I’m not sure we read the same article? If you give them their own nation, their children grow up in that nation too - exactly how it’s perpetuated - and exactly the opposite of the high point of this article.
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That brings up an interesting debate - I can’t remember where I read about it first - but what duty do people like Derek have to undo the damage they’ve caused? Is it enough that he’s renounced white supremacy, or should more be expected of him? Still not sure where I land on that question.
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It sounds tempting until you realize how many children (like Derek) will be trapped on the wrong side of those walls.
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And get “virtuously” punished by the rest of us for their parents’ child abuse.
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YUP. This kid came in with a good amount of self-awareness.
I’m made to think here of Louis Theroux’s interaction with the poor girls raised in the Phelps clan and how they seemed to just want to lead normal lives.
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I don’t think we can expect more of him than he expects of himself. I don’t think that we should try to push him into actually straight-up opposing his father instead of just disagreeing.
This article, in itself, was a big step.
If you try to push him or guilt him into doing something he’d really rather not do, that will just make him resentful, and maybe start pushing back the other way.
If he wants to contribute more to reverse some of the harm he caused, he’s certainly welcome to, but it needs to be his own decision to do so, or else, I believe, it will cause more harm than good in the end.
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@mallyboon; He has no obligation to do anything, other than for himself, and we should have no expectations of him. He has already done much, and demanding more of him is inconsiderate and greedy of us. What was done in the innocence of youth at the behest of authority figures is not necessarily his own moral fault, and an external demand that he do more is morally unfair.
His integrity has already brought him to this place, and it may continue to push him towards more, so we shall see what he does of his own initiative. As @nimelennar pointed out, dragging him along will create resentment, and that is both wrong and unneeded. This is a young man of integrity and conviction, and he has already done more and proven more personal strength than most people ever demonstrate, and I have no doubt that he will continue to grow as a person.
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Alright, that’s very fair. I’ll have another go, though: I’d like to see Stevenson’s story told, as well.
Derek’s in a unique position now, I wish him all the best and I hope he can become a positive role model in people’s lives. But hey,
Sod that, I wanted to draw attention to Matthew because I think he makes a good role model for me. It’s not clear that his Jewishness has anything to do with it, although I’m sure it’s a big part of the person that he is which is why I’d like to read more about his story. But to me it sounds like the key attributes he had were an inclusive attitude, a diverse group of friends, a sense of personal respect and empathy, and a willingness to share with and learn from others no matter their background. I don’t see how being a liberal white male would exempt anyone from that lesson, and I agree that anyone who thinks it’s a lesson for minorities is probably a dick.
I hear this a lot, but it seems to me that any person’s mind is in constant flux, changing perpetually with each new experience. In that sense anything you can do to shape a person’s experiences will shape their thoughts, in one way or another. In this case an entire campus was ready to give up on Derek, and Derek was making no effort to engage them in return. If somebody hadn’t reached out and shown acceptance then there’s every chance that Derek would have given up, and gone back to his old circles and stayed more or less the same person.
To me, Matthew’s invitation is a watershed moment for Derek. Because of it he has been able to have a very different set of experiences and I would argue that it’s changed him as a person. The dividing line between who a person is and who they could have been is not usually so stark as it is in Derek’s case. You might bring an outsider into your group of friends and never have an inkling of the kind of lonely, hateful person they were or could have been without your influence, so when you do see it so clearly I think it’s worth making a story out of.
Anyway I’m not really looking to argue with anyone, I just wanted to say that Matthew seems like a swell guy.
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One thing that really stood out for me in the article was that he seems to be starting on the next stage: recognizing that he has caused actual harm in the world by what he did when younger. He seems to be well on the way to figuring out what he will do as a result.
In other words, he recognizes that it wasn’t just a one-time conversion, but a life’s journey.
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Or, indeed, the White Nationalists he met:
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I think that’s super complicated. He obviously loves his family, but his family are so down the rabbit hole in that weird white supremacist rhetoric. I think if his family cut him off entirely, he’d have more incentive. He’d have nothing to lose. It was his love of other folks that got him out of it. He’d be a good ally, though. I guess we’ll have to see how he acts. At 27, that’s so young, and we’ll have to see what kind of man he grows into.
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I think that is the only way to get anyone with a set bias against another group of people. If they aren’t rational or logical enough to realize most people aren’t like the caricature in their head, then they need to meet REAL people who can show them they are more or less like anyone on else.
Thiis applies to everyone. Even though this guys parents are ardent racists, aside from that they are mostly like everyone else. If they overcame that one flaw, they would be just like you or I more or less.
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This reminds me of a couple other stories:
A prominent, young member of the Westboro Baptist Church, converted by the friendship of (among others) a Jewish man on Twitter:
And Larry Trapp, the Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska, whose anti-semitic phone calls and letters to a rabbi were reciprocated with love and caring:
(Actually, the Jewish aspect of those stories, and OP’s as well, was not why they reminded me of them, but it’s an interesting parallel.)
Stories like this are also why I cringe at liberal voices constant demonizing of Trump’s supporters as racist, ignorant deplorables: the way to change the other side is through understanding their voices and talking to them as real people, not screaming “racist” to them.
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I got some death threats in my email from some Stormfront people the other day (and the day before that, and the day before that…). I graded them and sent them back with grammatical and spelling corrections.
While, ideally, it would be wonderful to be able to reach every single one of them as Derek has been reached and helped, that isn’t possible, and a great number of them truly are racist deplorable ignoranuses who are proud of their hatred. At that point, if they are proud to be a racist, then that is what I shall call them.
Beyond that, though, your links reminded me of two more:
and
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it’s funny, i’m reading Twain’s “Following The Equator” right now, and while parts of it are really interesting and funny and good, HOLY CRAP there’s SO much racism in there. i know it was just the time period, but i cringe and i cringe and i cringe.
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I’m dyin’!
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LOL. If only you could add inspirational stickers. “Good try! Keep working on it!” Maybe give them a banana stickers and manipulate their actions from there…
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And Twain was pretty progressive for his time, IIRC.
Hey - didn’t he write a book that was to be published 100 years after his death? What happned with that?
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The “deplorables” comment wasn’t meant to get the white nationalists to abandon Trump and stop being racist, it was meant to get everyone else to wake up to the fact that they were supporting the candidate of white nationalists.
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It’s a 3 volume autobiography. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography_of_Mark_Twain
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