Diversity has benefits and costs - it is neither good nor bad.
People, or groups of people in a democracy, need to decide what level of diversity they would like to pursue.
Personally, as someone who can live anywhere, I've chosen (and continue to choose) a very diverse place (the United States - specifically California).
I like living with people who invent jazz music and snowboarding and the Internet and I am willing to pay costs like some decreased degree of social cohesion and trust.
Other people, or groups, might have a different cost/benefit analysis and that is not wrong - nor is it wrong to pursue those aims democratically.
The lynchpin is that every four years, a handful of the most disagreeable people rile up the rest to place one of two bets out of many, and if anyone doesn't bet the exact same way as their riler, they might as well be betting for the other riler, which is an intolerable act.
This is how the USA votes, and it's hard for people to separate what amounts to a behavior they must abide to 25% of their adult lives from the remaining time.
This is how we maintain our two parties: the GOP, and the people who don't have much else in common besides their dislike of the GOP.
> Do not confuse disagreeing with someone as that person being morally sub-human
If your disagreement with that person is about whether someone else is considered less of a human than they are (by dint of race, wealth, sexuality, whatever), it's probably ok to consider them morally bankrupt on that basis.
No, it's actually not, because people have different moral foundations, and many people value loyalty/authority/sanctity over care/fairness. It doesn't mean they don't care about care/fairness, it just means they don't make it their moral priority.
If you refuse to engage with these people and view them all as sub-human there's no path forward for society.
You can't build a functioning society that embraces people who reject the humanity of its other members. Or rather, you can build a society that way, but the moment that opinion is accepted you are on the road to terrible persecution of that out-group, whoever they are.
A pluralistic society can handle many different viewpoints, but it cannot give them equal value or acceptance.
Of course you can't, however many people have different definitions of "rejecting humanity" and you don't get to just define that however you want and then make anyone who doesn't agree with your definition the de facto outgroup.
If someone has "moral foundations" that cause them to think that, for example, a particular race of people is not worthy of life, I will refuse to engage with them in reasonable debate. There's no midpoint between nazis and non-nazis; the nazis are wrong and should be handled by force.
This may or may not be the case with ICE, the GOP, etc. but fundamentally there are some people who should not be engaged with in this way.
Abortion is a great example here. One side thinks their opponents want total control over women's reproductive systems while the other side thinks their opponents are fine killing babies as long as they haven't actually made it through the birth canal yet.
Very few people think they aren't the good guys in their own narratives, and what's moral isn't an obvious choice in a lot of situations.
Hey hey. You're opposing loyalty, authority and sanctity to fairness. This is already a caricature of ideological positions different from yours.
Most people you violently disagree with have probably a different view of fairness than you do, and think that your opinions and goals are plainly unfair, as much as you think the same about them.
I'm so baffled by this comment. It's saying that there's no path forward when refusing to engage with people/viewing people as subhuman, as an argument for the benefit of people who view others as subhuman! WTF?
A lot of the developing world are still deeply homophobic. Are all those people morally bankrupt and unworthy of a place in the hallowed gardens of equality?
Maybe a point of view is crafted through a life's worth of conditioning and experience. We seem comfortable accepting that fact when considering social conditioning over other issues, but when it comes to conservatism we draw the line - they are the evil others.
Unable to see how they are the sum of their life's experiences we draw up the lines, dig in our heels and choose our side - and in doing so force the other group to take a side.
I have a lot of family who have views which would terrify liberals, but I know these people are also not evil but just have had their own life circumstances shape their views.
Maybe people need to travel outside their comfort zones a little more...
> Are all those people morally bankrupt and unworthy of a place in the hallowed gardens of equality?
I would say that places in the "hallowed gardens of equality" are for those who believe in equality, not those who consider any set of other people as lesser.
> and in doing so force the other group to take a side.
No-one forces anyone to be racist, homophobic, etc.
> have had their own life circumstances shape their views.
That sounds like the "economic anxiety" excuse for racism.
There is a problem with this view because all groups of people are essentially (statistically) the same and are in fact shaped by their environment. What I mean is, if you were born in their world, you would statistically share similar views to them right? Or are you saying that you are somehow naturally morally superior to them and would resist these bigoted view if you were born in their shoes? I don't think so... so given that we must accept that our views do largely come from our environment right? If so is it not our job to try and change/convince them that this views are wrong, i.e. enlighten them? What I mean is you don't have to accept their opinions as valid or equal, but people absolutely should engage with people that hold very different, even reprehensible viewpoints. Otherwise they and their environment will not change and the cycle continues...
