Interesting article on public shaming and social media

[Cassius Clay]

As long as oppression exists you can't look at people as individuals.

Yes I can, and I will.
The quotes provided by Cassius Clay justify it.

If you want to prevent people from being raced, the solution is as unavoidable as it is difficult: eliminate racial hierarchy. The truth is, as long as there exists a system of oppression which punishes people on the basis of race, white individuals will sometimes suffer a bit of backlash. To expect anything else is unreasonable bordering on infantile; whiteness has always been a double-edged sword.

Exactly. The racial hierarchy is the problem, because it does not treat people as individuals. If people were treated as individuals, there would be no racial hierarchy.

By extension, you can never prevent a few white individuals from experiencing racialized, disproportionate backlash as long as our racial caste system exists. And, like focusing on gun accidents while ignoring gun murders, focusing on the rare backfiring of racism—rather than the horrendous costs it exerts when it punishes its preferred victims—manages to miss the point quite spectacularly.

See above. The problem is the racial caste system. If it is upheld, its rules usually target people from racial minorities; and sometimes people from the racial majority. But what should be done IMO is not applying discrimination more justly; it's dropping the rules. The problem is not the imbalance of power within the caste system; the problem is the caste system itself.

Let's quote an En Vogue text.

Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color-blind, don't be so shallow

You have it backwards. When there exists a sophisticated system that groups individuals into an unjust racial hierarchy, the solution is never to merely/broadly pretend that system doesn't exist. Sure, if people where treated like individuals, there would be no racial hierarchy...that doesn't mean the solution is to simply ignore racial hierarchy and treat everyone like individuals. That is incredibly naive...misguided, colorblind nonsense. It's like insisting that the way to help someone who has been stabbed, while they are bleeding to death on the ground, is to not stab them in the first place. It's that ridiculous. Yeah, the problem is that they have been stabbed, but proposing/insisting the solution(to not stab them in the first place) is absurd...rather than recognizing they have been stabbed and rushing them to the hospital. There are situations where it is necessary to recognize and highlight this grouping in order to address a problem. And to blindly insist on theoretical individuality when these social groupings actually exist is the opposite of helpful.

Edit: What is also dangerous in the colorblind solution is the superficial and simplistic implication/assumption that the racial categories were formed merely because people started arbitrarily grouping each other...rather than because there are powers and their interests that forced the creation of these categories...and some people then aligned themselves with power in various ways. So, then the superficial solution is then for people to merely stop categorizing each other, instead of addressing the engine that drives it all...the power. Saying "the power imbalance within the caste system is not the problem" is so backwards.

[Islandmur]

And I have the feeling you are just pretending not to understand.

I does have to do with how it affects their work as it should, only something that prevents you from doing your work as intended should be cause for dismissal. A cop being racist does affect the way he does his work, since it's a position that calls for being unbiased, in order to be fair and just and follow the law.

To make if even more clear, the PR lady lost her job and that was a good call, simply because she is in public relation and her post (satiric or not) put her in a position where the public perception of her fell to a new kind of low, she would not have been effective at her post after that.

That does not mean I agree with the bashing that brought her down. I don't agree with bashing just like I don't agree with bullying.

People seem to think if person A does something bad then it's ok for persons B to do something bad to A in return, A deserves it, got what was coming to them. It's a mentality I disagree with. It's a cycle that brings about no change, and that just keeps repeating itself,A vs B B vs A A vs B.

Anyways i'm out.

[Cassius Clay]

No, I'm not playing dumb. Your position was not as clear as you seem to believe.

And regarding your last point, I suspect there is a dangerous conflation being made between self-defense/fighting back and retribution. And it's a conflation I've seen used to defend the status quo far too often. It's very easy to style self-defense as continuing some sort of cycle of violence/hate...which makes the people fighting back share responsibility. As if it's two separate warring tribes going back and forth...rather than a system of subjugation where one group is constantly under siege. The people fighting back their constant oppression are never the problem.

