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It has been a little while now that this fledgling community has been around and it remains one of my favorite stories about communities. A splinter of a much larger community took it upon themselves to challenge the rest and make a move to a new home. Shedding the shackles that were being placed on them was a bold move, but one that has been fantastic.
The community here is great, but here is my question. Overall, we are amazingly tolerant of others, of the choices they make, and of their beliefs. I would then be curious, if we are such a tolerant group, how do we address intolerance in our ranks? I recently came across what I can only say filled me with pity and sadness. I find it saddening that in this day and age, and especially in this group, there are still such hate-filled people.
But this poses a question: how does a group that is tolerant deal with intolerance within it's ranks? Does our acceptance of others extend to accepting someone that has thoughts and beliefs which are far from the norm within this community, or is there a limit placed on how far from our own values a member of the community may be?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Sunday April 13 2014, @08:02PM
Generally speaking, first and foremost do not call attention to such things. They thrive on attention, and the more they get - positive or negative - is actually reinforcement.
Ergo, one of the worst possible things you can do is post it to the front page. The best thing you can do is refuse to publicly engage; when ignored many people will go elsewhere. If you must engage, do it privately.
Now, with that said: this particular rant was possibly written with some emotion behind it (possibly even living up to the poster's username). However, if you push past some of the language there are some valid points.
The biggest issue I have when certain things get brought up is people immediately screaming "Dats Racis!!1" and turning off their brains. When it comes right down to it, humans are not designed to interact with tens of thousands of people and both know and evaluate them all individually. Studies exist which show humans can only really have a close social group of about 130 individuals, which is in flux throughout our lives. New people get closer, old ones get pushed out of our heads. Where am I going with this? We innately group certain things together so we can respond rationally.
Stereotyping is in our nature. We can't turn it off. All we can do is resist it, which is something every person struggles with every day. Realizing it exists helps, but your first response in almost every situation is going to be based on past experience.
The rant in question even touches on the actual issues: cultural influencing politics (social support across generations via shared living, and how this dynamic informs voting), and the indirect effect of stereotypes (e.g. on property values). My personal belief is that the property value thing is cultural, not racial, and is supported and disseminated largely by certain music. I call it the hip-hop culture, and it's not doing a large portion of our youth any favors. But certain socioeconomic profiles are more likely to fall into this trap.
Note I took great care not to say racial profiles; socioeconomics is probably the underlying cause... but this does correlate with certain racial groups in certain geographic areas. Where it circles back around to stereotypes. If you grow up in an area where most underprivileged people are of a certain ethnic background, you may well build beliefs which are not based in reality (or blame the wrong factor[s]). In my humble opinion, this is what causes and promulgates true racism in the modern world.
Engaging such people in private to communicate what I just said may result in various outcomes. It may not always work; this is an area where logic is often not at the fore. But I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and at least try to engage (again, in private) to tease out the real issues.
Pointing fingers and shouting "racist!" and "intolerant!" and trying to rabble-rouse - which, let's be honest, is exactly the purpose of this front-page post - only serves to polarize. That isn't what anyone needs.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Aighearach on Sunday April 13 2014, @08:07PM
If you boot out the disruptive haters, you don't have to worry what they "thrive" on. In that case calling them out is effective.
Ignoring racist haters does not make them go away. It means every single post will have disgusting comments attached. Privately engaging them is not useful or productive.
In my opinion, your blind acceptance of hatred, and encouragement to force the targets of the racist hatred to suffer it quietly, without any encouragement that they're welcome or that the view is not the view of the group, is not well thought out. Actually that is so silly, once you start thinking from the perspective of the victim, that I would suggest perhaps you have fallen into this viewpoint and recite it when the issue comes up while "turning off your brain."
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Sunday April 13 2014, @08:30PM
"Booting people out" works only in the real world, where absence of physical presence is actually a real barrier. The question was asked in the context of an online community, and furthermore an online community of tech-savvy users. It's actually quite difficult to boot any real entity out of such a community; VPNs, Tor, and many other tricks guarantee that individual has more ways back in than you have bandwidth to try and keep them out.
I never encouraged anyone to suffer quietly. I never promulgated blind acceptance. I simply pointed out that in communities like this one, certain viewpoints thrive on ATTENTION alone - calling them out is counterproductive. This is what some want. Furthermore, there was no target of the post in question! It was a rant directed at nobody in particular, archiving one man's observations. I responded as such. Again, I reiterate: there was no victim, and the original post is edited to reflect that it does not apply to all or even most individuals of any particular ethnic background.
I would like to draw attention to how you ignore all of the actual points of my post, while continuing an indirect ad hominem against both the original target and also attempt to conflate and group myself with that individual. Actually, your response constitutes more raw hatred than the original which prompted this front page story. You are directly attacking myself and the original poster, whom I may not agree with but has done nothing to harm you directly. These are logical fallacies. I refuse to engage anyone in discussion who stoops to using them, because once you do it is no longer a discussion; you are no longer engaging your mind in reasonable discourse.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Monday April 14 2014, @04:59AM
That's trolls you are thinking about, not racist haters. The typical racist hater thinks his opinion is what everybody thinks secretly and is just shy to say in public. They will see silence as silent agreement. Also, the object of their hatred deserves the feeling that someone speaks up for them. Hate-speech is not only between speaker and audience.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1) by q.kontinuum on Monday April 14 2014, @05:10AM
Oh, and btw: I don't care if such a post contains some hidden true points. The fact that it starts as a racist piece of crap renders it unfit for any further consideration. The same guy might start a different discussion when he's sober, and raise some valid points there. Or others can raise these points in their posts, preferably without referencing this article. The article in question is a piece of emotional hate-speech, and as such deserves only contempt and emotional support for the targeted group; the comment-section of that article is burned for any rational discussion.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday April 14 2014, @04:56PM
I feel like there's not really a clear line between the two in the vernacular; e.g. how many of us would have an issue with someone of Ethnic Group A if they were adopted very early by and raised according to the culture of Ethnic Group B, if we respect B but not A? If you do, then it's clearly related to physical characteristics and thus racism.
I can discriminate against a culture without being racist. (Then the term is just bigot I guess.)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"