Why are you bringing up people who aren’t here a month after the fact?
Yes, I addressed this. If you’d read what I said, I very clearly stated that on Lemmy it’s likely fine. On any major social media site, it isn’t.
What other variant of “white people bad” is the topic of our discussion? How are variants germane to our discussion?
The exact comment that sparked this entire thread. It’s germane because it is literally the point of the discussion? Do you understand why I’m claiming you don’t read?
I’m starting to get the feeling that you disagree and feel attacked and repulsed by my rhetoric, which seems like a fair change from a month ago. Is that so?
You started to get this feeling because you didn’t read what I wrote. I’m sorry I didn’t perfectly MLA format my essay for you, Mr. Debatelord, I’ll do it better next time (I won’t).
You completely assumed I was disagreeing with what you said, when the reality is I’m talking about how the thread is perceived as a whole. You would have understood this if you read what I wrote.
i didn’t ask why you were bringing up people who aren’t here after the fact in response to your statement that on lemmy it was probably okay, i asked it in response to your claim that you were referring to all the different people who would respond to my post. i was asking it because after a month, only you had responded to my post and we had a perfectly fine conversation. even looking at the votes there was no indication that anyone had a problem with my comments.
in direct response to it being likely fine i asked if all this was based on the assumption that i’d talk this way everywhere.
I was asking those questions because it seemed like you were trying to construct a situation where your reasoning held but i didn’t want to make that assumption and accuse you of that so i asked you to elaborate instead.
I wasn’t able to find any variant of “white people bad” in the top comment. if you can point it out that would help me understand. i’ll quote the entire comment here so you don’t have to go looking:
Anytime I hear people say dumb shit like this I just start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit, they absolutely didn’t give a single fuck about any of this struggle session bullshit wreckers like to trot out to sabotage effective resistance
Then I end with the date Roe got overturned, but they still somehow cannot connect the dots and want to talk about registering new voters or some fucking bullshit
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
your formatting and structure wasn’t what made me think you were the one who felt attacked and repulsed, it was your use of offensive stereotypes when describing a person i actually needed to orient my responses and thought towards. what i’m specifically referring to is using broken english and invoking “billy the inbred”.
later on, your continued suggestion that people on other social media sites and who would read my comments would respond badly to “white people bad” combined with the fact that I couldn’t find any example of it in the top comment made me think you were bringing something you disagreed with into the conversation and trying to put it on someone else to make space to talk about it (think someone who blames something incidental on a political issue or party: I stub my toe and blame the reTHUGlicans, etc), which dovetails with the idea that its actually you who has some problem with the rhetoric.
but it would have been insulting to assume the worst so i asked questions instead to gain a better understanding.
Edit/tldr: The topic could not have been more meta, and instead of treating it as a meta commentary; you acted like you took it literally and behaved as if I was throwing up strawmen or secretly disagreeing with you. This is why I scoff at the idea that you want me to think this is a conversation, when that was very clearly never your intent.
Can you tell me where I brought up other social media platforms? Because if you had read what I wrote you’d have seen that it was immediately after talking about how others would perceive your post.
To put it simply, I think statements like “yt people bad” or any of the variants are too reductive for their explanations to ultimately matter, regardless of merit.
Nothing about what I’ve said has deviated from this message.
By the way, no I chose my words carefully. I never stated that this post or these comments would be seen on other platforms. It seems like the only issue you have with what I’ve said is that I didn’t preface it with “If you speak like this on other platforms.”.
Beyond which, you realize that before this conversation it wasn’t like I was totally unaware of what oppression was? It’s not like I lived in a bubble, I just don’t like how conversations about this topic always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.
It’s funny to me that you refer to any of this as a “conversation”. Obfuscating my points by conflating both of my subjects (you and the person who sparked the thread), being “confused” despite the fact that I was very clear with my words, arbitrarily deciding that I must just disagree that oppression is real; all of these things point to debatelord tactics. I am mortified for the people you speak to regularly if this is the shit you put them through during “conversation”.
Lastly, what point is there in trying to refine the opinion of someone who is already aligned morally with you? Why, if we’ve come to a point where we have an understanding, would you point fingers and act as if anything other than complete acceptance of your message is incorrect? Why is there no room for refinement of your perspective? What makes you think that this is any kind of meaningful discourse? Especially when you take into consideration that your response implies that you don’t speak like this on other platforms?
