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> This is tricky because there are lots of people who "ask questions" just to avoid admitting that they are a bigot. I am confused on how this would work in pr

> This is tricky because there are lots of people who "ask questions" just to avoid admitting that they are a bigot. I am confused on how this would work in practice. What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking?

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
Loaded ones, eg: "Why should I pay for taxes to support single mothers just so black men don't have to pay child support?" Now, I think we should still encourage them to ask those kinds of questions, because I believe in an open and liberal society and that the best reaction to poor thinking is to address it directly, that the answer to speech I don't like is more speech. But it's pretty easy for some really racist opinions about others to hide behind questions like that. Of course, there are also some uncomfortable truths in those questions which cause us to silence them, such as -- "Are the disparaties we see in racial groups purely the effect of lingering racial bias, or is there a modern cultural component that happens to align with racial groups and perpetuates the inequality?" (And in this case -- the more general, is there a disparity in the fatherhood rates that correlates with racial grouping?) Ed: I think the people downvoting proved someone upthread's point -- I literally provided an example I've heard of such a question and got downvoted for providing facts to a discussion.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  I disagree. We shouldn't encourage those questions from being asked, especially when the only reason they are being asked is to demonstrate someone's bigotry, and spread that bigotry and attempt to make it more mainstream. If you honestly want to ask a question like that, do so in the second manner you showed.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    Has that method successfully prevented bigots from collaborating, growing, and exerting political influences -- say in elections over the past year? I'm not saying we give them a megaphone, but if bigotry is prevalent (and it seems to be), then the best antidote is to expose it and address that directly. Why? Simple. Bigots are bigots for reasons -- even if they're not (in our esteem) good ones. You can't address the symptom (bigotry) without addressing the cause (those reasons). Your method only leads to wounds festering under bandages, and not the exposure and cleansing we need for healing.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      At the same time, what you're suggesting encourages the constant dumping on marginalized people with those "questions". Constantly being assailed like that takes its toll, and can lead to those people withdrawing from social media, removing their point of view from the discourse, and emboldening that of the bigots.
      - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
        > Constantly being assailed like that takes its toll, and can lead to those people withdrawing from social media, removing their point of view from the discourse, and emboldening that of the bigots. From my understanding of social media, it hasn't been workable trying to stop outright racist comments being hurled at those marginalized people -- so I just can't agree that not actually addressing the cause so we don't hypothetically do less damage than is actually being done right now by the problem is a workable idea. That's the kind of squeamish bargaining done by people without the stomach to tackle complex or hard topics: "Can't we all just get along without it being messy!" Your complaint is like saying that surgery hurts, can't we just let the infection fester? The surgery doesn't even hurt as much as the infection! Why would we do that? This is, for the moment, setting aside that we could work with technology to do better at time/place of those questions and filtering so the stream isn't overwhelming for (or even involuntarily sent to) any particular marginalized person. And so at a technical level, you're solving the problem in an inefficient way (trying to legislate human nature versus changing how we route text online).
        s73ver_ 9y ago
        "From my understanding of social media, it hasn't been workable trying to stop outright racist comments being hurled at those marginalized people" More so that it just hasn't been tried. "so I just can't agree that not actually addressing the cause so we don't hypothetically do less damage than is actually being done right now by the problem is a workable idea." What do you mean by "addressing the cause"? Taking the leading question seriously? That clearly hasn't worked. The answers to those things are out there. The people repeating these questions are not interested in answers. They just want to get their bigotry out there to try and make it seem mainstream. "Your complaint is like saying that surgery hurts, can't we just let the infection fester? The surgery doesn't even hurt as much as the infection! Why would we do that?" But your answer is like, "Let's amputate the leg!" When the infection is nowhere near the leg.
