I disagree that a CEO is not a public job, but I have very high standards for employers and I think we too easily promote people to managerial & executive positions in the US. Until we go full basic income, anybody who manages employees is effectively a public servant. (We don't treat them that way, but we should.)
But let's say we agree to disagree on that point. I recognize it's rather left of center.
It shouldn't be controversial to regard the CEO of a publicly-traded company as a public figure, because anybody in the public can invest in his company (and he has a responsibility to his shareholders).
(BTW, unless I missed something, literally nobody here is saying that comedy may never address controversial or sensitivity topics like race or rape. I'd say that you can broach those topics, but you have to be extremely conscientious about how you approach them, and what message your joke is sending. That's a small part of what made Louis CK's behavior so heartbreaking: he seemed to get it. Now that he's returned to comedy with the "damn kids and their political correctness run amok" angle, it makes me wonder how much of his prior act was just pandering.)
The question as it pertains to this thread though, is what should be required of normal (non public) individuals with respect to their backgrounds. Should a person who made racist remarks in high school be required to disclose it for a management position consideration? Should their past deeds eliminate them from consideration?
I would argue not. Very rarely should past deeds act as disqualifiers. More rarely the more in the past it is.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Humans were not meant to keep track of every single transgression made by a public figure, especially in the area of global communication where everyone is a public figure.
Try to do it if you believe it's the right thing to do. But from a purely practical standpoint, I think this is going to try our brains. Too much information. We're not supercomputers.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I fully agree that 9 months (Louis CK) is too soon for a lifetime of sexual assault, but I have to ask, what is sufficient penance? Or, is there even a sufficient penance?
To me, there are certain crimes that can be committed that no amount of contrition will make up for. Off the top of my head, murder, rape, involvement with child pornography (which is an even more heinous rape), and slavery.
I can forgive someone that has had a lifetime history of abuse, racism, or other crimes. But it's going to be an uphill battle and will take a very extended period of demonstrating true contrition and lifestyle changes before I'm willing to do so.
Not to detail this into a rape thread, but: rape is an illustrative case for a couple of reasons. First, the cultural and legal definition of rape has changed relatively quickly over the past few decades, so that something that wasn't considered rape 30 years ago (20? 10?) could easily be rape by today's standards. Second, cultural factors and the dismal state of sex ed in this country contribute to widespread ignorance about what rape and consent are, such that a depressingly large number of people still don't consider nonconsensual sex to be rape unless there was clear violence involved, and sometimes not even then. And that's without getting into how conservative and liberal sexual morals are based on completely different, mutually alien value systems.
It's incredibly easy for someone older than, say, 40 - or younger, depending on where and how you were raised - to have done something we would call rape now, but to have seen nothing wrong with it at the time (or to have thought they were merely fornicating, not raping their partner).
So you get an awful lot of people who think who think, "Rapists are bad people, and I'm not a bad person, so what I did wasn't rape." But you also get people who realize later that they had sex with a person who didn't or couldn't consent, and feel terrible about it in retrospect, and some of those become strong feminist allies because they believe victims who say they were raped.
Should repentant rapists be treated the same as unrepentant rapists and rapists in denial? Your post implies they should.
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
Second, there is, I think, a bit of a blurred line in the thread about what constitutes a public figure. Maybe I'm imagining the counter argument, but I would like to point out that there should be a very limited selection of jobs/industries where this type of scrutiny is warranted. CEO's for example have been mentioned, which isn't really a public job. I know recently america is want to aggrandize CEO's, and they have in turn used that popularity (blurring the lines), but it is not by default a public position. If I own my own local business I may be the CEO/founder, but that shouldn't give anyone who comes into my establishment the right to know my history.
CEOs are entrusted with power over the lives of their employees in much the same way as politicians are entrusted with power over the lives of their constituents. Likewise, in a field which relies on high public visibility like acting or comedy, somebody with a lot of fame can easily destroy the careers of up-and-comers or other less influential voices by turning their fans against them. I think these cases meet the standard of "public figure" perfectly well. Even something like an asshole branch manager who gets away with sexual harassment and racism due to support or apathy of the higher-ups is a pretty solid microcosm of the same scenario, in my opinion.
I’m not sure “entrusted with power” is an adequate litmus test. It can more or less be applied to literally every job with some kind of human interaction. I entrusted this cashier with the power to use my card and handle my goods. Should I get access to their entire history to make sure I trust them?
I think we agree though that certain jobs are inherently public, like movie star. I’m not sure I would lump CEO in there, but it is a borderline case.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
But I disagree that digging through someone’s background is a necessary defense against bad deeds. I don’t need to know my managers entire history to know if something bad is happening now. I think you can have adequate protections for workers or normal interactions without needing a persons full history, or even knowing the entirety of their beliefs. It is possible for example for a racist person to be a fine coworker.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
I disagree that a CEO is not a public job, but I have very high standards for employers and I think we too easily promote people to managerial & executive positions in the US. Until we go full basic income, anybody who manages employees is effectively a public servant. (We don't treat them that way, but we should.)
But let's say we agree to disagree on that point. I recognize it's rather left of center.
It shouldn't be controversial to regard the CEO of a publicly-traded company as a public figure, because anybody in the public can invest in his company (and he has a responsibility to his shareholders).
(BTW, unless I missed something, literally nobody here is saying that comedy may never address controversial or sensitivity topics like race or rape. I'd say that you can broach those topics, but you have to be extremely conscientious about how you approach them, and what message your joke is sending. That's a small part of what made Louis CK's behavior so heartbreaking: he seemed to get it. Now that he's returned to comedy with the "damn kids and their political correctness run amok" angle, it makes me wonder how much of his prior act was just pandering.)
The question as it pertains to this thread though, is what should be required of normal (non public) individuals with respect to their backgrounds. Should a person who made racist remarks in high school be required to disclose it for a management position consideration? Should their past deeds eliminate them from consideration?
I would argue not. Very rarely should past deeds act as disqualifiers. More rarely the more in the past it is.
The problem with this framing is that it sets a very obviously impossible standard. You can't expect people to actively disclose all of the mistakes and misdeeds of their life, because remembering that amount of detail is impossible even in ideal circumstances. I also think it's total BS that people keep trying to reach back into childhood to suggest that we can't look back at a person's life at all. Of course nobody should really care if someone said stupid racist things in high school if that's the only "dirt" a person has on them. On the other hand, if someone said stupid racist things in high school, continued saying those kinds of things in University, and maybe stopped a few years after graduating, that is a stain on their character, it does make them look bad, and populations adversely impacted by racists and racism would have a strong argument, absent good evidence of real personal growth, that such a person is unfit to lead.
Second, there is, I think, a bit of a blurred line in the thread about what constitutes a public figure. Maybe I'm imagining the counter argument, but I would like to point out that there should be a very limited selection of jobs/industries where this type of scrutiny is warranted. CEO's for example have been mentioned, which isn't really a public job. I know recently america is want to aggrandize CEO's, and they have in turn used that popularity (blurring the lines), but it is not by default a public position. If I own my own local business I may be the CEO/founder, but that shouldn't give anyone who comes into my establishment the right to know my history.
CEOs are entrusted with power over the lives of their employees in much the same way as politicians are entrusted with power over the lives of their constituents. Likewise, in a field which relies on high public visibility like acting or comedy, somebody with a lot of fame can easily destroy the careers of up-and-comers or other less influential voices by turning their fans against them. I think these cases meet the standard of "public figure" perfectly well. Even something like an asshole branch manager who gets away with sexual harassment and racism due to support or apathy of the higher-ups is a pretty solid microcosm of the same scenario, in my opinion.
I’m not sure “entrusted with power” is an adequate litmus test. It can more or less be applied to literally every job with some kind of human interaction. I entrusted this cashier with the power to use my card and handle my goods. Should I get access to their entire history to make sure I trust them?
I think we agree though that certain jobs are inherently public, like movie star. I’m not sure I would lump CEO in there, but it is a borderline case.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
But I disagree that digging through someone’s background is a necessary defense against bad deeds. I don’t need to know my managers entire history to know if something bad is happening now. I think you can have adequate protections for workers or normal interactions without needing a persons full history, or even knowing the entirety of their beliefs. It is possible for example for a racist person to be a fine coworker.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
Everyone is racist, though. We all grew up in a racist society; we can't not be.
