THIS IS A RACIST SITE

Dear all,

This is my final post at ILP. I do not want to be associated with this board. I have decided to write this post to alert those who are unaware of what kind of policy that this website adheres to, and strongly urge many of you to reconsider joining, or remaining a member.

A post in the Rant House, under the thread “Slavery Reparations” was made by abgrund on Thursday November 18, 2004 (5:57 am):

The moderators feel that this post is simply “uniformed.”

There is a lot of uniformed talk that occurs here. A lot. Certain members have been banned for being uniformed. Warrior Munk comes to mind. Somehow, uniformed posts and those that are also hateful, racists and evil in intent are lumped in the same category as, say, attributing an automatic equivalence theory between a right and a duty. Claiming an animal-like status of members of a different race and then expressing a desire to eat them does not carry the same weight as mixing up Descartes’ ontological and causal arguments for the existence of God.

But the moderators of this site feel that they are of equal weight.

No moderator has explained to me WHY they take this stand, or what reasoning they used to get there. I have pm’ed all, none have given me a reason why they have made this decision. Ben just informed me that they have.

I understand that a former member of the board is no longer a moderator because he made comments that are anti-Semitic in nature. It is a shame that this intolerance for discrimination is applied in only a selective nature. I would hope that the toleration of any hate, towards any group (even if you are not a member) means that all other groups suffer, the human race suffers.

This post is most importantly meant to establish one thing – that all posts made by me were done so as my contribution to this site. I stand here ashamed that I have been associated with this site. I want no such recognition, nor such acknowledgement. I need to make this very clear.

I regret coming to this site, posting on this site, and having my name appear on this site. This post is meant as an explanation and a renouncement of such actions.

– Trix

Hi Trix, I’m sorry you feel this way. If you’re interested here is my take on why I said we shouldn’t delete this post:

I’m not defending the poster, but I think Matthew E. had a good idea, that you should debate the point with Abgrund and set him straight. That way he will modify his own post and not only that he’ll learn why saying things like that can be hurtful and offensive. Personally, I think this site is about growing both intellectual and as a person through the knowledge gained from discussion. I know I’m a difference person for having spent many hours discussing a multitude of topics on this site, some of these topics were very hard for me to read as they went against what I believed in. I’m not condoning Abgrund post, but I think he needs to be confronted and asked to discuss his point by either putting forward more facts or retracting his statement. At the moment to me he just seems a little misguided and put forward his point in an untactful way.

His main point as I read it is slavery was practice internally in the country with others tribes taking slaves, from the history I know of other continents this was a common occurrence. So I can’t take offence to that statement. These tribes also partook in cannibalism; I don’t know how common this way in Africa, but it did occur. “Those fortunate enough to be purchased by Western slave traders escaped this fate, and were therefore not harmed by slavery.” I can see why this line could offend, expressly the “therefore not harmed by slavery” I think he meant of the two forms of slavery they suffered the lesser of two evils. Slavery is wrong! and this site does not condone slavery or racism in any form.

This is the part that I see as a combination of ‘hyperbole and humour’. Yes, it’s not funny but I think he meant it to be. That’s why I don’t take offence, as I think he’s just misguided. What he’s saying between the lines is that those that didn’t end up in America or one of the other colonially countries would have been a victim of tribal slavery and cannibalism; this part as he worded it I take as hyperbole. The first couple of generations of Slaves in these countries had a very hard and cruel time. But thanks to the many people like yourself Trix, slavery has been seen for the evil that it is in all modernized countries. The children of these first slaves now have opportunities that aren’t wide spread currently on the African continent. Things like famine, war and slavery are more common on the unstable continent of Africa then they are in Europe and America. Even the education system gives better opportunities. Take Dr. Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell. Would they be where they are today other for the opportunity that was gained by the enslavement of their forefathers and mothers? This doesn’t mean slavery was a good thing, just that even from evil some good can come.

“I’ll take mine with mustard, no mayo” This is just an insensitive attempted at humour that those not taken away from Africa would have ended up as food for the cannibals. Again I take this as hyperbole and not racial hatred.

Trix I hope we don’t loss your valuable contribution to this site and I hope there is some way you could address this issue directly with Abgrund. Personally I don’t like it when you call this a racist site, as we do remove racially hateful comments. Abgrund’s post just seems more untactful then a racially motivated attack on the Africa communities that were taken as slaves. I’ve send a PM message to Abgrund about this topic and asked him to expand on his original comment. Please would you at least read his reply and we still might be able to resolve this amicably.

I’d like to pitch in briefly here for 3 reasons:

1. To ask trix not to leave. He is a valuable contributor and the sit ewill be worse for his absence.

2. I can see the point trix makes. But he has only to look to the religion forum to see that far more heinous cultural abuse is handed out there and people whose views/cultures/religions are misrepresented there have deployed a stiff upper lip on many occasions. That is not to say I’m happy about every aspect of religious/anti religious expression on thsi site. It is entirely right that someone should get banned for anti-semitic comments. But why should Future man (to take an example) be allowed to profess in his persnoal details that he is a ‘christian hater’ and that his profession is ‘hating christians’. What if he had expressed this feeling about Jews or muslims? This (and issues like it) should be addressed.