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  I appreciate the answer despite the down votes you have received. It seems we are talking about questions that have a false premise as welfare programs do not eliminate a fathers requirement to pay child support if I am understanding you correctly. That seems to have less to do with bigotry specifically and more to do with a poor understanding of a situation.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    We could (and I have) had whole discussions unpacking the thinking around that quote. There are multiple levels of racism (and other -isms), misunderstanding, and legitimate concerns that could be being expressed. Assuming that it's just "a false premise" (though, there's many false or questionable factual premises -- eg, program targets mothers not single parents; most single mothers have children with black fathers; support programs have anything to do with child support) without really investiating what else it might mean is too dismissive -- it's shouting "tree!" then being proud without ever seeing that there might be a forest. I takes time, effort, and empathy to try and unpack the real meaning behind questions like that -- effort that we don't invest when we allow ourselves the shortcut of just calling them "racist" to end the conversation. I don't think we can move forward as a society -- and are even regressing -- because we've stopped unpacking what the other person is trying to say and started short-circuiting that process of human interaction with thought terminating cliches. It sincerely scares me how many people derive great joy in that kind of unthinking censorship.
kangman 9y ago
if you are a bigot then your range of questions and the people to put them to would be inherently limited.
52-6F-62 9y ago
"Why should I pay into social welfare programs when I've worked so hard to get where I am?" Implies people who have to take on welfare as sustenance haven't worked hard enough, and so are undeserving of any help, are therefore inferior and an unjust drain on resources ... and you can take that down the road a little while depending on context ... edit: Tucker Carlson on Fox News does this very often.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- theseatoms 9y ago
  Does "bigoted" really apply to a disdain for perceived laziness?
  - crooked-v 9y ago
    When that perceived laziness is universally applied to the entire class of poor people? Yes.
    - iamdave 9y ago
      This is your default assumption in response to hearing that statement? Every time? That the person who spoke it is speaking down on poor people? Every time?
  - wfo 9y ago
    The bigotry is not the disdain for laziness, which is just plain nastiness and a fundamental lack of empathy and human understanding. The bigotry comes first, in the perception of laziness itself. Who is perceived to be lazy? Hard working working-class whites, or lazy working-class blacks living on the dole?
    - KekDemaga 9y ago
      Why do you assume that comment is about African Americans?
vkou 9y ago
"Why do blacks even have a problem with the police? If they stop breaking laws, wouldn't they stop getting harassed/killed?" That would be a totally legitimate question, if we lived in a colour-blind world. Or in a world where institutional racism has not been well-documented for decades. Or a world where driving while black was not a reason to get pulled over. We don't, though. Or, the Canadian equivalent: "Why are natives complaining about the government, when they don't pay any taxes?" That would be a totally legitimate question, if we lived in a world where native people did not pay taxes. We don't, though.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  > "Why do blacks even have a problem with the police? If they stop breaking laws, wouldn't they stop getting harassed/killed?" That actually sounds like quite an important question to ask. And difficult to phrase without sounding racist, which makes it even more important to ask. If you assume someone is more racist than average just because they ask such a question, you are the bigot.
  - wfo 9y ago
    "Why do blacks even have a problem with the police" is an excellent question. The correct answer is "because the police disproportionately arrest them far more for behaving the same way as whites" and "because the police often murder them on the street in cold blood and face no repercussions" and "because the police are known to explicitly harbor white nationalist sympathizers and explicitly make racist comments publicly, in official internal communications, and informally in person". And finally "because the police as an institution in the US is primarily a force designed to protect property, and at its inception property was black slaves; traditionally, the US police are a psuedo-military force whose primary reason for existing was to chase runaway slaves". If your follow up to "Why do blacks even have a problem with the police?" is "all they have to do is stop commiting crimes!" then it is the second statement that is explicitly racist. With the second statement you make the claim that the fault of police abuse lies in the abused, not the abusers, and that black people have no reason to mistrust the police except for the obvious fact that they are criminals.
  - 9y ago
s73ver_ 9y ago
Watch the Glenn Beck show from the Obama years. He was a master of it.
throwawayknecht 9y ago
"What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking?"
j_s 9y ago
>cbhl: This is tricky because there are lots of people who "ask questions" just to avoid admitting that they are a bigot. >>KekDemaga: I am confused on how this would work in practice. What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking? Crazy to watch a near-literal explosion in this arguably off-topic sub-discussion "just" asking for concrete examples of loaded questions. Am I the only one hearing the imaginary yet ear-splittingly-loud whooshing sound (going "over their head") as people are gearing up and jumping in here? What an amazing demonstration of the power of words as HN users can't resist reacting to examples of inflamatory questions even when they are specifically requested and provided (some even with disclaimers) _as examples_! As an aside, it is almost impossible for me to even begin to differentiate between the naive/geniune vs. trolls vs. devils advocates vs. others (hope that covers most of the bases) at all levels of this sub-thread.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

