I’m saying that always exercising that freedom may be inconsistent. Not that anyone should be compelled to.
I’ve never, ever used the word “must”. I am saying “If you value tolerance, than you should at times tolerate intolerance up to a point”.
We leave it to each individual how they want to respond to positions taken by other people.
If enough people in a society respond strongly to a position taken by someone, to the point of shunning and boycotting, that is an expression that as a society, the position taken by that person is very much on the outliers. They still have the right to express that view, but their views do not have any traction in that society.
I’m not seeing the negative side effect. Speech matters, that’s why it’s protected. And individuals in a free society can respond to that speech, even if it means someone of them will hold peaceful protests on the street outside the home of someone caught on video saying vile racist things.
If enough people in society react that way, perhaps in the long run other people will stop saying vile racist things.
And yet this doesn’t happen, by and large. Because most people are smart enough to keep their opinions and views to themselves. If business owners don’t want their brand associated with their ideas, then they need to keep their ideas to themselves.
It’s no different than what happens in the social arena. Most of us don’t walk around wearing sandwich boards broadcasting our more controversial opinions, because we know we’d receive a shit load of flak for it. It would behoove businesses, who don’t want to receive negative attention, to also have this philosophy.
I don’t know how anyone can remember the boycotts of the 1960s and not see the value in being able to use the free market to shape opinion.
That’s exactly the point that the recent posters are making. If you have a business or a profession, you DO keep your yap shut on controversial issues for fear that it will cost you. This is not a good thing. These opinions are valuable for public discourse.
Freedom of association taken to such extremes is inconsistent with a society. It’s a good way to promote sectarian violence, though.
You’re basically denying that human judgment has any value.
One of the reasons we value free speech is that we want to use it to make changes in society, such as making people afraid of the social (and perhaps economic) consequences of being openly bigoted.
Why all of a sudden do we need a “clear principle”? How about we set some ground rules for really important things—you can’t boycott a person based on skin color, etc., and then let people use their judgment?
If I believe the owner of Chikfila is harming society by supporting bigotry, then I should withhold my business.
If I believe the designated hitter is ruining baseball then I should boycott the American League.
However if I cut off my brother for disagreeing with me about the designated hitter then I’m being a douchebag but that’s not a societal problem.
There might or might not be a problem for that person. I don’t see how that becomes a problem for society.
OF course we leave it up to the individual. My point is that it’s useful to have a discussion about when, where, and how an individual should make these decisions.
I’ve said, repeatedly, that I think the sort of speech at OU crosses the line into “clearly deserves to be absolutely socially shunned”. But I do think that there are times when a minority opinion was right, and we don’t want, as a society, to get too good at determining and shunning those who express minority viewpoints. Those ideas need a way to work the conversation, be seriously considered. Shunning is a hugely powerful tool–people need human contact, they need to belong, they need to be connected. The price of belonging shouldn’t be conformity.
And, again, there is a point past which I am going to exercise my right to shun. But I am going to be. . . uneasy . . . about it. I think that uneasiness is important. I think we should talk about when and why it’s appropriate, and not always assume that the better, more righteous path is to cut those who hold immoral ideas from our lives.
I don’t think people should have to have this philosophy, at least not everywhere and all the time. I think it’s a problem if you risk expulsion from you social circle, your family, your employment because you have different views. Free speech isn’t free if, in practice, you can only express yourself anonymously, or among others who share your views.
This, to me, is a bigger problem than boycotts, which is the secondary issue. It needs to be okay to think weird things, and to express those things.
They are hugely, massively powerful, which is why they should be used carefully. Dr. King wrote pretty convincingly about how the boycotts and sit-ins were appropriate only after direct negotiation had failed, and only as a targeted tool to accomplish a goal.
I am making an argument FOR the use of human judgment. I am making an argument that when we shun people, exclude them from society for what they think, it carries with it the power to stop people from expressing their ideas, and therefore stops new ideas from entering the conversations. At times that might be appropriate, and at times it might not.