I am not intentionally racist, but I have a shitload of unconscious negative bias against black people that was essentially programmed into me. No one around me was openly racist, but I grew up surrounded by almost exclusively white people, which meant I had no black friends/classmates/acquaintances to counter the racist narratives in the media, etc. So now, when I interact with a black person, all those negative stereotypes boil up, and I'm constantly interrogating my own actions to see if they're influenced by unconscious racism and trying to, you know, not do that. Which is a huge cognitive load that interferes with what should be a normal interaction between two people. It probably does make me a bad coworker to black people, tbh, if only because I can't ever give them 100% of my attention.
I'd like to think I'm atypical, and that most other people are better, but...
I don't like having unconscious racist beliefs, but implicit biases are literally impossible to change via conscious effort. The most you can do is try to be aware of them and actively work against them.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
When someone wore blackface in their past, we have to figure out how much of that time of their life (especially if it was upbringing) included reinforcement of hateful outlooks on other people, and their actions (especially on the job) since the incident can be a clue.
Second, there is, I think, a bit of a blurred line in the thread about what constitutes a public figure. Maybe I'm imagining the counter argument, but I would like to point out that there should be a very limited selection of jobs/industries where this type of scrutiny is warranted. CEO's for example have been mentioned, which isn't really a public job. I know recently america is want to aggrandize CEO's, and they have in turn used that popularity (blurring the lines), but it is not by default a public position. If I own my own local business I may be the CEO/founder, but that shouldn't give anyone who comes into my establishment the right to know my history.
CEOs are entrusted with power over the lives of their employees in much the same way as politicians are entrusted with power over the lives of their constituents. Likewise, in a field which relies on high public visibility like acting or comedy, somebody with a lot of fame can easily destroy the careers of up-and-comers or other less influential voices by turning their fans against them. I think these cases meet the standard of "public figure" perfectly well. Even something like an asshole branch manager who gets away with sexual harassment and racism due to support or apathy of the higher-ups is a pretty solid microcosm of the same scenario, in my opinion.
I’m not sure “entrusted with power” is an adequate litmus test. It can more or less be applied to literally every job with some kind of human interaction. I entrusted this cashier with the power to use my card and handle my goods. Should I get access to their entire history to make sure I trust them?
I think we agree though that certain jobs are inherently public, like movie star. I’m not sure I would lump CEO in there, but it is a borderline case.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
But I disagree that digging through someone’s background is a necessary defense against bad deeds. I don’t need to know my managers entire history to know if something bad is happening now. I think you can have adequate protections for workers or normal interactions without needing a persons full history, or even knowing the entirety of their beliefs. It is possible for example for a racist person to be a fine coworker.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
Everyone is racist, though. We all grew up in a racist society; we can't not be.
I am not intentionally racist, but I have a shitload of unconscious negative bias against black people that was essentially programmed into me. No one around me was openly racist, but I grew up surrounded by almost exclusively white people, which meant I had no black friends/classmates/acquaintances to counter the racist narratives in the media, etc. So now, when I interact with a black person, all those negative stereotypes boil up, and I'm constantly interrogating my own actions to see if they're influenced by unconscious racism and trying to, you know, not do that. Which is a huge cognitive load that interferes with what should be a normal interaction between two people. It probably does make me a bad coworker to black people, tbh, if only because I can't ever give them 100% of my attention.
I'd like to think I'm atypical, and that most other people are better, but...
I don't like having unconscious racist beliefs, but implicit biases are literally impossible to change via conscious effort. The most you can do is try to be aware of them and actively work against them.
This is a tautological fallacy. If you define everyone as racist and the criteria for a public figure is that you can't be racist, then nobody is fit to be a public figure.
I think instead you recognize that society has baked into a certain degree of racism, and that unconsciously you may have biases against minorities. This level of racism doesn't make you a racist, and the fact that you both recognize and are working to counter those biases indicates to me that you aren't a racist. You don't, for example, have a feeling of superiority to minorities. And you are, I suspect, supporting via your vote and/or other activities public figures that will work to reduce the amount of racism in the US.
I disagree that a CEO is not a public job, but I have very high standards for employers and I think we too easily promote people to managerial & executive positions in the US. Until we go full basic income, anybody who manages employees is effectively a public servant. (We don't treat them that way, but we should.)
But let's say we agree to disagree on that point. I recognize it's rather left of center.
It shouldn't be controversial to regard the CEO of a publicly-traded company as a public figure, because anybody in the public can invest in his company (and he has a responsibility to his shareholders).
(BTW, unless I missed something, literally nobody here is saying that comedy may never address controversial or sensitivity topics like race or rape. I'd say that you can broach those topics, but you have to be extremely conscientious about how you approach them, and what message your joke is sending. That's a small part of what made Louis CK's behavior so heartbreaking: he seemed to get it. Now that he's returned to comedy with the "damn kids and their political correctness run amok" angle, it makes me wonder how much of his prior act was just pandering.)
The question as it pertains to this thread though, is what should be required of normal (non public) individuals with respect to their backgrounds. Should a person who made racist remarks in high school be required to disclose it for a management position consideration? Should their past deeds eliminate them from consideration?
I would argue not. Very rarely should past deeds act as disqualifiers. More rarely the more in the past it is.
I don't think that in normal cases, like a manger, you should be required to disclose your previous actions for judgment. But a manger isn't a public figure, and is held to a different standard than POTUS, SCOTUS, Senator, Representative, Secretary, or Director in the government or for a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Otherwise you might end up with a racist grifting misogynistic adulterer as President.
Second, there is, I think, a bit of a blurred line in the thread about what constitutes a public figure. Maybe I'm imagining the counter argument, but I would like to point out that there should be a very limited selection of jobs/industries where this type of scrutiny is warranted. CEO's for example have been mentioned, which isn't really a public job. I know recently america is want to aggrandize CEO's, and they have in turn used that popularity (blurring the lines), but it is not by default a public position. If I own my own local business I may be the CEO/founder, but that shouldn't give anyone who comes into my establishment the right to know my history.
CEOs are entrusted with power over the lives of their employees in much the same way as politicians are entrusted with power over the lives of their constituents. Likewise, in a field which relies on high public visibility like acting or comedy, somebody with a lot of fame can easily destroy the careers of up-and-comers or other less influential voices by turning their fans against them. I think these cases meet the standard of "public figure" perfectly well. Even something like an asshole branch manager who gets away with sexual harassment and racism due to support or apathy of the higher-ups is a pretty solid microcosm of the same scenario, in my opinion.
I’m not sure “entrusted with power” is an adequate litmus test. It can more or less be applied to literally every job with some kind of human interaction. I entrusted this cashier with the power to use my card and handle my goods. Should I get access to their entire history to make sure I trust them?
I think we agree though that certain jobs are inherently public, like movie star. I’m not sure I would lump CEO in there, but it is a borderline case.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
But I disagree that digging through someone’s background is a necessary defense against bad deeds. I don’t need to know my managers entire history to know if something bad is happening now. I think you can have adequate protections for workers or normal interactions without needing a persons full history, or even knowing the entirety of their beliefs. It is possible for example for a racist person to be a fine coworker.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
Everyone is racist, though. We all grew up in a racist society; we can't not be.
I am not intentionally racist, but I have a shitload of unconscious negative bias against black people that was essentially programmed into me. No one around me was openly racist, but I grew up surrounded by almost exclusively white people, which meant I had no black friends/classmates/acquaintances to counter the racist narratives in the media, etc. So now, when I interact with a black person, all those negative stereotypes boil up, and I'm constantly interrogating my own actions to see if they're influenced by unconscious racism and trying to, you know, not do that. Which is a huge cognitive load that interferes with what should be a normal interaction between two people. It probably does make me a bad coworker to black people, tbh, if only because I can't ever give them 100% of my attention.
I'd like to think I'm atypical, and that most other people are better, but...
I don't like having unconscious racist beliefs, but implicit biases are literally impossible to change via conscious effort. The most you can do is try to be aware of them and actively work against them.
This is a tautological fallacy. If you define everyone as racist and the criteria for a public figure is that you can't be racist, then nobody is fit to be a public figure.
I think instead you recognize that society has baked into a certain degree of racism, and that unconsciously you may have biases against minorities. This level of racism doesn't make you a racist, and the fact that you both recognize and are working to counter those biases indicates to me that you aren't a racist. You don't, for example, have a feeling of superiority to minorities. And you are, I suspect, supporting via your vote and/or other activities public figures that will work to reduce the amount of racism in the US.
And I don't think trying to categorize people as "racist" or "not racist" has any place in this discussion, because it's not useful. Either everyone is a racist, or it's possible to do racist things and not be "a racist," which leads to nonsensical conclusions like this:
This level of racism doesn't make you a racist
And now you have to define what "level" of racism makes someone "a racist," which is both silly and a distraction from the actual question, which boils down to "Given that everyone is racist, how much racism is acceptable in a public official?"
