“Xenophobic” has a very different meaning from “racist.” It’s not that the former is the non-insulting version of the latter; it’s that they’re as similar as ponies and beasts of burden, comprising a Venn Diagram with only moderate overlap. A xenophobic person isn’t necessarily racist, as any of those degenerate Welshmen can tell you; a racist isn’t necessarily xenophobic, as any Klansman who lives around black people can tell you.
“Cocksucker” is a pejorative term for “gay man.” It’s perfectly acceptable to call someone a gay man. “Libtard” is a pejorative for “liberal.” It’s perfectly acceptable to call someone a liberal.
“Racist” is the least offensive term I know of to describe a person who believes in a race that’s inferior to others. To call it offensive is to call the idea offensive, to set an idea out of the bounds of discussion. And that’s the wrong approach.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
“Racist” is the least offensive term I know of to describe a person who believes in a race that’s inferior to others. To call it offensive is to call the idea offensive, to set an idea out of the bounds of discussion. And that’s the wrong approach.
[/QUOTE]
It might be least offensive to YOU, but then I figure you are confident you won’t be called one in GD. As to the rest, racism and someone theoretically being a racist isn’t out of bounds for discussion in GD…it’s CALLING someone a racist that is crossing the line and being a jerk. And if you just have to, well, that’s what the Pit is for, so it’s not like you can’t do it, just not in the other forums/fora.
Would you make the case that “cocksucker” has an element of hostility that goes beyond normal sarcasm and (mild) insults that come up in arguments/debates? I think I agree with what you are saying if I take your meaning correctly.
I agree also that xenophobic, racist, and white pride hatred are all three different levels of intolerance or suspicion, and that the most accurate term can designate different levels of a position…
Is “white supremacist” out of bounds? I’m pretty sure I’ve used it multiple times recently to describe a poster who has made openly white supremacist (in my view, at least) assertions, such as the equivalent of ‘all non-white people should go away’.
I think that, again, this comes down to a judgement call, since the Mods don’t have an exhaustive list of possible and potential insults along with a really complex flow chart to tell them whether this time, labeling someone a ‘white supremacist’ was ok or whether it was you being a jerk. Perhaps it just didn’t come to the Mods notice last time, or perhaps the person you labeled that with was the one being a jerk and destined in short order to be banned so the Mods didn’t smack you down. Who knows? I’d say that using that as a label in GD is going to skate you close to the edge, so if you want to do it you should be prepared for a smack…just in case.
(I’d report you for that, if I saw it in a thread, though whether the Mods would act or not is always up to them)
I think the rule I have learned… I can say… “that idea sounds incredibly racist to me”… which is better than saying “well the reason you think that is because you are a white supremacist”.
I think it is a matter of deescalation… not so much “don’t be a jerk”, which, as I’ve stated upthread… don’t be a jerk is a rule that is only very sparingly enforced…
You might misunderstand me. I’m saying that there are plenty of completely normal words to use to refer to another poster in Great Debates: pacifist, Christian, liberal, conservative, communist, pro-lifer, gun-control advocate, etc. And there are pejoratives for lots of these as well: peacenik, fundy, bleeding heart, fascist, pinko, anti-choicer, gun grabber, etc.
If “racist” is a pejorative, though, what is it a pejorative for? There is no other word.
As for the idea that calling someone a racist is crossing the line, I think that’s ridiculous. It’s not crossing the line to say, “You seem to think that a particular race is superior to another,” but that’s by definition calling someone a racist. And when I say, “by definition,” I mean by definition. A person who believes one race is superior to another exactly fits the definition of a racist. What possible good is served by allowing one phrase but not the other, when they are precisely synonymous?
Not only that, but also “cocksucker” is a pejorative synonym for “gay man.” It is a deliberate choice to use the more offensive of the two terms. “Racist” is the least offensive term for a person who holds the belief that one race is superior to another.
