Quote me calling Bruce and not his words racist then. I took care to argue that his posts were racist, and you're still whining about it.

Wait, would this discussion get me banned under the new rule?

The problem is that coddling the feelings of defensive white people is not actually productive.

I'm not revisiting the Bruce fiasco and no I'm not whining about it.

I will point it out if I think you misrepresent me but come on it was ages ago. Long past time to let it go don't you think?

It's coddling to enforce rules unequally. No, it's you who is being coddled here, friend.

Hey man, you are the one making the choice to get all up into the details of what a black college chick wrote on Facebook and the tactics in a stupid debate amongst trolling student groups.

You are the one choosing to obsess over this ****.

Can you give an example of when fostering a pleasant dialogue with oppressors led to better outcomes for the oppressed than confrontation with the oppressors that they find uncomfortable?

There are two big problems here. First is of course is that we're talking about institutionalized racism. Segregation isn't some natural occurring thingee, that somehow springs from flaws in people's "secret inner hearts". People naturally become friends with their fellow workers, neighbors, people that share their time and lives with. You got things backwards. Segregation is institutional. To attack segregation you need to attack those institutions... and do so in a non-segregated manner. The ends are the means. My advice: organize a union.

Second, this is classic JAQing off. Just because you've never heard of the term before, fighting "white fragility" is a real thing real people do in the real world. Once again, why do you presume to give tactical advice (ex: your false dichotomy between "shouting insults" -vs- "foster healthy discussion") to activists who have been fighting this fight for years. You really need to stop doing this... it's paternalistic, insulting, and just wrong. How about doing your homework if you are genuinely interested in what tactics & strategies work IRL.

What you can do, on a personal level IRL, is this however. Every time you hear one of your friends start going off about the "race baiters", or about how "pc-ism" is running amok, or any of the whole catalog of Tone Policing gibberish... you can call time out, tell them that's a buncha crap, offer to chat it out with them if they have any questions (they won't), and tell them otherwise you'd really appreciate it if they could keep that crap under their hat.

That's by far the #1 100% best thing you could personally do to "foster a healthy discussion". You wanna give it a try IRL ??

Fyp. All of them.

This doesn't get you anywhere. Even if we agree for the sake of argument that the 2p2 posting rules are coddling me, that would not invalidate my statement.

But MLK called people racist. You have asserted that cannot lead to productive dialogue.

Enforcing rules equally is nothing like coddling. And if you don't believe in the power of ideas, and their ability to change hearts and minds, then I can see why you wouldn't believe in fostering productive dialogue, or even free speech.

You're losing track of the argument. You are the one who brought up rule enforcement on 2p2, not me. I think "enforcing rules equally" is a good principle, although based on my experience modding it's something like an unattainable ideal. It's like you're playing word association and changing the subject back to 2p2 because I used the word "coddling", but my statement has absolutely nothing to do with 2p2.

You have no reason for concluding that I don't believe in the power of ideas. You have no reason to suggest that I don't believe in productive dialogue, let alone free speech. As a matter of fact, in the post you quoted and responded to with "good post," I explicitly mentioned the value of consciousness raising and framing, i.e "the power of ideas." I didn't argue that productive dialogue wasn't desirable, I argued that your belief about what makes dialogue productive is misguided. I never said anything about free speech.

If you want to have an intellectual space, I think it should also entail the obligation to try not to make such obviously specious assertions with no support.

I'd be surprised if MLK sat down to have productive dialogue with people and called them racist. I'm happy to shout Donald Trump is racist in here!

Do you disagree that personally insulting people is bad for productive dialogue? Why is there a first rule in this forum at all?

You really should read it.

We already addressed this. You assert that calling someone racist is a violation of the no personal insults rule and therefore should be strongly moderated. I already provided reasons why I disagree. If you'll recall, I agreed that in some circumstances calling someone racist was a personal attack with no other content and thus deserved moderation. But I pointed out that in other circumstances calling someone racist is either a reasonable description or obviously (in the context of a discussion) a criticism of some stated opinion, and that those instances, while they may be taken personally by the person they are aimed at, do not in my view deserve especially strict moderation.

You brought up the problem of judging between an instance that is an egregious personal attack and one that isn't. I gave a short answer in the form of whether or not the accusation included substantive content. But the real answer is that this sort of subjective evaluation is the job of moderation. I'm not interested in trying to reduce it to an algorithm, because I don't think it's useful to do so.

Uh, you know that you're begging the question when you say "productive dialog". You can only foster a dialog. You can't guarantee it'll be 'productive', whatever that might mean.

Second, I thought we were chatting about IRL activism. WTF does that have to do with the rules of 2+2 Alta Politardia? Are you smoking the tweek again, and can't distinguish IRL from 2+2 ??

Oh, so that's how you thread the needle about how the cockroaches comment wasn't actually an attack? It's not an insult if you don't hear it first hand at the time?

I definitely disagree that MLK's most productive accomplishments were the alleged calm conversations. I also think calling Bruce racist was wildly productive. We got exactly what we wanted!

From the start of the letter:

It is clear MLK is a very big fan of negotiation, and direct action is a great way to get attention and force people to confront issues. So that's great, do that, protest. I did that in Ferguson. Now what? Oh, yeah, negotiation involves productive discussions. Is this a place for those discussion, or is this forum still a part of that protest?

Not all dialogue has the same purpose.

You saw the word negotiation and got too excited to read the rest of the paragraph.

'Better' is hard to judge but the argument for LGBT rights in the UK has been won with almost no recourse to calling anybody names or making them feel uncomfortable in debates - we actively discourage immoderate language in our politics and we ended up with the leader of the conservative party championing gay marriage.

It's not 100% either way and I think huge credit goes to the outrage campaign of the 80s but the offensive bit while often vital to change the conversation, is also often counterproductive to winning hearts and minds. Much the same with race relations where riots were needed but generally the argument has been won with moderate politics. Also with sexism.

Huge amount still to do of course but I see pretty much no evidence that calling people names is anything but counter productive except as a shock tactic when when the debate isn't being had at all.

Here's another paragraph that seems instructive:

Hahahahaha, vital AND counterproductive?