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Students have level-headed debate about safe spaces on campus (video)

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Infinite

Member
The premise of the thread is clearly about the state of discourse in an unmoderated campus meeting about the intersection of identity and safety.

You'll note that most of the replies in this thread are less about the salient points of either side of the 'debate', but the futile nature of screaming about strawmen to one another.

The premise is seeing furvent internet arguing occurring in the real world away from a keyboard, and ineffective and cringe-inducing it is as a tool to actually persuade someone to see your point of view.

However, the title of the youtube video, captioning and comments of the videotube video are an unabashedly spectacular shitshow, but not at all the spin of the OP or any sane human who isn't trying circumventing a way to say the n-word.
I mean OP started this thread with a sarcastic title while saying "I thought this was interesting" while not saying what they thought was interesting about it. This is what OP said about their thread in their own words:

Well the title is sarcastic, but I don't think it's too bad... Stuff like safe spaces, millenials, PC culture etc are all hot topics now, and I thought the video nicely condenses the kind of stumbling blocks these debates tend to have. That's why I thought it was interesting. Obviously it's probably edited by someone from the 'anti-SJW' side of things, so we don't get the full picture. The guy calling his opponents' views "snowflake mentality" isn't helping either.

Which just comes across to me as stirring shit. This is a hardly worthwhile
 

Henkka

Banned
Well I admit I also posted it because it's ridiculous / shocking / kinda funny. But if my intent was to "stir shit", clearly I failed, because there isn't a whole lot of "shit" in this thread imo.

But there are real things to take away from it. Like if you watch the full discussion posted above, you see that the discussion about student debt came about because the guy in the cap doesn't believe in institutional racism, only racism between individuals. Now he seems pretty reasonable, and if you showed him the Amir0x thread about it, maybe he'd be open to changing his mind. But if the first thing you come up with is "White people don't have student debt", to him, the whole concept is now poisoned by a bad argument.
 

Cyframe

Member
Boss★Moogle;218156459 said:
I don't know if we're watching the same video cause they only thing said before she says that is a guy saying: "we believe in freedom of thought, we believe you should be able to voice your opinion without being shutdown by the other side, like we've seen on campus" I don't really get at all how that equates to "a person flat-out said institutional racism isn't real."

I'm sorry to had to deal with douchebags in HS. What part of the US was this in just out of personal curiosity? I've personally never heard a white parson use the N-word in real life, even when there weren't any black people around. But my experience living in the US is mostly limited to NYC and LA so maybe that's why; I don't know how it is in the southern states.

We're watching the same video, in fact, he says it several times, that he doesn't believe that systematic racism is real. He says that he doesn't see the evidence.

I went to school in PA, a northern state. I lived in the city and I lived in rural areas, and racism is prevalent in both environments.

In HS, a kid literally came up to me and said "I don't like interracial dating, so don't date white girls". This is not when schools were first integrated, and I'm not very old myself, I'm currently in my early 20's.

When I heard the n word, I was fearful, it's a very violent word, and it definitely didn't make me feel safe when I heard it. Still, I tried to have a conversation about it, but, it didn't go anywhere. So, I'm definitely hesitant to have a talk with anyone who thinks that word is okay to use or doesn't constitute harassment.
 
Which just comes across to me as stirring shit. This is a hardly worthwhile
Well I would agree then, yeah.

It's not news worthy or even particularly surprising, but just an arbitrary example held up to say "That phenomenon that South Park made fun of and was criticized for portraying it as buffonish - here is it actually happening in one instance in one college at one meeting."

And then hidden in the video (I believe) is a trans woman giving a personal anecdote about getting harassed and very legitimately afraid of her safety on campus, juxtaposed against someone chiding someone for clapping their hands together while calmly talking.

The thread could have been titled "Here's a train wreck of miscommunication that isn't doing anyone any favors", but people immediately realize that five seconds into the video and confirm the title is a sardonic joke.
 

Infinite

Member
Well I admit I also posted it because it's ridiculous / shocking / kinda funny. But if my intent was to "stir shit", clearly I failed, because there isn't a whole lot of "shit" in this thread imo.

But there are real things to take away from it. Like if you watch the full discussion posted above, you see that the discussion about student debt came about because the guy in the cap doesn't believe in institutional racism, only racism between individuals. Now he seems pretty reasonable, and if you showed him the Amir0x thread about it, maybe he'd be open to changing his mind. But if the first thing you come up with is "White people don't have student debt", to him, the whole concept is now poisoned by a bad argument.
Yeah that's shitty but what do you mean by saying the whole concept is now poisoned by a bad argument? What concept are you referring to?
 

