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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

Handy tip, you probably don't want to say a local, family-owned business that dates back to the 1800's is only worth $35,000. It comes off as elitist and hometown juries hate elitist with a passion.

Best coverage was Legal Insurrection since they actually had people in the courtroom: https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/06/oberlin-college-hit-wi... (summary of coverage at bottom of article)

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I'll heartily endorse Legal Insurrection's coverage, but with the caveat that they've got a bone to pick against "social justice" and leftist campus activism. It doesn't seem to get in the way of them reporting all the relevant facts in a fair way.

interesting. opposition to "social justice" signals an opposition to fairness and equality, and theoretically should be rare.

i wonder if it's the strain of opposition that sees it as zero-sum and resists (i.e., "if things get fairer for the disadvantaged, then i, as an advantaged person, must necessarily lose something")?

or the strain that resists social normalization (e.g., i should be free to offend and belittle others)?

or something else?

even if everyone gains from growing the pie, the desire for relative status seems more powerful than our desire for fairness and equality unfortunately.

Everyone is all for fairness and equality but, as is becoming increasingly clear, "social justice" as a movement has little, if anything, to do with actual fairness or equality. Oberlin College's misbehavior may be at the extremum but it is far from the only example of this.

Even on as pro-left a site as HN, people are realizing that this movement is more of a problem than a force for good and that one can be a liberal without necessarily being a progressive and vice-versa.

but what is "the movement"? the situation here seems like small-time stupidity and jerkiness (of behavior), not a movement.

just to note, group-labeling people tends to undermine openness and short-circuits revelation, so i'd like to avoid that (especially dichotomies like left-right and liberal-conservative).

The social justice movement was responsible for the general expectation in polite society to not misgender trans people, so it's clearly had material benefits. This is not to say that there aren't extreme elements, but shifting the center of gravity of society to a fairer place does involve some extreme elements.

It's like how RMS is the crazy extremist free software guy, and that gives the rest of us cover to share our or our employers' code freely with the world.

Qualifying “justice” makes it not justice. Is any student at Oberlin substantially “disadvantaged” or are they playacting a story they tell themselves?

The situation reminds me of the part in Foster-Wallace’s address to Kenyon college where he described his default negative mindset toward folks who drive gas guzzling SUVs. The audience hoots and applauds the viewpoint and Foster-Wallace has to stop them saying no, no, my point is to break out of that mindset. Similarly to the Kenyon crowd, my guess is that the Oberlin crowd didn’t pause a moment to step out of their default mindset and realize that their pursuit of “social justice” drove them to injustice.

Best listened to rather than read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Water

Opposition to "social justice" typically signals that one does not believe that "social justice" equates to fairness and equality.

>opposition to "social justice" signals an opposition to fairness and equality,

That's like a pro-lifer wondering how anyone could be against "life," or a communist wondering why anybody would be against the proletariat, or a capitalist wondering why anybody would be against freedom. You have to go beyond the dictionary definition of the word, and beyond the most abstract and noble stated goals of the movement, to understand why anyone would be against anything.

There is a form of the SJW movement that eschews “Liberalism” as basically being nothing more then the representation of the power of the oppressor rather then being a bedrock set of principles necessary for democracy and civil society. They have been vocal in demanding that those that would impress by any means (including speech) be suppressed and de-platformed or “canceled“. The systems that protect viewpoints that diverge or protect oppressors are must be removed. You see this not only with speech, but also things as basic as right to consul, right to face your accuser, right to a fair and speed trial - Under title 9 at college.

It’s basically the same authoritarianism that hard core Trump fans embrace, but on the left.

Not that I disagree with you (quite the opposite) but, please, let's not use that three letter acronym. It's needlessly provocative and is likely to derail the discussion.

most people would agree that authoritarianism is bad, and it's infections are certainly not bounded by the limits of one political party or one poltical ideology.

so why not peel apart oppressive behavior from social justice and just denounce that by itself? why does it need to be lumped in with social justice?

Leonard French had a good live stream yesterday going through everything too. Lawful Masses on YouTube for those interested.

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