How am I supposed to usemy judgment, make a decision, if I don’t come here and talk about it? I’d like to have something beyond gut instinct.
It’s a problem for society if new ideas never get any traction because everyone who espouses them is so effectively shunned that they wither on the vine. Gay marriage, for example, was initially very, very shocking and uncomfortable for a lot of people who warmed up to the idea eventually. Had being a proponent for gay marriage cost people their families, their friends, their customers initially, the rest of us would never have had a chance to play with the idea.
Speaking through a megaphone is not the only way to get your ideas heard. If you feel strongly about something, but you want to protect your business, you can send anonymous donations to an organization that shares your ideas. You can write an anonymous letters to the editor. You can vote for leaders who feel the same way you do. You can rant on message boards like this one.
Not all opinions are equally worthy of public discourse. The public always has the right to decide which opinions they value and which ones they don’t. A boycott is just a free market way to do this. Everyone is entitled to free speech. No one is entitled to receiving money while doing so.
You’re joking, right? For centuries in our society, you could be mocked, shunned, assaulted, or murdered just for publicly acknowledging the possibility of homosexuality existing, much less being okay. Hell, there are still places in the world where that’s true.
In the early 1990s, it was very risky to suggest that the military shouldn’t discriminate against gay people.
That’s not even starting to consider the unknown thousands of people who does over the last 400 years who might have made a peep about black people being fully human, much less fully American.
You seem to be looking for a cheat code to bypass the struggle—sometime bloody struggle—it takes to reform society. There ain’t one.
I don’t believe in tolerance of everything. Not all opinions are worthy of respect or consideration.
If someone in my social circle has a different opinion about a movie or celebrity than I do, I’ll shrug my shoulders and change the subject. But if they start espousing ideas and opinions that deeply offend me? Hell yes I’ll avoid them, and tell others to do so as well. They can find someone else to be friends with. I can still be a perfectly kind, decent human being and be choosy about who I associate with.
I see a boycott as being the same type of sanctioning. If enough people agree with the business owner that black people are niggers, then the business owner has nothing to fear. If their business indeed suffers, maybe they will think twice about saying “black people are niggers” in the public arena.
You seem to be saying that not supporting the business owner who believes in something that is blatantly offensive is the same thing as not supporting a family member who believes in homeopathic medicine or thinks the moon landing was a hoax. As if all unusual opinions have the same valence or power. A businessman who is just quirky or weird is likely not going to be the victim of a boycott. People don’t organize boycotts when the person they are targeting is just a little out in left-field or non-conformist. Any boycott against such a person would likely fall flat anyway, because most consumers don’t care about little harmless stuff, especially if the product is good.
And my point is that that riskiness is a problem. That it being socially impossible to even admit to thinking something might possibly be true is a limit on free speech, and that while sometimes this limit is a good idea, other times it dramatically slows the process by which ideas get considered. I just think we need to acknowledge the trade-off.
I am talking about the middle cases–the ones where something isn’t “blatantly offensive” but isn’t meaningless, either. And I am much more interested in the effect of social censure within social groups and communities than in boycotts. I think people should only use shunning as a tool under extreme conditions, that it does effectively limit free speech because social isolation is a debilitating condition that people will go to great lengths to avoid. Again, there are beliefs that I think deserve this level of approbation–and the OU case is one–but I think they are few and far between.
Families that shun, religions that shun, social networks that shun–they are not healthy.
I think I have a bright line “rule”: The individual has to determine for themselves what level of offense makes their action worthwhile. This ensures that the actions taken will be variable because people will have different levels of offense, different levels of energy, different willingness to go along to get along, different willingness to be public.
By creating bright line rules, it’s true that we might prevent society from overreacting to an offense. But we also would be codifying the reaction in a way, making it so that the hammer well and truly comes down on the offender. We would be then underreacting to some offenses, and overreacting to others becasue they are on either side of a bright, bright line.
Laws are simply a version of a bright line rule.
