7 ms·

These claims of prejudice can be so detrimental for wellbeing, whether it's racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. I personally think that this serves as

These claims of prejudice can be so detrimental for wellbeing, whether it's racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. I personally think that this serves as an example of when woke justice goes wrong. Always fact check individually; if one student in that entire college, she could been the one to do some research and stop it before it came too far. This is a great data point of the bystander effect, in that regard. I'm devastated for the bakery owners. :(

sn0w_crash 4y ago
We may need laws in place that prevent public accusations of this category of career-ending adjectives.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  https://cpj.org/reports/2016/03/north-america/ https://cpj.org/reports/2016/03/north-america/ Some states have them, some don’t, and the US Constitution’s First Amendment puts limits on the laws that do exist.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    It's 1A but it's also SCOTUS precedent. If NYT v. Sullivan were to be revisited, these limits could change. Justice Thomas has expressed (on multiple occasions, though I don't have the opinions handy) that he wants to do that. Personally I think it should be revisited. The recent case of a Duke volleyball student claiming that racial epithets were yelled at her during a came turned out to be false, but not after the usual cycle of social media enabled outrage. I bring it up because it's another instance where all of the facts are easily verifiable, and journalists seem to not care to actually look at them and report what actually happened.
    - puffoflogic 4y ago
      Well we can't have SCOTUS following the suggestions of racists like Thomas. /s?
- hirundo 4y ago
  Here's the flyer that was fatal to Oberlin's case: https://firstamendmentwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-17-at-11.27.15-AM.png https://firstamendmentwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/S... "This is a RACIST establishment ...": That's a statement of opinion, not actionable. "... with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.": That's a statement of fact, and it was therefore actionable and cost Oberlin's insuror millions. That seems like a reasonable way to split the difference between free speech and libel.
  - Ferrotin 4y ago
    Are you a lawyer with experience handling these kinds of cases? "This is a RACIST establishment ..." sounds like a defamatory statement to my naive ears when it is made without any fact behind it.
    - jlawson 4y ago
      The power of the word "racist" (like all woke-words) is that it has lots of definitions, which the speaker can slip between depending on the needs of the moment. In this case, the two definitions and their purposes would be: Definition 1. "One not actively working to create equal outcomes for non-white groups (even simply being neutral/disinterested is racist in this definition)". This is the definition of racist in the popular How to Be an Antiracist. This would be used to attach the word to the target. Definition 2. "One directly and intentionally harming people of non-white races out of conscious and deliberate hatred". Basically the KKK definition. This is the implication that's attached to the target, after definition 1 is used to "stick" the word onto the target. It's an amazing "stick and stab" tactic that, somehow, we haven't yet developed cultural antibodies against.
      - brightball 4y ago
        When did “non-white” get included into the definition of racism exactly? Those definitions are…I can’t find the word…
        4y ago
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Laws like that are in place, and they’re what ended McCarthyism. One problem is they are very civilly focused. How much money did you lose? A corporate execute might be out millions, while the guy at MacDonalds might be out a few thousand.
tbrownaw 4y ago
> Always fact check individually; if one student in that entire college, she could been the one to do some research and stop it before it came too far. One of the previous threads here had a link to a pdf somewhere in the comments, that looked like it had excerpts from the court filings. It had quite a few emails saying variants on "my experience with them says these accusations aren't true at all". So no, I don't think one student pushing back would have helped.
- scarab92 4y ago
  It's a town of 8000 people, of which 4000 are college students and staff. When you gather that many social justice warriors together in a location where there is no actual injustice to prosecute, they will creatively invent some so that they can do the thing they enjoy doing. You see a similar pattern with firefighters. When there haven't been many recent fires to put out, you start seeing more firefighters getting arrested for arson.
  - remuskaos 4y ago
    Citation needed
    - scarab92 4y ago
      For the firefighters? Here's a starting point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighter_arson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighter_arson
  - polski-g 4y ago
    Fire fighters are 94% volunteers. So not sure why they'd do that...
    - timellis-smith 4y ago
      As a former volunteer wildfire firefighter we definitely had instances of (former) volunteers engaging in arson for the thrill of putting out fires.
emmelaich 4y ago
It's a pity that Meredith Raimondo was not personally sued for defamation.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  She probably would have been if she had $36 million in cash. :)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bosswipe 4y ago
I don't feel too bad for them and their $36 mill.
- rendall 4y ago
  The husband did not have the energy to fight both lawsuit and cancer. They won the lawsuit, but he lost to cancer.
pipeline_peak 4y ago
I think a lot of times the catalyst is if you don’t agree due to insufficient evidence, or choose to shop there then “you’re the problem”.
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  And if you don't join in: "Silence is violence"
rayiner 4y ago
It’s also worth pointing out that the victims here aren’t the bakery owners. It’s also minority college students who are persuaded to believe they live in a more racist society than they do. After all, if even the local bakery in a famously liberal college town is racist, then the rest of the country must be much worse right? This perception, in turn, negatively affects their mental health, jobs, and interracial friendships.
- onos 4y ago
  It seems many of the policies advocated for by “the woke” are motivated by such simplistic logic that they ultimately have the opposite effect of their intentions. We must balance grace with truth. Of course in this case oberlin leadership just acted very poorly and there is no excuse.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    The "grace" framing makes it sound like it's about being fair to white people. I have some sympathy for people who are falsely accused, but honestly shit happens. My point is different: that exaggerating racism harms non-white people. I know other Asians who say stuff like "oh, I wouldn't want to go to the south because people are racist." And they're missing out on good food, warm weather, and friendly people. Trump won my precinct (which weirdly encompasses just my subdivision) 58-34 in 2016 when I moved there. It's a lovely place to live with lots of kids and friendly neighbors. A minority who is told by authority figures that the local bakery in Oberlin Ohio is a hotbed of racism might be too scared to come where I live. And that's not good for anybody.
    - greenyoda 4y ago
      > I know other Asians who say stuff like "oh, I wouldn't want to go to the south because people are racist." Interestingly, it was southern states that elected the first two governors of Indian descent: Bobby Jindal in Louisiana (2008-2016)[1] and Nikki Haley in South Carolina (2011-2017)[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Jindal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Jindal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Haley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Haley
devwastaken 4y ago
Oberlin lost because it was the dean and admins themselves that perpetuated it. They printed and handed out flyers about it. If they're federally funded they need to be blacklisted from student loans and grants. Once closed, wipe it clean and start over. Or else that culture will infect and continue to cause irrepairable harm.
- deweller 4y ago
  > Once closed, wipe it clean and start over This is exactly the kind of cancel culture that Oberlin demonstrated toward the bakery. "They did something unforgivable! Eliminate them!" Organizations have problems. People are imperfect. Society needs justice. But cancel culture is a mob mentality that goes far beyond justice and is harmful to society.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    > "They did something unforgivable! Eliminate them!" They claimed it falsely and without evidence though. The same is not true for any action that would be taking against the college. When someone claims that a random person committed a crime, kidnaps and imprisons them, we call that kidnapping and false imprisonment. But we won't shy away from taking the perpetrator off the street and in turn locking them up so they don't do it again.

