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I would love to hear what you think would happen to you if you had openly discussed the equality of man irrespective of race in the "public" town square in a so

I would love to hear what you think would happen to you if you had openly discussed the equality of man irrespective of race in the "public" town square in a southern plantation town in the 1850s. I would further love to hear what you think would happen if you did that while committing the "crime" of being black. Getting made fun of on Twitter seems like a substantially less severe consequence than what would happen if you proposed radical ideas in the "public town square" throughout history.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 5y ago
>I would love to hear what you think would happen to you if you had openly discussed the equality of man irrespective of race in the "public" town square in a southern plantation town in the 1850s. I would love to hear how you think the idea of giving up slavery was discussed and eventually won over in the North itself (who kept slavery well after the revolution). I would also love to know why you think the public square means addressing everybody (like giving a lecture or declaring some platform), as opposed different people being able to discuss things with others in a public space. >I would further love to hear what you think would happen if you did that while committing the "crime" of being black. The same thing that would happen if you commited what is considered a crime against today's order on a modern public space. >Getting made fun of on Twitter seems like a substantially less severe consequence than what would happen if you proposed radical ideas in the "public town square" throughout history. That's only because 99.999% of it is of less consequence - compared to people discussing the abolition of slavery or setting up a revolution back then. Try something that the current establishment considers threatening and equivalent to the above, and see how far you stay (a) on Twitter (b) in a job, (c) out of jail.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  So you accept that the "public" town square was highly discriminatory, suppressed non-conformist thought, was consistently violent, and oppressive to people of minority racial groups? ...and you want more of that? Gotta start to question your motives here, friend. Not seeing any real upside to this, and I'm starting to wonder if the goal is maybe to take the voice away from the people who are, for the first time, finally getting a say in how the world is governed, because you don't like what's being said.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >So you accept that the "public" town square was highly discriminatory, suppressed non-conformist thought, was consistently violent, and oppressive to people of minority racial groups? No, but nice strawman. I only accept (rather, I know, don't have to "accept" or not "accept" as hand given) that the public square was at the main representative of the general sentiment, but also the space to discuss and break from it. It hasn't been always and/or globaly "consistently violent, and oppressive to people of minority racial groups". Often it was more progressive than the elites towards those groups, who had more of a chance to discuss their ills and suggestions in the public square than in the "englightened" spaces of the rich, the government/powerful, and the upper-middle class, which peddled more in the conformist ideas of the time, were the ones who actually profitted from slavery - and of course the ones that owned plantations... >Not seeing any real upside to this, and I'm starting to wonder if the goal is maybe to take the voice away from the people who are, for the first time, finally getting a say in how the world is governed, because you don't like what's being said. You got it backwards. You don't like things being said. I don't like things not allowed to be said.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      The "public" town square as you've described it has literally never existed. You're asking to return to a time that simply never happened. You talk about strawmen, but you've invented from whole cloth a concept from history that simply did not exist. In classic conservative fashion, you want to "go back" to some idealized era of history that didn't in any way look the way your rose colored glasses seem to tell you it did, and you completely throw out the outright racist, sexist attitudes that pervaded literally everything happening in prior centuries. Just logistically, how did these "public" town squares function? Were they periodic meetings? Did people just walk to the center of town and start shouting? Who spent their time in these town squares, when they could be working/providing for their family? Since they didn't actually exist in history, there's nowhere I can look this up, and I'm curious about what you think happened historically. Setting aside this made-up "town square" concept for a moment, you really seem to want to allow some speech, but to not allow other speech, and that is really the problem here. If you want to allow all speech, then you necessarily must allow for speech that (successfully) calls for the "cancelling" of people who speak, as well. In other words, either you support Twitter's ability to express itself through the banning some users for their speech (which it does exceedingly sparingly to begin with, people are not banned for ideas, but for specific expressions of those ideas), or you only selectively support free speech. You don't get to have it both ways.
- Jcowell 5y ago
  > I would love to hear how you think the idea of giving up slavery was discussed and eventually won over in the North itself (who kept slavery well after the revolution). Certainly not in public squares. If I think about it , Black freedom and black rights came from not from discussion but action. Forcing Everyone , everywhere to look at the issue it was by hitting the hearts and minds of Americans brought the newspaper and television that allowed Civil Rights movement to propagate that it did. It was Media , not the public square that won our rights. Not white men who suddenly found a guilty conscience and talked about it. Hell the discussion had to forced.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 5y ago

