On drawing breaks lately, I’ve been leaving comments on Ozy’s blog, which I feel a bit guilty about since I’ve been neglecting my own blog. (Leaving comments on someone else’s blog is, somehow, easier and quicker for me than writing posts on my own.)
Anyway, on a thread over there, “Jiro” wrote:
Because of the tremendous power of an accusation of racism or sexism, you’ve created a tool that anyone not a white male can use to destroy their enemies, and it’s in the nature of an unfair but effective tool that it will be used.
I replied:
I think your premise – that “an accusation of sexism or racism” is “a tool that anyone not a white male can use to destroy their enemies” – is a ridiculous exaggeration of reality.
Look, I’ve had critics suggest that my work is sexist and/or racist. It happens. It’s not fun. But it didn’t destroy my career or my life, because I’m too obscure for stuff like that to stick to me.
But the same is true for people who are anything but obscure. A whole bunch of writers – including some quite prominent and respected writers, like Jay Caspian Kang – have argued that the hit podcast “Serial” is racist. Yet Serial is getting a second season, and it’s a safe bet that Sarah Koenig’s income and career prospects have improved because of “Serial.”
The New Yorker called the sitcom “2 Broke Girls” “so racist it is less offensive than baffling,” and that just got renewed for a 4th season.
I can think of lots of SF/F novelists who have, fairly or not, been criticized for sexism and/or racism: Paolo Bacigalupi, NK Jemisin, Saladin Ahmed, Vox Day, Larry Correia, Piers Anthony. In the movie/TV world, there’s Charlie Sheen, Chris Rock, Alex Balwin, Nicholas Cage, Sean Penn, Woody Allen, Aaron Sorkin…. I could go on and on with examples.
Your claim that an accusation of sexism or racism is a career-ending weapon, is contradicted by real life.
Jiro then admitted that they had been hyperbolic, but wrote that
It creates a system where someone who isn’t a white male can attack any work they don’t like in a way that is much more effective than and will be uncritically accepted by a much wider audience than a normal criticism that doesn’t have the added oomph of accusing something of being racist or sexist.
(Obviously, go read the original thread to read Jiro’s full statements in full context).
I responded:
I think there are three factors which are likely to make criticism harmful.
First, criticism that is so openly disdainful that it sends a clear message that the creator of the work, and anyone who enjoys that work, is an awful, evil person.
Unfortunately, this style of criticism is pretty popular, especially on some areas of the internet.
Second, people who seek out opportunities to be furious, either because they enjoy righteous indignation, or because they believe it’s politically expedient. So even small slights are interpreted without any charity and treated as major issues. This second factor combines very harmfully with the first factor.
And third, criticism that would be trivial or even reasonable on its own, but which is amplified by social media into a tsunami of criticism that is usually entirely disproportionate to the original offense. “Shirtstorm” is the obvious example.
Absent these factors, I don’t think that criticism of racism or sexism in a work is especially harmful. And with these factors, even criticism that doesn’t mention racism or sexism can be harmful.
Coincidentally, about a half-hour after writing the above, I read an interesting and persuasive defense of calling someone an awful person. Philosophy professor Joseph Levine was discussing an infamous tweet by Stephen Salaita, in which Salaita wrote:
Let’s cut to the chase:
If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human being.
11:46 PM – 8 Jul 2014
This and other tweets Salaita wrote made a lot of people mad, and caused a university to yank away a job offer.
Commenting on Salaita’s tweet, Levine wrote (and this is just a small part, I’d highly recommend reading Levine’s entire article):
Obviously, if Salaita had been tweeting instead about supporters of the 9/11 attacks as “awful human beings” no one would have been upset.
I locate the source of my initial ambivalence at precisely this point. While I shared his moral outrage… I balked at taking the next step and severely indicting the character of those who disagreed. I resolved my ambivalence by reasoning my way to the following twofold conclusion regarding the claim in the tweet: The claim itself is not true, but it ought to be, and that is the deeper truth that legitimates the breach of civility.
Why isn’t it true? Why doesn’t it follow from supporting morally monstrous actions that one is oneself a moral monster? Because the moral evaluation of character depends not only on what one does but also on the epistemic context in which one does it. In particular, we normally apply what we might call a “reasonable person” test. If a reasonable person, given the information available to her, including the evaluative perspectives available to her, could act a certain way, then even if what she does is in fact morally condemnable, that condemnation doesn’t carry over to her character as well.
By the information available I just mean the obvious — what she’s likely to know about the facts of the situation. But one brings more than just an opinion about the facts to bear in making a moral evaluation; one evaluates the facts from within a moral perspective, a system of values and a scheme of interpretation of the facts in light of those values. A person does not derive her moral perspective on her own, but develops it over time through her social interaction with parents, teachers, other role models and her wider social circle. This is why we judge racists today much more harshly than those who lived long ago; we expect more today. […]
But then this brings me to the second part of my answer: It ought to be true. Or rather, it ought to have been true, and I look forward to the day in which it is true. For if you let individuals off the hook in this case because they pass the reasonable person test, then you have to indict the social-political perspective from which such actions can seem moral and reasonable. No, these people aren’t awful, but what does it say about our society that we can support such [a view] without being awful?
Whether or not you agree with Levine about Israel, Levine’s approach here can be applied to virtually any issue. (Indeed, I have edited Levine’s quote – my edits are marked with ellipses and brackets – to make his argument more “generic,” rather than an argument specifically about Israel.)
For example, I think that being against marriage equality is a bigoted viewpoint. I don’t think it would be a socially acceptable viewpoint in any society that wasn’t homophobic. But given that people were raised in a homophobic society which taught them lies about lgb people, I can understand that someone can be against marriage equality without being an essentially awful human being.
Or a gun rights advocate might say: I think that being against the right to own and bear arms is, in its essence, an anti-liberty position. I don’t think it would be a socially acceptable viewpoint in any society that truly valued liberty. But given that people were raised in our liberal society, in which people are taught lies about guns, and are also taught (falsely) that we can rely on the government to defend us in need, I can understand that someone can be against gun rights without being an essentially awful human being.
Levine goes on to argue that incivility may be pragmatically justified:
Expressing moral outrage in this way — intentionally breaching civility by refusing to merely engage in calm persuasion — is itself part of the very process by which social-political perspectives shift. If it ought to have been true that only awful human beings would support this [view], how do we move society toward that point? One way is reasoned argument, no doubt. But it’s also important to exhibit the perspective, and not just argue for it; to adopt the perspective and provocatively manifest how things look from within it. When you do that, something like Salaita’s controversial tweet is likely to come out.
