Specifically, it dealt with a university asking people not to put together hallowe'en costumes that might be considered racially insensitive, followed by someone raising a series of thoughtful points about whether that policy should be followed or at least to what degree, followed by... mobs of students pulling their hair out and demanding she be fired and removed from campus for rather soberly expressing her point of view. Here's the letter:
I'm not saying any of that is right. I'm saying it was (or looks to me to be) a genuine, intellectually honest expression of a point of view. The appropriate response is to either agree or disagree, not send a demand to the powers that be that someone be for all intents and purposes run out of town on a rail. The fact that this is the response, on a goddamned ivy league college campus where debating all ideas, including (er, especially) those deemed outside the box or extreme, should always be encouraged.
Hell, this is one of the most important functions that academia can serve - the pursuits on campus are often completely impractical, and other than educating people their greatest social utility might be progressing human knowledge and culture by breaching new intellectual ground.
If she's wrong, tell her why. Nope, can't have that, burn the witch instead.
Yeah, THAT's what's patronizing.
And your option, or at least the option of these college kids which you appear to be defending - correct me if you're not - is to simply deny anyone the ability to make any statement deemed to be offensive. Or any statement that can be spun as such, really. Any sort of policy that brings to mind Orwellian distinctions like truefact and goodfact, and the sorts of things that people aren't allowed to have debates about, is a bad one. It's basically well-intentioned McCarthyism.
To be clear, I don't think she should be railroaded or fired or anything. That's ridiculous. I also don't agree it's a strong intellectual argument, as it's pretty heavy on sentiment, and I can see why that particular sentiment would be offensive to some students.
Yeah, that must be it. I'm on site where I am consistently outnumbered by people whose political and social ideologies are largely to the right of mine. I've never had any of my assumptions challenged. Ah well, still a better schtick than one that would get me permabanned and then immediately outed under a new username .
Yeah, see, this tactic appears to be the refrain from people who disagree with me rather than rebutting what I've actually said. Usually because they can't. It's kind of a dick move.
Anyway, the problem is that you appear to be so sure that you're right about everything and have the morally unimpeachable position on every issue that you don't need to self-examine. Aptly discussed, on this very topic, by Dave Rubin here, which I should have just posted before.
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I'm not talking about the generally ignorant and uneducated, I'm talking about unabashed bigots.
Okay. So am I, then. If I'm in a confrontation of ideas in front of a hundred people with the heir apparent to Fred Phelps, I may not change his mind but hopefully I can convince the hundred people that he's wrong.
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No, but when you're talking harm and marginalization, it's generally more prudent to ask the people being harmed and marginalized, and the phenomenological approach to some of these issues would seem to be the most appropriate.
No, it isn't, really.
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A right to free speech doesn't entail the right to an audience. There's plenty of precedent for telling someone "You're allowed to say that, you're just not allowed to say it here."
Sure, in some contexts. You shouldn't loudly declaim the deceased as a terrible person at his own funeral. You shouldn't decry Israeli military action in a synagogue during Shabbat. But what you've just typed, that should not be said in a university context. "Get out because I disagree" is not an appropriate response. It shouldn't be said anywhere where ideas are up for discussion and someone's made an earnest and honest attempt to express a view.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Yeah, see, this tactic appears to be the refrain from people who disagree with me rather than rebutting what I've actually said. Usually because they can't. It's kind of a dick move.
Nah, we just do it because it so obviously chaps your ass and it's pretty funny. Not like you didn't take your own shot in the previous post.
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Anyway, the problem is that you appear to be so sure that you're right about everything and have the morally unimpeachable position on every issue that you don't need to self-examine.
Yeah, pot meet kettle. There are numerous examples of me conceding points on this site. Meanwhile your posting history is a litany of militant, condescending intransigence. But I'll watch the video and get back to you.
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No, it isn't, really.
If your position is that you can understand the degree to which racism or marginalization affects someone as deeply as someone who actually experiences it, then that's pretty damn arrogant.
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Sure, in some contexts. You shouldn't loudly declaim the deceased as a terrible person at his own funeral. You shouldn't decry Israeli military action in a synagogue during Shabbat. But what you've just typed, that should not be said in a university context. "Get out because I disagree" is not an appropriate response. It shouldn't be said anywhere where ideas are up for discussion and someone's made an earnest and honest attempt to express a view.