If you say that we should be careful how we react to offensive speech with the claim that reacting to it pushes it underground, what then of the reactive speech which you are pushing underground? You cannot have a set of speakers privileged to speak with no reaction. A horde of monologuists is a worse outcome than a screaming dialogue.
Families that tolerate offensive behavior, religions that tolerate offensive behavior, social networks that tolerate offensive behavior–they are also not healthy.
And I would say, generally, being protected from your actions having consequences is worse for the individual than being punished for your actions.
But the thing is, only history tells us whether an idea is extreme or not. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was quite extreme for its time. People walking ten, twenty miles to get to work, just so they can sit anywhere on the bus. I’m sure quite a few people (both white and black) thought that was not only a ridiculous stance to take, but that the boycotters were unfairly penalizing the bus drivers, who didn’t have anything to do with the seating policy. But in retrospect, the boycotters were the ones who were being reasonable. Why would anyone support a business that doesn’t support them, as a customer?
I’m sure many people during the 60s had the same slippery slope concerns that you’re expressing here. “If they’re boycotting the buses, what’s to stop them from boycotting all businesses! Why, society will descend into chaos just because these minorities don’t like our opinions! That’s not fair!”
Surprise, but society is still intact. And the boycotters got what they wanted. It’s amazing what voting with your dollar can do.
I disagree vehemently. I think German and Rwandan society would have been a lot healthier if it had shunned the extremists the moment they had started yelling into megaphones. I think Islam as an institution benefits more when Muslims shun extremists than when they accept them. And I think families that shun members that are intent on dragging them down (like abusive spouses, ne’er-do-well adult children) are lot less dysfunctional than families that put up with mess no matter how destructive it is, all for the sake of appearances.
But regardless, a boycott is NOTHING like shunning a person. A person who holds disdain views can still run a business and make a shitload of money. They just can’t expect their “brand” to be unaffected by those disdainful views.
Objections to boycotts as a process, based on hypothetical objections to boycotts with poor objectives, are flawed, in my opinion, in the same way that it’d be flawed to object to all music on the grounds that some songs are racist.
The problem with a bad boycott is that it’s bad, not that it’s a boycott.
I am not arguing we create a universal bright line rule. I am saying that we should talk about when and under what circumstances we would each make our own choices. That we should make the decision to join in cutting someone out of society very carefully, and with recognition that it’s a complex thing that does carry potential costs to the idea of free speech.
And I never said we shouldn’t “react” to it. I said we should not lightly shun people–ban them from our company.
Since when is “tolerate” the opposite of "shun? If your child votes Republican, you can disagree with them without telling them not to come over for Christmas. No where am I advocating failure to express your own beliefs. I am suggesting only that rejecting any connection with an entire person because of their beliefs–such as expelling them from a school, or a family, or a church, or a market place–is a big deal and ought not be done lightly.
No where have a said a word about fairness, about boycotting having a terrible economic toll. I don’t begin to care about any of that. I just think an environment where people feel that their ability to belong in society is contingent upon agreeing with the majority is complicated. And deserves to be treated as complicated, and not dismissed as a back-door attempt to apologize for racists or object to civil rights.
What about families that shun homosexual kids? Churches who expel people who marry outside the faith? Communities who reject people who vote against the majority view?
I’ve never objected to boycotts. I’ve only ever said that refusing to engage with someone because of a belief is a big step.
Are there lesser expressions of disapproval that you think are acceptable for families to take against their gay kids? Or is any punishment of gay kids for their sexuality unacceptable?
Because that’s what I’m saying. When you talk about the evils of shunning using examples where any punishment is inappropriate, the problem isn’t the shunning, it’s the attitude behind the shunning. Content matters, not just process.
Right. I’m not in favor of passing a law which makes these boycotts illegal. As you admit, these people can speak their minds so long as they do it anonymously. And with YouTube videos everywhere, they had better speak where nobody has a cell phone.
I disagree that not all opinions are equally worthy of public discourse. Because then we fall into the lazy idea that things I agree with are worthy whereas things I disagree with are not worthy.