Is Levine correct? If some people act like Salaita – that is, if we treat people who disagree about a controversial issue as moral monsters – can that bring positive change about faster? My intuition tells me that Levine may be right, and that a mix of approaches – some civil and logical, some shrill and unforgiving – might create change faster than civility on its own will. If so, that’s not a conclusion that makes me happy.
To quote someone I used to be…
“I want to remind you all, men and women, black and white, young and old that you are PIGS!
“If you’re not a Black, homosexual working class woman, you’re an OPPRESSOR, PIG! And you deserve to DIE!!!
“You’re not worthy of the cow that died to make your belt you running dog jackal!!!”
Pete Patriot:
But, of course, no one said that he wasn’t familiar with the word:
David Schraub:
In other words, David said that it wasn’t a go-to word, a standard term of art in the discourse of the time. That’s a very different thing from asserting that King, an intelligent native speaker of American English, did not know the word at all. As I myself pointed out, he knew the word “racism”. In writing this post, I search a bit more and found an instance where King used the word “racist,” during civil discourse with William Bennett, here.
Which means that, rather than engage with the argument people have made, you are once again engaging with a different argument.
Wow. So, it’s verboten to actually use the word “racist” in civil debate, but it’s totally okay to draw an equivalence between people who make a reasoned argument in a civil debate and people who use fire hoses and police dogs on peaceful protesters.
It’s becoming clear that you don’t actually understand what “polite” means.
Grace
Pete Patriot:
As a moderator, I am now giving you three choices:
1) You can directly quote someone in this thread actually saying that MLK wasn’t familiar with the word “racist.” (I’d also accept someone implying this so clearly that there is no other reasonable interpretation of their words.)
2) You can admit that your statement was wrong and withdraw it. I think an apology would be in order, as well.
3) You can be banned from this thread.
Your choice.
Grace:
Calling an argument “racist” is describing the motivation behind the arugment which is essentially equivilant to calling the person making the argument racist.
I’m not arguing for a general equivalence, but rather that as they are both deeply offensive labels that can be applied in a techincally correct way, that they are equivalent specifically when applying your argument in support using offensive language in lieu of rational argument. The point was to apply your argument to a circumstance that you’d likely find the conclusion disagreeable in order to demonstrate that it was somehow lacking. I was hoping you might articulate some unstated assumption or argument that might differentiate the two cases, however all I see is a double standard hand-waving.
The big difference between civil disobedience and impoliteness is that the former is attacking a system while the later is attacking an individual. It was about demonstrating that an system that doesn’t enjoy the support a large portion of the population is not going to be sustainable if that population is willing to sacrifice enough to undermine it.
The reason why the civil disobedience campaigns garnered the respect they did was because they were campaigns of self-sacrifice. There’s a symbolic reason MLK broke the court order on Good Friday. It was about being willing to spend time in jail to simply send a signal about the signifiance sense of injustice. Using offensive language to provoke a reaction from people isn’t even remotely equivalent.
If you want to glorify what MLK has said consider this quote (empahsis mine):
You’re not going to achieve that by giving up on civil discourse and using offensive language designed to provoke a reaction.
RJN:
Well yes, but it’s also disgustingly racist.
Because there’s a vast difference between believing an incorrect argument because you think that black folk are innately inferior, and believing an incorrect argument because it fits your beliefs about how societies work. There’s a difference between “black folk are innately stupid and so rap music can brainwash them into committing crimes” and “cultural messages are really powerful, so rap music can drive people to commit crimes, and the rap music industry mainly targets young black men”. The former argument is racist; the latter is merely incorrect. It’s no more racist than the idea that video games cause shootings or porn causes rape, or the idea that tobacco companies target young black men.
Because they don’t think they’re being racist/making racist arguments. From their point of view, you’re just trying to silence them with a universally reviled label.
If you’ll note my last message to you, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference whether you call a person a racist or call zir argument racist. Both tactics are ineffectual. I’ve switched to discussing racist arguments now, if that helps.
I do. My claim is not that they are equally bad – my claim is that they are equally ineffectual and alienating.
Good on you for keeping your head. Alas, most people respond to accusations of antisemitism, racism etc as if they’ve been personally attacked, making it harder to dissuade them of a view.
I don’t know how to respond to this except to repeat myself – I’m not saying stop calling people racists because it gets abused sometimes. I’m saying stop calling people racists because it gets abused a lot. Disagreements on – say – the Mike Brown case are often the result of different beliefs about what went down between Brown and Wilson etc. We know this is true because in cases where it’s clear that the cop was out of line (e.g. Eric Garner) the police face universal condemnation. Insinuating that people who take Wilson’s side must be racist is both wrong-headed and pernicious.
@Patrick
@Lee1
Here I must admit that I’m in the wrong. I initially thought that his definition was too broad, but re-reading it, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I owe him an apology. Sorry, Patrick!
Mind you, I still think that the distinction between partisan and racist holds, for the reasons I’ve outlined above.
Desipis:
Just to be clear: Are you asserting that King’s statement in the Letter from Birmingham Jail was racist?
RJN:
Dictionary (Google):
MLK:
The use of the term “oppressor race” in a way that includes “white moderates” means that MLK was arguing all members of that race (i.e. white) possess the “oppressor” characteristic (and by implication are morally inferior). So yes, I think that part of the letter is racist.
Well, I suppose it really does matter what dictionary you use. Here’s Merriam-Webster’s definition racism:
And here is dictionary.com’s:
And here is Collins’:
Please show me where, anywhere in anything King ever wrote, that he suggested white people are inherently oppressive, or that being an oppressor is genetically inherited. Even using the definition that you cite, please show me where King said that the oppressor characteristic is specific to white people, i.e., a characteristic that people of other races cannot also possess.
desipis, could you explain what a “technically correct” application of “nigger” might look like?
Navin Kumar:
But people making racist arguments for non-political-partisan reasons also usually think this is true of themselves.
But sometimes those beliefs about the events are also a product of racist beliefs, just subtler ones than “he deserved it.” As we’ve discussed elsewhere on this blog, there’s still a lot of uncertainty and dispute in terms of what happened, so your thoughts about what happened come partly from your views on what’s a likely or reasonable way for the two people to act. (I do include my own side in that, of course, though given that it’s my side I think we’re correct!)
If the police truly faced universal condemnation, I think the officer in question would at least have been indicted. But he wasn’t, because the stance “it’s clear he was out of line” is not universal.
