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from the whatever-happened-to-DEsegregation? dept.
The Washington Times reports a story about protesters on the UC Berkeley campus physically blocking white students from accessing a bridge while police stand by and watch:
Students at the University of California, Berkeley held a day of protest on Friday to demand the creation of additional “safe spaces” for transgender and nonwhite students, during which a human chain was formed on a main campus artery to prevent white students from getting to class.
The demonstrators were caught on video blocking Berkeley’s Sather Gate, holding large banners advocating the creation of physical spaces segregated by race and gender identity, including one that read “Fight 4 Spaces of Color.”
Protesters can be heard shouting “Go around!” to white students who attempt to go through the blockade, while students of color are greeted with calls of “Let him through!”
Students turned away by the mob are later shown filing through trees and ducking under branches in order to cross Strawberry Creek, which runs underneath the bridge.
The protests were a response to a Safe Space being moved from the fifth floor of a building down to the basement.
[Original version of this story had "UCLA"; corrected to: "UC Berkeley" -Ed.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:06PM
You're right, you don't get it. I didn't get it at first either, I thought the same way you do here.
But actually, after listening to waaaay too many of these people in their own words and doing a little research on the intellectual pedigree of their professors, I was wrong.
The 'safe space' concept is a key one for them. It's not just a clubhouse or a lounge to discuss their issues. It's a place where they are safe from anyone disagreeing with any of their ideas, a place where if they just think you *look like* you're probably going to disagree with you they can bar you, expel you, etc. preëmptively. A place where only the correct people are allowed, and only the correct thoughts may be expressed. And the plan has never been to get a clubhouse on every campus and then stop, the plan is to expand the safe spaces by any means possible until all space is 'safe.'
They may say they are in favor of equality, but they can only do that with a straight face because they have redefined equality (and many other key words) to mean the exact opposite of what they mean.
This is essentially a cult, even if it has more to do with neo-marxism than any 'conventional' religions.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @07:04PM
It sounds to me [wikipedia.org] like they just want a place to not be harrassed. Naturally you're going to have extremists who, like white supremacists, want black/yellow/trans/homo/whatever supremacy, but don't think for even a second that because a few express a desire for that that all do [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday October 29 2016, @07:08PM
Thank you, I was going to respond but I didn't have good links offhand to backup basically what you said. This is not some racist counter agenda!
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday October 29 2016, @08:53PM
From your first link, we learn that a "safe space" is one that "does not tolerate [...] violence, harassment or hate speech."
This is a carefully constructed formula. We can represent it in pseudocode something like this:
safe_space(!tolerate{violence|harassment|hate_speech})
Which logically breaks down to
safe_space(
!tolerate{violence}
!tolerate{harassment}
!tolerate{hate_speech}
)
Now we have !tolerate{violence} already. Violence is literally illegal, from shore to shore, even in Alaska and Hawaii, even in foreign countries! So even though this is the part of the formula put first, the part that is leant on most heavily in rhetoric, to produce sympathy and support (how can you be against them having a space to be safe from violence you ogre?!?!) this part is of no practical effect.
(We could go further and cite many examples to show that, in fact, they positively approve of violence, as long as it's done by them and not against them, but there's really no need to add to the logic above to make the point.)
What's next? !tolerate{harassment}. Again, that's actually already illegal. Basically everywhere. So while it sounds great, it's not the point.
What's left? !tolerate{hate_speech}. And this comes to the crux of the agenda. How do you define hate speech? Lately simply speaking English is considered by many 'activists' to be hate speech. In fact any it's an undefinable term that must and can only be defined on an ad-hoc basis, and so it amounts to criminalizing politically incorrect speech. You can have this, or you can have freedom of speech, but those two things cannot live together.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:53PM
What's next? !tolerate{harassment}. Again, that's actually already illegal. Basically everywhere. So while it sounds great, it's not the point.
You realize that some of these people have an entirely different definition of "harassment", and that even the most innocuous actions can be construed by them as harassment, right? Also, even existing laws can be too broad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:53PM
We could go further and cite many examples to show that, in fact, they positively approve of violence, as long as it's done by them and not against them, but there's really no need to add to the logic above to make the point.
Actually there is a great need to cite those examples because otherwise you don't have a point. Drawing an equivalence between redundancy and outright hypocrisy is literally the exact thing you are complaining that "they" do.
Jesus christ, that circular reasoning gets modded up? WTF man? This place is freaking racist that such blatant sophistry is considered insightful? No wonder Trump is so popular.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:19AM
No, the point stands perfectly well without the aside. The 'safe space' is defined as an area where we prohibit... a bunch of things already prohibited everywhere else. Oh, and also 'hate speech.' The approach itself, the careful packaging of irrelevancies so that the core demand can be treated as a minor afterthought, reveals conscious deception.
Anyway you want examples? Melissa Click is a great one. And don't tell me she's one bad apple, because she's received and continues to receive very broad support and in fact astonishingly enough she landed another job at another university almost immediately as a result. Her behavior was exactly in line with what they teach and there are plenty more examples of it in action. Milo Yiannopoulos has been assaulted by them, Lauren Southern has been assaulted by them, many people have been attacked by them.
Attacking Milo Yiannopoulos on his stage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unoBT8Te13g
Attacking Lauren Southern outside a venue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-IFcCY0m3E
It's not just high profile lecturers who get hit the most by this though, it's their fellow students who may have to coexist with them for years, it's the poor janitors and professors that have to deal with them every day at work, it's random people that have to deal with this in their day to day lives.
