It's obviously not true that only white liberals care about the use of racist language. But it is true that people care about the use of racist language in large part because of the clear connection between how people talk, how they think, and the existence of discrimination, and that issues of discrimination are more important than issues of language, at least to the extent that you can separate them. On those bigger issues about race and racism, it would be absolutely false to claim that only white liberals care:

Social norms against the use of racist language are important because they also discourage racist stereotypes and discrimination.

lol, ofc wil never confronts or challenges anyone who's racist toward him.

Sorry, but 13ball is right. There is enough literature on the topic of discrimination written by minority authors in the US for the claim that "only white liberals can't get past it" to be plainly and obviously false.

Do you have a link to the SPLC articles you think are problematic and rebuttals to them? This is something I never quite got around to really diving into, but it seems worth doing. I agree at least in theory that strong criticism of Islam shouldn't be enough to brand someone an extremist.

If you believe language shapes thought.

We will never agree on this, white liberals will never understand people who hold my position. Really, it doesn't matter. Of course we don't enjoy hearing it, but we don't need to die on that hill every time it happens. We learn to just let it go. There are more important things.

If my boss says it, or a professor says it, well then we may have a serious issue. If you think I care if some 18 year old kid said something ignorant or racist, lol, no. That's not how it works.

LeBron James


If an extremely successful and rich sports star finds racism difficult to cope with, imagine how much harder it would be for unsuccessful black people.

But of course wil disagrees because he knows so much more about the black experience than actual black people.

Well, there's a lot of minorities who disagree. It is an issue within OUR communities that we've always dealt with. You are welcome to go around telling others how they should feel about how they are treated, but I think you'll be surprised. Not everyone wants your pity, I know I don't and I know many people I know don't. And I truly believe it's due to a lack of perspective.

I wonder how he'll survive? Maybe we should start a GoFundMe for him.

Your first sentence is to my point though. No one is arguing that only language matters, separate from everything else, or that 18 year-olds posting memes to Facebook is the most pressing issue involving race in America. However, there are many reasons to believe that human thinking is influenced by how we hear people around us talk, from which we infer how they think, and how we ought to think and talk. It's an important part of socialization. Those 18 year old kids may very well be someone's boss some day, and how they are socialized to think about race and racism has an impact.

I see you don't have a serious response to the refutation of your typically deplorable opinion.

This may come as a huge shock, wil, but you don't speak for all minorities. Hey, congrats. Glad it doesn't bother you. But you are lying if you say that it doesn't bother other people. And it's an incredibly dumb lie too since there are innumerable examples proving you wrong.

Imagine being a guy that thinks because he's Asian he can say that black people don't mind being called the n-word. Holy ****.

That isn't what's happening here, though. There are plenty of black people who tell others how they feel about how they are treated in a way that directly refutes your "the only people who can't get past it is white liberals" claim. Your claim is wrong and 13ball was correct to call it wrong.

A higher standard than claiming that we are at war with Islam and the entire religion needs to be defeated? Maybe it's understandable that she would be angry at people who had made death threats, but that's a pretty awful statement.

I understand that she had modified her position a bit, but no one is required to believe her.

Sure, here is the original article published on Southern Poverty Law Center's website, "A Journalist's Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists." Here is an article from the Atlantic Monthly on Najad and his own response. The NYT magazine had a long profile of him in March. This blog covers some of the points on Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

As far as I can tell, the main criticism of Najad is that he thinks some Islamist mosques in the UK should be kept under some form of surveillance and he thinks that extremist Islam is one of the causes of terrorism. Oh, and also he once went to a strip club!?! And he retweeted a Jesus and Mo cartoon in protest against Muslim bigotry?! I find this last one particularly galling. The SPLC is criticizing his protest against Muslim anti-free speech views because it is blasphemous?

Their argument against Hirsi Ali is equally bad, essentially amounting to repeating a bunch of rumors claiming she exaggerated how much she suffered under Islam (including skepticism that she really underwent FGM, which, wow) and quoting from primarily old interviews where she, an outspoken atheist of the Sam Harris variety, said that Islam needs to be defeated and other negative things about Islam.

It's hard to get past racism when white liberals want to find racism wherever they can. And then virtue signal that they are against the bad things and for the good things. That's why they're called race hucksters.

You know how you get over racism, you get over racism. BTW - if there is systemic racism, why do Asians do so much better than whites in the United States. The whites must be doing a terrible job with their system racism.

I understand Chris Rock's point on folks like LeBron - nobody wants to be me, and I'm rich. That said, I think the victim mentality has done so much harm to blacks that our only hope is Trump's outreach to lift the scales from their eyes.

Sociology papers written by biased authors don't count. Finding facts to fit your narrative isn't science.

OrP: thanks. I was googling and found most of that, I wanted to see if I was missing anything. Although it looks like your link to the SPLC Journalist's Manual goes to a different NYT article about Nawaz instead. I haven't read all of it yet so I won't comment yet...

It's hard to get past racism when actual white supremacists are still a thing. White liberals are not the reason for the existence of white supremacists, sorry.

? This is gibberish entirely unrelated to the conversation, nobody's talking about "sociology papers written by biased authors"

Black race hucksters have so much more political power than actual White Supremacists, it's not even close.

I responded DIRECTLY to your assertion that there is plenty of literature - and dismiss it based on the biases of the authors.

? That's debatable, but even if it were true, so what? Your go-to move in every post is just splattering poo on the wall and hoping something sticks (I particularly liked the incredibly random "did you know the Daily Stormer endorsed Corbyn?" earlier, wow is that from left field and ~meaningless to anything we're discussing). Could you try sticking to actual conversations and maintaining coherent thoughts from one post to the next? It would go a long way.

You have literally no idea what I was talking about. I know that because, again, I was not talking about "sociology papers written by biased authors". You are, again, throwing poo at the wall and hoping it sticks.

I am serious. I think lebron will get over it. I also think it was faked. LeBron and the Cavs are absolutely worshipped in Ohio by every white person in the state. But whatever.

And you speak for none. It is not a coincidence I say white liberals will never understand this and I'm in an argument with white liberals.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Minorities have to make a choice and that means we can either live our lives full of anger and suspicion about everything or we can ignore it and concentrate on what we can control and do our best. The former is a lifelong battle against the tide where you only wind up hurting yourself. The latter is one of acceptance and peace, knowing we can't control how other people act or think and can only control how we respond.

You can't understand this. I'm telling you the truth here. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

If you have some actual friends who are minorities maybe you should sit down and have a deep conversation about this and be enlightened. We really aren't so fragile, and we can get past some idiot making a stupid slur that means literally nothing at all to our lives.

Edging ever closer to the moment when wil's legendary "black friends" make their customary anecdotal entrance.

It didn't happen in Ohio. "Knowing things": not for wil.

Other things not for wil: reading the first sentence of a posted link.

Debatable?? Are you ****ing kidding? Dude - put the keyboard down, the Internet really isn't for you.

Is this what you do - get criticized and then whine that you're being criticized?

You know, I think it's better this way. The Right tried to reason with the Left. But the Left comes to their conclusions by being unreasonable. Now it's just easier to trigger them.