>I would love to hear what you think would happen to you if you had openly discussed the equality of man irrespective of race in the "public" town square in a southern plantation town in the 1850s. I would love to hear how you think the idea of giving up slavery was discussed and eventually won over in the North itself (who kept slavery well after the revolution). I would also love to know why you think the public square means addressing everybody (like giving a lecture or declaring some platform), as opposed different people being able to discuss things with others in a public space. >I would further love to hear what you think would happen if you did that while committing the "crime" of being black. The same thing that would happen if you commited what is considered a crime against today's order on a modern public space. >Getting made fun of on Twitter seems like a substantially less severe consequence than what would happen if you proposed radical ideas in the "public town square" throughout history. That's only because 99.999% of it is of less consequence - compared to people discussing the abolition of slavery or setting up a revolution back then. Try something that the current establishment considers threatening and equivalent to the above, and see how far you stay (a) on Twitter (b) in a job, (c) out of jail.

TameAntelope 5y ago
So you accept that the "public" town square was highly discriminatory, suppressed non-conformist thought, was consistently violent, and oppressive to people of minority racial groups? ...and you want more of that? Gotta start to question your motives here, friend. Not seeing any real upside to this, and I'm starting to wonder if the goal is maybe to take the voice away from the people who are, for the first time, finally getting a say in how the world is governed, because you don't like what's being said.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >So you accept that the "public" town square was highly discriminatory, suppressed non-conformist thought, was consistently violent, and oppressive to people of minority racial groups? No, but nice strawman. I only accept (rather, I know, don't have to "accept" or not "accept" as hand given) that the public square was at the main representative of the general sentiment, but also the space to discuss and break from it. It hasn't been always and/or globaly "consistently violent, and oppressive to people of minority racial groups". Often it was more progressive than the elites towards those groups, who had more of a chance to discuss their ills and suggestions in the public square than in the "englightened" spaces of the rich, the government/powerful, and the upper-middle class, which peddled more in the conformist ideas of the time, were the ones who actually profitted from slavery - and of course the ones that owned plantations... >Not seeing any real upside to this, and I'm starting to wonder if the goal is maybe to take the voice away from the people who are, for the first time, finally getting a say in how the world is governed, because you don't like what's being said. You got it backwards. You don't like things being said. I don't like things not allowed to be said.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    The "public" town square as you've described it has literally never existed. You're asking to return to a time that simply never happened. You talk about strawmen, but you've invented from whole cloth a concept from history that simply did not exist. In classic conservative fashion, you want to "go back" to some idealized era of history that didn't in any way look the way your rose colored glasses seem to tell you it did, and you completely throw out the outright racist, sexist attitudes that pervaded literally everything happening in prior centuries. Just logistically, how did these "public" town squares function? Were they periodic meetings? Did people just walk to the center of town and start shouting? Who spent their time in these town squares, when they could be working/providing for their family? Since they didn't actually exist in history, there's nowhere I can look this up, and I'm curious about what you think happened historically. Setting aside this made-up "town square" concept for a moment, you really seem to want to allow some speech, but to not allow other speech, and that is really the problem here. If you want to allow all speech, then you necessarily must allow for speech that (successfully) calls for the "cancelling" of people who speak, as well. In other words, either you support Twitter's ability to express itself through the banning some users for their speech (which it does exceedingly sparingly to begin with, people are not banned for ideas, but for specific expressions of those ideas), or you only selectively support free speech. You don't get to have it both ways.
Jcowell 5y ago
> I would love to hear how you think the idea of giving up slavery was discussed and eventually won over in the North itself (who kept slavery well after the revolution). Certainly not in public squares. If I think about it , Black freedom and black rights came from not from discussion but action. Forcing Everyone , everywhere to look at the issue it was by hitting the hearts and minds of Americans brought the newspaper and television that allowed Civil Rights movement to propagate that it did. It was Media , not the public square that won our rights. Not white men who suddenly found a guilty conscience and talked about it. Hell the discussion had to forced.