3. The moderators here do a good job: teh fact that you can complain about one specific post on one specific board slipping through their moral net is testament to how well they perform: offensive posts are usually addressed.

Some time ago, I encountered a post purporting that women are intellectually inferior to men. Now, along with the majority of Western society, I believe that men and women are intellectually equal. In fact, the notion that they are not equal is so ridiculous (to me) that it is equivilavent to racism. When I encountered JJJ’s post claiming women’s inferiority, I did not immediately move to have it deleted. Here is why: the intent behind JJJ’s post did not appear malicious- he seemed to earnestly believe that women were inferior. He was not simply spouting hateful rhetoric. Realizing this, I decided to respond- and through several pages of discourse- was able to convince the man that women and men are equal. If I had motioned the moderators to delete the thread, then this man would have lived the rest of life believing that women are inferior, and that those who think otherwise are so close-minded that they won’t even allow the topic’s discussion- on a philosophy site.

Trix, many of the moderators and I don’t feel that Abgrund’s post was written with malicious intent. There is big difference between spouting rhetoric and arguing a position. As Pax noted, there is historical evidence confirming that tribal leaders partook in slave trading willingly. Abgrund appears to drawing terrible conclusions from historical facts. Instead of banning him, wouldn’t it be better to inform him?

You wrote a beautiful letter in an attempt to persuade the moderators to delete the post. I think that a greater good would have been realized had you expended that energy into responding to Abgrund. You have the opportunity to actually rid the world of another racist. Wouldn’t that be a greater accomplishment than simply having one banned from a website? I urge you to invest that same energy into responding to Abgrund’s post, so that all who read the thread will know why he’s incorrect, and hopefully, to change his thinking.

Your contribution to ILP is highly coveted and much appreciated- I’d hate to see you go. I apologize that Ben did not explain our decision more thoroughly to you, as if he had, I don’t think you would have reacted with such extreme measure. I regret that I have not spoken with you more indepthly about the matter, but I have been swamped with work. And as much as I enjoy ILP, I do volunteer my time to moderate it. I’m rather positve that my paying customers feel that they take precedence . Please reconsider leaving, and at least, continue discussing the matter with us.

I hopefully await your response.

I have read this thread before but I think it’s good to revisit it because of the comments given here. I think Pax, Matthew, and gavtmcc gave really good pieces of advice to us posters. There will always be posts that would irate us, make us so angry that would make us want to scream Racist! Prejudice! Discrimination!—but we could do better by explaining why we think a comment is offensive and discriminatory. This is the point of the forums, is it not? Often, charges like these are not even warranted once the post is understood better and seen at a different light: some comments are just not tactful, or made out of ignorance. So, let’s all be good debaters by avoiding one-word refutation.

If our beliefs are not challenged then we cannot call ourselves philosophers. It is up to us, the offended to expand ourselves, to include the whole even if it’s not pretty. If we cannot tolerate/accept opposing view points then we might as well go to war.

Peace

A

Trix

I’d like to coax you into one more conversation. I see you feel strongly about this as do I. This board really isn’t the place to discuss it but if you or anyone else here interested would like and feel it a necessary discussion, join me here on the Hate Speech thread.

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … 13#1652213

Who wrote that piece of nazi junk? Zeno or Abgrund? Fuck freedom of speech and the rest pretencious crap - the moderators definitely should leave things like that on, for no reasons at all other than this: let everybody have a chance to spit and kick on racism. Fuck racism. Fuck racists. Hear me you moronic nazies? Fuck you.

i understand the problem here and i strongly agree that racism is wrong.
However the author would never be alowed a position of authority so is no threat to you. Freedom of speech is a wonderful right that i’m glad the board respects above all others.

Ok, as for Trix leaving, I can’t say I know him/her because I don’t, I only just got here, but I’m sure their presence will be missed. It is a shame though because, like the original post, I disagree with what Trix is saying.

Before I get into my objection with Trix, I wanna talk about the original post. I think it’s fucking idiotic to write that for a mulitude of different reasons. First, the slave trade in Africa at the time, was nothing like what was going on with the Americans, globally it was predominant at the time but it was still on it’s downslide. The actual trip to the US was the worst part, only about half of them survived, yet they were packed in as tightly as they could fit bodies, in an attempt to get as many possible living slaves on the other side, at the expense of the ones who did not make it. This type is killing is worthy of recognition, in fact the conservative estimate on bodies lost during the trips nearly outweighs the deaths of world war 2 (users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatv.htm).

But secondly, with the bennifit of heinsight we now see that not only were these -people- plucked out of their native land at an astronomical survival rate, but they were thus sentanced to a sentance of racial inequality for a term that’s still yet to be decided.

So, yes the original culprit is a moron. But we can learn from his actions, and so can he. This is the essence of philosophy, this is why this board exists. Posts which are corrupt or not in compliance with some of the guidlines regarding posting (something like like ‘hey are we in the matrix? I’m freaking out man!!’ ) should be removed, but anything that stimulates relatively original thought should be kept up, at least in the proper domain (ie: religion, mundane, etc)

trix - i think that at the end of the day you have to realise that this is just an internet mesage board. does it really matter as much as you think it does?