You could define politically correct boundaries for racism by distinguishing it from racial prejudice based on a sort of severity scale, but exactly zero people have an interest in doing that
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
Calling something "socially acceptable" isn't something that should enable individuals to more easily seek forgiveness. It should be a sign to call for condemnation of the larger society they were a part of that found that sort of behavior to be acceptable.
It's reprehensible that the culture on the campus of Northram's school (and apparently, schools all across the country) in the 1980s thought this sort of thing wasn't just acceptable enough to allow people to do it, but to publish celebratory photographs of the act in the fucking yearbook.
Second, there is, I think, a bit of a blurred line in the thread about what constitutes a public figure. Maybe I'm imagining the counter argument, but I would like to point out that there should be a very limited selection of jobs/industries where this type of scrutiny is warranted. CEO's for example have been mentioned, which isn't really a public job. I know recently america is want to aggrandize CEO's, and they have in turn used that popularity (blurring the lines), but it is not by default a public position. If I own my own local business I may be the CEO/founder, but that shouldn't give anyone who comes into my establishment the right to know my history.
CEOs are entrusted with power over the lives of their employees in much the same way as politicians are entrusted with power over the lives of their constituents. Likewise, in a field which relies on high public visibility like acting or comedy, somebody with a lot of fame can easily destroy the careers of up-and-comers or other less influential voices by turning their fans against them. I think these cases meet the standard of "public figure" perfectly well. Even something like an asshole branch manager who gets away with sexual harassment and racism due to support or apathy of the higher-ups is a pretty solid microcosm of the same scenario, in my opinion.
I’m not sure “entrusted with power” is an adequate litmus test. It can more or less be applied to literally every job with some kind of human interaction. I entrusted this cashier with the power to use my card and handle my goods. Should I get access to their entire history to make sure I trust them?
I think we agree though that certain jobs are inherently public, like movie star. I’m not sure I would lump CEO in there, but it is a borderline case.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
But I disagree that digging through someone’s background is a necessary defense against bad deeds. I don’t need to know my managers entire history to know if something bad is happening now. I think you can have adequate protections for workers or normal interactions without needing a persons full history, or even knowing the entirety of their beliefs. It is possible for example for a racist person to be a fine coworker.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
Everyone is racist, though. We all grew up in a racist society; we can't not be.
I am not intentionally racist, but I have a shitload of unconscious negative bias against black people that was essentially programmed into me. No one around me was openly racist, but I grew up surrounded by almost exclusively white people, which meant I had no black friends/classmates/acquaintances to counter the racist narratives in the media, etc. So now, when I interact with a black person, all those negative stereotypes boil up, and I'm constantly interrogating my own actions to see if they're influenced by unconscious racism and trying to, you know, not do that. Which is a huge cognitive load that interferes with what should be a normal interaction between two people. It probably does make me a bad coworker to black people, tbh, if only because I can't ever give them 100% of my attention.
I'd like to think I'm atypical, and that most other people are better, but...
I don't like having unconscious racist beliefs, but implicit biases are literally impossible to change via conscious effort. The most you can do is try to be aware of them and actively work against them.
This is a tautological fallacy. If you define everyone as racist and the criteria for a public figure is that you can't be racist, then nobody is fit to be a public figure.
I think instead you recognize that society has baked into a certain degree of racism, and that unconsciously you may have biases against minorities. This level of racism doesn't make you a racist, and the fact that you both recognize and are working to counter those biases indicates to me that you aren't a racist. You don't, for example, have a feeling of superiority to minorities. And you are, I suspect, supporting via your vote and/or other activities public figures that will work to reduce the amount of racism in the US.
And I don't think trying to categorize people as "racist" or "not racist" has any place in this discussion, because it's not useful. Either everyone is a racist, or it's possible to do racist things and not be "a racist," which leads to nonsensical conclusions like this:
This level of racism doesn't make you a racist
And now you have to define what "level" of racism makes someone "a racist," which is both silly and a distraction from the actual question, which boils down to "Given that everyone is racist, how much racism is acceptable in a public official?"
Aren't "What level of racism make someone a racist[*]?" and "How much racism is acceptable in a public official?" the same question?
When you ask "How much racism is acceptable in a public official?" you're asking us to quantify the racism, which is no different than using the phrase of "level of racism".
[*] - In the context of this thread, which is specifically about public figures.
As blackface is the current topic in the news, I had a couple of coworkers in the break room grumble about how it's just a costume and they legitimately didn't understand why blackface was a big deal.
I interrupted the conversation and explained that it was insulting parody used by white entertainers as a way to mimic racist stereotypes in an effort to entertain.
"Yeah, but that was back then! Why does it matter if someone does it now?"
I don't have the energy for this nor do I feel like I have the authority to make a claim and speak for anyone so I kind of shrugged it off and told them, "It was racist then, it's still racist... and now people actually know better and do it anyway."
These are educated middle aged white women who went to nursing school and presumably have bachelors degrees from a college that isn't in the cradle of southern styled racism.
On that front, I feel like there will always be an aggressively ignorant demographic who "doesn't see what the big deal is". So I think concern is appropriate when there's talk of a community dismissing the harm done to the victim. I'm just not sure where that line is or who's allowed to make the judgement call that a general population doesn't get to weigh in on a specific incident and have more/less say in the outcome.
People are complicated, this is fascinating.
Edit isn't working right now, so my post upthread was a draft I hadn't meant to post. Apologies.
I think the only response to "I don't understand what the big deal is" is "Do you want to understand what the big deal is, or do you want to feel good about not understanding?"
Then you can either a) give a cursory explanation and invite them to look it up on their own or b) turn your limited time and attention to more productive matters.
Second, there is, I think, a bit of a blurred line in the thread about what constitutes a public figure. Maybe I'm imagining the counter argument, but I would like to point out that there should be a very limited selection of jobs/industries where this type of scrutiny is warranted. CEO's for example have been mentioned, which isn't really a public job. I know recently america is want to aggrandize CEO's, and they have in turn used that popularity (blurring the lines), but it is not by default a public position. If I own my own local business I may be the CEO/founder, but that shouldn't give anyone who comes into my establishment the right to know my history.
CEOs are entrusted with power over the lives of their employees in much the same way as politicians are entrusted with power over the lives of their constituents. Likewise, in a field which relies on high public visibility like acting or comedy, somebody with a lot of fame can easily destroy the careers of up-and-comers or other less influential voices by turning their fans against them. I think these cases meet the standard of "public figure" perfectly well. Even something like an asshole branch manager who gets away with sexual harassment and racism due to support or apathy of the higher-ups is a pretty solid microcosm of the same scenario, in my opinion.
I’m not sure “entrusted with power” is an adequate litmus test. It can more or less be applied to literally every job with some kind of human interaction. I entrusted this cashier with the power to use my card and handle my goods. Should I get access to their entire history to make sure I trust them?
I think we agree though that certain jobs are inherently public, like movie star. I’m not sure I would lump CEO in there, but it is a borderline case.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
But I disagree that digging through someone’s background is a necessary defense against bad deeds. I don’t need to know my managers entire history to know if something bad is happening now. I think you can have adequate protections for workers or normal interactions without needing a persons full history, or even knowing the entirety of their beliefs. It is possible for example for a racist person to be a fine coworker.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
Everyone is racist, though. We all grew up in a racist society; we can't not be.
I am not intentionally racist, but I have a shitload of unconscious negative bias against black people that was essentially programmed into me. No one around me was openly racist, but I grew up surrounded by almost exclusively white people, which meant I had no black friends/classmates/acquaintances to counter the racist narratives in the media, etc. So now, when I interact with a black person, all those negative stereotypes boil up, and I'm constantly interrogating my own actions to see if they're influenced by unconscious racism and trying to, you know, not do that. Which is a huge cognitive load that interferes with what should be a normal interaction between two people. It probably does make me a bad coworker to black people, tbh, if only because I can't ever give them 100% of my attention.
I'd like to think I'm atypical, and that most other people are better, but...
I don't like having unconscious racist beliefs, but implicit biases are literally impossible to change via conscious effort. The most you can do is try to be aware of them and actively work against them.
This is a tautological fallacy. If you define everyone as racist and the criteria for a public figure is that you can't be racist, then nobody is fit to be a public figure.
