Racism At Anandtech

[GasX]

I do not know if I am alone, but I actually am concerned by the Mods decision to crack down on racism. I say this not because I am "pro-racism". Rather, I am concerned because I see accusations of racism all over these forums in situations where it isn't justified.

I can provide a good example. Fellow ATer FettsBabe posted a very humorous "Letter To China" The letter was a tongue in cheek revision to GWB's "apology letter" that reflected MANY people's view that China was being treated too nicely.

FettsBabe was accused of racism for posting this letter and in several posts I defended her. I will continue to do so if someone else cares to challenge my view. The point is that in this hyper-sensitive world, people misconstrue things frequently and have the knee jerk reaction to cry racism. If this is going to lead to people losing their AT priveleges then I will have to come to their defense.

A similar situation has become commonplace in the For Sale / Trade forum. There is a trend towards posting "Troll Alerts" in situations where it isn't justified. One recent posting that had over 60 responses and was thus kept at the top for much of the day was accusing a trader with a long history of good trades of ripping off his customer. The post was made the day that the goods arrived and therefore he had hardly given the trader a chance to respond to the problems that arose during shipping. Granted that there were issues with this trade prior to delivery, but one should be pretty sure that there are irreconcilable differences before posting a troll alert. We have e-mail and PMs to solve these problems. We also have Troll hunters to help resolve these issues.

The bottom line is that while racism is a bad thing, it is not something that most people understand well enough to know what it is. Added to the hypersensitivity of the day and you get a situation were people with either unpopular views or a sense of humor will have to defend themselves to keep their priveleges. I do not want this to happen.

MWilding

 

[StageLeft]

Its the same when somebody is over-zealously accused of neffing.

And I agree that anybody who talks trash of the chinese gov't (as I like to do) doesn't mean they are talking trash of the people. I can have absolutely nothing against the chinese as a people and still think their gov't is made of pig sh*t. Its different things. The only thing as bad as a racist is somebody who always blurts out the accusation.

 

[ArkAoss]

be care full what you say on the web, if theres some one out to get you, and they can use it against you they will. death might be nicer.

 

[GL]

The problem with situations like the one Fettsbabe is in, is one of the semantics of the English language. In common everyday English-spoken language, nobody explicitly declares whether they are talking of a country's government or a country's people. Saying "The Chinese do this and that" can be interpreted as "The Chinese people..." or "The Chinese government..." or "People of Chinese ethnicity".

It's completely ambiguous and therein lies the problem.

-GL

 

[GasX]

I agree, but the issue is that many people who lack the ability to discern the two just pull out the race card.

It's nice to be righteous, but I'd rather be right.

 

[Linflas]

Racism is the nuclear bomb of debate these days. It is a term flung out to substitute for logic when debating issues involving race in 99% of cases. It is used to turn the debate from the topic to the debator's character. The current flap on college campuses regarding David Horowitz's 10 Reasons to Oppose Reparations is a great example of this concept. Rather than use logic to prove or disprove views on this subject the Racism label is tossed out supposedly to obligate Mr. Horowitz to defend/disprove this rather than his original thesis. It is the prime reason most of us stay out of debates involving race and race relations currently reflect this. It is a sad thing as many problems will never be solved without some very frank discussion of these issues.

 

[xraymongral]

This reminds me of a fellow that shared a apartment with me in Ann Arbor. He was a well traved chap for his years(early twenties). In his travels, he had faced racism/prejudice often. He summed it up along the lines of: "When people are prejudice towards me, it is understandable, as there are some people in my country that I am prejudice against. All people are prejudice/racist to some degree."

Have never found a more grounded truth regarding society than that.

And as far as the "racist" chinese threads, if they are what sparked this debacle, I must mention the thread/threads, started/written by chinese people, regarding racism amoungst the chinese culture towards outsiders. Such is life. Do I care? No. Is it to be expected? Yes. Am I to much of a wuss to deal with it and move on? No.

 

[FettsBabe]

I never received an email from the mods regarding this issue, so I don't know if its me or not. However, some people don't understand that I have explained in Pm's that my family is big on adoption, and I have many different nationalities/races in my family. I love each of my realtives regardless of where they were born or what color their skin is. I don't have a problem with the Chinese people it is their gov. that I can't stand. Some people have misconstrued that to mean that I am racist. That is their own opinion and they can believe what they want. I have explained myself in numerous pm's and so have other people on AT, but there are a few people who choose not to believe and fired off racism comments, which was uncalled for.

On AT we are not allowed to make fun of or accuse other AT members of such things, but yet they were allowed to continue. I have saw many numeorus threads get locked because of this. However, I think the mods were asleep when this happened.

It is my opinion that they can believe what they want, but the mods need to control the accusations and lock the threads immediately. I received several Pm's and emails about this issue. I am not the only one that was targeted via email. I brushed it off as someone being over sensitive and trying to cause more harm than good. I can explain every comment I ever made regarding the chinese threads. The joke was nothing more than a joke, and I did not write it. It was forwarded to me from an acquantance. If anyone has a problem with me they can pm or email me but keep it off the boards.

 

[etech]

This ban would make it imossible to debate and or discuss many important topics and headlines.

I have never seen an individual that made a truely racist remark not be dealt with very harshly on these forums. I have seen many people who had no other argument in a discussion try and play the race card.

It should be a given that you can dislike a government but like the people of a country. Anyone that cannot understand that has their own problems that need to be dealt with before attacking someone else.

 

[NFS4]

I think that they need to take a chill pill. The racial undertones that run in this forum have been here for as long as I have been here (which is a loooooooooooooong time). You can't regulate it, so why even bother? People are gonna be themselves and you just have to deal with it.

