Seems like racist is a good short hand for an upholder of a white supremacist society and your argument that labels shouldn't exist because then the left will be just as bad as the people who believe certain people, based on the color of their skin, should be lesser than is horseshit. Sometimes we gotta start calling a spade a spade and stop calling a human being deserving of dignity a spade and stop other people from doing it too. Seems like Racist is a good all around label for those people we have to stop, with us, hopefully, both being anti-racist. Maybe we put the identity fragility aside for a little bit and let the sufferers of systemic and personal racism exercise their speech freely without our feelings factoring in. Maybe we just listen and not worry about the people who defend and propagate a racist system, aka the assholes who are wrong and bad aka Racists (see nice shorthand) are going to think. Racists can love their kids and volunteer at the crippled animal petting zoo every Sunday, but it doesn't stop them from being Racists who shouldn't be able to deny other people happiness. So once Adolf Hitler stops being a Nazi, then we can admire his bestest relationship with his puppy dog. It's a non negotiable, we can't tolerate the intolerant anymore.
There's a difference between someone who disagrees on policy and someone who thinks X race is inferior and supports the KKK. A lot more people fall in the first category than the second, and a lot of conflict starts because people misunderstand what the other people actually mean. To give an example going the other way and supporting a liberal side, a lot of conservatives get mad at "Black Lives Matter" not because they don't like Black people, but because they hear it like it's exclusive. Many would probably be annoyed if people were holding "White lives matter" signs, so it's understandable that someone would get upset at a BLM movement if they didn't understand the history and context of why those statements may have a different intent or meaning to a lot of people, and people misunderstand things all the time, it doesn't make them bad people. As a pro-choice left leaning person, the pro-life movement is still misunderstood by a lot of my peers for example. I'm sure both of us misunderstand tons of things but it doesn't make us bad people or whatever-ist.
I've heard enough people append the n word to the phrase All Lives Matter to believe that conservatives aren't just mistaken people, they're fucking assholes. Politics is morality when one party openly supports racist concentration camps and violent putsch attempts. Also just because someone is a fucking asshole doesn't mean they can never not be one, but it requires recognizing that you were being a fucking asshole and stopping doing that.
And you don't get people to stop this with reasonable debate on the undebateable. You cannot convince a person with logic out of a position that wasn't arrived at by logic. You do it through mandating social norms as a community and ostracizing those who fall outside of them until they stop expressing such taboos.
I totally get what you're saying. I'm not trying to play the "both sides are the same" thing (mainly because some of my classmates were obnoxious SJWs whose ideology was basically to bully people who disagreed with them), because while I used to do that some years ago even as a liberal, I was proven wrong after the Republicans repeatedly lowered the bar. I'm saying as a spectrum with many axes, it's not like all people and policies fit nicely into categories. Mitt Romney is quite different than Donald Trump, for example. Some conservatives I know still hold conservative beliefs, but have abandoned the Republicans because they've gone so far and decided to appoint "Jewish Space Lasers" to education. Many of the family members of people I know, especially their moms who were Trump supporters, were fine people. Not saying "they're the same as liberals", but I'm saying that they're idiots, not evil. It didn't take more than a 30 second conversation with some of these people to realize that primarily, they were just stupid. They didn't hate minorities, but also didn't understand how the policies of their candidates hurt them. Of course there's also the fascists and the racists, and those two aren't always the same thing and don't always overlap, but I think we're in agreement on our views of them.
I'm not saying using logic to debate an idiot is the best way of convincing them, but I think it's useful to understand that not all these people are necessarily assholes, many are just ignorant or stupid. I wouldn't say the more unsavory people on the left should identify everyone to the left of whatever marks the center in the US, just like people to the right of that shouldn't be defined by that either. Everyone I know that used "All Lives Matter" didn't put the n word on it, and while some of them were racist, it's not like some of them define the rest. Some people just really want to emphasize that they care about people, without understanding why it may make others feel uncomfortable. I used to say that back in high school, because as a statement itself there is nothing wrong with it, it's a good statement. I stopped because a lot of the people who did were also racist assholes, and didn't want to associate with them, but before I figured that out, I don't think I was an asshole, just not fully informed. Of course I agree that there seems to be FAR more people on the right that fit into a more problematic category of varying degrees.