I think instead you recognize that society has baked into a certain degree of racism, and that unconsciously you may have biases against minorities. This level of racism doesn't make you a racist, and the fact that you both recognize and are working to counter those biases indicates to me that you aren't a racist. You don't, for example, have a feeling of superiority to minorities. And you are, I suspect, supporting via your vote and/or other activities public figures that will work to reduce the amount of racism in the US.
And I don't think trying to categorize people as "racist" or "not racist" has any place in this discussion, because it's not useful. Either everyone is a racist, or it's possible to do racist things and not be "a racist," which leads to nonsensical conclusions like this:
This level of racism doesn't make you a racist
And now you have to define what "level" of racism makes someone "a racist," which is both silly and a distraction from the actual question, which boils down to "Given that everyone is racist, how much racism is acceptable in a public official?"
That question is this thread's question though, which is how much <bad thing> must a public figure do before they are removed, and how much time and/or <good thing> would balance this out?
This is just the racism subset.
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
This may be just me, but personally I find the idea of dressing as KKK members more shocking than blackface. This is possibly because I can recall numerous times where blackface was featured in popular media within the last few decades without any uproar: Scrubs, Tropic Thunder, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which also features Charlie Day using the n-word at least twice).
I'm pretty sure that Tropic Thunder would not be as well received today as it was when it was released, because opinions on race relations have changes significantly in the past decade.
I can't speak to the other examples because I haven't seen them myself, but Tropic Thunder was rightly lauded as a criticism not just of method acting, but also of how ignorant/well-meaning/conceited white actors take roles where they play a marginalized group that they are not a member of, and pat themselves on the back for doing such a good job of it.
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
Calling something "socially acceptable" isn't something that should enable individuals to more easily seek forgiveness. It should be a sign to call for condemnation of the larger society they were a part of that found that sort of behavior to be acceptable.
It's reprehensible that the culture on the campus of Northram's school (and apparently, schools all across the country) in the 1980s thought this sort of thing wasn't just acceptable enough to allow people to do it, but to publish celebratory photographs of the act in the fucking yearbook.
You should condemn the society. You shouldn't condemn the person, because they aren't the same as they were X number of years ago. Otherwise you're expecting people to have crystal balls to look into the future and figure out what's going to be acceptable.
You can certainly condemn the person if it shows a pattern of unchanged behavior, or if when confronted they go into full denial/ignore mode. But judging the actions from X years ago by today's standards is expecting someone to pass a test when the answer key didn't even exist.
Second, there is, I think, a bit of a blurred line in the thread about what constitutes a public figure. Maybe I'm imagining the counter argument, but I would like to point out that there should be a very limited selection of jobs/industries where this type of scrutiny is warranted. CEO's for example have been mentioned, which isn't really a public job. I know recently america is want to aggrandize CEO's, and they have in turn used that popularity (blurring the lines), but it is not by default a public position. If I own my own local business I may be the CEO/founder, but that shouldn't give anyone who comes into my establishment the right to know my history.
CEOs are entrusted with power over the lives of their employees in much the same way as politicians are entrusted with power over the lives of their constituents. Likewise, in a field which relies on high public visibility like acting or comedy, somebody with a lot of fame can easily destroy the careers of up-and-comers or other less influential voices by turning their fans against them. I think these cases meet the standard of "public figure" perfectly well. Even something like an asshole branch manager who gets away with sexual harassment and racism due to support or apathy of the higher-ups is a pretty solid microcosm of the same scenario, in my opinion.
I’m not sure “entrusted with power” is an adequate litmus test. It can more or less be applied to literally every job with some kind of human interaction. I entrusted this cashier with the power to use my card and handle my goods. Should I get access to their entire history to make sure I trust them?
I think we agree though that certain jobs are inherently public, like movie star. I’m not sure I would lump CEO in there, but it is a borderline case.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
But I disagree that digging through someone’s background is a necessary defense against bad deeds. I don’t need to know my managers entire history to know if something bad is happening now. I think you can have adequate protections for workers or normal interactions without needing a persons full history, or even knowing the entirety of their beliefs. It is possible for example for a racist person to be a fine coworker.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
I think you are trivializing the amnount of damage that can be done to your life by having your identity or credit cards stolen. You could lose your apartment because of missed payments, your car, your job. But that is sort of a secondary point.
Protections can and should be in place to protect against all the things you listed a CEO could potentially do. Just the same as protections are in place for the cashier. I am entirely unconvinced that posts/tweets/remarks from 10 or 20 years ago are at all useful (especially when devoid of context or subsequent history) as an indicator that someone may do something harmful in their current position. By all means we should have protections, but why do you believe that examining and penalizing someones entire history should be one of them? Or that it is even a good one? What point is there in ever changing your mind if you will be forever marked by the very first ideas you ever express?
And I fundamentally disagree that a racist can not be a good coworker. We all have the ability to act against our ideals if sufficiently motivated. I see no reason why we need to inception bad behavior, rather than waiting to see if it happens and responding appropriately.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Second, there is, I think, a bit of a blurred line in the thread about what constitutes a public figure. Maybe I'm imagining the counter argument, but I would like to point out that there should be a very limited selection of jobs/industries where this type of scrutiny is warranted. CEO's for example have been mentioned, which isn't really a public job. I know recently america is want to aggrandize CEO's, and they have in turn used that popularity (blurring the lines), but it is not by default a public position. If I own my own local business I may be the CEO/founder, but that shouldn't give anyone who comes into my establishment the right to know my history.
CEOs are entrusted with power over the lives of their employees in much the same way as politicians are entrusted with power over the lives of their constituents. Likewise, in a field which relies on high public visibility like acting or comedy, somebody with a lot of fame can easily destroy the careers of up-and-comers or other less influential voices by turning their fans against them. I think these cases meet the standard of "public figure" perfectly well. Even something like an asshole branch manager who gets away with sexual harassment and racism due to support or apathy of the higher-ups is a pretty solid microcosm of the same scenario, in my opinion.
I’m not sure “entrusted with power” is an adequate litmus test. It can more or less be applied to literally every job with some kind of human interaction. I entrusted this cashier with the power to use my card and handle my goods. Should I get access to their entire history to make sure I trust them?
I think we agree though that certain jobs are inherently public, like movie star. I’m not sure I would lump CEO in there, but it is a borderline case.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
But I disagree that digging through someone’s background is a necessary defense against bad deeds. I don’t need to know my managers entire history to know if something bad is happening now. I think you can have adequate protections for workers or normal interactions without needing a persons full history, or even knowing the entirety of their beliefs. It is possible for example for a racist person to be a fine coworker.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
Everyone is racist, though. We all grew up in a racist society; we can't not be.
I am not intentionally racist, but I have a shitload of unconscious negative bias against black people that was essentially programmed into me. No one around me was openly racist, but I grew up surrounded by almost exclusively white people, which meant I had no black friends/classmates/acquaintances to counter the racist narratives in the media, etc. So now, when I interact with a black person, all those negative stereotypes boil up, and I'm constantly interrogating my own actions to see if they're influenced by unconscious racism and trying to, you know, not do that. Which is a huge cognitive load that interferes with what should be a normal interaction between two people. It probably does make me a bad coworker to black people, tbh, if only because I can't ever give them 100% of my attention.
I'd like to think I'm atypical, and that most other people are better, but...
I don't like having unconscious racist beliefs, but implicit biases are literally impossible to change via conscious effort. The most you can do is try to be aware of them and actively work against them.
This is a tautological fallacy. If you define everyone as racist and the criteria for a public figure is that you can't be racist, then nobody is fit to be a public figure.
I think instead you recognize that society has baked into a certain degree of racism, and that unconsciously you may have biases against minorities. This level of racism doesn't make you a racist, and the fact that you both recognize and are working to counter those biases indicates to me that you aren't a racist. You don't, for example, have a feeling of superiority to minorities. And you are, I suspect, supporting via your vote and/or other activities public figures that will work to reduce the amount of racism in the US.
And I don't think trying to categorize people as "racist" or "not racist" has any place in this discussion, because it's not useful. Either everyone is a racist, or it's possible to do racist things and not be "a racist," which leads to nonsensical conclusions like this:
This level of racism doesn't make you a racist
And now you have to define what "level" of racism makes someone "a racist," which is both silly and a distraction from the actual question, which boils down to "Given that everyone is racist, how much racism is acceptable in a public official?"
Aren't "What level of racism make someone a racist[*]?" and "How much racism is acceptable in a public official?" the same question?
When you ask "How much racism is acceptable in a public official?" you're asking us to quantify the racism, which is no different than using the phrase of "level of racism".
[*] - In the context of this thread, which is specifically about public figures.
