Quote:
Originally Posted by FlyWf
And I would stress that each. and. every. person who champions the "we need to hear bigots out to engage them" line has ~no history, ever, of actually disagreeing with racists. Not one. Not ever.
That's a fairly extreme stance so you should have more substantial reasoning behind it. One problem is that racism is too widespread and replicates too much across generations to be simply shunned out of influence. It's not going to die off with the olds as you probably think.
Racist or bigoted views appeal on a lot of levels. A white person goes to school and sees all or nearly all the black kids do poorly. Their parents tell them black kids are stupid. Some guy at Harvard writes The Bell Curve. If you don't look at it in finer detail the question can appear satisfactorily settled. The young racist in training doesn't understand cross cultural studies of educational achievement of aligned minorities. They don't understand the behavioral adaptations to slavery carried by black people which can be maladaptive in the present context. They aren't aware of the massive flaws of The Bell Curve. They just know Harvard and MIT said blacks are dumb.
From that point it doesn't seem productive to treat such individuals who hold backward and ignorant opinions on race as evil ******s. They've been taught a worldview which seems consistent to them. In order to address that they have to be engaged and taught something which makes more sense.
And I don't lack extremist positions, nor am I a pacifist. If I could push a button and neuter every climate change denier and fascist in the world I would not hesitate for a second. However, I think we are at a place in race relations in which nuance will be required for further progress. Segregated facilities and voting rights are open bigotry which can be seen and confronted head on. While drastically unequal disparities still abound and the occasional singular outrage occurs, the mechanisms of Racism operate in much less exposed channels now. Without engagement and the drawing of the connections of those mechanisms with the outcomes, simpler, convenient, and self-serving ideas about race will have occasion to maintain or develop.