I wrote a long argument but deleted it all in favor of this. Everyone needs to toughen the fuck up and stop being offended so easily. Someone insults you for being different? Welcome to real life, get some thicker skin.
Edit: Here, I'll put it better: by telling people from historically disadvantaged groups to buck up and be quiet, you're effectively saying, "I reject your understanding of your experiences, so your perspective is invalid."
There is no virtue in being less privileged, and more privileged aren't necessarily morally bankrupt.
Not at all. Humans naturally assume their experiences and perspectives are generally shared; it's just the way we function. In this case, it makes dealing with the problems of society difficult because if you don't have those problems, you generally are unware of them and their true impact. "Let them eat cake", said one privileged person.
Generally, it results in people thinking an issue isn't a big priority or can be put off. It isn't keeping them up at night, after all. See MLK's writing on it, which I posted here:
The phrase asks the speaker to reevaluate their unspoken assumptions. I think 'lighten up and accept that the world is shitty' is a reactionary mode of thought, as if the 'real world' is a vast, static, unassailable entity and not an ever-changing tapestry of human activity. It is not a reasoned argument, it is not a response in a conversation, it is a demand that people shut the fuck up because the things they care about aren't worth caring about.
"check your privilege" is a diplomatic and concise way of saying 'you have no fucking idea what you're talking about, and yet you feel entitled to control the conversation; maybe stop doing that?'.
Anotherwords, it's passive-aggressive bullying and belongs in the same category as telling a woman to stop worrying her pretty little head about such issues.
He loved the media because he knew it was his best ally. The media loved him because he was courageous.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
Their response would be that they definitely don't have to ask you for permission to speak up.
MLK behaved like an adult while his oppressors behaved like animals. That's what gave him the moral high ground.
Today's world is one where we've made progress, but now the majority is tired of the minority pointing out its flaws. One side wants equality, and the other side is tired of hearing about how the system that clearly benefits them in ways that they don't even see is flawed.
It's hard to get a mediocre white man to agree that affirmative action is necessary. All he sees is the opportunity that someone else got because of their race and ability to keep up with the privileged.
I also don't think that "I reject your understanding of your experience, so your perspective is invalid" is an unreasonable thing to say. Sometimes people don't understand their experiences, and as a result, they misjudge the nature of reality.
The recent controversy at Yale over cultural appropriation in Halloween costumes is a good example: there were students saying that they couldn't go to class because they didn't feel safe after a professor made an argument that avoidance of cultural appropriation had to be balanced with free speech. I do reject that understanding of their experience; they experienced nothing that indicated they should feel unsafe. Nothing about the professor's measured statement of disagreement indicates danger. Their perspective on that topic was invalid.
People's feelings aren't always valid; everyone is wrong some portion of the time. And that's true of disadvantaged people, too. If we accept the rule that every opinion from an underprivileged person is correct, we're opening ourselves to all sorts of wrong ideas. And if we discard all dissenting opinions from privileged people, we're closing ourselves to all sorts of correct ideas. Truth is not solely given to the disadvantaged.
"We all have existential fears; that if you do or permit certain things, bad stuff will happen. If the center doesn't hold, we'll have chaos. If you don't have fears like that, then you don't have a conscience, and nothing personal but I'll lock my doors when you're around.When we don't recognize our own existential fears, then we assume that our viewpoint is identical to objective fact. This is not to say that morality is relative, but simply that the map isn't the territory."
A lot of political tribalism is triggering, or playing off of, existential fear responses. The more sophisticated and malevolent actors in this seek to trigger the existential fear response in their opponents enough to cause a violent backlash while staying just on this side of the law themselves, so that they point at their opponents and claim "they started it!".
Generally this kind of behavior is called bullying, and ought to stop. And while calls for a more civil discourse are certainly warranted, it is not enough. People need to gather their resolve and learn to distinguish between someone who is actually an existential threat and someone who is just trying to trigger you.
Or would that be disastrous to the point of the forum?
For example, a perennial topic around here is a lack of diversity in the software industry. My personal opinion is that a) for a variety of reasons, men and women have had different levels of interest in developing software, and b) these differences in of themselves are not a cause for concern.
I'm well aware that some consider this view misogynist. But what is the point of discussing a topic such as diversity if only "approved" viewpoints are welcomed? That would turn Hacker News into an echo chamber.
By who? I would be surprised if someone said that. You might be worrying too much, but maybe I don't know. Can you provide a link to someone saying that?
If their numbers were such that they could force all the technology posts off the front page and flood the site with mountain biking posts and pictures, should Hacker News morph in MTB News?
Most sites suffer from an Eternal September sooner or later. If new people start making very low-quality insult comments, and other new people flood those comments with upvotes, should discussions turn into toxic flame wars, because that’s what garners votes? Should the Hacker News discussion become YouTube comment threads?
The idea that votes should triumph over moderation presumes a certain critical mass of people who consistently vote in favour of quality. But given enough time, and enough success, exceptions to this take place. And when they do, if left unchecked, the site can degrade very rapidly, as the original core people get outvoted and give up.
Hacker News exists in part because this happened to Reddit. If left to become an absolute, unmoderated “democracy,” it will happen to Hacker News was well.
I will close with a reference to the word “democracy.” Countries have a lot of friction associated with citizenship. Most people don’t leave when things stink, they try to make it better for generations before fleeing and becoming refugees somewhere else. Most countries don’t allow absolutely everyone to show up and vote on everything.
The lack of friction associated with joining and leaving social media sites makes the business of “democracy” on social media very different than the business of democracy in the US or Canada.
http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
My opinion (copied from another post I made awhile ago):
I happily would accept unfairness, and suffer its slings and arrows myself, for a higher signal-to-noise ratio. I'd happily lose a few good comments in return for of better quality overall (i.e., false-positives are not really a big deal - so what if my good comment occasionally gets voted down or otherwise buried).
By prioritizing quality over fairness HN can best distinguish itself from a million noise-filled alternatives where 'rights' [or democracy] are the priority. Everyone has a right to their opinions, but not to my time.
And while we're on the subject, would "People need to stop getting offended so easily. You're told to sit at the back of the bus? Welcome to real life, get some thicker skin" be a valid argument, or would it be fallacious? (It's stronger than the offered argument, because in 1955, in real life, you actually did get arrested if you put up a fight about sitting at the back of the bus.)
Black kids are saying they feel unsafe, and you're suggesting they're overreacting.
What gives you the confidence to think you know them and their situations better than they do themselves? Perhaps you need to do some personal interrogation.
Instead, one has to ask: why is this happening? At least from where I'm sitting, it's clear that a lot of these recent flare-ups have been caused by previously disenfranchised groups finally getting their voices heard in the popular media. Sometimes they go too far, but there's a lot of repressed anger in the air from years and decades of mistreatment. If your solution is to yell at them to shut the fuck up, it will backfire. Horribly.
Also, not all cases of someone insulting you for being different are equal. Some are in-the-moment, sure. But some carry the weight of decades of hatred behind them. Equating the two invalidates the severity of the latter and keeps marginalized groups marginalized.
I think reaching for the "PC culture" argument is the easy way out. It would do us all a lot of good to try to put ourselves in the adverserial party's shoes, even if we might (vehemently) disagree with their actions.
The topic has to be approached with extreme sensitivity.