That was badly phrased on my part. I don't think we should be trying to quantify racism, and I also think it's infeasible to require public officials to not be racist (because everyone is racist). So in practice, the question of whether any given person should resign after past racists actions come to light is, "In this individual case, can I live with the kind of racism this person has demonstrated and is currently demonstrating?" (I consider a non-apology for past racist actions to be a racist action in itself.)
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
Calling something "socially acceptable" isn't something that should enable individuals to more easily seek forgiveness. It should be a sign to call for condemnation of the larger society they were a part of that found that sort of behavior to be acceptable.
It's reprehensible that the culture on the campus of Northram's school (and apparently, schools all across the country) in the 1980s thought this sort of thing wasn't just acceptable enough to allow people to do it, but to publish celebratory photographs of the act in the fucking yearbook.
You should condemn the society. You shouldn't condemn the person, because they aren't the same as they were X number of years ago. Otherwise you're expecting people to have crystal balls to look into the future and figure out what's going to be acceptable.
You can certainly condemn the person if it shows a pattern of unchanged behavior, or if when confronted they go into full denial/ignore mode. But judging the actions from X years ago by today's standards is expecting someone to pass a test when the answer key didn't even exist.
What does that look like, though? Not everyone has a highly public pattern of bigoted behavior like Steve King or Donald Trump. What if there is an absence of any stance taken publicly on the issue, how then do we know that their beliefs have (or have not) changed?
I would think that with public officials, their policies and voting practices speak even louder than soundbites, but what happens when you have newcomers to the political stage that have dirty laundry being aired?
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
Calling something "socially acceptable" isn't something that should enable individuals to more easily seek forgiveness. It should be a sign to call for condemnation of the larger society they were a part of that found that sort of behavior to be acceptable.
It's reprehensible that the culture on the campus of Northram's school (and apparently, schools all across the country) in the 1980s thought this sort of thing wasn't just acceptable enough to allow people to do it, but to publish celebratory photographs of the act in the fucking yearbook.
You should condemn the society. You shouldn't condemn the person, because they aren't the same as they were X number of years ago. Otherwise you're expecting people to have crystal balls to look into the future and figure out what's going to be acceptable.
You can certainly condemn the person if it shows a pattern of unchanged behavior, or if when confronted they go into full denial/ignore mode. But judging the actions from X years ago by today's standards is expecting someone to pass a test when the answer key didn't even exist.
What does that look like, though? Not everyone has a highly public pattern of bigoted behavior like Steve King or Donald Trump. What if there is an absence of any stance taken publicly on the issue, how then do we know that their beliefs have (or have not) changed?
I would think that with public officials, their policies and voting practices speak even louder than soundbites, but what happens when you have newcomers to the political stage that have dirty laundry being aired?
As a first step I would think that language and acknowledgement are important. A big first step is having representatives even willing to say out-loud that there is a problem (with for example racism or systemic racism). Rather than the typical response of "sure it's important, but we are all doing our best and it's mostly taken care of by now."
Second would be actual actions of trying to implement some kind of solution.
In the end I don't really care what someone like Sessions actually believed. What I do care about is the types of policies he tried to enact and the rhetoric that he actually expressed. If he had been a secret racist that had enacted say many of the policies the Obama era AG did to try and combat the systemic racism in the judicial branch, then I would have been fine with it. Even if his comments from 20 years ago indicate that he may have believe the opposite of the policies he was implementing.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
Calling something "socially acceptable" isn't something that should enable individuals to more easily seek forgiveness. It should be a sign to call for condemnation of the larger society they were a part of that found that sort of behavior to be acceptable.
It's reprehensible that the culture on the campus of Northram's school (and apparently, schools all across the country) in the 1980s thought this sort of thing wasn't just acceptable enough to allow people to do it, but to publish celebratory photographs of the act in the fucking yearbook.
You should condemn the society. You shouldn't condemn the person, because they aren't the same as they were X number of years ago. Otherwise you're expecting people to have crystal balls to look into the future and figure out what's going to be acceptable.
You can certainly condemn the person if it shows a pattern of unchanged behavior, or if when confronted they go into full denial/ignore mode. But judging the actions from X years ago by today's standards is expecting someone to pass a test when the answer key didn't even exist.
What does that look like, though? Not everyone has a highly public pattern of bigoted behavior like Steve King or Donald Trump. What if there is an absence of any stance taken publicly on the issue, how then do we know that their beliefs have (or have not) changed?
I would think that with public officials, their policies and voting practices speak even louder than soundbites, but what happens when you have newcomers to the political stage that have dirty laundry being aired?
Then you make your best guess based on the severity of their past actions and the convincingness of their current rhetoric?
There's not going to be a single answer here, everything is driven by context.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
Calling something "socially acceptable" isn't something that should enable individuals to more easily seek forgiveness. It should be a sign to call for condemnation of the larger society they were a part of that found that sort of behavior to be acceptable.
It's reprehensible that the culture on the campus of Northram's school (and apparently, schools all across the country) in the 1980s thought this sort of thing wasn't just acceptable enough to allow people to do it, but to publish celebratory photographs of the act in the fucking yearbook.
You should condemn the society. You shouldn't condemn the person, because they aren't the same as they were X number of years ago. Otherwise you're expecting people to have crystal balls to look into the future and figure out what's going to be acceptable.
You can certainly condemn the person if it shows a pattern of unchanged behavior, or if when confronted they go into full denial/ignore mode. But judging the actions from X years ago by today's standards is expecting someone to pass a test when the answer key didn't even exist.
What does that look like, though? Not everyone has a highly public pattern of bigoted behavior like Steve King or Donald Trump. What if there is an absence of any stance taken publicly on the issue, how then do we know that their beliefs have (or have not) changed?
I would think that with public officials, their policies and voting practices speak even louder than soundbites, but what happens when you have newcomers to the political stage that have dirty laundry being aired?
You can tell a lot about someone just by their reaction. Contrast Governor Northrop to Herring, Northrop went into the 6 step program of denial that Wyvern outlined, and Herring came out and owned his past action and showed how he has worked to repent for that action. Your immediate reaction when something like this is discovered greatly indicates if you are genuinely reformed.
And in the future, it will be much more difficult for someone to hide their beliefs because of how accessible the internet is.
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
This may be just me, but personally I find the idea of dressing as KKK members more shocking than blackface. This is possibly because I can recall numerous times where blackface was featured in popular media within the last few decades without any uproar: Scrubs, Tropic Thunder, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which also features Charlie Day using the n-word at least twice).
Why would there be an uproar? The only way to feel slighted by those representations is by taking them completely out of context and presenting them as still pictures.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
2) How do we need to change how we see people based on their statements in a world of un-deleteable social media?
The former question is loooooong debated and rightfully so. But the latter is very new. We are the first adult generations who are experiencing this phenomenon, nobody in our history has done that before. I can go back ten years and read conversations I was having on this forum and on facebook and so on. I can see exactly my opinions and views and so on at the time. And that's a good thing in many ways! That lets us examine ourselves and how we've changed. But also at the same time, if you tweeted something as a stupid teen and now you're a grown professional, that's still there. Should that haunt you? How do we see people based on that?
And I think there is a psychological element to it as well; if I look at your twitter from however many years ago, your handle and your picture thingy are the same as now, and the interface is the same regardless of when the tweet was made. So it looks like you're saying that right now, even though there's a date there, it's like if someone embarrassingly revealed something you did as a kid by bringing in an adult version of you and having them act it out before you.
So this is interesting stuff. And I think for me, being mindful of that has changed my views. Used to be that if someone said "well they seem woke now, but what were they like ten years ago?" you could say "well probably they weren't as good but people change" and you can do that now, it's just harder when someone can say "well hey let's look at that specific tweet they made ten years ago my goodness that's a shitty thing to say" and... should that really make a difference? Is there an actual difference between the two? If I had shitty views ten years ago but didn't put them online I get away with it but if I did then definitely not?
My moral conclusion would be... you have to let people change. You have to. I think that the amount of good, progressive people who are trying hard to make the world better who once definitely weren't that is quite high and every single one of those people is a win. We certainly don't give you a medal for it but I think it's fair to say "well okay, you've changed." And that might be frustrating sometimes. It's hard to forgive people. Of course it is hard! But it's surely something you have to do if you want anyone to have second thoughts?
