A poster who is on record having used ethnic slurs made a post that seemed to decry racism, which Ramira and I questioned based on his past use of ethnic slurs. We were given a mod note:
I understand this can be a potentially fiery topic, but the OP was explicitly about one approach to discussing racism. I didn’t call anyone any names – I just calmly responded to a poster, referencing an ethnic slur he had used in the past, to see if that kind of language usage applied to his criticism of racism. I think Bone is wrong here – it’s reasonable to challenge a poster about using ethnic slurs, in a thread about racism, when he’s on record using ethnic slurs (unapologetically, at least by my searching) in the past, and this is on topic. It’s not going easy on him, but to me it seems like an entirely reasonable thing to challenge a poster on. Or is it always wrong in Great Debates to (using respectful language) challenge something someone says based on something they said in the past? Or just if someone used ethnic slurs?
Prior to your post #48 there weren’t slurs being used in that thread either in a derogatory way or in an illustrative way. The introduction escalates the discussion. Even if Clothahump is on record of using the slur in the past (which I can’t find), it is unnecessarily antagonistic in that thread in that fashion as it serves to shout down another poster.
The topic of that thread was ostensibly disowning the label of white and calling out a specific poster for alleged historical behavior isn’t conducive to that. In addition, it makes no attempt to address the statement that was made and shifts the discussion into the personal. Calling people out directly is more appropriate for the Pit.
To answer your specific questions:
Or is it always wrong in Great Debates to (using respectful language) challenge something someone says based on something they said in the past?
No - it is not always wrong.
[Is it wrong in Great Debates to challenge something someone says] if someone used ethnic slurs?
No - it is however context dependent. I think it may be possible to address an argument about prior usage and the impact it has but there is a fine line here between that and simply calling someone out.
I think they’re related, but I doubt we want to go into the details of the origin of the slur. In any case, I did ask him if this particular ethnic slur was exempt from his point.
Yeah, don’t agree with this, either. Bringing up that one’s previous statements are in contradiction to what they are saying now is important. Yeah, it’s somewhat personal, but that’s a necessity of pointing out the contradiction.
Yeah, the way it was done was snarky, but that’s kinda how the board works. Snark is a “snide remark.” And “snide” means derogatory or mocking in an indirect way.
And snark is explicitly approved. I complained about it when I first got here, thinking it violated the “don’t be a jerk” rule, and was basically made fun of for it.