Is there anyone who disagrees with you about race that you enjoy debating, and that you learn from?
Regards,
Shodan
And if you keep doing that to your subscribers, how is the board going to be able to pay your exorbitant salaries, hmmmm?
Perhaps a “Donate To The Moderators Salaries” thread?
Those coffee mugs ain’t cheap!
I continue to be amazed at the conflation of people arguing that blacks are inherently stupider and more rapey and murderous than whites and good faith debates over tax policy, etc.
You are honestly suggesting that there is something to learn from someone who takes the above position?
Given what we know about genetics, folks who talk about race generally aren’t capable of a real debate. Its very evident in those pit threads.
Is there anyone who disagrees with you about Creationism that you enjoy debating, and that you learn from?
Wait, we’re supposed to learn something from racists, now? Sorry, no, I got done “learning” anything from them around the 90s…
No, but I learned a lot of specifics about race, genetics, etc that I never knew before by people rebutting NDD in some of the threads. Even if they’re not getting the point, that doesn’t stop the people that are reading along from learning interesting new information. I mean, there have been a lot of religious threads where both sides were clearly talking past each other, but I’ve learned a hell of a lot about the literal meaning of the original, un-translated wording of many parts of the Bible. I don’t see why racism or any other repugnant viewpoint is any different.
The recent thread about white privilege was really interesting to me overall, and I got some new perspectives on race in that thread. What’s interesting is an analysis of how race factors into our society, how it interacts with issues such as education, socioeconomic status, medical care, etc.
What’s not interesting is the question of whether black people are dumber than white people.
By analogy, I’m definitely interested in threads that discuss whether the space program is a good use of tax dollars, whether manned space flights are a good idea, and even the possibility of intelligent life on other planets. I’m not especially interested in debating whether the moon landing was faked. And if we had lots of astronaut board members, and if they suffered pervasive discrimination, and if the “hoaxers” were saying truly reprehensible things about astronauts, I’d be pretty happy with banning the hoaxers.
What about whether black astronauts are dumber than white astronauts? What then? Board meltdown!
IIRC, it was a creationist who pointed out to me the problems with using Haeckel and his theory to demonstrate evolution. Not on these boards, though.
Would it be fair to say that you learned something in that thread from those who disagreed with you about race in a basic way?
Yes - whether or not it is true. It appears there are a number of posters who not only don’t think it’s true, they don’t even want it to be discussed.
John Mace mentions creationism, which is an interesting example. I would say it is board consensus that creationism is not true, just as it appears to be board consensus that there cannot be any genetic component to the achievement gap observed in the US between those who self-identify as black, and those who self-identify as Asian and white. But it is much more unusual to hear Dopers suggest that creationists should be prevented even from posting, as seems to be suggested in the case of NDD and others.
Why that should be the case is probably not a subject for this forum. And I don’t really have much interest in rehashing the whole topic of race and genetics and whatever. I’ve heard the arguments, on both sides, and I am capable of making up my own mind.
Regards,
Shodan
The answer is pretty easy. Being a creationist doesn’t affect other people. It hurts no one. Being a racist means you hurt other people. The scientific stuff is cover for being able to treat people of other races poorly, which is exactly what we saw NDD do.
Other people who believe the possibility of genetic racial differences have not been banned, as they at least showed that, for them, it’s just scientific possibility, and, if they run their lives by it, they at least don’t hurt people here.
Creationism just hasn’t hurt enough people that it has become a social more. Racism, even the pseudoscientific kind, has. Racism is not tolerated in the civilized world.
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe this. Creationism does hurt people - it misinforms them and it lays the groundwork for the banning or diluting of science education in schools. And you can be a racist without hurting other people unless you are arguing that having unpleasant feelings is inherently hurtful to other people. I think applying that idea to a message board would be problematic to say the least.
Precisely. Thus in my moon-landing-hoaxers analogy, the bit about pervasive discrimination against astronauts. That’s a key part of the analogy.
Some people, like pedophiles, are evil. Some people, like Truthers, are wrong. Racists happen to be both wrong and evil.
I’m not calling for them to be banned because they’re wrong. I’d like them to be banned for being evil.