As a more general comment, I find it thought-provoking that the discussion has moved so heavily into racism, when the original post + comments were discussing other prejudices such as sexism and antisemitism.
I apologise. I would particularly like to apologise to Grace.
By saying there were claims that King wasn’t familiar with the word racist, I was asserting there were claims that King did not know the word at all. The word racist was infrequently used at the time of the civil rights movement. However, King, with his undoubted education, would have known the word racist and Grace has found indisputable evidentary proof of this.
Unfortunately, as racist was not a standard term of art in the discourse of the time of the Birmingham Campaign, King would not have been able to use it rhetorically. This is why it was not present in his Letter, not due to King’s unquestionable knowledge of racism. I also note that in the letter King was not speaking in all circumstances; he was speaking in a specific circumstance. I was wrong in claiming the sentiments expressed in Letter represented any abiding commitment on the part of King.
I would like to apologise again. I am glad I have had the opportunity improve my understanding and learn more about this important part of our history.
No, there is not “technically correct” way to use the n-word.* It is a slur, applied only to black people, which is meant to mark the target as less than fully human. It is a label which should be applied to no one.
Racist, applied correctly, is not offensive. It is a label which ought to be applied to members of the Nazi Party, the Ayrian Nation and similar hate groups (how much broader usage is appropriate is, of course, the subject of this debate).
*We are not speaking here of reappropriation of the term by African Americans, as in that context it is not an alienating insult
Yes, we know you were asserting that. Do you acknowledge that what you asserted was not true? Specifically, that no one here has claimed that King did not know the word at all?
RJN:
Using the terms “the oppressor race” and “the oppressed race” does exactly that. Rather than simply saying white moderates were of the same race as the oppressors (and hence might be biased), referring to them as “members of the oppressor race” spreads that characteristic across all members of that race.
I’m not about to go read everything King has ever written, so I’ll concede that what he wrote might not fit those other dictionary definitions of racism. That said, it’s still a lot closer to the defintion of racism than the example from Ozy’s post about touching someone’s hair, or even the example of using racial stereotypes to tell a story (unless the stereotypes are presented as being true reflections of inherent racial traits).
Amp, I want to modify my earlier opinion. Clearly using the WORD “racism” is too distracting for SJWs. It’s like a mirror in a parakeet cage, it just starts a lot of flapping and screeching.
I stand by my opinion that there is a time for reasoned debate and a time for deliberately provoking the beejezus out out people in a desperate attempt to jar them out of their mental rut. But clearly THAT WORD is far too engaging for some people…. just like a shiny object!
Nothing in the way MLK used “oppressor race” implies that he thinks all whites are biased. In fact, he unambiguously says that some whites are seeing the situation clearly and doing the right thing. Here’s the quote again:
If I understand him correctly, King was using oppressed and oppressor as political concepts; in the US political system (and especially in 1963), one race was politically dominant (favored in the law, by police, dominating all the ruling political and social institutions), while the other race was politically subjugated. In other words, oppressor and oppressed.
How is referring to that “disgustingly racist?” Was MLK supposed to pretend that the white race, in the American South in 1963, was not oppressing the black race?
Thanks for saying this.
Let me bring in another example.
Person 1 favors policies designed to make it harder for Black people to vote, because person 1 loathes Black people.
Person 2 favors policies designed to make it harder for Black people to vote, because although they genuinely have nothing against Blacks personally, and believe that Blacks are just as good as Whites, they also believe that pragmatically Republicans will win more elections if it’s harder for Blacks to vote.
Person 3 is a dupe, who has been taken in by arguments that policies that make it harder for Black people to vote are only coincidentally harming black people, and are not intended to make it harder for blacks to vote.
Person 4 is also a dupe. He honestly believes that the policy in question doesn’t actually make it harder for black people to vote, compared to the status quo. He also believes there is no intent to make it harder for black people to vote.
So which of these people is being racist?
Person 1: Straight up racist. Like a comic book villain.
Person 2: Also being racist. Supporting a racist policy for pragmatic gains, is a racist act.
Person 3: Also being racist. Supporting a policy that systematically makes it harder for Blacks to vote, as long as it’s unintentional, is a racist act.
Person 4: Not being racist, in my view. But the policy itself remains racist.
Amp,
Thanks for the response to desipis. I was going to post precisely the same point.
I understand Navin Kumar @106 to use the word “racist” to apply to people who distinguish between races because they believe race determines intelligence (or other important attributes), distinct from people who distinguish between races because this variable correlates with many other social and political variables.
I understand Amp @119 to use the word “racist” to refer to people who pursue policies that they know have a disparate impact harming members of a subordinated racial group, distinct from people who pursue policies that unknowingly have this effect.
I don’t regard either person’s usage of the word “racist” to be inherently right or inherently wrong. I value the distinctions each person identifies; I could imagine them having some bearing on interesting questions of public policy. And I value the implicit message that we should distinguish among distinctions, resisting the temptation to conflate these different kinds of differences.
That said, the fact that these two articulate people use the word “racist” in such disparate ways suggests to me that the term contain ambiguities. This fact prompts me to avoid the term, at least for purposes of making careful policy arguments.
Long-time readers will recall that we had somewhat similar discussions about using the word “bigot” and “bigoted”.
Huh?
You’re mixing up “reasoned argument” with “not using hotly-disputed, widely-distracting, labels; at least not without defining them first.”
You can be angry or not; you can be reasoned or not. The labels are what i am discussing.
Huh? Why?
Any action you can take while saying “I am doing this because your actions are antisemitic” can be taken while saying “I am doing this because your actions are selectively targeting Jews for harm, as shown by ____.”
I concede this is a theoretical problem. But I think it’s more theoretical than not. The number of things which actually lack all possibility of legitimacy are vanishingly small. And it seems that the number of things alleged to have absolutely no legitimacy are pretty high.
Well, first of all this basically translates to “this is really important to ME so I can break the rules.” That’s a bad procedure, overall. Any time you’re in a zero-sum transaction, both sides think the stakes are important.
But more to the point it is frequently–and grossly–misused to deal with groups.
IOW, to the degree I could magically make a deal, here’s the deal I would offer:
The excuse would be valid–but only when it was used rarely, and on a purely personal level, i.e. something that affects you alone, specifically, right now.
As the other side of the trade, it should never get to be applied as a group level, because the whole point of group policy discussions is to take into account all sorts of people OTHER than the one talking–which includes opponents. And it should only be offered when there’s no individual tradeoff.
So to use an example:
You get to use the “I’m important” to talk about getting support for your own sexual assault, without caring about the perpetrator.
