Comment by mind-blight

Comment by mind-blight 10 days ago

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I know someone who works for a university in event planning. They were putting together an event for a civil rights icon. Because of the new policies, they were forced to go through all of the brochures and pamphlets and censor any use of words such as "racism" and "black" (when referring to the man's skin color).

They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against racism" about a civil rights icon without losing millions in funding. I have no idea how someone can argue that this kind of censorship targeting universities is acceptable

mantas 10 days ago

It is not acceptable. But at the same time the US „antiracist“ campaign itself looks just like (reverse) racism in many case. Two unacceptables don’t cancel each other out. But you reap what you saw.

Just my 2 euro cents.

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  • bsder 9 days ago

    > But at the same time the US „antiracist“ campaign itself looks just like (reverse) racism in many case.

    And what do you propose instead? I'm not seeing the EU doing any better than the US with their lowest socioeconomic class groups.

    Talking points are nifty. But, at some point, you have to propose an actual solution that does something.

    Bigotry exists. What are you going to do about it? It seems that the most popular answers right now vary from "Not a goddamn thing" to "Fuck those bastards."

    (In reality, I'm pessimistic that there is much that can be actively done. The bigots who threw slurs at my immigrant ancestors didn't so much get better as much as just change epithets and targets. Sadly, so it goes.)

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    • mantas 9 days ago

      > And what do you propose instead? I'm not seeing the EU doing any better than the US with their lowest socioeconomic class groups.

      Key word „socioeconomic“ groups. It should not be racist policies based on skin color. Help poor people, help people growing up in shitty neighbourhods. True diversity is people with different life experiences. Sometimes it correlates with skin color, sometimes it doesn't. Just like poor economic situation and shitty upbringing.

      > Bigotry exists. What are you going to do about it? It seems that the most popular answers right now vary from "Not a goddamn thing" to "Fuck those bastards."

      Of course. Including among those so-called „anti racists“.

      Slightly offtoic, but it's funny that modern „antifa“ is one of the most authoritarian-minded people I've met. While a good chunk of far-right people are full-on anarchistic-minded people. With about equal amount of bigotry on either side. People loooove abusing labels to further their agenda.

      > (In reality, I'm pessimistic that there is much that can be actively done. The bigots who threw slurs at my immigrant ancestors didn't so much get better as much as just change epithets and targets. Sadly, so it goes.)

      And then there're bigot immigrants who talk shit about locals. My country was a major source of migration two decades ago and it's horrible what our people would say about locals. Now tables switched and we got more incoming migration. And now we're on the other side of the same transaction guests not respecting our culture. Bigots are everywhere. But current policies tend to focus on one side of bigots which just breeds more resent on the other side.

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      • bsder 9 days ago

        > It should not be racist policies based on skin color. Help poor people, help people growing up in shitty neighbourhods.

        That is, in fact, what a lot of those DEI programs did. The problem is that "lower socioeconomic status" is a high correlate proxy for "minority" in the US. There are simply a lot more minorities in the US in the lower socioeconomic brackets.

        The problem, at the end of the day, is that the a lot of the market became zero sum. When there were lots of jobs and lots of college slots, nobody cared so much about affirmative action-type programs.

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CapricornNoble 9 days ago

>They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against racism" about a civil rights icon without losing millions in funding. I have no idea how someone can argue that this kind of censorship targeting universities is acceptable

Sounds like they are being forced to take the Morgan Freeman Approach to Ending Racism: stop talking about race. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2RwJlQdzpE

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diogocp 10 days ago

> They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against racism" about a civil rights icon without losing millions in funding.

They could. They just preferred to play the victim.

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