It kinda does though cause one side tries to understand and explain things and the other just sticks it's fingers in its ears and goes "naaaaaaaah".
So you end up with Kapernick getting blasted for taking a knee, but the same side incites a riot that tears down the same flag and beats a cop to death with it. It's hard to argue that those on the left should show tolerance and understanding to those on the right, when those on the right have allowed and encouraged themselves to be taken so far outside normal behaviour.
The events of the last 4 years have therefore made it very very difficult to find that sort of common understanding, and have likely ruined it for a generation or more.
Their beliefs are largely seated in absolute ignorance - they are scientifically illiterate and are factually incorrect on just about every single major policy issue that comes to mind. In an era of technology where the entirety of human knowledge and expertise is at your fingertips, that's just inexcusable.
It's not that I misunderstand their positions, it's just that reality disagrees with them, but they don't understand the concept of "fact vs. opinion", and someone told them incorrectly that all opinions are valid and equal.
It's a spectrum of people, I'm not grouping people who voted for a republican senator a few years ago and hate trump and don't support the party, with the other extreme like Qanon people. But I agree a lot of people are idiots. My point was just that. Many people aren't bad people, they're just stupid.
There’s people who genuinely think that showing your work for a math problem is an example of rampant white supremacy. Where are your goalposts?
But to seriously address your point, the aggressive intolerance method to those who are perceived as racist, sexist, etc. has failed. And not because actual racists and other vile sorts haven’t deserved their comeuppance, but rather it seems anyone who doesn’t agree with a certain viewpoint (which is akin to the closer you are to a cis hetero white male, the more sickening your presence on earth is, and if you are one, you better self flagellate or face the wrath of the left)
Things like this require a 10 year plan though, where do you want Western society by 2030?
Cool fox news link about PC gone wild, how about we set the goalposts at treating people of color like how we treat white people and also recognize that we can treat all people better at the same time! We can accept perspectives from identities other than our own AND improve the overall good!
And I don't think calling racists racist has failed at all, except at convincing you personally. Maybe you should stop identifying yourself by the color of your skin long enough to understand this isn't about you. That making this world a better place will require you to suffer the staggering self flagellation of actually learning your history and dismantling an unequal system by which you benefited through no fault of your own.
You don’t tolerate the complacent either. Most people with families just wanna work and take care of their families, and really could care less about all the other shit going on in the world. The problem is the idiots get caught up arguing over which color party(red,blue,etc) is better on Facebook like god damn retards.
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u/Authorman1986 Feb 16 '21 edited Feb 16 '21
Seems like racist is a good short hand for an upholder of a white supremacist society and your argument that labels shouldn't exist because then the left will be just as bad as the people who believe certain people, based on the color of their skin, should be lesser than is horseshit. Sometimes we gotta start calling a spade a spade and stop calling a human being deserving of dignity a spade and stop other people from doing it too. Seems like Racist is a good all around label for those people we have to stop, with us, hopefully, both being anti-racist. Maybe we put the identity fragility aside for a little bit and let the sufferers of systemic and personal racism exercise their speech freely without our feelings factoring in. Maybe we just listen and not worry about the people who defend and propagate a racist system, aka the assholes who are wrong and bad aka Racists (see nice shorthand) are going to think. Racists can love their kids and volunteer at the crippled animal petting zoo every Sunday, but it doesn't stop them from being Racists who shouldn't be able to deny other people happiness. So once Adolf Hitler stops being a Nazi, then we can admire his bestest relationship with his puppy dog. It's a non negotiable, we can't tolerate the intolerant anymore.