As always, the context is King, and of course there are lots of things (most things) which are really problematic and the forgiveness isn't mine to give. But my instant moral feeling is that without giving people the chance to take the stone of having shitty views in the past off from around their neck you're going to get nowhere. And also, we all live here. We are all in this society together. If someone says "I used to be a fucking shit dude with shit opinions but I want to be better, I want to change" then surely the answer is "then change, and be welcome." And the ones who don't change, or who don't want to properly face up to what they said or did, get rightfully castigated as they absolutely should be.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
Gunn is a public figure, unless the topic is being limited to actual politicians or public servants. But I only really brought him up as an example of someone who got dinged twice for the same offense. What happens if in ten years from now a new group of people discover Herring's press conference and decide that he needs to be booted from whatever position he holds?
You can't have a hard and fast statute of limitations on stuff, but a perpetual Sword of Damocles situation isn't that great either.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I think we've gone too far pc policing ourselves for past acts. I would never think of doing blackface now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a picture of me as as kid doing it. I'm pretty sure I never did, and it's not like it should have been ok, but things were different in the 70''s and 80's. My parents are very open and liberal people. Most of their close friends throughout my life have been black
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
When someone wore blackface in their past, we have to figure out how much of that time of their life (especially if it was upbringing) included reinforcement of hateful outlooks on other people, and their actions (especially on the job) since the incident can be a clue.
I think this is the problem I have with the current response to a public figure's history. The internet and collective outrage from it does not take the time to "figure out" the context of the prior action in the person's greater life.
Instead it immediately goes into a call for the person's job and for a social lynching. There is very rarely any kind of scale for response. It goes straight to 100 almost every time something is found in anyone's past.
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
I'm not sure how it doesn't. It's literally the same thing that is happening in Virginia now which spawned this thread.
Right-wingers find someone they dislike
-> they dig through said person's history looking for anything they might have said that will get the left riled up (but which they don't give a shit about)
-> they make a huge deal about how terrible said person is in a hit piece (while, again, not caring at all about the issue)
-> hopefully they hurt said person by getting them fired or something similar
It's the exact same playbook and you will see it again and again and again in the years to come. And the basic issue as it relates to this thread* is at what point do you think we should just accept that said person has changed and atoned enough that they don't need to be punished now for the thing they did then.
*the other issue that is not directly relevant to this thread is about how people need to not immediately pull the trigger the minute the right spins up one of these shitstorms and access the situation before taking action
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
Gunn is a public figure, unless the topic is being limited to actual politicians or public servants. But I only really brought him up as an example of someone who got dinged twice for the same offense. What happens if in ten years from now a new group of people discover Herring's press conference and decide that he needs to be booted from whatever position he holds?
You can't have a hard and fast statute of limitations on stuff, but a perpetual Sword of Damocles situation isn't that great either.
I say that Gunns situation is special, because he was like 40 when he did those jokes,not 16, and he knew he was being provocative, its not that people 10 years ago thought that baby rape was ok and then the new times caught up to him.
FANTOMAS on
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
I'm not sure how it doesn't. It's literally the same thing that is happening in Virginia now which spawned this thread.
Right-wingers find someone they dislike
-> they dig through said person's history looking for anything they might have said that will get the left riled up (but which they don't give a shit about)
-> they make a huge deal about how terrible said person is in a hit piece (while, again, not caring at all about the issue)
-> hopefully they hurt said person by getting them fired or something similar
It's the exact same playbook and you will see it again and again and again in the years to come. And the basic issue as it relates to this thread* is at what point do you think we should just accept that said person has changed and atoned enough that they don't need to be punished now for the thing they did then.
*the other issue that is not directly relevant to this thread is about how people need to not immediately pull the trigger the minute the right spins up one of these shitstorms and access the situation before taking action
Unfortunately the downside for having done something shitty is that you keep having to answer for it, and the progression of society might mean that you have to apologize differently each time you do. If you've grown it shouldn't be hard to say something to the effect of, "yeah that was a shitty thing I did that I never plan on doing again and regret having done in the first place. I can't undo the things I've done in the past, but I've tried to be better since then and hope to continue improving on who I am in the future". Bingo bango, moving along next interview question please.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
I'm not sure how it doesn't. It's literally the same thing that is happening in Virginia now which spawned this thread.
Right-wingers find someone they dislike
-> they dig through said person's history looking for anything they might have said that will get the left riled up (but which they don't give a shit about)
-> they make a huge deal about how terrible said person is in a hit piece (while, again, not caring at all about the issue)
-> hopefully they hurt said person by getting them fired or something similar
It's the exact same playbook and you will see it again and again and again in the years to come. And the basic issue as it relates to this thread* is at what point do you think we should just accept that said person has changed and atoned enough that they don't need to be punished now for the thing they did then.
*the other issue that is not directly relevant to this thread is about how people need to not immediately pull the trigger the minute the right spins up one of these shitstorms and access the situation before taking action
Unfortunately the downside for having done something shitty is that you keep having to answer for it, and the progression of society might mean that you have to apologize differently each time you do. If you've grown it shouldn't be hard to say something to the effect of, "yeah that was a shitty thing I did that I never plan on doing again and regret having done in the first place. I can't undo the things I've done in the past, but I've tried to be better since then and hope to continue improving on who I am in the future". Bingo bango, moving along next interview question please.
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
Gunn is a public figure, unless the topic is being limited to actual politicians or public servants. But I only really brought him up as an example of someone who got dinged twice for the same offense. What happens if in ten years from now a new group of people discover Herring's press conference and decide that he needs to be booted from whatever position he holds?
You can't have a hard and fast statute of limitations on stuff, but a perpetual Sword of Damocles situation isn't that great either.
I say that Gunns situation is special, because he was like 40 when he did those jokes,not 16, and he knew he was being provocative, its not that people 10 years ago thought that baby rape was ok and then the new times caught up to him.
Is there an age limit to when we decide "Ok, at this point you should obviously know better"? Where after that point, anything that comes out your mouth is your true self? Because that just feeds back into the mentality I mentioned way back. "I knew it was not ok to make those kind of jokes back then. He still willingly made them, therefore his true self is revealed, he's a garbage person, and should be treated thus forever more".
I'm assuming good faith and that those aren't necessarily your thoughts on the matter. But as it relates to the topic at hand, it means the answer is ultimately no. Who cares about forgiveness when you shouldn't have done it in the first place? Who cares about your regret because you should have known better?
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
Gunn is a public figure, unless the topic is being limited to actual politicians or public servants. But I only really brought him up as an example of someone who got dinged twice for the same offense. What happens if in ten years from now a new group of people discover Herring's press conference and decide that he needs to be booted from whatever position he holds?
You can't have a hard and fast statute of limitations on stuff, but a perpetual Sword of Damocles situation isn't that great either.
I say that Gunns situation is special, because he was like 40 when he did those jokes,not 16, and he knew he was being provocative, its not that people 10 years ago thought that baby rape was ok and then the new times caught up to him.
Is there an age limit to when we decide "Ok, at this point you should obviously know better"? Where after that point, anything that comes out your mouth is your true self? Because that just feeds back into the mentality I mentioned way back. "I knew it was not ok to make those kind of jokes back then. He still willingly made them, therefore his true self is revealed, he's a garbage person, and should be treated thus forever more".
I'm assuming good faith and that those aren't necessarily your thoughts on the matter. But as it relates to the topic at hand, it means the answer is ultimately no. Who cares about forgiveness when you shouldn't have done it in the first place? Who cares about your regret because you should have known better?
The first thing I said is that it didnt apply to the conversation because Gunns case was a hit piece done by a bad faith actor, and not society changing its moral standards of what was acceptable.
And yes, at age 40 you should have your mind sort of made up, or at least you cant play the "too young to know better" card.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
One situation that we're probably going to see at some point is someone having to answer for some action a few years in the past, and then X years later when attitudes have progressed further, have to answer again for the same action. Like the James Gunn situation, more or less.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
Gunn is a public figure, unless the topic is being limited to actual politicians or public servants. But I only really brought him up as an example of someone who got dinged twice for the same offense. What happens if in ten years from now a new group of people discover Herring's press conference and decide that he needs to be booted from whatever position he holds?
You can't have a hard and fast statute of limitations on stuff, but a perpetual Sword of Damocles situation isn't that great either.
I say that Gunns situation is special, because he was like 40 when he did those jokes,not 16, and he knew he was being provocative, its not that people 10 years ago thought that baby rape was ok and then the new times caught up to him.
Is there an age limit to when we decide "Ok, at this point you should obviously know better"? Where after that point, anything that comes out your mouth is your true self? Because that just feeds back into the mentality I mentioned way back. "I knew it was not ok to make those kind of jokes back then. He still willingly made them, therefore his true self is revealed, he's a garbage person, and should be treated thus forever more".