Henkka

Banned
Yeah that's shitty but what do you mean by saying the whole concept is now poisoned by a bad argument? What concept are you referring to?

I mean now he associates the concept of "institutional racism" with "White people don't have student debt", which is false, which probably makes for a mental barrier for him to accept the concept in the future.
 

Draft

Member
Being screamed at or being close to someone that is violent thrashing about is an adrenaline raising experience. What kind of response is that woman expecting? Imagine being on the other end of that and trying to come up with any kind of empathetic response while your cheeks are flushing and your ears are ringing. It's a recipe for escalating a discussion into an argument and maybe even violence. I guess telling a woman to calm down is the textbook definition of mansplaining, but what is the alternative? All that yelling is probably therapeutic but if the goal is advancing a dialog on cultural issues then mission failed.
 

Jonm1010

Banned
Yeah that's shitty but what do you mean by saying the whole concept is now poisoned by a bad argument? What concept are you referring to?
Well I think any time you jump into perceived direct or inferred personal accusations you poison the argument to some extent.

In some cases it is justified to bring into question a persons motives or intention(though I would say more often then not an overused debate crutch) but arguing someone by throwing them on the defensive as a tactic more often then not comes off as self serving and more about winning points with your side or winning the argument then having a dialogue.

Something you see a lot in in-group out-group interactions on the internet but probably shouldn't be carried over into real life if you are trying to have a dialogue.
 

Quixzlizx

Member
Being screamed at or being close to someone that is violent thrashing about is an adrenaline raising experience. What kind of response is that woman expecting? Imagine being on the other end of that and trying to come up with any kind of empathetic response while your cheeks are flushing and your ears are ringing. It's a recipe for escalating a discussion into an argument and maybe even violence. I guess telling a woman to calm down is the textbook definition of mansplaining, but what is the alternative? All that yelling is probably therapeutic but if the goal is advancing a dialog on cultural issues then mission failed.

Some people who consider themselves activists are more interested in obtaining a "righteousness high" and feeling good about themselves than in affecting change.

Which is fair play to them, although the lack of self-awareness can be counterproductive when people misinterpret their cathartic airing of grievances with ideology.
 

2MF

Member
I'll need to keep this video in mind for when someone mentions that this nonsense only happens online.
 

Dryk

Member
I truly do not get a lot of what is happening as regards safe spaces, and micro aggressions. They're not something that I really understand. What I would suggest is that if you feel you need a safe space then that's some combination of you lacking self-confidence or understanding of the situation around you, and a lack of understanding or tolerance from those around you. I wouldn't presume to say where that lies in every case, I'm not a mind-reader.
One of the points of a safe space is to stop discussion from being constantly derailed by people wandering in and asking "So why can't I do this thing" (some well-intentioned some not). At best allowing that forces the people who are trying to do other things to run a learning centre and at worst it opens them up to trolls showing up and ruining their activities. I don't know about most of you but I have a lot of experience with how letting one wrong person into a social group can ruin the atmosphere bring the whole thing down from the inside (but in a more general sense). So I can see where they're coming from but I think a lot of that gets lost in current discourse.

Some people who consider themselves activists are more interested in obtaining a "righteousness high" and feeling good about themselves than in affecting change.
We used to have a phrase for that. Used to.
 
What happens when a person that gets upset over microagressions meets a calm, nicely manner person who coincidentily gives no fucks over whether or not somebody is offended over words or not?
 

styl3s

Member
Boss★Moogle;218150570 said:
Yeah I only lasted 30 seconds. As soon as the girl opened her mouth to say that white people don't have any college debt that was about all I could take.
That's when i clicked off.

Was in debt till i was 31 i was not awarded any kind of get out of debt free fucking privilege i worked my ass off.
 

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
Boss★Moogle;218150570 said:
Yeah I only lasted 30 seconds. As soon as the girl opened her mouth to say that white people don't have any college debt that was about all I could take.
You can't take what she says at face value (it was a heated argument and her point wasn't stated properly), but she was trying to point out the fact that a disproportionate number of African American families have very low net worths that make it impossible for most AA college students' parents to afford college for them.

Yes, any kind of student can have college debts, but there's a higher incidence for minority students.


Looking beyond the simplifications, there's something in the video that I can relate to.
 
Oh man. I've been using the term "guy/s" forever. I didn't know it was a form of microaggression. :(

Edit: Should've shot it in landscape so everyone's in the picture. This will probably be my first and last post in this type of threads. Oh I did it again.

I've always viewed it as a gender neutral word.
 
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