This is a good example. Notice that this is NOT a case where someone was doing something they knew was wrong and got caught at it. This lady recorded herself. She posted it herself. She thinks she's being virtuous here (because that's what her professors taught her to think.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpvnO0p9KvU
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @10:24PM
> Attacking Milo Yiannopoulos on his stage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unoBT8Te13g [youtube.com]
She grabbed the microphone and danced in his face. You consider that violence?
Are you really that fragile?
> Attacking Lauren Southern outside a venue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-IFcCY0m3E [youtube.com]
She grabs something and then the video is mysteriously black. What did she grab? Was it hers to begin with?
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpvnO0p9KvU [youtube.com]
There wasn't any contact in there at all. And you consider that violence? WTH?
Seems like all of your examples more of the same as the original video - because in your heart of hearts you absolutely know that SJWs are all hypocrites so anything that might possibly be construed to prove that becomes definitive proof. But really, if those are your best examples of hypocrisy, you've pretty much disproved your entire thesis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @07:27PM
Ya, welcome to this place. Some hard corr libertarian/conservative weirdness going on. I like the pro-freedom stance that most here hold, but there is a definite undercurrent of... Not sure what to call it. Not quite racism, but super sensitive easily triggered people when it comes toliberal/hippy/progressive things they don't have any idea about.
Half of me thinks they are paid agitators trying to being down a decent community, but in reality its probably just users that are in their own conservative echo chamber. Video evidence isn't enough, and explained away so Ariks(?) can maintain his viewpoint.... The worst type of "thinking" that we routinely mock around here... He just wants to feel righteously angry about counter racism and won't accept that this is not what is happening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @10:12PM
there is a definite undercurrent of... Not sure what to call it. Not quite racism, but super sensitive easily triggered people when it comes toliberal/hippy/progressive things they don't have any idea about.
Its called "white fragility." [goodmenproject.com] Of course part of it is denying that it exists.
Its kind of like a fish disbelieving that the entire universe isn't actually filled with water.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Saturday October 29 2016, @07:53PM
You paint with a very large brush. I did my own research and you are basically describing the crazy minority of these groups. It is very hard for someone that doesn't share a marginalized position in society to understand what it is like. Personally I tend to be optimistic, hoping that some nasty bullshit was more of a mis-understanding. To use a more easily understood example, imagine a rape victim sitting with a friend at the local coffee shop talking quietly about what happened. Someone overhears a bit of it and chimes in with "Well you shouldn't go out to parties and walk back alone." While that may be true advice it is a terrible time to offer it and can easily send the victim into a depression for days.
This same sort of thing happens all the time to anyone with a marginalized viewpoint. Half the people on this site should understand, try talking to an average person about the depths of government spying and see how quickly they treat you like a diseased crazy person. Soylentnews is our safe space (haha). So that is what safe spaces are about, its not excluding based on race, its including based on shared experiences. I guarantee that the majority of people in such spaces would welcome a white person if there was a legitimate plea. Maybe some white kid grew up in the ghetto and all his friends were black and he feels a bit isolated at the predominantly white/asian university, 10:1 bet that he would quickly have a new group of friends.
That you call this a cult reveals your own failings, you and many on this site are like academics sitting in their towers trying to understand the world they never experience.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by BK on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:46PM
Those 'crazy minority groups' so often end up setting the agenda.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:51PM
Soylent is our safe space. We all gather 'round, and watch as Aristarchus beats up anyone whose views are different from his.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday October 30 2016, @12:03AM
Shut the fuck up, Donny! Go around!!
(Score: 1) by Arik on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:02PM
Similarly, when you say: "It is very hard for someone that doesn't share a marginalized position in society to understand what it is like" that's actually quite true.
And don't assume you know my position, or can gauge my sympathies, without evidence. I call them a cult as a result of seeing cult-like behavior and seeing the teachers and leaders rationalize and justify that behavior instead of drawing back from it. Just because someone paints themselves as a defender of the downtrodden and 'marginalized' doesn't necessarily make it so.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Sunday October 30 2016, @07:38PM
Some good points, but you're still running with the spin on this story as if it is true. This was a well done protest that is not about racism, its about people wanting a shared cultural space on campus. There are Jewish/Black/Engineering/RichKid fraternities/sororities, I don't see you getting upset about those. There are clubs specifically for certain activities, shall we call them all bigots because they exclude other activities?
You're complaining about a very minor thing, and why should I not assume to know your position based upon short statements? You're doing it with this story, crying racism where there actually isn't any (except for probably a minority of the protesters, but that goes for any large group).
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by Arik on Sunday October 30 2016, @08:27PM
"Some good points, but you're still running with the spin on this story as if it is true. "
It does still appear to be *roughly* accurate.
"This was a well done protest that is not about racism, its about people wanting a shared cultural space on campus."
Actually it was about them being unhappy with the space allocated to them, and demanding a better space.
And calling it a 'well done protest' is truly offensive, as someone that's been part of well done protests, someone that's faced police violence for protesting when I didn't block anyone from passing, didn't threaten anyone either verbally or non verbally, when in other words I was actually part of a well done protest. This does not look like one to me. You have a right to protest in a public space but you do NOT have the right to physically block other people who have just as much right to pass as you do to protest. That's not 'well done' at all. This didn't look like a protest to me, it looked like something rather sinister in fact.
"There are Jewish/Black/Engineering/RichKid fraternities/sororities, I don't see you getting upset about those."
Show me one that's physically blocking a public path because they think they deserve more space?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?