so I bid you adieu for now.
The only thing that has happened is that labeling someone racist is now a prelude to violent assault. Much like the labeling of someone as witch in the past or a blasphemer in places I would have once considered less enlightened before the ‘progressives’ were enabled.