He's a black guy who went out of his way to befriend KKK members, and many of them ended up leaving the KKK when they realized he didn't fit what they were told about black people.
Censorship would not have helped, they had to be shown that they were wrong. That's what "sunlight is the best disinfectant" means.
From what I can tell most racists are either born into it (grew up surrounded by it) or fall into it looking for a place to fit in. Mere exposure to an idea is insufficient. I propose you test this 'idea virus' theory yourself. Go find a racist podcast and see how many episodes it takes for you to start thinking that jews and black people are inferior. I'm going to go ahead and guess that no amount of hate speech will cause you to think that way, but feel free to try to prove me wrong.
Exposure is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition. But exposure increases the propagation. You have this realization yourself when you say "grew up surrounded by", which is one way people get exposed.
There are many case studies in the real world.
"Go find a racist podcast and see how many episodes it takes for you to start thinking that jews and black people are inferior."
That is what happens, though. Not with probability one, but with a probability decently above zero.
Rwandan genocide being incited over radio, 1930s/1940s Germany being incited by the press and speeches, same with 1930s Japan.
Many mass shooters that targeted specific ethnicities were radicalized online. Dylan Roof. Also the recent guy that wrote the N word on his gun. These were white nationalists. The latter said it wasn't his offline world, it was purely online where he got radicalized.
You're just making assertions that it's not like this but our best understanding of ideas that they are social and contagious.
If you genuinely think listening to racists would turn you into a racist I really do encourage you to try it so you learn you don't need to fear hearing bad ideas.
Researchers and activists spend countless hours doing exactly that, listening to what racists are saying, lurking in their online communities, and analyzing their rhetoric and membership. It doesn't turn them into racists. How is it you think that they don't become radicalized? It's not because they have some kind of power that makes them immune to idea viruses.
If you're too afraid to dive deep into racist speech why not start with something a little less unpleasant and attend a religious service of a faith you don't belong to. It's fascinating to do, most places of worship are very welcoming to newcomers, and again, you really won't be magically converted.
Yes, some people who walk into a church do end up becoming members, just like some people who stumble onto racist online communities do end up joining, but in both cases it's not because exposure to the message has infected them. The actual message itself (in both cases) generally isn't terribly convincing, logical, or consistent. It's very often because they offer people who feel alone and lost a place to be accepted, something besides themselves to blame for their troubles, a clear and narrow path for how to move forward, and a comforting narrative and identity.
If you're happy with who you are and how your life is going, have friends/family who support you, and strong convictions you have nothing to fear from listening to people whose views you strongly disagree with and often you'll have a lot to gain from it.
> If you genuinely think listening to racists would turn you into a racist I really do encourage you to try it so you learn you don't need to fear hearing bad ideas.
I just gave you evidence that it does by pointing to specific case studies throughout history. You then proceed with an assertion that it doesn't, backed up by you saying that less than 100% of people who view racist material become racists (well, of course, not everyone that's exposed to a virus becomes infected). This discussion is going nowhere.
You say 'exposure' but then you discuss powerful orators and crowd dynamics. These aren't the same at all.
Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics, and I don't think that people who study genetic factors of IQ are more likely to be Nazi-sympathetic. It's not like the Nazis were scientific racists, they were pseudo-scientific racists - they started out racist and went on a quest for the appearance of proof.
The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway and then prove that "deplatforming" works to reduce overall belief in or following of that path. Censorship tends to have a whiplash effect to those who notice it which is rarely taken into account by those who preach censorship. (Which is what you'd expect if the people who were doing the censoring didn't care about the issues and were simply using them to bolster their control of the censoring mechanism...)
Yes, racism is bad for the believer and for society but there is no evidence censorship could help and a ton of evidence that it is ruinous to democracies.
> You say 'exposure' but then you discuss powerful orators and crowd dynamics. These aren't the same at all.
I didn't just discuss that. I also discussed mass shooters who were radicalized by these ideas that they read in online forums. No orators.
> Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics
Scientific racism is just one instantiation of it. Not every bad outcome of racism is going to be traced back to scientific racism.
But I will say that scientific racism was a part of Nazi thought. And the mass shooter who wrote the N word on his barrel, and Dylan Roof, were inspired by scientific racism. You can read his manifesto for yourself, or you can see Dylan Roof's interview on Youtube.
> The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway
I really don't see the point of this. I'm not even talking about science or exclusively about scientific racism. You're the one who pivoted the conversation in that direction.
> [scientific racism] You're the one who pivoted the conversation in that direction.
The whole article is about a professor being forced to politicize and limit his research, presumably because it would be used to justify wrong-think.
To restate more generally though, the censoring side needs to prove the 'reading viewpoints -> copying actions' pipeline. Would a plainly written description of Hitler's beliefs create nazis of those who read it or is it the oration and the cult tactics that do that? If a nazi quotes a book in support of their views does that mean the book would cause someone without those views to become a nazi?
Sun Tzu counsels to know your enemy, how would this work if they were censored?
He's a black guy who went out of his way to befriend KKK members, and many of them ended up leaving the KKK when they realized he didn't fit what they were told about black people.
Censorship would not have helped, they had to be shown that they were wrong. That's what "sunlight is the best disinfectant" means.