On literally any platform with a sizeable userbase (lurkers)? Absolutely not, the net result is ultimately in favor of polarization.
and later on, clarifying that this was in reference to social media platforms:
Yes, I addressed this. If you’d read what I said, I very clearly stated that on Lemmy it’s likely fine. On any major social media site, it isn’t.
and to your point i did notice that you said that in reference to how people not on lemmy would respond to a post on lemmy. the underlying assumption that i would use the same language reasoning and approach on a different platform is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. people post differently in different places and frankly they probably don’t go 20 replies deep over it in most.
but that’s not at all my only issue or misunderstanding with what youve written.
I don’t think you’ve deviated from your message, i’m trying to understand why you brought it up in the first place when the top commenter didn’t ever say it. i’m trying my best to do so by asking you what you think as opposed to making assumptions and putting words in your mouth.
am i correct in saying that the topic in question that you don’t like becoming racially charged when race is never the real problem with it is how teaching that social change is achieved by being reasonable is a form of whitewashed history?
Do you think Lemmy has a sizeable userbase compared to other platforms? Because I don’t. It’s grown considerably, that does not make it large enough to be directly compared to something like Reddit, Xitter etc.
My only comment to your next point is: why try to convince others that are morally aligned with you? Why waste your time talking to people who won’t disagree with you?
I brought it up in the first place as a meta commentary on how threads like this are perceived on larger platforms. This is not the first time a debate like this has happened, it will not be the last. I was merely examining how something like a reductive statement can backfire unintentionally.
For example, I agreed with everything the original commenter stated. Right up until they brought up how “white people suddenly know how to protest when yadayada”. This statement is what I’m talking about when I say “yt people bad or variants of”. Granted, with explanation the statement makes perfect sense. Without explanation, as is the inevitable conclusion of most reductive statements, sparked the talk about lurkers.
am i correct in saying that the topic in question that you don’t like becoming racially charged when race is never the real problem with it is how teaching that social change is achieved by being reasonable is a form of whitewashed history
You aren’t correct until you make this paragraph make sense. I’m not implying you should be reasonable with fascists.
It’s a hard sentence to parse. I tried to write it a bunch of ways to avoid using “scare quotes” and that’s the best I could come up with.
I’m asking if the topic of this thread, that the conception of social change as achievable through being reasonable is whitewashed history, is the topic around which conversations “always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.”
With that out of the way: how is
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
White people bad? I just can’t figure out how to get there.
As to why I’d try to convince someone morally aligned with me, first of all I’m not sure that you are and second I’m not trying to convince you of anything, I’m asking you questions to try and understand your views. I was explaining before how it would have been fine if the top comment was “white people bad” even though it wasn’t.
I don’t think lemmy is comparable in size to the big social media platforms. I do think that if what I said was as upsetting as you say, there would be a lot more downvotes on it. I don’t think lemmy has the same ideological makeup as the big social media platforms, but look at my response to your glib categorization of the top comment as “white people bad”: 7 to 1 versus your 3 to 7. Even accounting for wildly different ideology here, surely the sub-humans you described earlier are on lemmy in greater proportion than one in eight!
Ok, for one thing it’s more like a paragraph than a sentence. For another, I’m not saying you should be reasonable with the people in power. I’m saying you should be reasonable with the idiots who outnumber you. Because yes, the average American reads at about the 6th to 8th grade level (looked it up to verify after the other response, was a little off). If you genuinely believe that a person who reads at that low of a level looks beyond surface level, I don’t know what to tell you other than you are optimistic verging on naive.
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
Tell me why being white is relevant after the rest of their message when white people aren’t the only ones that are anti-abortion? Tell me exactly why.
Ah yes, big number better than small number. You sure did get me, wow.
Reading level based on school grades has everything to do with a persons vocabulary and ability to parse complex passages. It is not an indicator of a persons ability to understand complex ideas or think deeply.
Being white is relevant because the top poster is talking about
all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement.
Those people are overwhelmingly white. The top poster isn’t talking about people who line up on one side or another, but people who take direct violent action. When it comes to anti-abortion activists those people are white.