I think there's a difference between an exchange of ideas and an administrator holding to a sentiment that could contribute to the marginalization of certain segments of the student body. Again, I don't think she should be fired and I do agree that some campuses have gone overboard in this respect, but I can also understand why this would bother some people.
Yeah, pot meet kettle. There are numerous examples of me conceding points on this site. Meanwhile your posting history is a litany of militant, condescending intransigence. But I'll watch the video and get back to you.
Militant? Hahahaha. Condescending, sure, I frequently can be accused of that; it's a failing. But as for intransigence, my first principle on any topic is that I don't want to be wrong for a second longer than I need to be. I'm not sure I'm right about anything.
If any of my views have been militant, it's often been of the precise sort I'm now opposing: I at one point would not even brook discussion with anyone who had any opposition to gay marriage, for example; I just naturally considered them homophobes and that was that. I've come to believe that even if I'm basically positive I'm right - and I'm pretty goddamned sure on that issue - I need to be more interested in contrasting views. Some of them actually can be filtered out as in many cases it's pretty obvious when someone just hasn't thought about an issue in any particular depth (see, that could very well be considered condescending). But there are smart people who disagree with me on a lot of things, and if it's on a topic I'm actually interested in I'd like to know why that is.
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If your position is that you can understand the degree to which racism or marginalization affects someone as deeply as someone who actually experiences it, then that's pretty damn arrogant.
So once again you have characterized my position and dismissed me as arrogant. No, that's not my view. If a person who has been affected by racism can leverage that experience to make a strong rational point on the issue of racism, then that may be where the value of these experiences comes in. However, their view should never be privileged over anyone else's simply because of that experience, which is precisely what happens in a ton of cases. Any argument, statement, perspective or what have you has its own merits irrespective of who is offering it. The inverse is inherently fallacious.
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I think there's a difference between an exchange of ideas and an administrator holding to a sentiment that could contribute to the marginalization of certain segments of the student body. Again, I don't think she should be fired and I do agree that some campuses have gone overboard in this respect, but I can also understand why this would bother some people.
Sure, and they should engage in a conversation about why her views bother them if they do, and why she should alter them. This is not, as in the earlier example, Fred Phelps. There seems to be a huge desire to cast people as horrible monsters here. From that letter, this woman doesn't seem evil to me, and if there are good reasons she should alter her views, maybe she would be receptive to such. Probably somewhat less so, now, I'd wager.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
So once again you have characterized my position and dismissed me as arrogant. No, that's not my view. If a person who has been affected by racism can leverage that experience to make a strong rational point on the issue of racism, then that may be where the value of these experiences comes in. However, their view should never be privileged over anyone else's simply because of that experience, which is precisely what happens in a ton of cases. Any argument, statement, perspective or what have you has its own merits irrespective of who is offering it. The inverse is inherently fallacious.
Right, but my point was in regards to you saying you don't seek out alternative voices. If someone makes an argument from one perspective, it may be right by the criteria contained in that perspective, but the perspective itself might be limiting to the larger issues at hand. Go look at something like the people who go to rallies and try to shout down "black lives matter" chants with "all lives matter." Technically they're not wrong, but they're clearly missing the point and the bigger picture.
I had a moment a few months back where I was reading a lot of articles on various issues and I realized that most of the people I would read for takes on various social issues were white men. Now either I was just extremely good at picking the "winning argument" (whatever that means) and it's just coincidence that everyone who I agree with happened to be white or, the more likely explanation, I probably have some inherent biases that are reinforced by the media I'm exposed to and the limited diversity of voices in said media. So I made a conscious effort to start looking for different sources, and surprise, surprise there were a lot of things that I hadn't considered because those particular perspectives and experiences were missing in the media I was primarily consuming.
I don't think it's possible to be completely informed on a subject, and therefore be able to judge what is the correct course of action, unless you're willing to do the legwork and educate yourself from a variety of perspectives. Even if you don't agree with the conclusions of the authors, understanding their position is pretty crucial to any sort of discourse.
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Sure, and they should engage in a conversation about why her views bother them if they do, and why she should alter them. This is not, as in the earlier example, Fred Phelps. There seems to be a huge desire to cast people as horrible monsters here. From that letter, this woman doesn't seem evil to me, and if there are good reasons she should alter her views, maybe she would be receptive to such. Probably somewhat less so, now, I'd wager.