sn0w_crash 4y ago

We may need laws in place that prevent public accusations of this category of career-ending adjectives.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
https://cpj.org/reports/2016/03/north-america/ https://cpj.org/reports/2016/03/north-america/ Some states have them, some don’t, and the US Constitution’s First Amendment puts limits on the laws that do exist.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  It's 1A but it's also SCOTUS precedent. If NYT v. Sullivan were to be revisited, these limits could change. Justice Thomas has expressed (on multiple occasions, though I don't have the opinions handy) that he wants to do that. Personally I think it should be revisited. The recent case of a Duke volleyball student claiming that racial epithets were yelled at her during a came turned out to be false, but not after the usual cycle of social media enabled outrage. I bring it up because it's another instance where all of the facts are easily verifiable, and journalists seem to not care to actually look at them and report what actually happened.
  - puffoflogic 4y ago
    Well we can't have SCOTUS following the suggestions of racists like Thomas. /s?
hirundo 4y ago
Here's the flyer that was fatal to Oberlin's case: https://firstamendmentwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-17-at-11.27.15-AM.png https://firstamendmentwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/S... "This is a RACIST establishment ...": That's a statement of opinion, not actionable. "... with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.": That's a statement of fact, and it was therefore actionable and cost Oberlin's insuror millions. That seems like a reasonable way to split the difference between free speech and libel.
- Ferrotin 4y ago
  Are you a lawyer with experience handling these kinds of cases? "This is a RACIST establishment ..." sounds like a defamatory statement to my naive ears when it is made without any fact behind it.
  - jlawson 4y ago
    The power of the word "racist" (like all woke-words) is that it has lots of definitions, which the speaker can slip between depending on the needs of the moment. In this case, the two definitions and their purposes would be: Definition 1. "One not actively working to create equal outcomes for non-white groups (even simply being neutral/disinterested is racist in this definition)". This is the definition of racist in the popular How to Be an Antiracist. This would be used to attach the word to the target. Definition 2. "One directly and intentionally harming people of non-white races out of conscious and deliberate hatred". Basically the KKK definition. This is the implication that's attached to the target, after definition 1 is used to "stick" the word onto the target. It's an amazing "stick and stab" tactic that, somehow, we haven't yet developed cultural antibodies against.
    - brightball 4y ago
      When did “non-white” get included into the definition of racism exactly? Those definitions are…I can’t find the word…
      - 4y ago
pyuser583 4y ago
Laws like that are in place, and they’re what ended McCarthyism. One problem is they are very civilly focused. How much money did you lose? A corporate execute might be out millions, while the guy at MacDonalds might be out a few thousand.

