One man convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan members to give up their robes (2017)
npr.org
npr.org
The view that anyone who has ever so much as uttered a racist word a decade ago should be ostracized and unemployable for the rest of their lives seems counterproductive if the goal is to reduce racism rather than punish racists.
Not everybody has the time or the temperament to befriend a racist, but we should make it clear that it's the ignorant ideology and not the individual that is the problem and that being abandoned by their old friends won't mean never being accepted by anyone else.
Colonial settlers were (largely) Protestants, and up until 2012, they were the religious majority in America. Protestantism provides overwhelming support for punishment due to the ideas of biblical literalism, inherent sin, and the belief that physical punishment can be a spiritual lesson. I mean, people are called bad parents because they don't spank their kids.
Obviously, this permeates a lot of American culture and viewpoints when it comes to non-familial punishment. I think even if we do see a large shift in religious views in America, these views will stay because they're so ingrained in the culture.
I disagree. I'd argue that much of America actually does have a fetish/obsession when it comes to punishment and an unwillingness to forgive is just one aspect of that same sick impulse. It's partly to blame for the fact that the US locks up more of its own citizens than any other nation on Earth and why prisoners are routinely subjected to inhumane conditions and torture.
You can point out to an American how prisoners are denied healthcare, denied basic personal hygiene products, kept in solitary confinement, beaten, raped, and forced to eat maggot infested food, and there's a good chance you'll be told that's a good thing and that if anything prisoners have it "too good". People who serve their time and who have paid their debt to society are still widely discriminated against and have problems finding work and housing. Even things like the sex offender registry are inappropriate tools intended to allow people to continue to be punished. If someone is a genuine danger to others they should be behind bars, but otherwise they should be allowed to rebuild their life in peace. There is wide support for tough on crime polices even though research shows them to be ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.
You can see the American obsession with punishment in how police abuses are permitted and how even extrajudicial executions are often considered justified by the public for even the most minor failure to obey an officer's every instruction. In schools zero-tolerance policies carry extremely harsh punishments and literal children (including first graders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8DWqMWJdy8) are handcuffed and arrested for nothing more than acting like children and the school-to-prison pipeline is a uniquely American problem. The US is one of only 5 developed countries that still allow for state-sanctioned killing as a punishment.
It isn't just in the justice system either. A person can spend decades paying taxes that are supposed to entitle them to a safety net in case they fall on rough times, but plenty of people will say that anyone getting food stamps should be punished by not being allowed to spend what little assistance they get on "luxuries" like soda or birthday cakes for their children. I've even seen people argue against birth control because women, especially young women, should be punished with pregnancy or STDs just for having sex.
There's a certain segment of the population which seems as obsessed with others getting the punishment they supposedly "deserve" as they are fearful about others getting good things when they supposedly don't "deserve" them.
Free thinking, intellectualism, basics of honesty and truth become only suggestions when moral feelings are involved.
Puritanism is defined by its reactionary and emotionally manipulative position. It has a focus on punishment that perpetuates the cycle. It's drama, it makes people feel good that they "punished" others because it gives them egotistical power.
It is also why this phenomenon is so widely gripping the U.S. and not elsewhere.
Also, people need to actually change. I've had friends who were transphobic I had to stop being friends with (not that I completely ostracized them but I stopped inviting them to things) because it wouldn't be fair to my trans friends to have them around.