You don’t get to use the exception to change the overall system of proof: you have to consider and discuss the effect of those procedures on everyone else, and consider your own wishes in context WITHOUT the exception.
You get to use the “I’m important” exception if you feel upset that a college didn’t admit you and want to get moral support.
You don’t get to use the “I’m important” exception to try to force the college to change its admission procedures: you have to consider and discuss the effect of those procedures on everyone else, and consider your own wishes in context WITHOUT the exception.
G&W:
It’s probably because I have mostly left this discussion behind and so I am not holding it in my head the way I have been, but your comment really confuses me. I’m not sure what you’re arguing with in what I have said or, really, what you’re arguing for.
Amp, that’s a great set of hypos which deserves a response. But it’s missing one crucial data point, which I will point out below.
Sure.
Of course, depending on other limiting factors, this would lead to POC and other minority classes being tagged as -ists.
My Holocaust-fleeing, family-losing, Eastern-European ancestry Jewish grandmother died loathing Germans, who were, in her mind, all pretty much Nazis at heart. Trust me when I say I’m not offended by your opinions here, since they won’t change how I feel about her: Was she bigoted, in your world view? Or do you hold a “justified” exception?
Or, to make things more complicated: my aunt lived in a mixed-race neighborhood where there were few younger whites. For whatever reason, she and my grandfather were often harassed by roving gangs of young black men; she was eventually beaten and raped in her an apartment by a young black man, and she subsequently died of her injuries (he was poorly identified and was never caught.) My grandfather was a strong supporter of (and marcher for) civil rights in general. Yet he distrusted, feared, and disliked young black men; people are complicated. Racist?
Seems to me the differences in group prejudices are one of frequency, not of kind. In 1960 there were a hell of a lot more Jews who had good cause to hate Germans than there were the reverse. And there were sure as hell more blacks who had cause to hate whites than the reverse. But I don’t see how you can accept such prejudice as acceptable generally, without conceding the possibility that it can occasionally run the other way as well. Either “____ are _____” statements are OK (if true,) or they’re not.
Now we get into that missing data point:
What makes you it “a racist policy” in the first place?
Does it make it harder for Black people to vote because of their race, i.e. “no votes for POC?” Or does it make it harder for Black people to vote because the law affects a class (say, poor people) and there are a higher-than-normal proportion of people in that class?
To answer that question, you might ask: If the law was focused on rural northern New England, and if it would therefore have vastly more effect on white people (VT, ME, and NH are about 96% white, rural areas even more so AFAIK) would it be racist?
But to me, this hypothetical is pretty much the crux of my argument. One hotly-disputed theory of “-isms” relates to disparate impact: the idea that something can be -ist even if there was no intention for an impact and even if the impact does not directly relate to status in a particular group.
Your question (like so many -ism discussions) takes that very important point and hides it behind a semantic argument. Instead of discussing the core issues (“Should it matter if there was racial animus and intent to discriminate? If it should matter, was there actually animus and intent to discriminate?”) you end up discussing around them.
You and I usually disagree on this, which is basically a “disparate impact” issue. No real surprise here–although this one seems unusually a stretch, since it’s an accidental/misinformed disparate impact hypothetical.
RJN, if you don’t want to get back to this, then I won’t hold you to a response. Go write your poetry and have fun!
Otherwise: the thrust of my argument is that most of the “ism” terms are ill-defined, inflammatory, overbroad, and generally atrocious words, to use, well, almost ever. Even if you’re angry.
After all, the point of language is communication. IMO it’s a dumb idea to use a word which has such widely variant meaning and which will often be misintepreted; or draw discussion away from the point. That is not good communication.
You appeared to read my earlier comments as supporting some sort of “calm civil discourse” argument–or at least that’s what I understood, because your comments seemed to address the need to be angry or to quickly affect the status quo. But that wasn’t intended to be the thrust of my argument.
I’m interested in the regulation of small businesses. So are you. However, as a small business owner, you have a stake these issues that I do not. They may make you more emotional, because this is about your LIVLIHOOD, while for me it’s more of a theoretical question. You have lived experience of owning a business that I don’t have. That is a type of knowledge that you have about this issue that I cannot get no matter how much I might read and research. This means that, I need to listen more than you do in discussion about small business.
The difference with racism (or other –isms) is that if you aren’t a member of that marginalized group, you have no access to that lived experience (I could in theory, choose to open a business).
I have some responses to @124 too, but I need to get off to work.
Yes. But together with making me more emotional, it may also make me inaccurate.
After all, people are usually pretty selfish, and I’m only human. When I react, I’m likely to think mostly about myself. My business is the most important one in the country for me, but not very important for everyone else.
Sure. But although that can contribute valuable specific knowledge, it can also lead me to falsely believe my experience is representative of a larger group. And because I’m a “local expert” in my field, I have less incentive to challenge my worldview. (As an example, I recently had a conversation on Alas about plumbing, where my personal experience was pretty far from the norm, and my larger assumptions turned out to be plain old wrong.)
I don’t agree at all, at least not generally. If you spent enough time talking to small business owners you might well know much more than I would. Or even if I had more depth in one area, you might know enough things to have an overall greater knowledge.
Oh, sure, I suppose there’s always a difference between theory and practice: you can’t really know exactly what it is like to stand up in front of a judge until you do it for the first time. But things are usually less special than they seem–I bet there are a lot of other things that are similar to arguing in court, even if I haven’t tried them myself–and even the real exceptions are usually pretty rare.
When I step back from it, I admit that I am not an exception to every rule. Like most folks, I like to think of myself as special. And fortunately my mom still thinks of me as special ;) But you can name any trait I have from intelligence to interests to musical skill and there are probably millions of folks who have the same trait, or better.
Well, that’s up to you. And I confess that I might argue that perspective if you and I were having a personal disagreement, especially if it would relate to my own business and would help me get what I wanted (see “people are selfish,” above.) But I don’t think so, in general.
Well, nobody is exactly like anyone else, right? I do not have access to anyone else’s lived experience, nor they to mine. Nobody does. But yet we usually manage to communicate pretty well; by and large, we’re likely to share at least some experiences or themes or motivations or whatever.
I can see the argument that “no person can walk in another’s shoes” and although I reject it, at least that view is consistent. But I suspect you’re making another unfortunately-common argument, which is a one-way exclusion of “access.” That reminds me of my teenaged daughter, who is certain that she knows just how we feel, and certain that we could never, ever, know how she feels.
The only think that your lived experience gives expertise in, is your lived experience. It doesn’t make you a theorist.