I'm assuming good faith and that those aren't necessarily your thoughts on the matter. But as it relates to the topic at hand, it means the answer is ultimately no. Who cares about forgiveness when you shouldn't have done it in the first place? Who cares about your regret because you should have known better?
The first thing I said is that it didnt apply to the conversation because Gunns case was a hit piece done by a bad faith actor, and not society changing its moral standards of what was acceptable.
And yes, at age 40 you should have your mind sort of made up, or at least you cant play the "too young to know better" card.
I don't see how the Gunn situation is any different. The stuff on Northam et all is also a hit piece done by a bad faith actor. And in all these cases the things they revealed about said person are also true.
And I don't see why age 40 is any sort of cutoff for when you can stop learning to be a better person with time.
First, that amoral individuals will use moral standings as a way to undermine those they view as their enemies.
Second, that there is an insane double standard where Republicans are held to no standards and everyone else is held to socially acceptable standards. I don't think someone finding Trump or McConnell dressed up in blackface would change anything.
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The question as it pertains to this thread though, is what should be required of normal (non public) individuals with respect to their backgrounds. Should a person who made racist remarks in high school be required to disclose it for a management position consideration? Should their past deeds eliminate them from consideration?
I would argue not. Very rarely should past deeds act as disqualifiers. More rarely the more in the past it is.
Try to do it if you believe it's the right thing to do. But from a purely practical standpoint, I think this is going to try our brains. Too much information. We're not supercomputers.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Not to detail this into a rape thread, but: rape is an illustrative case for a couple of reasons. First, the cultural and legal definition of rape has changed relatively quickly over the past few decades, so that something that wasn't considered rape 30 years ago (20? 10?) could easily be rape by today's standards. Second, cultural factors and the dismal state of sex ed in this country contribute to widespread ignorance about what rape and consent are, such that a depressingly large number of people still don't consider nonconsensual sex to be rape unless there was clear violence involved, and sometimes not even then. And that's without getting into how conservative and liberal sexual morals are based on completely different, mutually alien value systems.
It's incredibly easy for someone older than, say, 40 - or younger, depending on where and how you were raised - to have done something we would call rape now, but to have seen nothing wrong with it at the time (or to have thought they were merely fornicating, not raping their partner).
So you get an awful lot of people who think who think, "Rapists are bad people, and I'm not a bad person, so what I did wasn't rape." But you also get people who realize later that they had sex with a person who didn't or couldn't consent, and feel terrible about it in retrospect, and some of those become strong feminist allies because they believe victims who say they were raped.
Should repentant rapists be treated the same as unrepentant rapists and rapists in denial? Your post implies they should.
Back in the 80''s they had a Halloween party were some friends did blackface and my mom.and dad were kkk members (don't think the costumes has anything to do with each other) they would never think of doing something like that today , but if they were famous, their livelihood could be over because of something dumb they did in their 20''s that was socially acceptable at the time.
People in positions of power absolutely should be held accountable to standards higher than those of the common folk. CEOs are absolutely in positions of power and there are number of corporations that have a global value greater than that of many small nations.
In your example, what's the worst that the cashier could do by using your credit card or handling your goods? They could potentially steal your credit card number and pin, but there are protections against this and the thief would go to jail for this theft.
Now, look at how a CEO can impact your life. They could crash your credit rating, leaving you no recourse. They could fire you, and everyone you work with, just to increase the value of their shares by $0.02 each. They can institute policies that will cause a million times the entirety of the pollution you will emit in your entire lifetime. They destroy lives not even know the name of the person's whose life they are destroying. They can do more damage to you and your family than an entire army of cashiers could.
And CEOs often have great political impact as well via lobbying and PACs. A A-list movie star may be more publicly visible, but they have much less power than a Fortune 500 CEO.
It's not possible for that racist person to be a fine coworker with a minority coworker. Racism has a significant unconscious impact on people interactions. And your coworker or manager obviously have a lot less power than a C-level executive or politician. So the need to know their background is less.
The problem with this framing is that it sets a very obviously impossible standard. You can't expect people to actively disclose all of the mistakes and misdeeds of their life, because remembering that amount of detail is impossible even in ideal circumstances. I also think it's total BS that people keep trying to reach back into childhood to suggest that we can't look back at a person's life at all. Of course nobody should really care if someone said stupid racist things in high school if that's the only "dirt" a person has on them. On the other hand, if someone said stupid racist things in high school, continued saying those kinds of things in University, and maybe stopped a few years after graduating, that is a stain on their character, it does make them look bad, and populations adversely impacted by racists and racism would have a strong argument, absent good evidence of real personal growth, that such a person is unfit to lead.
Everyone is racist, though. We all grew up in a racist society; we can't not be.
I am not intentionally racist, but I have a shitload of unconscious negative bias against black people that was essentially programmed into me. No one around me was openly racist, but I grew up surrounded by almost exclusively white people, which meant I had no black friends/classmates/acquaintances to counter the racist narratives in the media, etc. So now, when I interact with a black person, all those negative stereotypes boil up, and I'm constantly interrogating my own actions to see if they're influenced by unconscious racism and trying to, you know, not do that. Which is a huge cognitive load that interferes with what should be a normal interaction between two people. It probably does make me a bad coworker to black people, tbh, if only because I can't ever give them 100% of my attention.
I'd like to think I'm atypical, and that most other people are better, but...
I don't like having unconscious racist beliefs, but implicit biases are literally impossible to change via conscious effort. The most you can do is try to be aware of them and actively work against them.
This is a tautological fallacy. If you define everyone as racist and the criteria for a public figure is that you can't be racist, then nobody is fit to be a public figure.
I think instead you recognize that society has baked into a certain degree of racism, and that unconsciously you may have biases against minorities. This level of racism doesn't make you a racist, and the fact that you both recognize and are working to counter those biases indicates to me that you aren't a racist. You don't, for example, have a feeling of superiority to minorities. And you are, I suspect, supporting via your vote and/or other activities public figures that will work to reduce the amount of racism in the US.
I don't think that in normal cases, like a manger, you should be required to disclose your previous actions for judgment. But a manger isn't a public figure, and is held to a different standard than POTUS, SCOTUS, Senator, Representative, Secretary, or Director in the government or for a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Otherwise you might end up with a racist grifting misogynistic adulterer as President.
And I don't think trying to categorize people as "racist" or "not racist" has any place in this discussion, because it's not useful. Either everyone is a racist, or it's possible to do racist things and not be "a racist," which leads to nonsensical conclusions like this:
And now you have to define what "level" of racism makes someone "a racist," which is both silly and a distraction from the actual question, which boils down to "Given that everyone is racist, how much racism is acceptable in a public official?"
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Calling something "socially acceptable" isn't something that should enable individuals to more easily seek forgiveness. It should be a sign to call for condemnation of the larger society they were a part of that found that sort of behavior to be acceptable.
It's reprehensible that the culture on the campus of Northram's school (and apparently, schools all across the country) in the 1980s thought this sort of thing wasn't just acceptable enough to allow people to do it, but to publish celebratory photographs of the act in the fucking yearbook.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Aren't "What level of racism make someone a racist[*]?" and "How much racism is acceptable in a public official?" the same question?
When you ask "How much racism is acceptable in a public official?" you're asking us to quantify the racism, which is no different than using the phrase of "level of racism".
[*] - In the context of this thread, which is specifically about public figures.
I think the only response to "I don't understand what the big deal is" is "Do you want to understand what the big deal is, or do you want to feel good about not understanding?"
Then you can either a) give a cursory explanation and invite them to look it up on their own or b) turn your limited time and attention to more productive matters.
That question is this thread's question though, which is how much <bad thing> must a public figure do before they are removed, and how much time and/or <good thing> would balance this out?
This is just the racism subset.
..I might be misreading your post.
This may be just me, but personally I find the idea of dressing as KKK members more shocking than blackface. This is possibly because I can recall numerous times where blackface was featured in popular media within the last few decades without any uproar: Scrubs, Tropic Thunder, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which also features Charlie Day using the n-word at least twice).
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
You should condemn the society. You shouldn't condemn the person, because they aren't the same as they were X number of years ago. Otherwise you're expecting people to have crystal balls to look into the future and figure out what's going to be acceptable.
You can certainly condemn the person if it shows a pattern of unchanged behavior, or if when confronted they go into full denial/ignore mode. But judging the actions from X years ago by today's standards is expecting someone to pass a test when the answer key didn't even exist.
I think you are trivializing the amnount of damage that can be done to your life by having your identity or credit cards stolen. You could lose your apartment because of missed payments, your car, your job. But that is sort of a secondary point.