Again, I think you need to understand it from the perspective of someone who's sick and tired of dealing with racist nonsense and the assorted apologists that come in its wake. Minorities are tired of having to explain to white people why their racism is racist, because it generally goes one of a number of ways:
a) They get mocked or racially disparaged
b) The person they accuse of something racist denies it and proclaims that acuser is just being oversensitive
c) You get the "well it wasn't intentional" speech
d) You get the "I have a lot of ____ friends" speech
e) They legitimately and sincerely apologize
Now if e) was the most common, there's probably not a huge issue, but talk to most people who have had race-related happen to them, and you usually run through a) to d) and then maybe, if you're lucky, get the apology, which more often than not comes out as the "I'm sorry if you're offended" crap.
So, yeah, the reaction is over the top, but I understand why it might be more appealing for people to just want someone who appears to hold a marginalizing sentiment to just F off as opposed to taking the time to explain
why they're misguided.
Anyway, the problem is that you appear to be so sure that you're right about everything and have the morally unimpeachable position on every issue that you don't need to self-examine. Aptly discussed, on this very topic, by Dave Rubin here, which I should have just posted before.
Okay I watched the video and I pretty much disagree with most of it. It has nothing to do with free speech. No one is debating whether these people have the right to say what they're saying. They're shouting them down because they don't want to hear it. Go and say it somewhere else. I also reject the notion that you have to give these ideas a forum for discussion, especially at a university. Are we that concerned that racists are going to come up with some sort of groundbreaking theory on race that we're missing out on if we don't listen to them? These view they espouse are antiquated and uneducated.
Would we not call for the resignation of a science professor if he started to lecture in favour of flat-earth theory? Hell, we recently had a health prof in Toronto come under fire for teaching anti-vaxx nonsense in her classrooms. Is that a violation of free speech? Not really. She's still allowed to say it, but we're arguing that it has no business being spoken at a post-secondary institution. It serves no educational purpose and is a giant waste of everyone's time.
Bigotry is even worse, because in addition to not serving an educational purpose and being a giant waste of time, it'also harasses and causes emotional distress. So what business does it have being spoken at a place that is not only supposed to be one of higher learning, but also supposed to be an inclusive space, free from unnecessary harassment?
I don't think there's much more to go through here, because I am always for more information and it would be extremely hypocritical for me to talk about the importance of addressing different (even extreme) perspectives on hot-button issues while not admitting the possibility that there are perspectives I simply have not heard expressed. That being said, I'm sort of surprised that you actually had to look super hard for non-white-man people you agreed with given the amazing resources the internet provides. When I posted that video of Rubin earlier, the link in the side bar was to a skype conversation he had today with Gad Saad - Gad is an evolutionary psychology professor at Concordia who I really enjoy hearing because he makes a lot of sense and has absolutely no time for BS, and they were talking about this stuff among other items. So I'm listening to a Canadian Lebanese immigrant who's also jewish talking to a recently-gay-married guy from Long Island, and quite frankly I couldn't care less about their backgrounds except to the extent that it allowed them to offer interesting examples of things based on their life experiences. I still either agree or disagree with them on the merits (they got into Israel / Palestine at a pretty thousand foot level with unfortunate results).
Anyway, I care about the message, not the messenger, but it certainly makes sense that seeking out different sorts of messengers will expose one to a broader variety of messages. I'm on board there. I just want to stress that there's no area in which background should somehow render a particular message more "right", or more worthy of some inherent respect or somehow insulate that message from scrutiny and criticism where appropriate.
Which is where I get to your second point. If someone is aggrieved, they are either aggrieved for good reason, or not. Some people actually are being oversensitive - the notion that there is any significant energy spent on the overuse of the male pronoun in academic writing is like something out of Swift, and stories like this are just Bizarro World: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/22/uc...en-menstruate/
But leaving that aside, no one can tell someone to be offended or not; that's a subjective reaction. What I can do is determine whether I think a particular grievance should give rise to some redress. That has to be determined objectively. I do not need to have been subjected to similar indignity to make that judgment; arguably that actually would place me in a position of bias, which is why for example if my brother is murdered, I'm not sitting on the jury. And by that token, I just want to call attention to this:
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e) They legitimately and sincerely apologize
Now if e) was the most common, there's probably not a huge issue,
Part of the problem in a lot of these cases is that some people seem to feel that if they were subjectively offended, they are entitled to an apology. As if the fact that they were offended is the end of the story and that offense in itself convicts whoever they're upset with of wrongdoing worthy of penance. Instead of actually discussing the issue and hopefully getting to a place where the other person can really see where they've gone wrong here, the reaction is instead to become indignant and demand and apology. I think this is in many cases why we get the "non-apology apology" of "I'm sorry if you were offended", because it immediately becomes a witch hunt of accusations of some form of insensitivity. People still offer that simply because it seems polite and an apology doesn't cost them anything, but they also don't want to admit that they were in the wrong simply by virtue of having been accused. There's often a conversation there, and if the explanation as to "here's why your statement caused me offense" is met with "you're being oversensitive", a following "here's why I'm not being oversensitive" seems apt.
