Well, things change, and new ways for some people to become jerks to others appear.
Like what The Telegraph did to many on that “report”.
Well, clearly not the Status Quo Warriors who insist that because visible, in-your-face racism is illegal, therefore we never have to worry about any such problems ever again.
One point the social justice brigade perenially fail to address: For someone who benefits from the status quo, why for fuck’s sake would they support anything that has the potential to make their lives difficult, worse, or less pleasant?
The fact that society as a whole has never not benefitted from becoming more egalitarian and free? Personally, I wish the general principle of “don’t be an incredibly terrible human being” was enough, but I guess it isn’t.
And again we come back to fundamental differences in the definition of “not an incredibly terrible human being”.
If your response to people saying, “The status quo is miserable for us” is “Well, that’s unfortunate. Got mine, fuck you”, you’re probably a terrible human being.
(That’s a hypothetical you; I’m sure you specifically are not one of those people.)
At the end of the day, I don’t think I would have felt particularly obligated to get slave owners’ permission to free their slaves. Respecting the rights of others is not negotiable.
There’s degrees between “I’m alright so fuck you” and “Look, I’m sorry things suck for you but making things better for you makes them worse for me so I’m sure you can see the quandary here”.
“The status quo sucks is miserable for us and you don’t have to do anything to make our lives better and changing things to make our lives better won’t inconvenience you at all” - Awesome, let’s make your lives better so you too can be happy! Gay marriage is an excellent case in point.
“The status quo sucks for us and even though you never interact with us, the way to fix things will not only make things harder for you, it requires you to go out of your way to give special consideration to not just us, but people who are offended on our behalf, and by the way, the definition of what’s offensive will be randomly changed once every 2d6 months” - Sorry, but you’re going to need a better sales pitch.
Decent, informed people.
Except that ignores the fact that oftentimes, the reason something that makes something better for one person makes them worse for another is because the second person is benefiting from unjust advantages that they should never have had in the first place.
Yeah, freeing slaves meant that slaveowners had to face a new economic reality that they weren’t prepared for when before they could live off the backs of their victims. Strangely enough, though, I’m not particularly sympathetic to the plight that befell upon them through emancipation.
Interestingly, I’m an informed, decent, well-educated person - and yet here we are with fundamentally different views on the subject and a strong belief the other one is the wrongest about it.
What’s the “Slaves In The Antebellum South” version of Godwin’s Law?
Actually here in the thread you showed to fell easily for misinformation that you thought it supported your idea that “the definition of what’s offensive will be randomly changed once every 2d6 months”
In fact what the Telegraph omitted from what the newsletter was pointing at. shows that the Telegraph did managed to avoid pointing at the studies that show that the main point was to tell the university staffers* to remember that and other studies when dealing with new people and coworkers. Yes, those guidelines that were declared ridiculous by the Telegraph were really advise based on how others used “blind” approaches to deal with prejudice. Prejudice that one should remember was also dismissed with similar excuses in the past.
- Again, staffers, not students. The Telegraph did pull the leg on many conservatives again.
That’s fine, but there’s a lot that it doesn’t explain. For instance, just for two examples:
(a) it doesn’t explain why many conservatives oppose win-win propositions like universal health care, which makes health care cheaper for everyone including themselves, and at the same time promotes a better and more humane and decent society in which no one’s health and well-being suffers from lack of money;
(b) it doesn’t explain why many conservatives lie about climate change, oppose emissions reductions, and oppose all forms of environmental regulation, even though we all breathe the same air and drink the same water and have to live on the same planet, and these policies make things uniformly worse for everyone. It can, however, be explained by the observation that these policies help to enrich the small numbers who advocate and promote them.
If that’s the conservative attitude then why was opposition to gay marriage so strongly identified with conservative ideology for so many years, until the Supreme Court ruling and changing public sentiment finally made it a lost cause? Why did conservative go around manufacturing ridiculous rationalizations about how gay marriage would undermine “the sanctity of marriage”? Why did so many conservative states pass laws banning gay marriage, and then, not satisfied with the laws alone, passed state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in a totally redundant but symbolic effort to really stick it to the gays? And why do we today have so many conservatives targeting the transgender community?
I live in Australia. We have universal health care. Everyone thinks it’s a great idea and the average person thinks the US system is the complete opposite of that.
As for the rest of your points, I will again note I live in Australia so I can’t speak for the US situation except in very broad terms.
Oh, yeah? Well, we don’t have spiders that eat Volkswagens!
Perhaps this ties in to the thread title. Conservatives and liberals don’t understand each other because they don’t even read the same news.
I may be as guilty as anyone. The National Review was once rarer than a four-leaf clover: a breath of intelligence in the right-wing wasteland. Now? No idea; now I wouldn’t bother to click a link — now I just assume they’re part of the Koch Brothers’ disinformation empire.
Perhaps if, for one whole month, “conservatives” were redirected to Alternet.org whenever they tried to click to a story, they would learn to listen. Fair’s fair, so liberals would also have to be redirected … but to where? Alex Jones’ Infowars? Reruns of Bill O’Reilly?
Didn’t we settle this when I spent a dozen posts playing Lauren Cooper in the Voter ID thread and people couldn’t believe I knew The Catherine Tate Show?
I read the Telegraph. I watch Eastenders, embarrassingly. And Broadchurch. But not the Jeremy Kyle Show. “I swear.” (crosses fingers)
So while this items seems to have appeared in National Review, I linked to it from where I found it.
The thing is, YOU don’t get to define “decency” for the rest of us.
I was making a slippery slope argument: that the approach under discussion had, as its predictable conclusion, advice to students like this.
And you have rebutted this by showing that the newsletter was to staff, in Britain, and contains lots of good advice.
To staff? So what? The fact that I said it was to students appears to be wrong, but was not remotely a part of my argument. I cheerfully concede: this was to staff, not students as the link I supplied suggested.
The UK and not the US? So what? I knew it was the UK. That’s where Oxford is. The point I was making is that dilution of the word “racism,” leads to claims like this.
And there are lots of good suggestions in the newsletter like blind auditions? SO WHAT? Cheerfully acknowledged that the same document that suggested staff avoid not looking in someone’s eyes because of racism ALSO has good ideas about blind auditions. SO WHAT? Nothing whatsoever to do with my point.
“We’re gonna have the best necromancers… great, very tremendous reincarnation… and the biggest, most beautiful segregated fountains of youth anybody’s ever seen. It’s gonna knock your toe tags off, believe me.”