EAllusion wrote:Honor, you don't appear to think I misread what occurred in the video, so why would you assume I "jumped the gun?" Instead, you seem to think that I have it wrong in describing anything that isn't expressed with intent to convey racial contempt as racist. If you love telling your co-workers racist jokes, but don't do so with the intent to express direct racial contempt, then that's not racist in your view. Just "ignorant" and barely worth anyone's time. That's quite the position you have there, and if you want to make that the basis of your disagreement, then fine. I wouldn't pat yourself on the back about my stubbornness in not agreeing with you, though.
You think racial mocking of Native Americans is, if not fine, at least such a small deal that even acknowledging that it is bad shows poor priorities. I don't. We agree to disagree.
Wow.
I'm pretty clearly saying that a group of kids who responded to a native American drumming and chanting by doing a tomahawk chop and chanting are very easily doing so out of ignorance of why it would be seen as offensive. And that saying this ignorance is irrelevant, their actions should be treated as on par with the assumption they chose to show up in MAGA hats and face down native American demonstrators because Trump! is bad for public discourse because it leaves no room to differentiate between White Nationalists marching in jack boots with torches and a kid who chose to dress up like their favorite basketball player Michael Jordan in black face in the late 80's. Or a Somali-American Congresswoman who relied on anti-Semitic tropes in expressing exasperation with US-Israel relations that ignore Palestinians. But yeah, feel free to say I'm cool with racism as long as someone doesn't mean any harm or whatever you want to paint it as being. That's how you cow people down in this game, right? Make them afraid of being called racist so they can't consider there is something wrong with your argument? Can't imagine how that will do any harm to public discourse...
Or, you know, consider that intentions matter in how the public discourse ought to engage with an incident. Because adulting is hard I guess.
ETA: I do think you misread the video based on your responses on the first page of the other thread, to be clear. Not sure what you mean by that. I think you are continuing to try and reframe the cause for viewing it as, "one of the worst "feel bad" videos I've seen in some time. It's not objectively the worst story out there, but the symbolism is appalling on a level that is difficult to take in." by refocusing on the so-called symbolism instead of acknowledging that behind this are people being unjustly affected by our new, and harmful, national outrage sport. Yeah, I know you said you hoped it wouldn't destroy the kid's life. Yet here we are with the evidence largely having absolved the kid of what he was accused of other than wearing a hat, and what are you doing? Slathering on the symbolism so the kid knows just how racist he actual is and how much his having wore a MAGA hat and looked a guy in the face should haunt him to his dying day...