The top poster isn’t saying that white people are bad, they’re saying white people know that direct action works and are allowed to use it. That is descriptive of a trait that the racist settler colonial state has, not some hive mind all the white people tap into and use to coordinate their actions to avoid repercussions.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about when you say you don’t think we should be reasonable with the people in power, I asked if the topic of this thread, that the conception of social change as achievable through being reasonable is whitewashed history, is the topic around which conversations “always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.”
I didn’t reference a bunch of Reddit crap to “get” you. I brought it up because it represents a real life measurement that ought to bear out your thesis that people can’t stand what I say but it doesn’t seem to.
Reading level has everything to do with critical thinking. The fact that you’ve even tried to suggest otherwise completely proves that I’ve been wrong in trying to converse with you.
I finally understand what you’ve been trying to ask.
Is the idea that " ‘change can be achieved through being reasonable’ is whitewashed history" the topic around which conversations ‘always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem’.
Just so we’re clear, there are more ways to use quotes than scare quotes. No, the answer is no. People are primed to hate these days, it doesn’t really matter if you’re white skinned or otherwise.
And, if you read what I fucking wrote for the 15th time I actually did answer you. Very clearly. Being reasonable with the people in power is not how change is achieved. Violence is, and the whole god damn point of what I’ve said is that violence is a pretty bad fucking solution for all of us when it’s pointed at the wrong people. Especially at such a critical juncture of human history.
I’m not engaging with you further on this. My advice to you is stop skimming when you read.
In response to your edits: I don’t think we’re morally aligned and I don’t think the average person is incapable of understanding that “white people bad” doesn’t mean white people are bad because of their skin color but instead means that the position they occupy in society is bad.
Where did I decide you believe oppression isn’t real?
If it’s driving you up the wall this much, stop replying. Click the check mark instead of the link and don’t worry about it.
You think that the average person, keep in mind the average person in the United States reads around a 6th to 8th* grade level, will read further than white people bad? That, my good person, is blind optimism.
I’m starting to think you disagree and feel attacked and repulsed y my rhetoric
People think contradictory stuff all the time. I didn’t even realize it was contradictory until you explained that my assumption that you were the person repulsed would mean that you also think oppression isn’t real.
I’m not even sure that I agree that one flows from, implies or requires the other but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it did.
assumption that you were the person repulsed would mean that you also think oppression isn’t real.
Here is proof you do not read. “Disagree and are repulsed”. Disagree. You very clearly stated that you, for some reason, think I disagree with your message.
Edit: sorry, sorry. You said you were beginning to think. Lest I be guilty of the same thing you are. Although, truth be told, with how clearly adversarial you’ve been I doubt that the distinction matters.
Yeah I said that, but I don’t believe that people have internally consistent ideas. Like I said, you could disagree with me and feel repulsed by my words and still believe that oppression exists. It’s not a problem, no one’s gonna whip out the uno contradiction card.
Yes, I addressed this. If you’d read what I said, I very clearly stated that on Lemmy it’s likely fine. On any major social media site, it isn’t.
The exact comment that sparked this entire thread. It’s germane because it is literally the point of the discussion? Do you understand why I’m claiming you don’t read?
You started to get this feeling because you didn’t read what I wrote. I’m sorry I didn’t perfectly MLA format my essay for you, Mr. Debatelord, I’ll do it better next time (I won’t).
You completely assumed I was disagreeing with what you said, when the reality is I’m talking about how the thread is perceived as a whole. You would have understood this if you read what I wrote.
i didn’t ask why you were bringing up people who aren’t here after the fact in response to your statement that on lemmy it was probably okay, i asked it in response to your claim that you were referring to all the different people who would respond to my post. i was asking it because after a month, only you had responded to my post and we had a perfectly fine conversation. even looking at the votes there was no indication that anyone had a problem with my comments.
in direct response to it being likely fine i asked if all this was based on the assumption that i’d talk this way everywhere.
I was asking those questions because it seemed like you were trying to construct a situation where your reasoning held but i didn’t want to make that assumption and accuse you of that so i asked you to elaborate instead.