And I fundamentally disagree that a personal stake improves one’s theory. If anything, while my view as a small business owner might make me inclined to care a lot about the subject, it probably makes me less accurate when I try to claim how valuable small businesses are w/r/t other businesses.
Amp:
I am glad you brought up this example @119, because I was going to bring it up in response to earlier comments. So, by restating your views on the Voter ID issue, you have saved me some time.
I would do the same analysis with minimum wage laws, which were originally designed to price cheap black labor out of the market.
The same thing for people who support labor laws, which have a history of excluding black labor.
Then, you can lump in anyone who supports the Great Society or the modern welfare state, which has been far more efficient in destroying the black family than centuries of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow.
If you support any of these things, you are racist!
See: that is not a very productive way to handle policy discussions. Despite its racist origins and its effects on the black community, I think well-intentioned people can support such laws and hold no ill-will toward black people. Intent may not be “magic,” but it is pretty damn important.
So, there is a 5th person, Amp. The person who understand that ANY requirement will make it more difficult for some people to vote but believes that the integrity of the election process demands an identification process to ensure at least the appearance of legitimacy and that the burden that one prove the entitlement to vote before being allowed to vote is not onerous (particularly if the process for obtaining such I.D. is not too onerous); there is a middle ground there. Maybe you think that is person number 3, but you called him a dupe, so you have already assumed that there is by nature a racist intent behind the law and it is not possible for to have a legitimate way to identify whether someone is really entitled to vote.
But, you can’t have it both ways: if you think I am a racist for thinking that Voter I.D. is a good thing, then you support minimum wage laws because you hate black people!
(Yeah, as hard as I tried, I don’t think I have convinced you of the error of your ways. I will have to go back to my old pollyannish views about people who disagree with me.)
-Jut
G&W:
Well, I wasn’t so much arguing with your main point, I don’t think, as much as I was following a logical progression from the idea that your assertion that using “-ist” or “-ism” words tends towards inaccuracy, unhelpful name calling (inadvertent or not), etc. to the idea that the kind of language you think should be used in general does in fact tend towards calm, civil discourse; and I thought I was careful to point out that, in general, I agree with that idea. I just also wanted to point out that calm civil discourse tends to serve the (at least short term) interests of those who are relatively powerful over and against those who are relatively powerless, and that there comes a point when the powerless have every right to set careful language and civil discourse aside and say, in words and/or action, “Get the fuck off my neck.” You and I probably disagree about precisely when that point has been reached, though we also agree that the lines between the relatively powerful and powerless can get blurry when you’re talking about policy and its consequences over large periods of time, groups of people, geographical areas, etc.
And that’s probably the end of what I will have to say in this thread. I am off to work.
Just to clarify, I believe that “get the fuck off my neck” is perfectly OK. I’ll go farther and say that in most cases I suspect it’s vastly superior to most “ism” stuff.
Well, see, I doubt we actually disagree at all w/r/t “get the fuck off my neck.” Which is why I prefer language like that.
ETA: I’m sure that you and I disagree about racism, but that’s probably because we use the word in different ways.
So true.
I think I’ve referenced this before, but I’m going to again highly recommend “The Dynamics of a Pro-Racist Ideology: Implications for Family Therapists” by Ken Hardy and Tracy Laszloffy.
The full chapter isn’t on Google Books but I have a .pdf if anyone is interested.
With all humor: if one chooses to define “supporting a pro-racist ideology” to include” inadvertent inaction that fails to oppose the status quo,” it shouldn’t be that surprising if that revelation, coupled with the efforts to “highlight” one’s purported “support” of a pro-racist idiology (surprise!) “often invite[s] tremendous defensiveness and anxiety.”
But at least the instructor isn’t trying to shoehorn them into his/her own vision of how the world should be. I mean after all, “stating that someone has acted in a way that supports a pro-racist ideology… leaves open the possibility that the individual can alter her or his behavior accordingly and thereby still be a “good person.”
Just the possibility, mind you. Why be defensive?
Ampersand:
The white race was not doing anything. A whole collection of people who were white were oppressing people who were black. I consider reifying race to the extent of attributing morally negative actions to be racist. Evidently we may have different understanding of how to interpret the word racist.
Consider the following statement:
Surely you’d have to agree that black people were in a politically inferior position during that time. However, would you consider the use of the phrase “politically inferior race” to refer to black people as racist?
I used the term ‘disgustingly’ primarily in response to how RJN phrase the issue as ‘calling white people oppressors’ which takes goes a step further from MLK’s collective assessment (‘oppressor race’) to being something directed at individuals. I also used the term to distinguish it from the “lol racism” from the video from brians@94. The ‘disgust’ was directed at the idea of judging an entire race of people, even in a rhetorical sense. It may have been a very human reaction to MLK’s circumstances, however my criticism is directed at the idea not at MLK’s character.
Oh, and I.D. And background checks to buy guns: if you support that, you are a racist.
Racists have always been trying to make sure black people were defenseless. After all, if they get guns, they might go all Nat Turner. We have to require them to have I.D.’s to buy guns because, as we know from voter I.D. Laws, that will affect them more than anybody else.
-Jut
JutGory-
Wow…. seriously or satirical, either way that’s dumb. I don’t even know where to begin.
desipis, would you mind answering my question posed here?
Mookie, I provided an example in my comment@76:
desipsis, is this a joke? I hope so.
Because [shakes head in disbelief that we are even having this discussion in anything approaching a serious fashion] that is not what “n****r” means. Any more than “kike” means “badly behaving Jewish person,” or “faggot” means “badly behaving gay person,” etc.
Those slurs have no inherent meaning other than “I hate you.” They aren’t based on what the recipient is doing.
Yes, of course some people will use a slur when they’re referring to someone doing something bad… but many of those people will ALSO use the word when the “something bad” is “standing on a street corner” or “being in line at the movie theater” or “generally existing in society,” which puts the lie to hte concept you are proposing.
I had this argument (rather loudly) with a housemate’s boss. That asshole cited Chris Rock’s routine as the basis for his definition (actually, that asshole had drifted the definition to define black nationalism as the characteristic that deserved disapproval).
From the wikipedia article linked above:
In a 2005 60 Minutes interview, Rock said: “By the way, I’ve never done that joke again, ever, and I probably never will. ‘Cos some people that were racist thought they had license to say nigger. So, I’m done with that routine.”
Having given it some thought, I’ve decided I don’t want to host an argument for why “nigger,” used as an insult by white people, could ever in any circumstances be appropriate or “technically accurate.”
It is not appropriate, it is not technically accurate. If you want to continue arguing about it, find some other forum.