From what I've seen over the last few years, this pretty much gets right to the heart of how this kind of push to shape discourse and control what's possible to say is justified: the people pushing for it really, truly believe that whatever moral beliefs are currently the norm amongst the (narrow, geographically, socially, religiously and racially unrepresentative) community of people campaigning for this are the one objectively correct moral framework and that anyone who deviates from it is a morally bankrupt monster who is treating others as subhuman.
What makes this particularly interesting is that those beliefs actually vary a lot more than the people pushing for this realize. There's actually this argument that they shouldn't have to spell out what the correct beliefs actually are to justify this since they're obvious to everyone, and any demand to be specific is just an attempt by wrongthinkers to pretend they don't know why they're supporting evil. This means any differences only get discovered when that specific situation comes up, and can just get pinned on the other side being evil monsters masquerading as decent people when an unreconciled divide does appear. Also, they change over time rapidly enough that the mandatory non-bigoted views from even a few years ago are beyond the pale in critical ways now.
> No-one forces anyone to be racist, homophobic, etc.
Do you believe that you hold your beliefs because of some great achievement, and not "just because"? Do you believe that you are as smart as you are because of $somethingYouDid and not because of genetic and environmental lotteries?
> Do you believe that you hold your beliefs because of some great achievement, and not "just because"?
I believe that I hold my current beliefs because I have considered my old beliefs and tried to work on improving them. As someone who grew up in 70s UK, I grew up seeing casual racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. on TV every day and, yeah, that definitely helped shape, if not specific opinions about the worth of people, then certainly a casual carelessness - it would be a rare week at school without a new racist joke, for example.
Thankfully I've seen since that I was wrong and have tried to be better (but I fully admit I have a long way to go.)
> I have a lot of family who have views which would terrify liberals, but I know these people are also not evil but just have had their own life circumstances shape their views.
Like what? What life experiences have shaped their views to make them terrifying to liberals? I'm genuinely curious because the people most likely to have actual lived experiences to support "views which would terrify liberals" are generally liberal and live in cities while those who have "views which would terrify liberals" don't generally have very many relevant lived experiences to speak of.
Growing up in very religious environments - like all of the Middle East?
Growing up with a homophobic government and homophobic environment like Russia where it is the norm?
Growing up in countries where there is a very hated "other" tribe like in Israel?
Outside of the "developed" world a lot of non-liberal stances are very alive and practised. But should we condemn a vast fraction of these people who hold racist or homophobic views in environments where they are accepted or even encouraged?
Plenty of people have left those places and adopted more liberal stances. But this times time and acclimatisation. And education. So much education.
But when you write people off or morally judge them, you usually encourage them to dig in their heels because no one likes to be told their life and upbringing is wrong and a lie.
I have seen relatives' views on homophobia soften over the years but I know from experience flat out telling them they are wrong got nowhere. But they came from a time when everyone was supposed to have only one boyfriend/girlfriend into spouse for their whole life, and living was about making sure food was on your table that night. They had society force feed some ideal on them and never given the space to contemplate otherwise.
What’s interesting to me is how selectively this kind of understanding is applied. Why is it that we default to this reasoning to explain hate but not, say, crime. Where’s this level of nuance where we discuss riots? Why does it apply in one case but not the other? Why do we get blame upbringing and society in one scenario and then default to hard nosed personal responsibility in another?
I find your argument convincing. I just don’t understand why looking at the context of an individual’s upbringing is acceptable when explaining why aunt Becky is racist but isn’t when explaining why Mohammed is angry.
But I would also argue that it's also ok to choose not to associate with people who find you abhorrent. Would you genuinely expose your gay friend to your homophobic relatives and expect the gay friend to be happy and fine with being a target of bigotry/hate?
Sure - but they can still participate in society. Why shouldn't they?
A klansman like Robert Byrd turned his life around. This is after Al Gore's father and he filibustered the civil rights act. Byrd went on to mentor Hillary Clinton, and I assume Al Gore's father was an influence on his son - the Vice President of the United States and the first lady, who went on to become a Senator from New York and then almost became President of the United States. You have a candidate right now who has a murky past when it comes to school segregation - as highlighted by his own running mate!
The funny thing is - the Facebook employees fighting with Zuckerberg most likely support all of these people politically, yet the people who espouse similar views today are suddenly irredeemable?
