If you are genuinely seeking new information, great! But you should do your homework first, which includes finding the right person to ask the question to.
I am confused on how this would work in practice. What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking?
"Why should I pay for taxes to support single mothers just so black men don't have to pay child support?"
Now, I think we should still encourage them to ask those kinds of questions, because I believe in an open and liberal society and that the best reaction to poor thinking is to address it directly, that the answer to speech I don't like is more speech. But it's pretty easy for some really racist opinions about others to hide behind questions like that.
Of course, there are also some uncomfortable truths in those questions which cause us to silence them, such as -- "Are the disparaties we see in racial groups purely the effect of lingering racial bias, or is there a modern cultural component that happens to align with racial groups and perpetuates the inequality?" (And in this case -- the more general, is there a disparity in the fatherhood rates that correlates with racial grouping?)
Ed: I think the people downvoting proved someone upthread's point -- I literally provided an example I've heard of such a question and got downvoted for providing facts to a discussion.
I'm not saying we give them a megaphone, but if bigotry is prevalent (and it seems to be), then the best antidote is to expose it and address that directly.
Why?
Simple. Bigots are bigots for reasons -- even if they're not (in our esteem) good ones. You can't address the symptom (bigotry) without addressing the cause (those reasons).
Your method only leads to wounds festering under bandages, and not the exposure and cleansing we need for healing.
From my understanding of social media, it hasn't been workable trying to stop outright racist comments being hurled at those marginalized people -- so I just can't agree that not actually addressing the cause so we don't hypothetically do less damage than is actually being done right now by the problem is a workable idea. That's the kind of squeamish bargaining done by people without the stomach to tackle complex or hard topics: "Can't we all just get along without it being messy!"
Your complaint is like saying that surgery hurts, can't we just let the infection fester? The surgery doesn't even hurt as much as the infection! Why would we do that?
This is, for the moment, setting aside that we could work with technology to do better at time/place of those questions and filtering so the stream isn't overwhelming for (or even involuntarily sent to) any particular marginalized person. And so at a technical level, you're solving the problem in an inefficient way (trying to legislate human nature versus changing how we route text online).
More so that it just hasn't been tried.
"so I just can't agree that not actually addressing the cause so we don't hypothetically do less damage than is actually being done right now by the problem is a workable idea."
What do you mean by "addressing the cause"? Taking the leading question seriously? That clearly hasn't worked. The answers to those things are out there. The people repeating these questions are not interested in answers. They just want to get their bigotry out there to try and make it seem mainstream.
"Your complaint is like saying that surgery hurts, can't we just let the infection fester? The surgery doesn't even hurt as much as the infection! Why would we do that?"
But your answer is like, "Let's amputate the leg!" When the infection is nowhere near the leg.
I takes time, effort, and empathy to try and unpack the real meaning behind questions like that -- effort that we don't invest when we allow ourselves the shortcut of just calling them "racist" to end the conversation.
I don't think we can move forward as a society -- and are even regressing -- because we've stopped unpacking what the other person is trying to say and started short-circuiting that process of human interaction with thought terminating cliches. It sincerely scares me how many people derive great joy in that kind of unthinking censorship.
Implies people who have to take on welfare as sustenance haven't worked hard enough, and so are undeserving of any help, are therefore inferior and an unjust drain on resources ... and you can take that down the road a little while depending on context ...
edit: Tucker Carlson on Fox News does this very often.
Every time?
But my two hypothetical quotes were simply examples of the attitude that is so common, not explicitly trying to accurately characterize the parent or GP.
In particular, paragraph 2
"What about this guy" doesn't really help here.
Are you arguing that it's a bad example, or asking in good faith why it is a good example?
Also, that was an either-or question...
That would be a totally legitimate question, if we lived in a colour-blind world. Or in a world where institutional racism has not been well-documented for decades. Or a world where driving while black was not a reason to get pulled over. We don't, though.
Or, the Canadian equivalent:
"Why are natives complaining about the government, when they don't pay any taxes?"
That would be a totally legitimate question, if we lived in a world where native people did not pay taxes. We don't, though.
That actually sounds like quite an important question to ask. And difficult to phrase without sounding racist, which makes it even more important to ask.
If you assume someone is more racist than average just because they ask such a question, you are the bigot.
If your follow up to "Why do blacks even have a problem with the police?" is "all they have to do is stop commiting crimes!" then it is the second statement that is explicitly racist. With the second statement you make the claim that the fault of police abuse lies in the abused, not the abusers, and that black people have no reason to mistrust the police except for the obvious fact that they are criminals.
The racist part is that the question assumes there is no precursor, or unstated factors.
>>KekDemaga: I am confused on how this would work in practice. What kinds of questions do you propose these bigoted people are asking?
Crazy to watch a near-literal explosion in this arguably off-topic sub-discussion "just" asking for concrete examples of loaded questions. Am I the only one hearing the imaginary yet ear-splittingly-loud whooshing sound (going "over their head") as people are gearing up and jumping in here? What an amazing demonstration of the power of words as HN users can't resist reacting to examples of inflamatory questions even when they are specifically requested and provided (some even with disclaimers) _as examples_!
As an aside, it is almost impossible for me to even begin to differentiate between the naive/geniune vs. trolls vs. devils advocates vs. others (hope that covers most of the bases) at all levels of this sub-thread.