To be very clear: Desipis, I’m talking to you. Drop it immediately. Thank you.
From Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern:
On Friday, the journal Science published a buzzy new study suggesting that homophobia is more of a minor, curable malady than a chronic illness. For the study, researchers sent gay and straight canvassers into strongly anti-gay neighborhoods and directed them to converse with residents for about 20 minutes about why marriage equality mattered to them. The result: Residents’ support for gay equality increased considerably—and those residents who spoke with gay canvassers retained their pro-equality beliefs nine months after the conversation.
This “transmission of support for gay equality” endured only when residents spoke with gay canvassers, however—straight canvassers yielded an initial pro-equality boost but failed to produce long-lasting effects. The study, then, essentially reinforces an intuition that the LGBTQ community has held for decades: When homophobes experience compassionate, individualized interaction with a gay person, they tend to shed their homophobia.
It’s nice to have a scientific study confirm what so many gay people already suspected. But the Science piece comes at a tricky moment for what my colleague J. Bryan Lowder calls the “ ‘hearts and minds’ model of social change.” Ever since gay marriage started winning at the ballot box, our more faint-hearted allies have encouraged gay people to be “tolerant” of those who hate us and vote against our rights. We should, these (usually straight) people scold, let our opponents denigrate and humiliate us all they want, without ever raising our voices or asserting our dignity. Then, once we’ve been thoroughly debased and degraded, we should gingerly plead with those who despise us to please, please despise us just a little bit less.
Like Lowder, I think this advice—especially coming from self-described “allies” who’ve never experienced real prejudice in their lives—is profoundly condescending and exasperating. And yet, looking at the Science study, I also wonder whether it might contain a kernel of truth. Gay people having nonconfrontational, nonjudgmental confabulations with homophobes really does appear to be the single most effective way to further the cause of equality….
Look, I don’t like it either. But after the Science study, I don’t see a way around it. Gay people have to keep engaging, passionately and sympathetically, with the obdurate holdouts who think we are perverted, or diseased, or undeserving of rights.
Is this all tongue-in-cheek? I can’t tell.
Okay, I don’t mean to gloat but, if no one else is going to say it, I guess I have to. This has got to be a first:
Brian @135:
-Jut
Ampersand:
No problem, I wasn’t intending to get into that discussion. It appears I selected a rather distracting example for my reductio ad absurdum argument.
@Harlequin
Correct, so don’t call them racists either.
Correct, so demonstrate that their beliefs are in fact wrong; you don’t, interestingly, have to investigate why your opponents hold the wrong beliefs they hold. Maybe it’s racism. Maybe it’s partisanship – they see Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other and rush to join their team. Maybe it’s apolitical group loyalty – their dad was an upstanding cop. Maybe it’s experience – they’ve been assaulted for no reason once, and don’t think it’s highly unlikely for someone to do that. Maybe they’ve just seen too many reruns of Cops, whatever. You don’t know why they hold the incorrect beliefs they do, so why alienate them by asserting that it must be the worst possible reason?
It’s true that both cops got the grand juries on their side. But the response from the media etc was vastly different in both cases. Hardly anyone came to Pantaleo’s defense. Even the “anti-sjw” part of the blogosphere completely shut up in this case, which is about as close to condemnation as you’ll get out of these folks.
Sorry, ampersand about the delay in my reply. Your comment threw me off and I needed sometime to think about a reply. I’d like to thank nobody.really for clarifying the clash.
So lets count the number of definitions of “racist” we have –
1. Someone who thinks that black people are inherently less intelligent but doesn’t necessarily hate them or think of them as less morally deserving.
2. Someone who hates black people
3. Someone who doesn’t hate black folk but who advocates policies that intentionally harms black folk.
4. Someone who advocates a policy that harms black folk but is okay with that because that’s not the intent. (I don’t know why you call him a dupe btw, maybe he’s just a virtue ethicist!)
5. Someone who advocates a policy that harms black folk but is okay with that because he doesn’t think that it harms black folk (and certainly doesn’t regard that as it’s intent).
6. (When applied to a policy) Anything that disproportionately and intentionally harms black folk.
7. (When applied to a policy) Anything that disproportionately harms black folk, intentionally or otherwise.
Before we go on, let me make the simple and more important argument – you don’t know what your opponent is. I made the same argument in the 144. Other than Heartiste and some other scum, individuals (1) – (4) do not present themselves as being individuals (1) – (4). Most of the arguments I see them make in favour of racist policies are things that (5) would make. Unless they reveal themselves as (1)-(4) (and I mean they themselves state that they belong to this category, not you cleverly inferring that they do using your correctly-deducing-peoples-motives-over-the-internet superpower) it’s best to presume that everyone is arguing in good faith. This is because (a) most people are and (b) too many – rather than too few – people assume bad faith and (c) that’s your best chance of persuading people who actually do belong to (4) to leave the dark side.
Secondly, because there are so many different meanings to “racist” I don’t know what you mean when you tell me that X is racist. Telling me “X is racist” may lead me to the false belief that X thinks that black folk are dumb, instead of informing me that X is a virtue ethicist who supports policies that disproportionately harm black people. Because of this, you’ll have to explain to me what definition of racism you’re using, not least because all these people have very different moral and intellectual standing. And if you’re going to do that, why not just start with it? Tell me “X hates black people” or “X thinks black people are dumb” or “X is a race-player” etc.
Why risk confusing me and alienating X?
But can’t I do both?
Your argument largely seems to be, “Calling someone a racist without any further information is just insulting.” Which, one, you’re not (as far as I can tell) engaging with the proposal that being insulting can be the point–that interrupting the emotional line of the debate, showing your anger, stepping over a boundary, can in itself be helpful to the larger conversation, though it will probably piss off the person you’re referring to. You’re welcome to disagree with that proposal, but your arguments seem to be taking for granted that it’s false, rather than arguing that it’s false: you keep making statements that boil down to “calling someone racist is insulting”, and, like, I know. I’m saying that it’s possible for that to be the point and for that to be effective (though, personally, I don’t have the temperament to try it). And two, none of your arguments in the second comment apply if you say “I think it’s racist if people do X and Y, and under that definition, boy, are you a racist.” Is that statement a problem, in your mind? If it is, is it because you disagree with my first point above, or for some other reason?