And I personally get really tired of people trying to claim that racism is somehow equivalent to all this other crap. It’s not. Racism hurts vast portions of the population. It’s not something most of us are okay with existing so that we can learn from it. Fuck learning from it. Knowledge is not the most important thing in life. This is the one idea that we as a culture have decided is okay to be completely eradicated.
You want to know this crap you claim you learned? You can ask for the current science on race and racism. You do not in any way need someone who comes in and asserts that all black people are inferior, to the point of even accusing some South African poster of rape due only to his ethnicity.
People like that are scum, and it doesn’t matter what their arguments are. They are not needed here, or really anywhere else in the civilized world.
So only people on the side of Good can post here? Frankly I’d like to hear from the opposition now and again.
I guess it can be argued that racist feelings are not harmful if you keep them to yourself in your own secret little racist heart. We are not talking about people’s feelings, here. We are talking about what they say and specifically where they say it.
So, you actually think that espousing Creationism on a message board is harmful but that saying blacks are inferior, criminal and stupid isn’t. Excuse me, but that’s fucking ridiculous. If you don’t think that racist speech is harmful then you must have slept through, oh I don’t know, the entire recorded history of the world.
Do we have to hear from them for years at a stretch?
None of that actively hurts people. And if you seriously believe that words don’t hurt people, why are you on a board with moderation against being a jerk? Why not go hang out at 4chan instead of moderating a board where you disagree with the number one rule?
First, “racist” can be used two ways. I’ve seen here more than a few times someone trying to get a poster to admit that taking race into consideration makes someone a “racist”. Then shifting from the innocent scientific connotation to the KKK variety: “He’s a self-admitted RACIST!”
Second, there is a factually correct answer as to whether the differences in races are at all manifested in mental function. Whether you like it or not has no bearing on that reality. It’s akin to arguing the race plays a role in one race generally being taller or having darker skin. But the reality is that many people simply do not want to have the conversation at all. It makes them uncomfortable, so they seek to shout down the person and start Pit threads in order to make the topic verboten and paint the other person in the debate as a bad or evil person: a “RACIST”!!!
Reality has no such personal bias. What I find funny about this is that many of the people so desperate to shut down the discussion are this who claim to have such a high regard for science and the truth.
Maybe Whites have greater mental abilities than Blacks. Maybe they don’t. Maybe Asians have greater mental abilities than Whites. Maybe they don’t. It seems obvious that even if this is generally true, that the differences are small enough that we can expect any individual of any one race to outperform an individual from either of the other. So, I don’t really care what the finding are either way.
But then WHY have the discuss, right. Well, science often explores things that we don’t know the benefit of. That’s the dispassionate nature of scientific inquiry, isn’t it. Also, it’s not like the subject has been brought up for us in the real world. Look at SAT scores, look at tests for Police and Fire Departments. Why is it, for instance, that Blacks score so poorly in relation to Whites. The might be that the difference can be attributed—100%—to culture.It may also be the fact that the attribution can be 99%. Or 84%. Whatever.
I just don’t get that people on a debate board devoted to fighting ignorance would want to shout people down and close off a line of discussion. The crackpots will be made to look like fools more effectively without people trying to label them as RACISTS and such. Also, if you think someone is a jerk you (pl) can just bow out of the discussion. And there’s even a handy-dandy little feature called “Ignore” that saves you from being affected by even seeing the words these racists spew.
I have little feeling about NDD, but I am troubled by this mob rule of sorts. It’s a friggin debate board. People should be able to debate pretty much anything. And the competence with which one argues a particular point should not be conflated with validity of the point being argued. Someone might not be able to argue a conservative point as well as Bricker, or make as good a case for the support of Israel as FinnAgain, but those are problems with the poster’s ability rather than the validity of the argument. And certainly not the threshold a topic must reach to even be discussed.
It’s a big world. There are hateful people in it. It would serve us all well to have thicker skins. Tolerating what some anonymous poster on a message board says requires a simple “medium” thickness.
You don’t have to hear from them at all. You have both a scroll wheel, and an Ignore function.
It sounds very much to me like you don’t want anyone else to hear from them at all. Deciding what you want to hear or not hear is one thing. Deciding that for everyone else is quite another.
If you think words do hurt people simply by being said, why are you on a board with a Pit?
Regards,
Shodan