4 ms·

That's the core of the issue. Instead of addressing rhetoric at a face value, people put their projection of disagreement into your words and judge you by that.

That's the core of the issue. Instead of addressing rhetoric at a face value, people put their projection of disagreement into your words and judge you by that. After all, what is the difference between people who use "all lives matter" as a thinly veiled excuse for discrimination and people who use "it's a pride month and you're homophobic" as an excuse to attack you when asked to stay on technical topic? Addendum: I believe "affirmative action" is a major step towards dismantling freedom of speech. It is until after I got better at English and started immerse into the Western medium of discourse, that it became apparent that my beliefs of equality by judging people upon their virtues/vices are considered wrong by many who prefer to insist on categorizing people only by their superficial features and use that as a basis of the debate.

mavhc 4y ago
The point is to do both, acknowledging that certain people have inherent (dis)advantages, and that established perspectives are usually the perspective of the establishment, which isn't representative of the whole
sofixa 4y ago
> It is until after I got better at English and started immerse into the Western medium of discourse, that it became apparent that my beliefs of equality by judging people upon their virtues/vices are considered wrong by many who prefer to insist on categorizing people only by their superficial features and use that as a basis of the debate Don't confuse mostly American language and culture with "Western". The UK sometimes follows some of these things, but not always, and the rest usually don't. For instance in France It's forbidden for government entities to categorise people by how they look. There are no quotas or statistics per skin colour. There's still racism here and there of course - be it in some police actions/accidents, or political parties, or whatever. There are poor neighborhoods (which tend to be prevalently with immigrants or close descendants of immigrants, be they from Africa, Asia or Eastern Europe), and there are efforts to help the people living there ( improve schools, provide jobs, etc.), not "people from Arabian/Western African descent living there".
- pasabagi 4y ago
  France just narrowly avoided voting in the daughter of a noted neo-nazi, running the nationalist party that neo-nazi founded. It's also got a hijab ban, which puts it in the company of places like Russia, or Xinjiang in China, not noted bastions of tolerance and diversity.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > France just narrowly avoided voting in the daughter of a noted neo-nazi She's drastically less neo-Nazi than her father, just an empty far-right populist. But yeah, not great. > It's also got a hijab ban, which puts it in the company of places like Russia, or Xinjiang in China, not noted bastions of tolerance and diversity It's more complicated than that. The hijab ban isn't coming from intolerance or to force conformity. France has a long and proud history of laïcité, separation of church and state and irreligiousness in public life ( you don't get politicians doing photo ops with bibles or praising Jesus, thank god). Outright religious symbols, especially ones that are a symbol of religious subjugation for many ( many women, especially the young ones, are pressured/forced by family/husbands to be "modest"; plenty of others do it for themselves) have no place in irreligious public places. Religion is a private matter you practice however you please as long as you harm noone. And the ban isn't for hijabs, it's for face coverings, so a Catholic nun is also included; and it only covers public places like post office, town hall, schools ( not sure about that one). But the gist of it is - religion has no place in public life, especially its (often) intolerant parts.
    - pasabagi 4y ago
      > Religion is a private matter you practice however you please as long as you harm noone I think the chinese make this argument in Xinjiang much more convincingly, after all, unlike the french, they do not have large, bell-ringing churches and cathedrals in the centers of literally every settlement, all of which are blazoned with symbols of the faith. It's also the argument they make in Germany, where you're not allowed to have religious symbols in public offices, but they still manage to have a crucifix behind every blade of grass, public or otherwise, in Bavaria. The other problem with the hijab ban is that modesty (which is what hijab means) makes no sense in private. So it ends up making women choose between their religious self-expression, and taking part of public life. I'm sure that some muslim women are oppressed by some muslim men, but I can say for certain that every muslim woman, whether they wear the headscarf or not, is oppressed by having this choice taken out of their hands. I love the french universalist tradition, but it feels like mobilizing that in order to restrict the freedoms of a relatively poor and disenfranchised minority is a shameful betrayal. I would find it credible if there was also a general crucifix ban, and the French state, as the soviets did, was turning churches into community centers or tearing them down. Since no such idea is even proposed, it just seems like yet another classic of the european tradition: abstract equality, concrete discrimination.

mavhc 4y ago

The point is to do both, acknowledging that certain people have inherent (dis)advantages, and that established perspectives are usually the perspective of the establishment, which isn't representative of the whole

sofixa 4y ago

> It is until after I got better at English and started immerse into the Western medium of discourse, that it became apparent that my beliefs of equality by judging people upon their virtues/vices are considered wrong by many who prefer to insist on categorizing people only by their superficial features and use that as a basis of the debate Don't confuse mostly American language and culture with "Western". The UK sometimes follows some of these things, but not always, and the rest usually don't. For instance in France It's forbidden for government entities to categorise people by how they look. There are no quotas or statistics per skin colour. There's still racism here and there of course - be it in some police actions/accidents, or political parties, or whatever. There are poor neighborhoods (which tend to be prevalently with immigrants or close descendants of immigrants, be they from Africa, Asia or Eastern Europe), and there are efforts to help the people living there ( improve schools, provide jobs, etc.), not "people from Arabian/Western African descent living there".

pasabagi 4y ago
France just narrowly avoided voting in the daughter of a noted neo-nazi, running the nationalist party that neo-nazi founded. It's also got a hijab ban, which puts it in the company of places like Russia, or Xinjiang in China, not noted bastions of tolerance and diversity.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > France just narrowly avoided voting in the daughter of a noted neo-nazi She's drastically less neo-Nazi than her father, just an empty far-right populist. But yeah, not great. > It's also got a hijab ban, which puts it in the company of places like Russia, or Xinjiang in China, not noted bastions of tolerance and diversity It's more complicated than that. The hijab ban isn't coming from intolerance or to force conformity. France has a long and proud history of laïcité, separation of church and state and irreligiousness in public life ( you don't get politicians doing photo ops with bibles or praising Jesus, thank god). Outright religious symbols, especially ones that are a symbol of religious subjugation for many ( many women, especially the young ones, are pressured/forced by family/husbands to be "modest"; plenty of others do it for themselves) have no place in irreligious public places. Religion is a private matter you practice however you please as long as you harm noone. And the ban isn't for hijabs, it's for face coverings, so a Catholic nun is also included; and it only covers public places like post office, town hall, schools ( not sure about that one). But the gist of it is - religion has no place in public life, especially its (often) intolerant parts.
  - pasabagi 4y ago
    > Religion is a private matter you practice however you please as long as you harm noone I think the chinese make this argument in Xinjiang much more convincingly, after all, unlike the french, they do not have large, bell-ringing churches and cathedrals in the centers of literally every settlement, all of which are blazoned with symbols of the faith. It's also the argument they make in Germany, where you're not allowed to have religious symbols in public offices, but they still manage to have a crucifix behind every blade of grass, public or otherwise, in Bavaria. The other problem with the hijab ban is that modesty (which is what hijab means) makes no sense in private. So it ends up making women choose between their religious self-expression, and taking part of public life. I'm sure that some muslim women are oppressed by some muslim men, but I can say for certain that every muslim woman, whether they wear the headscarf or not, is oppressed by having this choice taken out of their hands. I love the french universalist tradition, but it feels like mobilizing that in order to restrict the freedoms of a relatively poor and disenfranchised minority is a shameful betrayal. I would find it credible if there was also a general crucifix ban, and the French state, as the soviets did, was turning churches into community centers or tearing them down. Since no such idea is even proposed, it just seems like yet another classic of the european tradition: abstract equality, concrete discrimination.