You're possibly going to say it's naive to think we can just talk it out, and you'd probably be right to some extent, but this sort of attitude is just way, way worse. Plus, at least in an ideal world, the measured, rational explanation for why something is wrong and needs to be addressed should attract more support. I recognize that it's not necessarily that way because you sometimes just need to scream to be heard by a media that loves screaming (hence the coverage), but I think, just from where I sit, it harms the message and alienates anyone who one should want to convince.
I could go further on this - the "it wasn't intentional" speech is something that's worth talking about because it should be obvious, or at least it's obvious to me, that intentions are very important to any moral discussion. But this whole thing is fairly exhausting and I'm skiing tomorrow, so...
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 11-15-2015 at 12:24 AM.
Reason: typo
Wow, your analogies are terrible. I thought there was some progress to be made here but this is I guess where we are... just characterizing any position that causes distress or offense as bigotry and comparing it to a science teacher teaching flat earthery. I don't really know how to respond, if that's legitimately how you look at these issues. I guess I can only say that I think that is insane.
"They're shouting them down because they don't want to hear it". Exactly. This isn't a Klan rally they're shouting down.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Wow, your analogies are terrible. I thought there was some progress to be made here but this is I guess where we are... just characterizing any position that causes distress or offense as bigotry and comparing it to a science teacher teaching flat earthery. I don't really know how to respond, if that's legitimately how you look at these issues. I guess I can only say that I think that is insane.
"They're shouting them down because they don't want to hear it". Exactly. This isn't a Klan rally they're shouting down.
That's not even remotely what I did. I compared bigotry to flat earthery. I didn't pick some sort of obscure, leftist grievance. I'm thinking more along the lines of some yahoo showing up to talk about the perils of miscegenation or something. There's no reason that should be given the time of day. If you want a less extreme example, then let's take Vlad's one of Ann Coulter. This is a woman who once said that all non-Christians should be converted at gunpoint. Now it's likely that she's a complete poe or a world class troll, but that's not particularly relevant here. The point is that that is a bigoted position to take, so why wouldn't it make sense for students to protest against her presence on their campuses? What possibility is there for constructive, educational discourse with someone like that?
That being said, I'm sort of surprised that you actually had to look super hard for non-white-man people you agreed with given the amazing resources the internet provides.
Trust me I was surprised, too. That's not to say that it was exclusive white but it was nearly as diverse as I would've liked to think. I remember the moment that kind of got me was one day going through my twitter feed and seeing the same tweets & articles being retweeted. Was a big ol' heaping spoonful of humble pie.
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Which is where I get to your second point. If someone is aggrieved, they are either aggrieved for good reason, or not. Some people actually are being oversensitive - the notion that there is any significant energy spent on the overuse of the male pronoun in academic writing is like something out of Swift, and stories like this are just Bizarro World: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/22/uc...en-menstruate/
I kind of have a half-concocted theory that stuff like this is a combination of it being a an easy target for people who feel disaffected and unable to successfully challenge the bigger issues, or just bored, rich kids.
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But leaving that aside, no one can tell someone to be offended or not; that's a subjective reaction. What I can do is determine whether I think a particular grievance should give rise to some redress. That has to be determined objectively.
I think it's crazy to think you can ever determine something like that objectively. Any decision on something like that is always going to involve biases.
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Part of the problem in a lot of these cases is that some people seem to feel that if they were subjectively offended, they are entitled to an apology. As if the fact that they were offended is the end of the story and that offense in itself convicts whoever they're upset with of wrongdoing worthy of penance. Instead of actually discussing the issue and hopefully getting to a place where the other person can really see where they've gone wrong here, the reaction is instead to become indignant and demand and apology. I think this is in many cases why we get the "non-apology apology" of "I'm sorry if you were offended", because it immediately becomes a witch hunt of accusations of some form of insensitivity. People still offer that simply because it seems polite and an apology doesn't cost them anything, but they also don't want to admit that they were in the wrong simply by virtue of having been accused. There's often a conversation there, and if the explanation as to "here's why your statement caused me offense" is met with "you're being oversensitive", a following "here's why I'm not being oversensitive" seems apt.
