4 ms·

Out of interactions with 100,000 people, how many are racist dipshits? 2 or 3? You'll have another couple dozen "ignorant, but want to hurt or provoke you" that

Out of interactions with 100,000 people, how many are racist dipshits? 2 or 3? You'll have another couple dozen "ignorant, but want to hurt or provoke you" that use racist slurs. There's a difference between ignorant behavior and racist beliefs. Hurtful language in a brief confrontation is an insufficient criteria to identify "real" racism unless you're radically changing the meaning of the word. Getting called a name is a reason to look for racism, but it's more likely to be the result of testosterone fueled heat of the moment stupidity than a belief about people based on the color of their skin. An astonishingly large proportion of people in the US are decent, fair dealing, hero of their own story, regular old homo sapiens. Get rid of the political noise and we have an overly civil and decent society literally unmatched in history in its liberal and tolerant values. There are boomer holdouts that aren't on board with sex stuff, some racist clusters with objectively racist beliefs, but the rainbow coalition and civil rights activists have won those battles in the culture war. There are fewer than 9000 kkk members left in the US, down from millions at their peak. There's a couple or 5 times more neonazis. (There's some probably unconstitutional ongoing surveillance of extremists by the fbi and nsa resulting in good yearly reporting that congress and the public and activist groups tolerate, I guess because fuck those people.) It's not that there isn't room for improvement, that there aren't objectively bad things that we need to resolve. I don't want to trivialize the remaining challenges we face in making society better. I just think it's a good idea to recognize that what's apparently happening at this Tesla plant is extremely unusual. If it's a bad as alleged, it needs to be overhauled aggressively, and the person or people that brought about the cluster of racists needs to be kicked to the curb.

braingenious 5y ago
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  My operational definition of racism is a belief that race is somehow a useful means to discriminate between individual humans and behavior. I think there's a difference between someone racist using the n word to demean you and someone ignorant using racist language to provoke or hurt you. The use of racist language is insufficient as confirmation of actual racism, but it is evidence. A reading or quoting of Huckleberry Finn isn't necessarily racist. A lady looking to provoke you because she's crazy or drunk or bored isn't necessarily racist. In both cases, it depends on context and intent. What does the human involved believe and intend? Ignorance and stupidity are not racism, they're basic human fallibility. You'll never eliminate them. Lowering the bar for "actual racism" to include stupid and ignorant behavior - removing the criteria of intent and belief - means you're equating universal human behaviors with abhorrent memes. The distinction is pretty critical if we want to eliminate actual racism. Formal organizations are a good social metric to gauge cultural involvement in racism. It's entirely socially unacceptable to take part in social groups known to be racist, and those organizations will eventually disappear - I see this as a positive indication that American culture is improving. The allegations make it seem like there is a cluster of actual racists at the Tesla plant. It's not yokels ignorantly hassling or hazing coworkers, but actual racists harassing black people. The two scenarios indicate two entirely different problems.
  - braingenious 5y ago

braingenious 5y ago

robbedpeter 5y ago
My operational definition of racism is a belief that race is somehow a useful means to discriminate between individual humans and behavior. I think there's a difference between someone racist using the n word to demean you and someone ignorant using racist language to provoke or hurt you. The use of racist language is insufficient as confirmation of actual racism, but it is evidence. A reading or quoting of Huckleberry Finn isn't necessarily racist. A lady looking to provoke you because she's crazy or drunk or bored isn't necessarily racist. In both cases, it depends on context and intent. What does the human involved believe and intend? Ignorance and stupidity are not racism, they're basic human fallibility. You'll never eliminate them. Lowering the bar for "actual racism" to include stupid and ignorant behavior - removing the criteria of intent and belief - means you're equating universal human behaviors with abhorrent memes. The distinction is pretty critical if we want to eliminate actual racism. Formal organizations are a good social metric to gauge cultural involvement in racism. It's entirely socially unacceptable to take part in social groups known to be racist, and those organizations will eventually disappear - I see this as a positive indication that American culture is improving. The allegations make it seem like there is a cluster of actual racists at the Tesla plant. It's not yokels ignorantly hassling or hazing coworkers, but actual racists harassing black people. The two scenarios indicate two entirely different problems.
- braingenious 5y ago