I am not a racist...

[wildhogs91]

I listed 2 swapcards with sooty and sweep and a golly from rupert bear..no mention of the word gollywog, and i accept it upset someone, but the weird thing is if you look up black doll there are heaps of gollys ...

[shoppingbag*]

"Racist" is the most overused word in the English language, used by those who seek out things to be offended by.   Little kids must be confused about the rainbow sheep (we can no longer call them by their correct color) Someone told my son he looked very white, to which he replied "thank you" I guess if he wanted to take offence it would be no different to the other side of the coin, but I guess no-one would ban the word "white"

[springyzone]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

The anecdote with the microphone is, of course, a ridiculous example, but the world has not "gone mad". To believe that, you would have to believe that one example is always representative of the way everyone who can be lumped into a single group, believes and thinks the same way, and that is literally impossible.

There are always individual examples of people across the entire spectrum of political leanings who are able to be paraded as an example to ridicule an entire movement, group or ideology, but those who do that are being extremely disingenuous, even if they don't know it.

The fundamental core of any leftist ideology is to reduce harm and maximise well-being. If there are things in the world that cause more harm by existing than they do by not existing, it makes sense to remove them. Some people not seeing the harm they can cause doesn't mean they don't cause harm. 

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I agree with your summing up, that people often use extreme examples to support or argue against an idea.

And that some things or attitudes cause trouble in the world.

But I think what is up for debate is what actually causes harm and how far censorship should go. We are talking here of a vintage swap card with a golly from Rupert Bear. It is probably not going to be bought for a child but a collector.

[digital*ghost]

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@springyzone wrote:

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We are talking here of a vintage swap card with a golly from Rupert Bear. It is probably not going to be bought for a child but a collector.

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I wasn't talking about that at all, I was responding to a much broader post.

You also didn't address my last line - the one that said "just because people don't see the harm something causes, doesn't mean it doesn't cause harm". 

On that note, if someone tells you something causes them harm, you can't debate that, you can either choose to believe and respect it, or... not.

[springyzone]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

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@springyzone wrote:

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We are talking here of a vintage swap card with a golly from Rupert Bear. It is probably not going to be bought for a child but a collector.

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I wasn't talking about that at all, I was responding to a much broader post.

You also didn't address my last line - the one that said "just because people don't see the harm something causes, doesn't mean it doesn't cause harm". 

On that note, if someone tells you something causes them harm, you can't debate that, you can either choose to believe and respect it, or... not.

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I guess it is a philosophical discussion in a sense then.🙂

Granted that just because people don't see the harm something causes, doesn't mean it doesn't cause harm, or that if someone feels something is harmful to them, we can't debate that that is a genuine feeling they have.

On the other hand, we have, as you mentioned earlier, a situation of extremes. For example, we have chameleon's example where someone took exception to the word mute.

There is no doubting that the person felt the word was harmful.

But what is doubtful is if most other people did. 

So we come to the question of what path do we take, as there will never be a situation where 100% of people agree.

And we also have to question if the word mute itself is  considered evil by the woman. Is her stance that it can only be applied to people & not objects or is it that a disability must never be alluded to at all? that aspect we don't know.

I suppose my concern is that I know attitudes change over time but I feel that at the moment, there are forces at work to ensure that what are minority views in many cases are enforced on the majority.

[digital*ghost]

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@springyzone wrote:

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I suppose my concern is that I know attitudes change over time but I feel that at the moment, there are forces at work to ensure that what are minority views in many cases are enforced on the majority.

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I did acknowledge that the mic example was ridiculous, but minority views being adopted by the majority is often how social change and progress actually happens. "Minority" doesn't mean not enough to be significant or worthwhile, for a lot of people it just means they don't know / understand / respect / believe how significant and worthwhile it actually is.

It isn't always philosophical, either - "harm" is difficult to quantify, but the effects of that harm can often be borne out in data quite easily.