tbrownaw 4y ago

> Always fact check individually; if one student in that entire college, she could been the one to do some research and stop it before it came too far. One of the previous threads here had a link to a pdf somewhere in the comments, that looked like it had excerpts from the court filings. It had quite a few emails saying variants on "my experience with them says these accusations aren't true at all". So no, I don't think one student pushing back would have helped.

scarab92 4y ago
It's a town of 8000 people, of which 4000 are college students and staff. When you gather that many social justice warriors together in a location where there is no actual injustice to prosecute, they will creatively invent some so that they can do the thing they enjoy doing. You see a similar pattern with firefighters. When there haven't been many recent fires to put out, you start seeing more firefighters getting arrested for arson.
- remuskaos 4y ago
  Citation needed
  - scarab92 4y ago
    For the firefighters? Here's a starting point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighter_arson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighter_arson
- polski-g 4y ago
  Fire fighters are 94% volunteers. So not sure why they'd do that...
  - timellis-smith 4y ago
    As a former volunteer wildfire firefighter we definitely had instances of (former) volunteers engaging in arson for the thrill of putting out fires.

emmelaich 4y ago

It's a pity that Meredith Raimondo was not personally sued for defamation.

AussieWog93 4y ago
She probably would have been if she had $36 million in cash. :)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bosswipe 4y ago

I don't feel too bad for them and their $36 mill.

rendall 4y ago
The husband did not have the energy to fight both lawsuit and cancer. They won the lawsuit, but he lost to cancer.

pipeline_peak 4y ago

I think a lot of times the catalyst is if you don’t agree due to insufficient evidence, or choose to shop there then “you’re the problem”.

llanowarelves 4y ago
And if you don't join in: "Silence is violence"

rayiner 4y ago

It’s also worth pointing out that the victims here aren’t the bakery owners. It’s also minority college students who are persuaded to believe they live in a more racist society than they do. After all, if even the local bakery in a famously liberal college town is racist, then the rest of the country must be much worse right? This perception, in turn, negatively affects their mental health, jobs, and interracial friendships.

onos 4y ago
It seems many of the policies advocated for by “the woke” are motivated by such simplistic logic that they ultimately have the opposite effect of their intentions. We must balance grace with truth. Of course in this case oberlin leadership just acted very poorly and there is no excuse.
- rayiner 4y ago
  The "grace" framing makes it sound like it's about being fair to white people. I have some sympathy for people who are falsely accused, but honestly shit happens. My point is different: that exaggerating racism harms non-white people. I know other Asians who say stuff like "oh, I wouldn't want to go to the south because people are racist." And they're missing out on good food, warm weather, and friendly people. Trump won my precinct (which weirdly encompasses just my subdivision) 58-34 in 2016 when I moved there. It's a lovely place to live with lots of kids and friendly neighbors. A minority who is told by authority figures that the local bakery in Oberlin Ohio is a hotbed of racism might be too scared to come where I live. And that's not good for anybody.
  - greenyoda 4y ago
    > I know other Asians who say stuff like "oh, I wouldn't want to go to the south because people are racist." Interestingly, it was southern states that elected the first two governors of Indian descent: Bobby Jindal in Louisiana (2008-2016)[1] and Nikki Haley in South Carolina (2011-2017)[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Jindal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Jindal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Haley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Haley

devwastaken 4y ago

Oberlin lost because it was the dean and admins themselves that perpetuated it. They printed and handed out flyers about it. If they're federally funded they need to be blacklisted from student loans and grants. Once closed, wipe it clean and start over. Or else that culture will infect and continue to cause irrepairable harm.

deweller 4y ago
> Once closed, wipe it clean and start over This is exactly the kind of cancel culture that Oberlin demonstrated toward the bakery. "They did something unforgivable! Eliminate them!" Organizations have problems. People are imperfect. Society needs justice. But cancel culture is a mob mentality that goes far beyond justice and is harmful to society.
- luckylion 4y ago
  > "They did something unforgivable! Eliminate them!" They claimed it falsely and without evidence though. The same is not true for any action that would be taking against the college. When someone claims that a random person committed a crime, kidnaps and imprisons them, we call that kidnapping and false imprisonment. But we won't shy away from taking the perpetrator off the street and in turn locking them up so they don't do it again.