A non-essential, self appointed “role” to be sure.
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Oh absolutely, Trump is a step back, there’s no denying it, but that’s not my point. Every conversation doesn’t have to devolve into talking about Donald Trump, it’s not productive, and in this case it was just changing the subject.
Well, is patriotism the same as nationalism? Is provincialism the same as patriotism? It’s kind of a spectrum. I definitely have a problem with patriotism, but I think it’s not necessarily worse than loving your home town. I also recognize that it isn’t going away anytime soon, and that it might be an “in” with conservatives, a way to actually get them to give a shit about racism. Saying “you’re a racist” only goes so far, you have to make them feel some kind of empathy.
Speaking of lack of clarity in message. There’s a fascinating back story behind that image.
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I think this is one of the ways that “reasonability” has become a weapon to defend the currently-powerful. It’s a way of saying that if you want to participate in public discourse you should either be highly educated yourself or, better yet, have the resources to speak through lawyers and PR firms. People who are being marginalized by society are the wronged party, they don’t have to conform to our debate club’s rules to deserve to be heard.
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From what I’ve gathered from the responses I’ve gotten, it apparently doesn’t matter what you say or whether you can articulate your position or have a clear enough message such that people can tell immediately what you’re espousing, just saying things in general is good enough- you can assign a value to whatever muddled and potentially incoherent slogan you decide to throw around after the fact. How using opacity to “start a conversation” is better than being immediate, concise and crystal clear is beyond me.
And the people holding this sign weren’t oppressed or undereducated, these were white Americans. Nobody’s trying to squeeze outsider experiences into a majority mold or anything here, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at. These were protesters presumably trying to make a point, not indigenous Amazonian tribespeople struggling to communicate with the outside world; I’m not saying a person needs to have a doctorate to engage in discourse, it just seems to me that there shouldn’t be any ambiguity, and that there didn’t need to have been any here. I feel like saying that it’s enough that people talked about it is nonsense as well- how is saying that people serve their positions better when their positions are clear-cut even controversial? It seems pretty obvious, and I don’t think people noticing a thing is the same as people knowing what it means, nor do I think the conversation about something’s meaning is as valuable as the meaning itself; this was a sign of public protest, not a hoodoo magical symbol, and I wouldn’t think one you’d want to leave open to any misinterpretation.
That’s the point, most likely.
Unless a White male says something is ‘a problem,’ it’s not a problem.
The message itself wasn’t ambiguous to many people who live in that reality without the benefit of denial, sugar-coating or whitewash.
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Nor was being ambiguous (and thereby “making people talk”) going to convince people on the other side. It just looks like poorly chosen words- which either validates what ignorant people think of racism anyway or confuses what the protesters were trying to communicate. I wasn’t saying it was somehow more valid because white people were standing against racism rather than PoC, I’m saying that framing the situation as though it was ambiguous because of some sort of elitism doesn’t really come to bear in this instance.
Right? It was only unclear because, like, why were they mentioning it? I’m not real sure more white people need to be taking the lead on these things, right?
I do believe white people should speak out, but being obfuscatory just seems like a weird and easily misconstrued approach.
I never make it past the “but” in a “yes, but”.
What were you saying about obfuscation being a weird and easily misconstrued approach?
First point; I’m not the person who made the comment about getting people talking.
Second: I don’t think people can be ‘convinced’ of anything, no matter what anyone else does or says.
No one can change a person’s mind, except that individual person him or herself.
That said just pretending problems don’t exist won’t make them go away.
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I know you didn’t. I had been directing my comments, and the context of those comments, to those who’d made that argument. That’s part of what I’d been talking about. Unless I miss my guess, I don’t think I’d replied to you unbidden- my comments had originally been directed elsewhere. Either way, it does have to do with what I was originally talking about.
Who was obfuscating? Was what I said unclear, or had you just stopped reading after a word you didn’t like and thereby dismissed half of my comment?
I would disagree. Racism and general hatred of the “other” is baked into our DNA.
Which means that trying to prevent racism (and the host of other 'isms) is NOT just a matter failing to expose our children to “bad influences”. It requires active measures to prevent people falling into natural, but destructive patterns of behaviour.
There are reasons why life is naturally nasty, brutal and short. The job of society is to prevent those impulses from dictating behaviour.
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a pattern of two words and a punctuation mark, “Yes, but” which obfuscates.
And it’s not a matter of liking it, it’s a matter of cognitive dissonance. It’s really not subjective as you said.
Yes, i did ignore whatever came after that. As do most sensible people. just a heads up.
It’s literally subjective when you dismiss an entire chunk of a comment because you have some kind of semantic issue with how a sentence is constructed. But hey, make it some kind of statement about “sensible” people or whatever, even though you don’t seem entirely clear on what “obfuscate” means. And do keep in mind that I didn’t jump in the middle of you, you decided to try to throw my words back at me without provocation; I halfway agreed with you, and you apparently needed to make what I said into something it wasn’t.
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I’ll just chalk it up to my loss, but you can continue to derail for as long as you care to. Not about me, is it, this thread? (no, it isn’t)
It’s my bad. I always forget how hypersensitive people are around here.
You should tie a string around your finger or something. I hear that helps.