[QUOTE=Robert163]
Yes, XT, but at the same time (#12):
[/QUOTE]
Well, a couple of things. First off, was it reported to the Mods? Was the poster being a jerk by spouting obvious racist stuff? Second, what is or isn’t ‘racist’ is often murky (full disclosure…I didn’t even skim the thread in the OP, was really just going with the broader question). I know that CP gets Pitted quite often, and seemingly they are warranted, so basically my response would still be the same…if the OP felt that CP was being a racist then he should have attacked the posts, not the poster, and if he just couldn’t resist he should have started a Pit thread. If CP was being a jerk then definitely someone should have reported him and then the Mods would have had to make a judgement call on that under the Don’t Be a Jerk Rule(tm…arr).
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
As for the idea that calling someone a racist is crossing the line, I think that’s ridiculous. It’s not crossing the line to say, “You seem to think that a particular race is superior to another,” but that’s by definition calling someone a racist. And when I say, “by definition,” I mean by definition. A person who believes one race is superior to another exactly fits the definition of a racist. What possible good is served by allowing one phrase but not the other, when they are precisely synonymous?As for the idea that calling someone a racist is crossing the line, I think that’s ridiculous. It’s not crossing the line to say, “You seem to think that a particular race is superior to another,” but that’s by definition calling someone a racist. And when I say, “by definition,” I mean by definition. A person who believes one race is superior to another exactly fits the definition of a racist. What possible good is served by allowing one phrase but not the other, when they are precisely synonymous?
[/QUOTE]
I think you’d be attacking the post, not the poster, and would be ok. I don’t see it as ridiculous at all to say that someones POSTS seem racist and attacking them in debate. It crosses the line, though, to call someone a racists straight up in GD (or any of the other fora besides the Pit)…IMHO anyway.
I wish I had you debating skills or level of clarity in my statements… you express my thoughts more or less exactly… except… and I — do — agree with you… still, for some reason it seems to deescalate the situation by a step to say “that sounds like a racist idea” instead of “only a racist would say that”.
Again, though, what I’m saying is that someone who holds racist beliefs is by definition a racist. If you say someone has racist beliefs, you are implicitly calling them a racist. There’s nothing else to the definition of a racist, other than someone who believes one race is superior to another. How does it serve discussion to treat the two differently?
That said, I could see applying a rule in less extreme cases. Calling someone a racist for advocating stop-and-frisk policing, or for supporting private schools, or for opposing amnesty for undocumented workers, is not cool. I think that the problem it runs into isn’t definitional so much as it’s a problem with assigning beliefs to people that they don’t hold. A person might advocate stop-and-frisk policing for reasons other than a belief in the superiority of a particular race, and it’s kind of jerkish to impute the worst possible beliefs to someone who doesn’t hold them.
That doesn’t apply here. C-P has never made a secret of his belief that black people are, by curse of biology, intellectually inferior to white people. The OP was, as far as I can tell, imputing no beliefs to C-P other than what he himself explicitly has claimed.
Except that… and I know lots of people see me this way… except that… there are the posters that every time you get ready to read one of their comments, you roll your eyes and chuckle or moan with frustration because you know they are going to say some pig headed ignorant comment and cling to in no matter what enumeration or clarity is provided, they will gleefully continue with their pig headed assertion.
I’m not naming names, manly because I don’t know everyone perfectly and don’t want to incorrectly slander anyone… but, anyone who spends over 30 days here will be able to tell at a glance who the “pig headed” posters are…
Why are these type of posters allowed to continue with their tactics unchecked by the moderators. I realize (I do) moderators have a difficult job but watching pig headed remarks go unchecked month after month tends to grate on the nerves…
Perhaps. I’m all about de-escalation, and I’ll beat the crap out of anyone who denies it. There’s a difference in your phrasing, though. The two sentences that appear to rest on either side of this arbitrary line are:
OKAY: You believe that one race is superior to another.
NOT OKAY: You are racist.
Because these two are precisely equivalent, I don’t think it makes sense to draw a line between them. IMO, the moderators should either step forward, and forbid explicitly racist ideas on the board outside of the pit; or they should step off, and allow posters to call out explicit racists for what they’re saying. Standing in the exact position that they do offers nothing except comfort to those who would promulgate explicit racism.
