I feel like I killed this thread. Sorry about that.
I think you expressed yourself very well and did a nice job summing up the issues being discussed here in a very rational and sensible way.
If you killed the thread by making people stop yelling past each other and instead just say “Oh, ok” to themselves then you did a great job!
Okay - in my own little personal echo chamber, that is how I will choose to look at it!
FWIW I agree w/ ZipperJJ here.
The thread is now old enough and long enough that nobody is going to open it and read all 124 posts to add their fresh 2 cents worth. And both the SJWs and the deliberately obtuse have vented their respective spleens and departed.
It does. Thanks for posting that.
Do I get correctly that you’re saying something along the lines of: "Thresholds of what is acceptable are changing in large part because of demographic and technological trends. Changing thresholds of acceptability involves trial and error when it comes to where the line should be drawn.
E.g.:It may seem obvious to us now that “negro” should not be used to refer to a black person i.e.: it lies outside the line of acceptability. But it only seems obvious because the line moved. At first, attempts to redraw the line to exclude “negro” were tentative just like today’s attempts."
I can’t/won’t address the case of any specific poster who said this but saying that it’s stupid and folks need to get over it can also be a way of saying that the line of acceptability should include that particular word/behavior generally or in specific ways. I had much the same reaction when people got in a huff and Internet puff over Obama making mention of the word “nigger” when discussing racist epithets on a radio show.
Yes - the more diverse we are, the more likely a “majority voice” will not be able to say “just get over it,” so there will have to be ongoing discussion about how “thresholds of acceptability” have changed. Some will stick and others be dismissed as whiny victimhood. But we will all be a bit more thoughtful.
Whenever we’ve discussed this topic on the board, it’s usually in response to a thread started by someone who takes issue with the concept of microaggressions and wants to argue about it. So course when this happens, you’ll see lengthy discussions from both sides as to whether this is really a problem, whether people should just get over it, etc.
But most of us out here in the real world are concerned about other things. Microaggressions, by definition, aren’t keeping people awake at night. The obnoxiousness isn’t killing anyone. If someone is going to start a thread about them, of course you’ll hear people describing their experiences. But it’s a rare day that you see anyone starting a Pit thread about this stuff. Outside of the social media sphere, it’s not a major issue.
Social Media and the college campus, much to the chagrin of this UC Berkeley prof:
Of course, he is dealing with this list of things not to do (.pdf):
Thankfully, you’re right. But if campuses and social media keep this buzz going, it influences the overall cultural conversation over time.
And just when I feel like I am framing this issue in a way that works for me (see soapbox post above), I get someone who stirs the pot. Behind the NYTimes’ paywall, David Brooks, who I can like at times despite his ivory tower windbag persona, writes in today’s column equating race relations with the psychological concept of repressed / unearthed memories. That’s helpful. :dubious:
[QUOTE=David Brooks]
The parallel is inexact, but peoples and cultures also have to deal with the power of hard memories. Painful traumas and experiences can be passed down generation to generation, whether it is exile, defeat or oppression. These memories affect both the victims’ and the victimizers’ cultures.
Many of the issues we have been dealing with in 2015 revolve around unhealed cultural memories: how to acknowledge past wrongs and move forward into the light.
The most obvious case involves American race relations. So much of the national conversation this year has concerned how to think about past racism and oppression, and the power of that past to shape present realities: the Confederate flag, Woodrow Wilson, the unmarked sights of the lynching grounds. Fortunately, many people have found the courage to tell the ugly truths about slavery, Jim Crow and current racism that were repressed by the wider culture.
Many of the protests on campus and other places have been about unearthing memory or asserting a narrative, or, at their worst, coercing other narratives into silence. There have been pleasant and unpleasant episodes during all this, but over all, you’d have to say this has been a good and necessary stage in the nation’s journey
[/QUOTE]
Man, if you ever wanted to alienate folks who are already suspicious as to whether this is a “real” issue, tell them it is like those stories they hear on Dr. Phil. :smack:
I don’t know … Dr. Phil is a popular TV host, so obviously a lot of people like that “Now, at last, the healing can begin!” stuff.