And a bit of extension on the first point–I’m definitely not saying that it’s right in every case. But if I think a situation is important enough, I’d rather people occasionally dip into the dirty tricks* bag of rhetorical tools than always lose the argument honorably (especially if the other side is using the dirty tricks too). You may disagree with that, and clearly we already disagree on which situations those would be; you may (and I think do) find this a slippery slope we’re already well on the way down, which may also be true. In any case, calling people racist/sexist/antisemitic is clearly a lesser-used tool than, say, variants of “think of the children.”
(*that is, things which are so emotionally resonant that they tend to interfere with higher logic functions)
As a side note,
It’s not unimportant what the media says, but when “what the media says” and “what actually happened to the people in question” are in conflict, I will go with the real-world consequences as the more important metric. I’m glad nobody’s really defending Pantaleo because it means next time we’re more likely to see a conviction for this sort of thing–but that mindset is not yet fait accompli.
That would be a huuuuuuge improvement over the status quo.
Never said it wasn’t. But it does happen sometimes, and I’m interested in trying to figure out exactly where the disagreement comes in: is that still beyond the pale because it uses the insult in addition to the definition? Is the objection to any insult, or merely to an ill-defined insult? :)
I guess also, for me, I still defend occasional incivility in discourse even though I think it is too common currently, so I’m interested in discussing edge cases. YMMV, of course.
I made the argument early in the thread but I’m happy to state it again: when the situation sucks because of (say) policy X, activists must aim to repeal X. To do so, they must persuade voters to repeal X. Voters who already agree with you don’t really matter. What you need to change is the minds of voters who don’t agree with you. When you talk to them nicely, they can and do change their minds. When you insult these people, at best they walk away in a huff. At worst, you get the PETA effect, where people are so repelled by you they swear to eat more meat just to spite you. There are also a lot of secondary effects, for example people may be reluctant to spread a certain kind of message because they don’t want to be associated with the kind of abrasive person who does spreads that kind of message.
That’s my case, or part of it. There are a great many harms associated with this kind of abrasive activism, but I won’t go into it now. Over a hundred comments in, I really don’t see anyone making a persuasive case for the benefits of calling someone racist – it seems like a lot of people on this thread expect their opponents to, upon being called racist, slink away in shame and spend voting day hiding in their bedrooms with the a pillow over their faces. That’s not what happens. Heck, if Ampersand is to be believed even the external costs are trivial.
As G&W says, that would be a huge improvement.
But even then, people are likely to get angry and walk away, and that’s one more voter who’s still in the dark side.
Again, I really don’t see how you win an argument by calling your opponent a racist.
But in addition to that, I don’t see how you lose by continuing to make reasoned arguments in the face of a stubborn opponent. Even if you fail to persuade them, you’ll persuade the neutral people who are listening in. These are exactly the kind of people who, if you start throwing around terms like “racist” in response to an argument that X doesn’t have a negative impact on black folk, will assume you don’t have to data to back your claims.
Not in my experience, but then again I spend a lot of time in the more unsavory parts of the internet.
Re: Eric Garner case.
I invoked this case to argue that a person may believe something for reasons other than racism. For example, they may believe that Wilson was attacked by Brown for reasons other than an animosity towards black folk. We know this because in cases where it’s clear what went down (as in the Garner case, where the incident was taped), the same folk are quick to condemn errant cop.
Navin, your argument strikes me as overly simplistic. ETA: Sorry if that phrasing seemed insulting, that wasn’t my intention. What I meant was, there are many cases in real life where things aren’t as simple as “persuade voters who disagree with you, and everything else is irrelevant.”
There are cases where playing nice has its benefits – although note, even in your link, it’s at least as much about identity – that is, about who is making the argument – as it is about how nicely they make it.
But there are also cases where being able to call a racist policy racist has practical benefits. You say that “voters who already agree with you” don’t matter, but who do you suppose is doing the footwork and the phonework, knocking on doors trying to raise money and convert views? And furthermore, it’s really not only about convincing voters who disagree to change their minds; as anyone who’s done door-to-door get out the vote efforts in the US can attest, it’s about persuading the voters who agree with you to show up and vote.
Let’s take the case of racist Republican attempts to suppress the Black vote. These attempts have had a limited effect for a variety of reasons, including the fact that there has been a strong counter-reaction in the Black community, leading to activists stepping up their voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. I’m not sure that people would be as passionate about resisting racist voter suppression policies if no one was willing to call them what they are.
This is the second time you brought up the Eric Garner case, and I think you’re wrong both times. What we have here are two cases. In case 1, there is overwhelming video evidence that the police overreacted, leading to the death of a black civilian. In case 2, there is ambiguous evidence, including witness accounts going both ways, about whether or not the police overreacted, so what we are left with is what may or may not be the an unjustified death of a black civilian.
An objective moral standard would look at these cases and say “in case one, the police were at fault; in case 2, we don’t know who was at fault, because the evidence is ambiguous.”
But that’s not the moral standard you describe. What you describe is a moral standard that says “We will always believe the police and blame the dead black guy, unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” That’s not an objective moral standard, at all, and it’s certainly not evidence of a lack of racism.
Another question is the effect of calling racist policies, racist, on fence-sitters. Although there are a couple of exceptions, in my experience most of the people who collapse on the fainting couch crying “mercy! I cannot breathe!” if the “R” word is mentioned, are not people who are even remotely persuadable. The people who favor vote-suppression policies are not open to changing their minds, and any argument that says “if you call a racist policy racist you won’t persuade them” is unpersuasive to me, because I won’t persuade them regardless of what I say.
On the other hand, it’s possible that a detailed argument (which I know, I haven’t made on this thread, since it’s not the main topic of this thread) about why voter suppression policies are a deliberate attempt to suppress black voters (as well as a few other groups, like student voters), might be persuasive to some fence-sitters. Or maybe not. But I don’t think it’s self-evident that fence-sitters will be repulsed by arguments that use truthful terms rather than euphemisms.
That would be a huuuuuuge improvement over the status quo.
It sure would, given that the status quo is “except in closed groups of SJWs where you never talk to anyone else, you MAY NOT call anybody racist unless they have proudly acknowledged themselves as racist and/or said something so blatantly awful that you would expect Nathan Bedford Forrest to rise from his grave solely for the purpose of giving them a high five, and if you break this rule, then you’re playing the race card.”
Ampersand:
You make some good points. I’ve changed my mind: there are indeed situations where it makes sense to call people/policies racist. Perhaps I didn’t think of this because my experiences with Indian politics (which is less issue based) is different from the one you have with US politics.
I’m currently thinking this through and updating my mental model. I’ll let you know what I think when this is done. Just thought I’d put this out there in the meantime.
