Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
You mentioned lynch mobs. In a discussion about racism. In a forum with many members from the USA, where lynch mobs have murdered black people within living memory. |
Yes, exactly. Emmet Till would have been 69 this year if he'd lived, that's younger than my parents.
Words have meaning, and since Orwell's 1984 and newspeak has already been invoked in this thread, I'll point out that seeing "lynching" used as if it has no more meaning than "doubleplusungood behaviour" is really jarring.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FizzyWater
As a white woman, I'll admit those scenes just "go past" my radar - yes another stereotype, "how lazy", but not objectionable (to me). So I can only try to really understand by finding another situation or stereotype that I do see and experience and remember how annoyed and/or hurt those make me feel.
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Same here. I saw this in myself pretty starkly some years ago: A textbook on ethics which one of my children brought home from school had a chapter on altruism, with four people as examples of admirable people who had dedicated their lives to helping others. I noticed right away that all of them were Christians, and was annoyed about that -- surely they could have picked a few people of other beliefs! It was only later, when rereading, that I also noticed that all of them were white Europeans. As a white European, that had been completely invisible to me at first.
I also remember being surprised when someone mentioned that one of my favourite Heyer books contained antisemitism. When rereading, I found that it was really, really blatant, so much that I'm embarrassed and surprised that I didn't notice it the first time I read it. ("The Grand Sophy", where a minor villain is a Jew and matches pretty much every nasty stereotype you can imagine.)
@ hitch: I agree that internet harassment and the chilling effect of that is real. Are you aware that marginalized groups, like women of color, are far more likely to be victims of such harassment, and that platforms like Twitter and Facebook are far less likely to take action in those cases?
But "critiscism" is still not the same as "censorship", and conflating the two or using hyperbole like "storming with pitchforks" just serve to make the discussion more stupid.
Some posts ago you were really indignant about the possibility that people could be banned from RWA because of their opinions. Do you still think that's horrible,
[...-ed]