5 ms·

We accept the status quo of countless racist tragedies occurring day after day. But if even one individual is falsely accused of racism, that's untenable?

harryh 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- rectang 6y ago
  Huh? I'm directly addressing the point of the article. Because our institutions are structurally racist and legislative remedies are unattainable, social pressure must be applied. It's unfortunate that while just in the aggregate social pressure is occasionally unjust in the specific, but that's what you get when you deny justice systemically.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > Because our institutions are structurally racist and legislative remedies are unattainable, social pressure must be applied. This is 100% backwards; structural, institutional problems demand structural, institutional solutions. Want to end structural racism in the U.S.? Start from the clearest near-term goal, viz. reforming criminal justice. Then move on to the next most visible problem.
apsec112 6y ago
Someone should say something before the list of victims is as long as McCarthy's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Victims_of_McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Victims_of_McCarth... Stalin was a monster, but history doesn't remember McCarthy and HUAC fondly either.
MattGaiser 6y ago
More that caving blindly to mob behavior is untenable. We don't handle crime by letting people shout "hang him" and following through.
rbecker 6y ago
> We accept the status quo of countless racist tragedies occurring day after day. Do we? Because a company firing workers, even their own family, to avoid being seen as racist doesn't exactly scream "acceptance" to me.
chippy 6y ago
It's a kind of philosophical issue at root. Parallels can be seen in the both the Death Penalty in the US vs. UK and more generally in Innocent Until Proven Guilty in both legal systems. In the UK the death penalty was abolished because it is untenable that one innocent is killed accidentally. Innocent until proven guilty (and I might be mistaking the actual thing here) means that it is indeed better for 10 guilty people to walk free than 1 innocent person be imprisoned. If we reject some of these fundamentals for how we run our societies then we might repeat of the Terror during the French revolution. During the Terror they said "well, the mob cant be controlled, but it generally did good." Political philosophy and History can teach us many things.

harryh 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

rectang 6y ago
Huh? I'm directly addressing the point of the article. Because our institutions are structurally racist and legislative remedies are unattainable, social pressure must be applied. It's unfortunate that while just in the aggregate social pressure is occasionally unjust in the specific, but that's what you get when you deny justice systemically.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > Because our institutions are structurally racist and legislative remedies are unattainable, social pressure must be applied. This is 100% backwards; structural, institutional problems demand structural, institutional solutions. Want to end structural racism in the U.S.? Start from the clearest near-term goal, viz. reforming criminal justice. Then move on to the next most visible problem.

apsec112 6y ago

Someone should say something before the list of victims is as long as McCarthy's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Victims_of_McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Victims_of_McCarth... Stalin was a monster, but history doesn't remember McCarthy and HUAC fondly either.

MattGaiser 6y ago

More that caving blindly to mob behavior is untenable. We don't handle crime by letting people shout "hang him" and following through.

rbecker 6y ago

> We accept the status quo of countless racist tragedies occurring day after day. Do we? Because a company firing workers, even their own family, to avoid being seen as racist doesn't exactly scream "acceptance" to me.

chippy 6y ago

It's a kind of philosophical issue at root. Parallels can be seen in the both the Death Penalty in the US vs. UK and more generally in Innocent Until Proven Guilty in both legal systems. In the UK the death penalty was abolished because it is untenable that one innocent is killed accidentally. Innocent until proven guilty (and I might be mistaking the actual thing here) means that it is indeed better for 10 guilty people to walk free than 1 innocent person be imprisoned. If we reject some of these fundamentals for how we run our societies then we might repeat of the Terror during the French revolution. During the Terror they said "well, the mob cant be controlled, but it generally did good." Political philosophy and History can teach us many things.