Quoting myself from a couple of years ago (about the downsides of not having compulsory voting):
Ampersand:
I wonder how much different voting and political systems impacts people’s perceptions of what standard of discourse is ‘acceptable’.
Harlequin:
Based on what I’ve seen and read I don’t think that Pantaleo is guilty of manslaughter (and certainly not murder). I think that discussion would be getting a little off topic though.
I think it’s pretty much ideal.
It seems like a great way for folks who want to use “racist” to do so without most of the downsides. That is because it allows listeners to judge whether BOTH the “you’re racist” person and “no I’m not” person are being reasonable, based on some very specific criteria.
For example, imagine right now that you go to an affirmative action opponent and call them racist. Trouble ensues. If they were on the fence you might get a concession due to fear of the label; if not you may have created a new opponent.
But if you say “I think that changing the system to disadvantage minority college applicants is racist, and therefore I think you are racist” you might get the same agreement… or you might get someone who (a) agrees with your definition; but (b) subscribes to mismatch theory–and who makes the argument that there is a long term disadvantage from AA.
That person is not actually an “opponent,” at least not in the way it might appear at first.
I believe that most people who are close to switching side usually have some common ground, and defining it helps you find it. W/r/t the folks who are plain old never-gonna-change opponents, you still get to call them “racist” in the end.
Thanks for the comment, g&w, and that particular part made me laugh out loud. :)
If they were on the fence you might get a concession due to fear of the label; if not you may have created a new opponent.
“Well I totally would have been in support of your position but you hurt my feelings so I’m 100% against you!” is always, in my experience, a lie. Somebody who claims to be a fence-sitter and to make their decisions on spite and hurt feelings was almost certainly looking for an excuse to jump to that side of the fence anyway.
That’s setting aside the issue that people who make decisions based on poor information or an emotional reaction may be less prone than you suggest to responding to carefully-hedged reason.
I think that’s just sour grapes and rationalization.
If you piss someone off to the degree where they say “fuck you and everyone on your side,” it’s tempting to pretend that their pissed-off-ness was always internalized: “well, anyone who would say that would never have joined my side anyway.” But that doesn’t make it true, and there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. Because it seem obvious that–hyperbole aside–these things can swing either way.
So it’s a really an issue of weighting. Some folks may think that the consequences are rare and the benefits of harsh speech are high. Those folks will support harsher speech. Other folks will think that the consequences are more common and the benefits of harsh speech are smaller. Those folks will support more reasoned language.
To actually evaluate it, you should at least consider four groups of people:
1) Converts who say “I was pressured/forced into joining but I appreciate it in retrospect; I would not have converted unless the group used a harsh presentation to force me to change.”
2) Converts who say “I was spoken to kindly; I would not have converted had my opponent tried to use a harsh presentation to force me to change.”
3) Opponents who say “I have joined other groups when I was spoken to kindly, and might have been convinced to join this one. But I have not joined (and may even oppose) this group because they used a harsh presentation.”
4) [Ed.: It’s hard to imagine anyone self identifying in this group but it completes the set, so…] Opponents who say “They tried nicely to convince me and I did not join the group, but I would have joined if they had used a harsh presentation.”
If you were right, every convert would be in Group 1.
But it seems that there are a lot of people who claim to be in Group 2 and Group 3. In fact, there seem to be folks who claim to be in multiple groups, all for different issues.
Unless folks want to say that every non-group-1 claim is false (and why would anyone say that?) you might want to reconsider your view.
g&w, you need to add at least, like, four groups to your schema (maybe more).
5. Somebody who says, “Your arguments convinced me, and I would have been convinced whether your presentation was harsh or kind, even if I wish you’d used the other sort of persuasion.”
6. Somebody who says, “Your arguments were unconvincing, and it doesn’t matter how harsh or kind you were.”
7. Somebody who claimed to be on the fence, but had already made up their mind against you, and was looking for a rationalization of their already-made-but-not-yet-admitted-to choice.
8. As 7, but for you instead of against you.
Groups 5 and 6 don’t necessarily matter when you’re making a choice of harsh or kind arguments, but excluding them makes a hash of trying to understand people’s choices after the fact (as when you state that mythago’s argument implies believing that everyone but Group 1 is lying).
Groups 7 and 8 are often a large chunk of the undecideds, and (in my experience, based on comments people have made during debates that were entirely one-sided despite a claim of uncertainty, and based on the kinds of things they say when the debate is over) they’re much more likely than the other groups to cite the tone of the debate, instead of its content, as the reason they “chose” the side they were already clearly in sympathy with. I’m more likely to hear statements like, “Well, I didn’t like person X and I didn’t think argument Y was fair, but s/he did make some good points” from people who are or were genuinely on the fence.
Now, that doesn’t tell you much about how to convince the people who are actually on the fence, because Group 7 and 8 people never were members of that class at all. But the people who say they were members of Group 3 are very likely to include a bunch of members from Group 7 as well, so listening to the volume of complaints from that group doesn’t necessarily contain the information you’re interested in.
True dat. Yours is more complete than mine, and better.
The larger point remains, though: How the heck are you placing someone in the “they’re lying” class in the first place? And how is it clear that the problem is 100% them (i.e. they never would have converted) and 0% you (you’re just looking for reasons to blame them for the results?)
Or, to ask slightly more personally: am I really the only one who has ever been put off by an argument and opposed a position solely because my opponent was a dick? And subsequently realized that the argument was right and accepted it, solely because someone presented it better?
Any argument? From “Han shot first” to “sox/yankees” to “benefits of welfare state?”
Ever?
Because if folks have had that happen somewhere else, then (as applicable) I’d be curious to know if/why they think feminist arguments in particular are different.
That’s a hard question for me to answer, because it’s also been my experience that people are more likely to end up in the being-rude camp of a debate if they’re not very good debaters to begin with. I can think of cases where I have been unconvinced by a rude/harsh debater and was later convinced by something softer, but it was also generally the case that the second person was presenting new arguments, in addition to phrasing them differently. In other words, this thread for me is trying to debate the efficacy of two debating styles assuming all other things are held constant, but I’ve never experienced it in the real world without confounding variables. So, it’s hard to tell.
And, indeed, a good debater might be able to use a word such as “racist” in a way that made people laugh or even made them more sympathetic to the debater him- or herself–it doesn’t necessarily need to be flung willy-nilly as an insult. Rhetorical skill matters here.
It’s also been the case that I’ve come away from some kind of argument pissed off and certain I was right when the other person was being rude, and later realized they had at least some good points–the rudeness there certainly caused a delay in my change of mind; I can’t say for sure if it ever prevented it.