Comment on I don't like what I've seen, man
OpenStars@startrek.website 9 months ago(Wow a lot of downvoters here but fwiw I at least upvoted you.)
You bring up a FASCINATING tangent: is there a minimum level of agency required for someone to be “wrong”? Like if ChatGPT were to say something that represent racist trolling language, is it racist, or is it merely incorrectly trained? (and if it is a racist troll, then why is it not banned entirely from places like Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, Threads, X, and the Fediverse? humans that do precisely that have that happen to them - why is it treated with “kid gloves”?)
Moreover, if someone steps up to become a leader, do we hold them to a higher standard? e.g. even though Trump can barely pass a test to determine if he is mentally incapable, do we hold his actions (such as assassination, invasion of another country like Russia is doing, etc.) against him? Do these standards vary according to the level of leadership, e.g. what if someone is not running to be a President, but they do vote to remove access to medical care for pregnant mothers - does the person bear any responsibility whatsoever for their actions in that case, if they “merely voted”, the way that their pastors told them to?
Another source of bias is a personal relationship - is someone wrong, or conversely not wrong, even if they are your mother or father?
I think the Western world is under attack, and we have some difficult decisions ahead of us. People people are literally dying, and we are in this trolly staring at the lever. Whatever the attacker does is on them, but whatever we do in response is on us. imho. But if I say that, then isn’t it likewise on them, those people who vote in the other way than I think is correct?
Dicska@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Thanks. The only reason I wrote it because I believe people CAN stop being racist. I grew in a small town (and family) where almost nobody was nazi level racist, but the kind that still grabs their bag when a gypsy/roma person gets on the bus. No N words, no swastikas but the kind of “passive” racism where you still have unrealistic prejudices and stereotypes.
It took me a few years, meeting more people, getting some education (and a few amazing girlfriends) to realise that I’ve been fed some unfiltered, biased information on ethnical minorities, people of colour and the LGBT community. But the same way as I could get more information and stop being racist, I think the majority of those people (if not everybody) can, as well.
OpenStars@startrek.website 9 months ago
Good points! Fwiw, though I’ve never met a roma person, I thought that one was more “cultural” than “ethnic”, and also that it was a part of the culture (literally) to steal. That said, one should keep a solid eye on their belongings regardless of who else is around, so the “clutch” seems entirely unnecessary. Being aware is just good advice, though not making an obvious clutch is an “anti-racist” pattern that considers the feelings of the person that just stepped onto the bus, and I would strongly advocate for doing both actually.
One thing to add to your story though: you were willing to learn - but not everybody is. And if your racist parents, just to give an example, were to vote against women’s healthcare, then their choices will lead to literal deaths, possibly even of your very girlfriend, like if a period went wrong one day but then doctors did not know what they were allowed vs. not allowed to do and she died as a result. At least, this is happening in America. This is not theoretical - this is ACTUALLY happening.
Russia may be feeding into the existing prejudices in the Western World - by making memes, making TV shows (like Tucker Carlson’s, before he got booted out as a result of going too far), bribing politicians; and overall causing or at least inflaming or taking advantage of things like Brexit - but the people who make themselves into sheep and enact those wills… they bear some of the responsibility as well. As in, if they ever were fortunate to have your own experiences, then they would look back at how they voted decades ago and feel guilt. Assuming that they were still alive - which many of the anti-vaxxers are already not anymore. And they did not go down quietly: they took MANY others along with them too. They also prevented us from even so much as counting precisely how many there were, but from the excess death stats it was A LOT - in the USA we lost more people to covid than all the wars we’ve ever had combined (with the one exception of the immensely bloody civil war on our own soil, and even that number we’ve probably blown past by now?).