It also doesn't help that he's trying to put words in other people's mouths, then clamoring those people are sad, arrogant, ignorant, etc...

He's beating up straw men and acting righteous about it

As opposed to uppity?

So when you say "you put your fingers in your ears" you're talking about the post where he explained the relevant life experiences that led him to the opinion he stated, which to the surprise of no one you are still claiming is invalid? Wow, shocker, didn't see that one coming at all!


btw, this made me laugh from the other thread in the context of our current discussion:

It's so tortured and specific to find the word "thug" being applied to nonblack people - it seems we've established it applies to mafia hitmen, less clear how it might ever apply to more ordinary nonblack people - but get a black guy on camera and the word flows and flows and flows. Three times in that post!

You don't get the fact that I fundamentally reject viewing individuals according to the group identity they belong, and do believe it's toxic. You won't ever convince me otherwise. I also often find people's feelings, intuition, perceptions are not the best arbiter of truth (including my own), and definitely not authoritative. These things are at the foundation of your sides argument.

If someone wants to appeal to their experience, they should do that, instead of appealing to their race/group identity, as if being a certain color makes someone an authority.

For instance, if I'm discussing the impact of child abuse, and someone says something I disagree with, I would never simply say, I'm an abuse survivor, your wrong. Because my experience is not authoritative. It can't be, because of the various ways people experience things,from all different angles.

I don't lack imagination. I think the issue is, you all reject everything that does not subscribe to that mindset. You think people must subscribe to it, or that person is any number of things I've been called this far..

Here is the kicker, I don't view him as black. His race is wholly irrelevant to me. It's relevant to you, though, and he wants it to be relevant. A persons race is not relevant to the truth. It's kinda my whole point.

But later on, after you demanded he state the obvious, he expounded on that to confirm that he and family/friends have a lifetime of experience of dealing with anti-black racism, so it kinda seems like he is in fact an expert, but you got way too #triggered by his earlier posts to ever allow yourself to learn from those experiences?

Like, you're going on and on about how you don't see identity, you just want the facts, and someone who has more facts than anyone else here to help shine a light on that truth you're looking for is apparently not worthy to you because they're "arrogant" and not "humble". So not only must they be knowledgeable, but they also have to cater to your snowflake ass? Hahahahahahahaha

How about if I appeal to my authority of knowing how common words are used in colloquial English?

One's experience still does make them an authority. Every other person who's discussed this issue have cited extrinsic sources and didn't necessarily rely on their own experience.

Again, you're not even trying to comprehend or contend with what I'm saying. Here's a tip for you, his experience can be valuable, but not authoritative. your entire argument is based on ensuring that his experiences is somehow more authoritative than anybody elses experience, and it's f****** stupid.

This is a nice ideal, but the problem is it's not as absolutely true as you want it to be. The problem, more or less, is the Thomas theorem. Race is relevant to people's experiences and direct knowledge simply because our whole history has made it relevant. Being "blind to color" is a nice idealized goal in the abstract, but you can't remove the actual significance of race in the present just by declaring it irrelevant.

That, and (as I said before) you are treating "credibility", "authority" and etc. as too binary (black and white? :P) of terms. You don't have to accept him as an unquestionable authority (in the sense you are rejecting) to recognize the value in his perspective, and that the value is grounded in the reality of his experience as a black person, which is going to be different from yours.

Wow, a bunch of non-black people didn't have personal anecdotes about the word thug being directed at them as a slur? Shocker!

You seem to have a very odd sense as to what a racial slur is, but I have hurling the word at someone in a racializing and demeaning manner as a necessary and sufficient condition, even if it's a word that also has benign uses. In that regard, someone's personal experience is authoritative: if they have experienced its use as a slur, it's a slur. So, if you see someone say "Are you black? I am. I’m telling you he’s not wrong," and you can't infer the obvious subtext, that he and his friends and family and acquaintances have all been called thugs at one point or another, you most definitely lack imagination and sense.

His race is completely irrelevant in determining whether "thug" is a dog whistle. His experience does have relevance, and is valuable, but it's not authoritative.

As a kid, I spent several years in Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia, and have first hand accounts of daily racist actions perpetrated by white people against against black/Hispanic people ( I don't recall thug ever being used). Saw it every day, multiple times a day. I would never claim to be an authority. Yes, I know the world sees color, but when it comes to objective truths, a persons race is irrelevant. Racist use of the term is the evidence, not the dudes race.

For someone concerned about decimal points being correct, you sure don't have the same demand for precision when it comes to speech, unless it's something you disagree with, then you still screw it up.

Would you accept the statement that "thug," when used in some contexts, has racial undertones? Sometimes fairly understated, other times much less so. I'm not really sure what objective criteria you have in mind for evaluating whether a word is a dog whistle or not, and partly I'm trying to restate the assertion in such a way as to remove intent as a factor.

I'm also not really sure it matters that much whether there is some perfectly objective measure. I'm not sure you can entirely remove subjectivity from language and communication. I think a lot of black people will tell you that they hear those undertones in a lot of the usage of the word "thug," and it's not really that difficult for me to see why they would. That is enough for me to be cautious about my own usage of the word.

Dude, you literally failed to express 1/1000 as a percentage given 3 attempts, at least one of which was after someone told you the ****ing answer. It's not so much a demand for precision as pointing out that you are a dumb-dumb.

By the way, any chance you'll ever get round to explaining why Twitter banned you, and how that is them being an "arbiter of truth"?

Yes.

You never really going to know conclusively. In some cases you can deduce the likelihood based on the context. Remember, this entire tangent was due to master stating as a matter of fact, it is a dog whistle, which is what spawned the post I was critical of. It seems that context was lost on the people arguing with me. The discussion was whether it was, or was not, not whether it can be. They introduced the binary you're speaking of, not me.

Gonna guess his inexplicable inability to recognize common racial slurs was a part of the reason.

Apprently, it's something to do with #LearnToCode (which sounds like he was trolling journalists or something), and the banning is Twitter preventing people from consuming his truf. That's all I got so far, but maybe he will elaborate.

Fair enough. I tend to think you get bogged down a little too much by people overstating their arguments, being too strident, too hyperbolic, or whatever. And then it's like you take an equal but oppositely strident stance in rebutting them. It often feels like the forest gets lost for the trees. Just IMO.

Also I think originally the argument was that Trump's specific usage was a dog-whistle. I don't think anyone actually believes that literally every use of the word thug is a dog-whistle.

I'm not responding to you, because it seems you are looking for ammunition, rather than a discussion. I will say my use was not targeted at anyone, and was not inflammatory.

Yeah, and I think the context it was used is the only relevant evidence, and maybe his history of using the term.

Your position in that thread seemed to be that your banning for (apparent) trolling was tantamount to their censoring your speech and preventing people from consuming your truth, which is absurd prima facie, so you are right in that I wasn't really taking you very seriously.

No, you assumed I was trolling. which is another reason why I don't really engage with you, you are just dishonestly looking for something to tease about.

Well, you said it was to do with #LearnToCode. I didn't know what it was, so I looked it up. I discovered that it was to do with trolling journalists. Given lack of any other infomation from you, the reasonable assumption would be that you were trolling, yes.

Cite the original post I wrote. Also if you were honest, you would understand I'm not one that deals in memes.

Please take the twitter conversation to the LC thread. I moved d2_e4's last post there.