Loaded ones, eg: "Why should I pay for taxes to support single mothers just so black men don't have to pay child support?" Now, I think we should still encourage them to ask those kinds of questions, because I believe in an open and liberal society and that the best reaction to poor thinking is to address it directly, that the answer to speech I don't like is more speech. But it's pretty easy for some really racist opinions about others to hide behind questions like that. Of course, there are also some uncomfortable truths in those questions which cause us to silence them, such as -- "Are the disparaties we see in racial groups purely the effect of lingering racial bias, or is there a modern cultural component that happens to align with racial groups and perpetuates the inequality?" (And in this case -- the more general, is there a disparity in the fatherhood rates that correlates with racial grouping?) Ed: I think the people downvoting proved someone upthread's point -- I literally provided an example I've heard of such a question and got downvoted for providing facts to a discussion.

s73ver_ 9y ago
I disagree. We shouldn't encourage those questions from being asked, especially when the only reason they are being asked is to demonstrate someone's bigotry, and spread that bigotry and attempt to make it more mainstream. If you honestly want to ask a question like that, do so in the second manner you showed.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  Has that method successfully prevented bigots from collaborating, growing, and exerting political influences -- say in elections over the past year? I'm not saying we give them a megaphone, but if bigotry is prevalent (and it seems to be), then the best antidote is to expose it and address that directly. Why? Simple. Bigots are bigots for reasons -- even if they're not (in our esteem) good ones. You can't address the symptom (bigotry) without addressing the cause (those reasons). Your method only leads to wounds festering under bandages, and not the exposure and cleansing we need for healing.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    At the same time, what you're suggesting encourages the constant dumping on marginalized people with those "questions". Constantly being assailed like that takes its toll, and can lead to those people withdrawing from social media, removing their point of view from the discourse, and emboldening that of the bigots.
    - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
      > Constantly being assailed like that takes its toll, and can lead to those people withdrawing from social media, removing their point of view from the discourse, and emboldening that of the bigots. From my understanding of social media, it hasn't been workable trying to stop outright racist comments being hurled at those marginalized people -- so I just can't agree that not actually addressing the cause so we don't hypothetically do less damage than is actually being done right now by the problem is a workable idea. That's the kind of squeamish bargaining done by people without the stomach to tackle complex or hard topics: "Can't we all just get along without it being messy!" Your complaint is like saying that surgery hurts, can't we just let the infection fester? The surgery doesn't even hurt as much as the infection! Why would we do that? This is, for the moment, setting aside that we could work with technology to do better at time/place of those questions and filtering so the stream isn't overwhelming for (or even involuntarily sent to) any particular marginalized person. And so at a technical level, you're solving the problem in an inefficient way (trying to legislate human nature versus changing how we route text online).
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        "From my understanding of social media, it hasn't been workable trying to stop outright racist comments being hurled at those marginalized people" More so that it just hasn't been tried. "so I just can't agree that not actually addressing the cause so we don't hypothetically do less damage than is actually being done right now by the problem is a workable idea." What do you mean by "addressing the cause"? Taking the leading question seriously? That clearly hasn't worked. The answers to those things are out there. The people repeating these questions are not interested in answers. They just want to get their bigotry out there to try and make it seem mainstream. "Your complaint is like saying that surgery hurts, can't we just let the infection fester? The surgery doesn't even hurt as much as the infection! Why would we do that?" But your answer is like, "Let's amputate the leg!" When the infection is nowhere near the leg.
KekDemaga 9y ago
I appreciate the answer despite the down votes you have received. It seems we are talking about questions that have a false premise as welfare programs do not eliminate a fathers requirement to pay child support if I am understanding you correctly. That seems to have less to do with bigotry specifically and more to do with a poor understanding of a situation.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  We could (and I have) had whole discussions unpacking the thinking around that quote. There are multiple levels of racism (and other -isms), misunderstanding, and legitimate concerns that could be being expressed. Assuming that it's just "a false premise" (though, there's many false or questionable factual premises -- eg, program targets mothers not single parents; most single mothers have children with black fathers; support programs have anything to do with child support) without really investiating what else it might mean is too dismissive -- it's shouting "tree!" then being proud without ever seeing that there might be a forest. I takes time, effort, and empathy to try and unpack the real meaning behind questions like that -- effort that we don't invest when we allow ourselves the shortcut of just calling them "racist" to end the conversation. I don't think we can move forward as a society -- and are even regressing -- because we've stopped unpacking what the other person is trying to say and started short-circuiting that process of human interaction with thought terminating cliches. It sincerely scares me how many people derive great joy in that kind of unthinking censorship.

kangman 9y ago

if you are a bigot then your range of questions and the people to put them to would be inherently limited.

