It's both. Just like ignorant.

Nope, never said anything like this. You are trying to conflate discrimination with racism. Or in other words, trying to ignore/deny the "systemic institutionalized" part.

Anyways... how about you STFU & GTFO like you promised.

I'm glad you think I'm reasonable, but sometimes I'm not.

Anyway, my opinion of the jman situation was different than your opinion. While I didn't call him a racist itt, (iirc), I wasn't too upset about the level of discourse regarding the situation. When a few people called you a racist because you tried to point out potential alternative reasons for his bias, I did defend you.

And jman wasn't stifled from offering his opinion. He had almost 200 posts itt. When he said something like, "those people need to calm the **** down and let the system work," he totally lost any empathy from me -- rightly or wrongly.

If there's a spectrum of racists and you are trying to move people in the right direction and hopefully completely off the spectrum, then alienating people on the side not that close to Hitler doesn't necessarily help the actual problem either.

Is your goal to address the problem or to label people?

That's another problem with calling people racist as opposed to saying some idea is racist. Instead of encouraging someone to change their ideas, you are just branding them.

Allow racism, autobans for whining about calling racist posts racist starting to look like a good solution right about now, particularly since site rules clearly do not prohibit racist content in practice whatever they actually claim.

I disagree. I think it's challenging and I'm open to the idea that it may not be the #1 way of combatting racism but no one here is under an obligation to combat racism in the best possible way. Person A says makes a post, person B says thats racist and you shouldn't post racist stuff if you don't want to get called racist. Both are being honest, both are being open. The onus is on both (or neither) of them to explain their positions further and reach a more common understanding. Person B does not take the responsibility of hand holding A through the process. If A chooses to disengage from the open and honest debate, that is on him.

I've called out people calling for bans of "nice guy racists" saying they should stick to poli-alpha. Who else should I be calling out?

I like your word choices, and I thought I made that apparent.

So in your view, the shop owner is racist unless he goes out of business, or moves somewhere else where he can operate profitably without supporting racism?

Also, can you give an example of someone who hates black people who isn't racist?

We're close enough to a consensus for a tolerable working definition that we don't need to nit it up any further. It's counterproductive.

We actually reached this same point in Alta Politards a year or so ago in the thread I linked to in the BruceZ kerfuffle. It took fewer than 100 posts, with minimal poo flinging. Then it descended into a semantic cluster**** which I contributed to. Then AlexM showed up, poo was flung, and the thread ended.

It can be, yes, but not always. Context is important.

Both. Labelling things is how we communicate as a species.


Completely agree.

However, when someone spouts numerous and consistent racist ideas - its probably fair to call them a racist.

What he said there is over the top imo, but if the discourse were more polite he might not have said it or could have been offered a fair chance to modify it or at least concede that it was inflammatory.

Jman was literally stifled. He was banned.

I'm not accusing you of anything, but did you read the entire thread from the beginning?

Also, he was temp-banned for repeatedly questioning the mods decisions in the thread. There is a special thread in the forum for that. He was subsequently perma-banned for using an existing second account to come back during his temp ban. (I guess to report posts, if you believe his story.)

I approve of stifling in politics alpha.

We hear this line all the time. In short: that's not everyone's goal (nor should it be), 'confrontation' can be just as successful as 'coddling', there's absolutely no reason to believe 'coddling' ever works, and 'coddling' does nothing good for the lurkers (who outnumber the racists by orders of magnitude).

On the flip side: A can't remember a racist ever not playing the "hurt feelings" card, and derailing the conversation, regardless of how 'coddled' they were. Not once.

Also, this is Baja Politards, if you can't deal with a little harmless name-calling you need to GTFO.
There's a whole lot to be said for this.

With some people constantly and freely making personal attacks (not just calling them racists) in politics alpha and jman being banned for questioning wookie, the moderation seems ridiculously inconsistent.

Some white supremacists types don't care if you call them racist. No feelings are being hurt when it's done. It's called indifference. Some will even exploit being called a racist. A singular approach doesn't address the notion that, as individuals, racists are not a singular entity.

Well, yeah the whole thing was a semantic game right from the get-go. This isn't an honest misunderdtanding about word definitions --the guys on #teambruce know what the meaning of everyday words like "racism" are. They speak English, they haven't been raised by wolves. The goal is to find whatever slapdash excuse they can find to never ever call anything racist.

Why my cousin Shamey always indulges them in this game of being willfully obtuse, I'll never understand.

Yes, if a corporation depends on systemic institutionalized discrimination to turn a profit, and targets certain areas to do so... yes, the shareholders of that corporation are racists.

A historical example? Not off the top of my head. But I'm sure there are a few examples of companies integrating to improve profits, even though the owners personally hated blacks.

But the problem still remains that many people disagree with your definition. I disagree with it. I recognize yours may be right, and some of you including Trolly have been making fine points. Yet I remain unconvinced and have questions, as do many others. Please don't take that the wrong way and assume I have sinister motives.

So, regardless of whether there's a specific example, some people think it's possible to hate black people and not be a racist?

I don't think so. Unless you mean to hate a specific black person for reasons that have nothing to do with his race.

I have to admit that I've missed the point of why FoldN brought that up, and haven't gone back to try and figure it out.

I'm sort of with you on the corporation bit, but that overcomplicates things because now we're dealing with shareholders who may be ignorant. If I don't go through every stock in my mutual fund to make sure the company doesn't support racist policies, I'm racist. That's just too broad, imo. What if I miss one?

Sticking to the shop owner, if he doesn't uproot and move to another town, risking financial ruin, he's racist? What if he does his best to limit his impact and donates to the NAACP, can he cap and trade out of his racism?


Any example, a hypothetical example. I still think those business owners you mention above are racist if they hate black people.

I'm fine with calling somebody a racist in your scenario. It's part of an intellectually honest evidence-based argument. I'm less fine in my case since it's being used prematurely as a weapon to end the argument.

The point wasn't that I can come up with a good non-racist argument in support of voterID - I can't. But I'm willing to let somebody try without cutting them off at the knees and chasing them out of the forum.

Mat- is a politics sub-forum with an incredibly strict rules interpretation for expected behavior something to consider? Call it Politics Formal or Politics Polite? I tried an experimental thread along these lines a while back and had a few participants. Rather than banning to uphold the standards, posts that are impolite or personal can just be moved elsewhere.

I'm just brainstorming while waiting for the phone to ring.

So who, besides fly, routinely calls people racist within one post of interacting with them?