This idea that you can cancel the morally bankrupt out of existence is rooted in some kind of blind weakness. If people don't want to engage with them, that's fine, sit down and let the rest of us clean up. I'm not afraid of engaging with white supremacists, they always lose anyway. Their ideas are weak, dumb and not at all compelling, and the more we let them speak, the weaker their allure will be. History has already proved this. Facebook isn't magic - their ideas are still trash.
then you just label anyone who disagrees with you as having those beliefs. and then you get to smugly consider them subhuman and ban them without having a single thing break your bubble
You're right that there's no middle ground if you set it up that way, but the trick is to look for ways of framing an issue that do allow for middle ground. For example, we could ask which specific political consequences ought to follow from the fact that Black lives matter, and in which order. There's lots of room for middle ground there. It's a question of whether we want to find it or not.
Certainly, there's middle ground (concessions) in several issues like tax rates, zoning, visa policy.
Rights-based positions, on the other hand, are no-compromise by their premise. They're binary issues. "Women/BlackPeople/Felons/OtherGroup should be allowed to vote." "Women/BlackPeople/Felons/OtherGroup should not be allowed to vote." Sometimes you have what looks like a concession in these issues but it's really just one side masquerading like a concession. Example: voter disenfranchisement disguised as implementing voter literacy tests or "you must pay your court debt". Straight up abortion denial disguised as good faith "limitations" (limit after x weeks, insurance requirements, clinic closings, heartbeat, sleep on the issue, fake clinics, etc.).
The policy that follows isn't the thing that most people find appalling. It's the premise. You're absolutely right that we should be focused on policy, but only if people are on board with the premise. Check out the top ranked articles shared on Facebook and you'll agree.
If you take your comment and apply it to moments that sparked huge civil rights changes, I don't think minority groups would have gotten this far. It's the "no compromises" attitude that leads to great social change. Not half measures.
Edit: On further thought, it's arguable that segregation was the "middle ground" between slavery and equal rights. The middle ground just doesn't sound too appealing when it comes to equal rights. Minorities are right to instinctively distrust invitations towards "compromise".
There’s no discussion to be had when you’re FOR equality and the other side is arguing against it. There’s equality and fairness. The rest is garbage. There’s no need to meet in between and compromise. If you compromise with shtty ideas you are gonna get sht on your shirt.
>There’s no discussion to be had when you’re FOR equality and the other side is arguing against it.
Kind of like how there's a subset of a certain political party that believes fetuses have the same right to life as infants.
Or how some people believe someone who comes from a statistically high crime demographic, has $120 in their checking account and face tattoos has the same right to own a gun as someone from a low crime demographic who can take a weekend class, pay $200 and ace an interview with the police chief?
My point is that it's not as simple as you are stating it is. Whichever side of an issue you are on the other side believes that they are right and you are wrong and that you are the oppressors. They have good logical reasons to reach this conclusion and if you peel back the logic you get to fundamentally incompatble differences of opinion.
What is a "statistically high crime demographic"? Men? It's men, right? Statistically speaking the vast majority of violent crime is committed by men [0].
Interesting. According the FBI data in my previous reply, white men are far more likely to be driving drunk, statistically speaking. I guess we should teach cops to pull them over far more often than everyone else, right? That would be a similarly logical conclusion based on the statistics.
I think it's hilarious that you're downvoted so heavily for this when it's the exact same logic that's used against young black men.
If you look at these statics and think to yourself, "the fact that 87% of murders, 99% of forced rapes, and 77% of assaults are committed by men is terribly misleading because as a category it doesn't make sense to lump all men together when they're so different" then why the hell does "black men" make any more sense?
Sure, “kind of like” how the Nazi Party usurped Germany a hundred years ago. Why don’t you have a civil discourse with people who believe in slavery? Give me a break.
People will disagree about the definition of equality.
Good advice is to spend a reasonable amount of time on defining precisely what is meant by equality. You will likely find you are arguing past each other because your life experience has given you a different definition than someone else.
This is more true over internet communication, because most human-human communication is non-verbal, and text compresses this communication to oblivion.
Diversity is good.
Diversity means diversity of ideas.
Ergo, you will disagree vehemently with people, and this is a good thing under the framework of diversity.
Do not confuse disagreeing with someone as that person being morally sub-human, and if you are able to do this your life will be more pleasant.
Disagreement is a good thing, it is society’s mechanism for decision making in complex circumstances.