It just seems to me that this forum is getting more and more narrowly focused on what you can and cannot say these days.

 

[FettsBabe]

Agreed NFS4.

Someone just posted an "Israel Sucks" thread. Wonder what will happen?

 

[Hecubus2000]

Who cares? I don't let it bother me, it's a waste of my time to even give it a thought.

 

[Isla]

The bigger this forum has become, the more it has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. Really, it is to be expected... it is a natural progression of most social institutions. We've got rascism, misogyny, sexism, elitism, cruelty, you name it. Kind of reminds me of real life... which I admittedly tend to avoid.

 

[Fastball]

<< The point is that in this hyper-sensitive world >>



hyper-sensitive is an understatement.

 

[GasX]

When I challenged FettsBabe's accuser on whether or not the post was racist, their defense was that all of FettsBabe's previous racist posts had stimulated the accusation. When I ran a search for FettsBabe's posts I came up with such horribly racist remarks such as:

&quot;Its morally wrong to take out all of china since the gov. is the one causing the problem. the people are generally good just like americans. however, sometimes their voices are controlled by the gov, and its not their fault that they can't speak out against the gov or fight for their beliefs...&quot;

Despite this, the accuser stuck to his/her guns. Sad but true.

 

[Emos]

<< Despite this, the accuser stuck to his/her guns. Sad but true >>


I kept track of that post too and I thought it was tragic that an e-mail joke which was critical of the government of China was used to smear the reputation of a popular (IMO ) AT member.
I normally stay on the sidelines in the political and religious threads in this forum (guess I use my Grandfathers advice that no good comes of bringing up religon and politics...you won't get the other person to agree and it simply creates hard feelings). However I felt that some of the statements posted lately came close to character assasination...just my $0.02

 

[GasX]

Your Grandfather's sentiment reminds me of an expression.

&quot;It's like teaching a pig to sing - it doesn't work and it annoys the pig.&quot;

 

[Elledan]

'Racism' consists out of many shades of gray and it's therefore impossible to determine which cases show 'racism' and which ones don't. Only in a few rare cases everyone will agree that it's racism.

My advice is therefore to stop judging people whether they're or aren't 'racists' unless everyone unanimously agrees that this is the case.

 

[DesignDawg]

<< The bigger this forum has become, the more it has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. >>

You can say that again. I think a better phrase would be &quot;taken over by AOL kiddies&quot;

Ricky
DesignDawg

 

[FettsBabe]

Thanks EMOS. I think thats how alot of people feel. Thanks for the support!

 

[loogie]

<< The bigger this forum has become, the more it has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. [Blah blah blah blah]....elitism.... >>


loogie whistles

 

[kami]

Now I remember why I'm coming here less and less. :disgust:

 

[LadyNiniane]

I have stayed out of the various &quot;China&quot; threads because I don't care for the yelling and screaming matches that so often occur when political &quot;cuss-n-discuss&quot; sessions heat up. Thus I was not aware that some of those threads had begun to degenerate (from the sounds of it, at least).

What may have prompted Mods action was a thread that I did see over in FS/FT - another &quot;bad trader&quot; thread where the e-mails between the parties were posted. At least two of those had blatantly racist comments, specifically directed against a person's race/color, and blaming the problems in the trade on those items.

Those items appear to have caused the Mods to decide to take an overall tougher stance on the general bad manners that have been running rampant around here lately. I do not speak for the Mods; I don't even know any of them. But I agree that some tightening of the moderating process is in order right now.

It would appear to me that we have a &quot;spring break&quot; outburst going - I've seen the same or similar in a couple of other forums/newsgroups that I frequent. The same thing tends to happen around the Christmas holidays and shortly after schools let out for the summer.

People have free time, they spend more time on the 'Net, they get bored, they start raising a ruckus to relieve their boredom. Can't say that I would accuse anyone here of doing just that, but if one responds to the ruckus, one becomes a part of it.

Perhaps we all need to take a deep breath before we respond to the next post. Or maybe just skip a few threads for a day or so to let things cool off.

Peace, people...this, too, shall pass.

Lady Niniane

 

[prontospyder]

As a Chinese-American, I didn't notice any racism toward Chinese people in those China vs US threads.

I was shocked to hear a lot of anti-American comments though.

 

[Kosugi]

Proto,


True. I posted some pretty damning remarks about the chinese government, but none of my posts were directed towards the chinese people. The US and China go quite a ways back. In truth, I think there is a mutual appreciation of each others people and culture.

However,

I did find an interesting article posted by the Hong Kong based newspaper Open, which is not run by Beijing. It stated that the ant-US rhetoric that was filling the state run media of China was directed not at the world in general, but specifically at the Chinese people. What is interesting is that normal people who usually took the government propaganda machine with a grain of salt, started toting the government line 100%. And that I think is really symbolic of what lies beneath the surface in US-Sino relations.

We, in the US, heard about the hate-filled and inaccurate message being pumped into the chinese people, and it upset us (we heard through our own media). But the same rhetoric that rialed up Chinese nationalism to a fervor pitch was not echoed on the international scene. The Chinese government knew all to well that such blatant lies and insults would permanently damage relations, and they weren't ready to sacrifice the 110 billion dollar a year trade. So they wanted a simple apology. If what they actually claimed was true, then they would have asked for far far more. They knew their &quot;negotiations&quot; were being conducted on borrowed time.

The truth is though, that American nationalism, which is a very dangerous thing, began to get stirred, and you saw alot of that on these forums. America, as I have said before, is not overly nationalistic, but is tremendously patriotic. I am glad the crisis was resolved before American nationalism reached the same level as Chinas. Trust me. That would be very very bad.

America is the sleeping dragon (in Hiro Hito's words). It should be left sleeping.