I wasn’t able to find any variant of “white people bad” in the top comment. if you can point it out that would help me understand. i’ll quote the entire comment here so you don’t have to go looking:
your formatting and structure wasn’t what made me think you were the one who felt attacked and repulsed, it was your use of offensive stereotypes when describing a person i actually needed to orient my responses and thought towards. what i’m specifically referring to is using broken english and invoking “billy the inbred”.
later on, your continued suggestion that people on other social media sites and who would read my comments would respond badly to “white people bad” combined with the fact that I couldn’t find any example of it in the top comment made me think you were bringing something you disagreed with into the conversation and trying to put it on someone else to make space to talk about it (think someone who blames something incidental on a political issue or party: I stub my toe and blame the reTHUGlicans, etc), which dovetails with the idea that its actually you who has some problem with the rhetoric.
but it would have been insulting to assume the worst so i asked questions instead to gain a better understanding.
Edit/tldr: The topic could not have been more meta, and instead of treating it as a meta commentary; you acted like you took it literally and behaved as if I was throwing up strawmen or secretly disagreeing with you. This is why I scoff at the idea that you want me to think this is a conversation, when that was very clearly never your intent.
Can you tell me where I brought up other social media platforms? Because if you had read what I wrote you’d have seen that it was immediately after talking about how others would perceive your post.
Nothing about what I’ve said has deviated from this message.
By the way, no I chose my words carefully. I never stated that this post or these comments would be seen on other platforms. It seems like the only issue you have with what I’ve said is that I didn’t preface it with “If you speak like this on other platforms.”.
Beyond which, you realize that before this conversation it wasn’t like I was totally unaware of what oppression was? It’s not like I lived in a bubble, I just don’t like how conversations about this topic always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.
It’s funny to me that you refer to any of this as a “conversation”. Obfuscating my points by conflating both of my subjects (you and the person who sparked the thread), being “confused” despite the fact that I was very clear with my words, arbitrarily deciding that I must just disagree that oppression is real; all of these things point to debatelord tactics. I am mortified for the people you speak to regularly if this is the shit you put them through during “conversation”.
Lastly, what point is there in trying to refine the opinion of someone who is already aligned morally with you? Why, if we’ve come to a point where we have an understanding, would you point fingers and act as if anything other than complete acceptance of your message is incorrect? Why is there no room for refinement of your perspective? What makes you think that this is any kind of meaningful discourse? Especially when you take into consideration that your response implies that you don’t speak like this on other platforms?
your reference directly to other platforms:
and later on, clarifying that this was in reference to social media platforms:
and to your point i did notice that you said that in reference to how people not on lemmy would respond to a post on lemmy. the underlying assumption that i would use the same language reasoning and approach on a different platform is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. people post differently in different places and frankly they probably don’t go 20 replies deep over it in most.
but that’s not at all my only issue or misunderstanding with what youve written.
I don’t think you’ve deviated from your message, i’m trying to understand why you brought it up in the first place when the top commenter didn’t ever say it. i’m trying my best to do so by asking you what you think as opposed to making assumptions and putting words in your mouth.
am i correct in saying that the topic in question that you don’t like becoming racially charged when race is never the real problem with it is how teaching that social change is achieved by being reasonable is a form of whitewashed history?
Do you think Lemmy has a sizeable userbase compared to other platforms? Because I don’t. It’s grown considerably, that does not make it large enough to be directly compared to something like Reddit, Xitter etc.
My only comment to your next point is: why try to convince others that are morally aligned with you? Why waste your time talking to people who won’t disagree with you?
I brought it up in the first place as a meta commentary on how threads like this are perceived on larger platforms. This is not the first time a debate like this has happened, it will not be the last. I was merely examining how something like a reductive statement can backfire unintentionally.
For example, I agreed with everything the original commenter stated. Right up until they brought up how “white people suddenly know how to protest when yadayada”. This statement is what I’m talking about when I say “yt people bad or variants of”. Granted, with explanation the statement makes perfect sense. Without explanation, as is the inevitable conclusion of most reductive statements, sparked the talk about lurkers.
You aren’t correct until you make this paragraph make sense. I’m not implying you should be reasonable with fascists.
It’s a hard sentence to parse. I tried to write it a bunch of ways to avoid using “scare quotes” and that’s the best I could come up with.
I’m asking if the topic of this thread, that the conception of social change as achievable through being reasonable is whitewashed history, is the topic around which conversations “always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.”
With that out of the way: how is
White people bad? I just can’t figure out how to get there.
As to why I’d try to convince someone morally aligned with me, first of all I’m not sure that you are and second I’m not trying to convince you of anything, I’m asking you questions to try and understand your views. I was explaining before how it would have been fine if the top comment was “white people bad” even though it wasn’t.
