Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
The redefinition of the word ‘racist’ freaks me out. We went through centuries of rationalizing it any way we could to finally figure out that ‘discrimination based on race’ was a horrible thing regardless of justification. But redefinition is just another justification! 1/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
And the only way we made this stop is by going no, your justifications aren’t valid. You personally thinking this is a good thing for whatever damn reason, no matter how compelling, isn’t cutting it. Treating people terribly based on their race is bad, full stop, no exceptions. 3
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
And fast forward to today, where somehow we’ve got enough people justifying racism it that they literally got the dictionary definition of racism changed to only apply to certain groups of people. What. The fuck.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
No, I don’t care what the justifications were for racism back in the day, and I don’t care what the justifications are for it now. Discriminating against anyone on the basis of their race is horrible, I don’t care if they’re more powerful than you or if this is good for them. 5/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
If you’re buying into arguments why it’s ok to treat other people like shit today, then you probably would have bought into arguments why it’s okay to treat slaves like shit if you’d been born white a few hundred years ago. From the inside, it feels like it makes sense. 6/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I wonder how much of this comes from people being totally unable to empathize with evil. If you think evil is this other thing out there, done by monsters, something you’re never capable of, then you won’t guard against it in yourself - and this is exactly how atrocities happen.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I know this well myself. I was raised evangelical Christian and went around calling gay people fags. I know what it’s like to believe a terrible thing - and from the inside, it feels like exactly the way you feel right now. It’s comfortable, justified, it makes the most sense.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
You should be just as wary and skeptical of yourself as you are of other people. You *are* other people.
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Nemesis 2023
@Nemtastic1
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
I make this point frequently. Nazis, the Klan, etc. all had rational, intellectual justifications for their bigotry. More often than not, a large number of academics supported them. Just like today.
L'Épervier
@AssoEpervier
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
That's a broken argument. I understand why it sounds like a good point, but it is not. "People who were wrong in the past also thought they were right" can be said about anything.
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