Protections can and should be in place to protect against all the things you listed a CEO could potentially do. Just the same as protections are in place for the cashier. I am entirely unconvinced that posts/tweets/remarks from 10 or 20 years ago are at all useful (especially when devoid of context or subsequent history) as an indicator that someone may do something harmful in their current position. By all means we should have protections, but why do you believe that examining and penalizing someones entire history should be one of them? Or that it is even a good one? What point is there in ever changing your mind if you will be forever marked by the very first ideas you ever express?
And I fundamentally disagree that a racist can not be a good coworker. We all have the ability to act against our ideals if sufficiently motivated. I see no reason why we need to inception bad behavior, rather than waiting to see if it happens and responding appropriately.
That was badly phrased on my part. I don't think we should be trying to quantify racism, and I also think it's infeasible to require public officials to not be racist (because everyone is racist). So in practice, the question of whether any given person should resign after past racists actions come to light is, "In this individual case, can I live with the kind of racism this person has demonstrated and is currently demonstrating?" (I consider a non-apology for past racist actions to be a racist action in itself.)
What does that look like, though? Not everyone has a highly public pattern of bigoted behavior like Steve King or Donald Trump. What if there is an absence of any stance taken publicly on the issue, how then do we know that their beliefs have (or have not) changed?
I would think that with public officials, their policies and voting practices speak even louder than soundbites, but what happens when you have newcomers to the political stage that have dirty laundry being aired?
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As a first step I would think that language and acknowledgement are important. A big first step is having representatives even willing to say out-loud that there is a problem (with for example racism or systemic racism). Rather than the typical response of "sure it's important, but we are all doing our best and it's mostly taken care of by now."
Second would be actual actions of trying to implement some kind of solution.
In the end I don't really care what someone like Sessions actually believed. What I do care about is the types of policies he tried to enact and the rhetoric that he actually expressed. If he had been a secret racist that had enacted say many of the policies the Obama era AG did to try and combat the systemic racism in the judicial branch, then I would have been fine with it. Even if his comments from 20 years ago indicate that he may have believe the opposite of the policies he was implementing.
Then you make your best guess based on the severity of their past actions and the convincingness of their current rhetoric?
There's not going to be a single answer here, everything is driven by context.
You can tell a lot about someone just by their reaction. Contrast Governor Northrop to Herring, Northrop went into the 6 step program of denial that Wyvern outlined, and Herring came out and owned his past action and showed how he has worked to repent for that action. Your immediate reaction when something like this is discovered greatly indicates if you are genuinely reformed.
And in the future, it will be much more difficult for someone to hide their beliefs because of how accessible the internet is.
Why would there be an uproar? The only way to feel slighted by those representations is by taking them completely out of context and presenting them as still pictures.
1) How do people atone for past acts?
and
2) How do we need to change how we see people based on their statements in a world of un-deleteable social media?
The former question is loooooong debated and rightfully so. But the latter is very new. We are the first adult generations who are experiencing this phenomenon, nobody in our history has done that before. I can go back ten years and read conversations I was having on this forum and on facebook and so on. I can see exactly my opinions and views and so on at the time. And that's a good thing in many ways! That lets us examine ourselves and how we've changed. But also at the same time, if you tweeted something as a stupid teen and now you're a grown professional, that's still there. Should that haunt you? How do we see people based on that?
And I think there is a psychological element to it as well; if I look at your twitter from however many years ago, your handle and your picture thingy are the same as now, and the interface is the same regardless of when the tweet was made. So it looks like you're saying that right now, even though there's a date there, it's like if someone embarrassingly revealed something you did as a kid by bringing in an adult version of you and having them act it out before you.
So this is interesting stuff. And I think for me, being mindful of that has changed my views. Used to be that if someone said "well they seem woke now, but what were they like ten years ago?" you could say "well probably they weren't as good but people change" and you can do that now, it's just harder when someone can say "well hey let's look at that specific tweet they made ten years ago my goodness that's a shitty thing to say" and... should that really make a difference? Is there an actual difference between the two? If I had shitty views ten years ago but didn't put them online I get away with it but if I did then definitely not?
My moral conclusion would be... you have to let people change. You have to. I think that the amount of good, progressive people who are trying hard to make the world better who once definitely weren't that is quite high and every single one of those people is a win. We certainly don't give you a medal for it but I think it's fair to say "well okay, you've changed." And that might be frustrating sometimes. It's hard to forgive people. Of course it is hard! But it's surely something you have to do if you want anyone to have second thoughts?
As always, the context is King, and of course there are lots of things (most things) which are really problematic and the forgiveness isn't mine to give. But my instant moral feeling is that without giving people the chance to take the stone of having shitty views in the past off from around their neck you're going to get nowhere. And also, we all live here. We are all in this society together. If someone says "I used to be a fucking shit dude with shit opinions but I want to be better, I want to change" then surely the answer is "then change, and be welcome." And the ones who don't change, or who don't want to properly face up to what they said or did, get rightfully castigated as they absolutely should be.
The James Gunn situation was a hit piece, done by a bad faith actor, aimed at a private industry and Gunn is not an elected official nor a public speaker. Not to mention that Gunns jokes werent socially accepted at the time he posted them either, so Im not sure how it relates to the broad topic.
Gunn is a public figure, unless the topic is being limited to actual politicians or public servants. But I only really brought him up as an example of someone who got dinged twice for the same offense. What happens if in ten years from now a new group of people discover Herring's press conference and decide that he needs to be booted from whatever position he holds?
You can't have a hard and fast statute of limitations on stuff, but a perpetual Sword of Damocles situation isn't that great either.
I think this is the problem I have with the current response to a public figure's history. The internet and collective outrage from it does not take the time to "figure out" the context of the prior action in the person's greater life.
Instead it immediately goes into a call for the person's job and for a social lynching. There is very rarely any kind of scale for response. It goes straight to 100 almost every time something is found in anyone's past.
I'm not sure how it doesn't. It's literally the same thing that is happening in Virginia now which spawned this thread.
Right-wingers find someone they dislike
-> they dig through said person's history looking for anything they might have said that will get the left riled up (but which they don't give a shit about)
-> they make a huge deal about how terrible said person is in a hit piece (while, again, not caring at all about the issue)
-> hopefully they hurt said person by getting them fired or something similar
It's the exact same playbook and you will see it again and again and again in the years to come. And the basic issue as it relates to this thread* is at what point do you think we should just accept that said person has changed and atoned enough that they don't need to be punished now for the thing they did then.
*the other issue that is not directly relevant to this thread is about how people need to not immediately pull the trigger the minute the right spins up one of these shitstorms and access the situation before taking action
I say that Gunns situation is special, because he was like 40 when he did those jokes,not 16, and he knew he was being provocative, its not that people 10 years ago thought that baby rape was ok and then the new times caught up to him.
Unfortunately the downside for having done something shitty is that you keep having to answer for it, and the progression of society might mean that you have to apologize differently each time you do. If you've grown it shouldn't be hard to say something to the effect of, "yeah that was a shitty thing I did that I never plan on doing again and regret having done in the first place. I can't undo the things I've done in the past, but I've tried to be better since then and hope to continue improving on who I am in the future". Bingo bango, moving along next interview question please.
Moving on to the next career you mean.
Because admitting that will end your current one.
Is there an age limit to when we decide "Ok, at this point you should obviously know better"? Where after that point, anything that comes out your mouth is your true self? Because that just feeds back into the mentality I mentioned way back. "I knew it was not ok to make those kind of jokes back then. He still willingly made them, therefore his true self is revealed, he's a garbage person, and should be treated thus forever more".
I'm assuming good faith and that those aren't necessarily your thoughts on the matter. But as it relates to the topic at hand, it means the answer is ultimately no. Who cares about forgiveness when you shouldn't have done it in the first place? Who cares about your regret because you should have known better?
The first thing I said is that it didnt apply to the conversation because Gunns case was a hit piece done by a bad faith actor, and not society changing its moral standards of what was acceptable.
And yes, at age 40 you should have your mind sort of made up, or at least you cant play the "too young to know better" card.
I don't see how the Gunn situation is any different. The stuff on Northam et all is also a hit piece done by a bad faith actor. And in all these cases the things they revealed about said person are also true.
And I don't see why age 40 is any sort of cutoff for when you can stop learning to be a better person with time.
First, that amoral individuals will use moral standings as a way to undermine those they view as their enemies.
Second, that there is an insane double standard where Republicans are held to no standards and everyone else is held to socially acceptable standards. I don't think someone finding Trump or McConnell dressed up in blackface would change anything.