I don’t think lemmy is comparable in size to the big social media platforms. I do think that if what I said was as upsetting as you say, there would be a lot more downvotes on it. I don’t think lemmy has the same ideological makeup as the big social media platforms, but look at my response to your glib categorization of the top comment as “white people bad”: 7 to 1 versus your 3 to 7. Even accounting for wildly different ideology here, surely the sub-humans you described earlier are on lemmy in greater proportion than one in eight!
Ok, for one thing it’s more like a paragraph than a sentence. For another, I’m not saying you should be reasonable with the people in power. I’m saying you should be reasonable with the idiots who outnumber you. Because yes, the average American reads at about the 6th to 8th grade level (looked it up to verify after the other response, was a little off). If you genuinely believe that a person who reads at that low of a level looks beyond surface level, I don’t know what to tell you other than you are optimistic verging on naive.
Tell me why being white is relevant after the rest of their message when white people aren’t the only ones that are anti-abortion? Tell me exactly why.
Ah yes, big number better than small number. You sure did get me, wow.
Reading level based on school grades has everything to do with a persons vocabulary and ability to parse complex passages. It is not an indicator of a persons ability to understand complex ideas or think deeply.
Being white is relevant because the top poster is talking about
Those people are overwhelmingly white. The top poster isn’t talking about people who line up on one side or another, but people who take direct violent action. When it comes to anti-abortion activists those people are white.
The top poster isn’t saying that white people are bad, they’re saying white people know that direct action works and are allowed to use it. That is descriptive of a trait that the racist settler colonial state has, not some hive mind all the white people tap into and use to coordinate their actions to avoid repercussions.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about when you say you don’t think we should be reasonable with the people in power, I asked if the topic of this thread, that the conception of social change as achievable through being reasonable is whitewashed history, is the topic around which conversations “always become racially charged despite that never being the real problem.”
I didn’t reference a bunch of Reddit crap to “get” you. I brought it up because it represents a real life measurement that ought to bear out your thesis that people can’t stand what I say but it doesn’t seem to.
Reading level has everything to do with critical thinking. The fact that you’ve even tried to suggest otherwise completely proves that I’ve been wrong in trying to converse with you.
I finally understand what you’ve been trying to ask.
Just so we’re clear, there are more ways to use quotes than scare quotes. No, the answer is no. People are primed to hate these days, it doesn’t really matter if you’re white skinned or otherwise.
And, if you read what I fucking wrote for the 15th time I actually did answer you. Very clearly. Being reasonable with the people in power is not how change is achieved. Violence is, and the whole god damn point of what I’ve said is that violence is a pretty bad fucking solution for all of us when it’s pointed at the wrong people. Especially at such a critical juncture of human history.
I’m not engaging with you further on this. My advice to you is stop skimming when you read.
In response to your edits: I don’t think we’re morally aligned and I don’t think the average person is incapable of understanding that “white people bad” doesn’t mean white people are bad because of their skin color but instead means that the position they occupy in society is bad.
Where did I decide you believe oppression isn’t real?
If it’s driving you up the wall this much, stop replying. Click the check mark instead of the link and don’t worry about it.
You think that the average person, keep in mind the average person in the United States reads around a 6th to 8th* grade level, will read further than white people bad? That, my good person, is blind optimism.
Idk, maybe when you wrote this.
*Edited for accuracy.
People think contradictory stuff all the time. I didn’t even realize it was contradictory until you explained that my assumption that you were the person repulsed would mean that you also think oppression isn’t real.
I’m not even sure that I agree that one flows from, implies or requires the other but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it did.
Here is proof you do not read. “Disagree and are repulsed”. Disagree. You very clearly stated that you, for some reason, think I disagree with your message.
Edit: sorry, sorry. You said you were beginning to think. Lest I be guilty of the same thing you are. Although, truth be told, with how clearly adversarial you’ve been I doubt that the distinction matters.
I don’t know what else to say.
Yeah I said that, but I don’t believe that people have internally consistent ideas. Like I said, you could disagree with me and feel repulsed by my words and still believe that oppression exists. It’s not a problem, no one’s gonna whip out the uno contradiction card.
Ugh, this is why I called it over in the other reply. Debatelord tactics are fucking slimy.