Given that the alternative was to let Caesario post pro-toddler-rape rants for months*, and has let Chief Pedant slime around GD pretending that “Oh no–black folks are just dumb and violent because…um…science!” for years. It’s a stupid policy.
And if your idea of “horrific” is "stifling a few obviously obscenely stoopid ideas like “3 year old girls are clearly nymphos who can give informed consent” or “Black folks are close to apes so they’re more violent and dumb”, then you’re really on the wrong page, because shutting people up like that is a feature, not a bug. There is no discussion possible because it’s simply too dumb to discuss.
I’ve seen threads where people posted gibberish like “What color is “up”?” or “If the sky was green, what flavor would bacon be?” that are insta-closed as “too dumb to live”. Why is it fine-n-dandy to close those kinds of threads for stupid but not threads that promote child-rape or racial hatred.
This is the only board on the entire internet where a racist can say that black people are one step up from animals, barely able to control their savage emotions and get away with it, but saying they’re racist can get you warned or banned.
Also, “horrific”? Really? The killing fields in Cambodia were “horrific”. The Holocaust ws “horrific”. Nothing short of doxxing on a message board can even come vaguely close to the outer orbit of that word’s meaning.
*Yes, he was before your time as a mod, but it’s the same idiotic policy
**These aren’t real examples. They tend to get closed too fast for me to remember the specifics.
Except CP doesn’t seem himself as a racist (I’m guessing), so calling him one, whether warranted or not, is an insult, and goes against the being a jerk rule of this board in all but the Pit. BTW, there IS, of course, a Pit thread on this here…which is the proper way to go about it. If you really just have to call someone a racists, this is where you can do that with zero repercussions…otherwise, attack the argument. JMHO, FWIW.
You see attacking the arguments as racist and calling someone a racist directly as the same thing…basically, I disagree with that, and to me it cuts to the recurring theme of this board, which is attack the post, not the poster, unless you are in the Pit. Saying that if you say someone is a racist THIS way, you are ok, but not if you do it THAT way just overly complicates things…the Mods really would need a flow chart, dictionary of definitions, a goat and a complete ASCII chart to make determinations if they went this way.
If you know what CP’s arguments are, and that you are talking about CP and his beliefs…why do you need the label racist? You and anyone else in the discussion knows who believes what and is arguing what.
Some of you just want to score label points at some point in the thread is why.
Indeed. Shutting down explicit racists who explicitly declare one race inferior to another would not force moderators onto the SlipnSlide of moral relativity. They could shut these guys down while still allowing posters to inveigh against illegal immigrants, chide churlish children, whine about welfare women, and shit I’m out of alliteration. The vast majority of views that may fall under the racist umbrella are up for debate, and I agree that accusing people of racist views when they’ve not explicitly stated them is problematic (although I reserve judgment on whether it’s ever reasonable). But when someone out-and-out says that one race is inferior to another, it takes no straw man, no insult comic dog, no frothing radical to put the accurate label on the person in order to facilitate discussion of what they’re doing; and eliminating them from the debate isn’t going to bring about Ragnorak.
First, I believe CP hasn’t denied being a racist. Am I wrong? I think he considers the charge to be meaningless.
Fine, you disagree with it. Why? What is the difference between saying that someone is a racist, and saying that someone believes that a particular race is superior to another? They mean precisely the same thing! I can recite “attack the post, not the poster” as easily as you can. The rule doesn’t make any sense when the “attack” on the poster is a description of their beliefs, when the two mean precisely the same thing.
Why wouldn’t I want to use clear language? You seem to think that at all other times we should use precision and clarity in our discussion, but somehow in this case it’s spooooooky to use the words that encapsulate our meaning.
Now see, THIS sort of behavior is the sort that ought to be warnable. You’re describing my motives in order to dismiss what I’m saying, using words I’ve never used. It would be lovely if you felt shame over such behavior, or if you faced consequences for it.
But accurately characterizing a poster according to their own explicit claims? That shouldn’t be problematic at all.