52-6F-62 9y ago

"Why should I pay into social welfare programs when I've worked so hard to get where I am?" Implies people who have to take on welfare as sustenance haven't worked hard enough, and so are undeserving of any help, are therefore inferior and an unjust drain on resources ... and you can take that down the road a little while depending on context ... edit: Tucker Carlson on Fox News does this very often.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
theseatoms 9y ago
Does "bigoted" really apply to a disdain for perceived laziness?
- crooked-v 9y ago
  When that perceived laziness is universally applied to the entire class of poor people? Yes.
  - iamdave 9y ago
    This is your default assumption in response to hearing that statement? Every time? That the person who spoke it is speaking down on poor people? Every time?
- wfo 9y ago
  The bigotry is not the disdain for laziness, which is just plain nastiness and a fundamental lack of empathy and human understanding. The bigotry comes first, in the perception of laziness itself. Who is perceived to be lazy? Hard working working-class whites, or lazy working-class blacks living on the dole?
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    Why do you assume that comment is about African Americans?

vkou 9y ago

"Why do blacks even have a problem with the police? If they stop breaking laws, wouldn't they stop getting harassed/killed?" That would be a totally legitimate question, if we lived in a colour-blind world. Or in a world where institutional racism has not been well-documented for decades. Or a world where driving while black was not a reason to get pulled over. We don't, though. Or, the Canadian equivalent: "Why are natives complaining about the government, when they don't pay any taxes?" That would be a totally legitimate question, if we lived in a world where native people did not pay taxes. We don't, though.

akvadrako 9y ago
> "Why do blacks even have a problem with the police? If they stop breaking laws, wouldn't they stop getting harassed/killed?" That actually sounds like quite an important question to ask. And difficult to phrase without sounding racist, which makes it even more important to ask. If you assume someone is more racist than average just because they ask such a question, you are the bigot.
- wfo 9y ago
  "Why do blacks even have a problem with the police" is an excellent question. The correct answer is "because the police disproportionately arrest them far more for behaving the same way as whites" and "because the police often murder them on the street in cold blood and face no repercussions" and "because the police are known to explicitly harbor white nationalist sympathizers and explicitly make racist comments publicly, in official internal communications, and informally in person". And finally "because the police as an institution in the US is primarily a force designed to protect property, and at its inception property was black slaves; traditionally, the US police are a psuedo-military force whose primary reason for existing was to chase runaway slaves". If your follow up to "Why do blacks even have a problem with the police?" is "all they have to do is stop commiting crimes!" then it is the second statement that is explicitly racist. With the second statement you make the claim that the fault of police abuse lies in the abused, not the abusers, and that black people have no reason to mistrust the police except for the obvious fact that they are criminals.
- 9y ago

s73ver_ 9y ago

Watch the Glenn Beck show from the Obama years. He was a master of it.

throwawayknecht 9y ago

"What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking?"

j_s 9y ago

>cbhl: This is tricky because there are lots of people who "ask questions" just to avoid admitting that they are a bigot. >>KekDemaga: I am confused on how this would work in practice. What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking? Crazy to watch a near-literal explosion in this arguably off-topic sub-discussion "just" asking for concrete examples of loaded questions. Am I the only one hearing the imaginary yet ear-splittingly-loud whooshing sound (going "over their head") as people are gearing up and jumping in here? What an amazing demonstration of the power of words as HN users can't resist reacting to examples of inflamatory questions even when they are specifically requested and provided (some even with disclaimers) _as examples_! As an aside, it is almost impossible for me to even begin to differentiate between the naive/geniune vs. trolls vs. devils advocates vs. others (hope that covers most of the bases) at all levels of this sub-thread.