Edit: And it reminds me of how the west frames the Israel-Palestine conflict. Even the word "conflict" implies that they are equal aggressors that are both arguably wrong in some ways...and that they need to put their differences aside and make peace. Rather than recognizing the fact that it's an abusive situation where one group is backed by the most powerful empire in the world and are just brutalizing a people.

When you have an abusive situation...whether it's a large cultural issue or merely an abusive relationship between two people...insisting on empty, feel-good notions like "two wrongs don't make a right", when the abused fight back, is actually abusive. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is not applicable in every single "conflict".

[Cinemachinery]

I does have to do with how it affects their work as it should, only something that prevents you from doing your work as intended should be cause for dismissal. A cop being racist does affect the way he does his work, since it's a position that calls for being unbiased, in order to be fair and just and follow the law.

I did not intend for this to become yet another identity politics oil wrestling event and, at this point, I'm starting to consider it a challenge to find a topic which cannot be turned to another laborious sermon on whether or not white people are the new magical exception to "stereotyping is wrong" - my thesis was that the magnitude of the reaction due to the prolific and viral nature of social media has gone a bit past "censure" and entered the realm of "life-scarring". I don't think any reasonable HR manager is going to give anyone a pass when it comes to comments in a public setting which can be traced back to a company position and calls into question the individuals ability to do their job. (Which, sadly, can even extend to Adriana Richards, who was representing her company in the position of new-hire grooming when she tweeted her perfectly justified thoughts on dongle jokes... and did so, unfortunately, during a professional event while in a professional role.)

The "kidding, I'm white" comment merited termination - it's the death threats, rape threats, etc, as extended to hundreds of thousands or even millions of people that cross the line and describe the dynamic I am objecting with regard to any target, white or black.

[Cassius Clay]

A dog chasing it's tail.

[Anakin McFly]

Racists who openly say or do racist things knowing that they're racist should be fired, sure. I'm on board with that. (less so if they said something not knowing that it was racist, and wouldn't have if they had known. I'm adamantly against the idea of people getting punished for doing things they didn't know was wrong, because it defeats the whole purpose of corrective punishment and makes moral choice into a matter of luck.)

I liked the concept of racistsgettingfired before I clicked on the link. Then I clicked on it, and took that back. I don't feel sorry for them - they're jerks - but nothing warrants releasing anyone's personal information online, with the implicit invitation to cause them real life harm. It crosses a line. Especially if they're kids - at least one of those was a high school student - or otherwise vulnerable. We're not just talking powerful white men here, who would be quite likely immune. It's an extreme breach of privacy, and naive to think that the information won't be abused by other people with other agendas. What if one of them was a young woman living alone, and a potential rapist used the information of her address and work place to figure out when would be best to break in and rape and kill her? Does her racism - which might have been a one-off thoughtless remark - justify that risk? Should it?

If racists or other bigots deserve to have their lives ruined or taken for the slightest bigotry, then we all deserve that, because none of us is innocent. And I don't believe we all deserve that.

[Cassius Clay]

There isn't necessarily some hard line between malicious racism and "accidental" racism. That's a myth. However, there is a clear line between explicit and implicit racism. Patricia Arquette's recent Oscar speech fiasco is a perfect example. The way she structured her feminist statements on the wage gap, and how gays and POCs should help "women"...as well-intentioned as it may have appeared...revealed something about who she considers women and a general entitlement in her politics. Her intent wasn't to be malicious, but she accidentally revealed something malicious about her politics/who she considers women...like a Freudian slip.

This blog goes after people who say explicit racist things, and it only posts employer's information...which is public anyway. So, your whole assessment of this is way off and unnecessarily dramatic.

[Anakin McFly]

I think the line is a myth when it comes to the hurt experienced as a result, but not the hurt intended. If someone who's a proud racist says something mildly racist, it's different if someone who is otherwise anti-racist but ignorant about a certain thing says the same racist thing not knowing that it's racist. The damage done is identical, but the way to deal with it is different - the latter can be educated, the former opposed through other means.

Thanks for clarifying on the blog. I've known of other similar blogs on both sides of the social justice divide that release names/addresses/phone numbers/credit card info etc (the practice known as doxing), where people have been harmed IRL as a result, and I projected that onto this one.