I think you also have to consider what I said earlier. It's usually not the first rodeo for the person who's been offended in these situations and they're often just flat-out tired of having to explain why it offends them. This is sort of what I meant when I asked if you've read any of the pieces on the other side of what you're criticizing for why people react in the ways that they do. You're still entitled to believe their overreacting but it leaves provides some insight as to why.
Personally, I think we should have a "shut up and listen" week where, for one week, no white, straight men speak publicly.
I mean every white male with a tv show turns over their show to minority hosts and guests for a week. Every opinion writer hands over their column, every single straight white guy on Sportsnet lets women and minorities take over for a week.
Just a week, one week.
I, personally, am really curious to see what that would look and sound like.
I am really, really starting to despise my own side of the political spectrum. Actually, I'm starting to suspect it's been entirely hijacked at the youth level. It used to be that the conservatives were the ones obsessed with controlling the behaviours of other people - stop sleeping with certain people, stop watching violent TV or playing violent video games, enjoying sex is immoral and you should be pure and nun-like, etc. Now religious justifications for those sorts of authoritarian dicta are out of fashion, so we're going to justify our urge to control other people under the new guise of political correctness or safe spaces or whatever term you'd like to use.
Just shamefully illiberal fascistic behavior.
You need to disentangle liberalism from the progressive left. The liberal tradition is about relentless scepticism and inquiry, carried out in an environment that tolerates the broadest possible range of expression. It sets us free from our cages of identity (class, race, gender, etc.) to contest ideas on their own merits.
The modern progressive left has a fundamentally different program. It has become just another tribal identity rooted in group-think and a Manichean us versus them outlook. In most of its essential qualities, it is indistinguishable from religion. The unchallengeable dogmas. The pieties expressed so earnestly and publicly. The savaging of unbelievers. And most of all, the comforting simplicity.
So forget about left right. Recognize that your primary allegiances are to reason and liberalism, and recognize that those values are under assault as least as strongly from the left as from the right. Challenge dogma and irrational group-think wherever you see it. Don't give sloppy or authoritarian arguments a free pass just because the person demonstrating them seems to have laudable goals like reducing sexism. And have some trust in the fundamental strength of liberal principles, which are responsible for the tremendous gains we have made in the last century, and which are still supported by the majority of people in the West, even though the ideologues who attack those principles are full of unrelenting vigour.
Mostly this is the folly of youth who want to belong to something bigger than themselves and who crave the kind of comfort and security that religion used to provide. It's distressing - especially the dismal state of free inquiry and speech in our institutions of higher learning. But I'm not convinced such infantile folly can persist for long if exposed to the cool light of reason. Science, logic, and empiricism aren't going anywhere, even though so many of even our educated today have abandoned them in favour of feels.
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Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
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So forget about left right. Recognize that your primary allegiances are to reason and liberalism, and recognize that those values are under assault as least as strongly from the left as from the right.
I don't know that this is necessarily the case - particularly on the right of the political spectrum, the level of crazy has absolutely ventured beyond even self parodying caricature. But in general, yeah, I'm there.
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Mostly this is the folly of youth who want to belong to something bigger than themselves and who crave the kind of comfort and security that religion used to provide. It's distressing - especially the dismal state of free inquiry and speech in our institutions of higher learning. But I'm not convinced such infantile folly can persist for long if exposed to the cool light of reason. Science, logic, and empiricism aren't going anywhere, even though so many of even our educated today have abandoned them in favour of feels.
It's incredibly depressing to see how easily people fall into established patterns of ignorance and irrationality and how difficult it is for large segments to overcome shortcomings imposed upon them by the unfinished project of human evolution.
On the same topic, I'm shaking my head while listening to this, at the moment:
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Go look at something like the people who go to rallies and try to shout down "black lives matter" chants with "all lives matter." Technically they're not wrong, but they're clearly missing the point and the bigger picture.
Could be worse. They could've made "#****Paris" trend on Twitter.
Anyways, I thought this was relevant to the back and forth banter on the issue.
"The Princeton Open Campus Coalition is a student group at Princeton University formed to push back against the recent wave of politically correct suppression of open academic discourse on campus."
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Originally Posted by Yamer
Even though he says he only wanted steak and potatoes, he was aware of all the rapes.
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