Does it matter?

What people should do and what people can do are two different things. I'm sorry if I haven't been clear on this point, but I do not believe myself qualified or justified in dictating to others what they should do in any given situation.

The laws in this country allow each and every one of us to publicly judge and shame others if we choose, based on whatever criteria we wish, so any attempt to deflect public shaming using ignorance as a shield is akin to attempting to convince a person to turn to religion using a holy book. We all have our own personal thoughts and feelings. The use of the holy book might be convincing for some and not others. Just as the justification of ignorance might be convincing for some, but not others. Both positions, however, are still valid because each one uses personal preference as the backbone of it's argument.



No, I suggest that IF someone is ashamed of their actions, then they should use that shame to change themselves in a helpful way. Whether or not they should be ashamed is their choice. People will publicly shame other people. That's a given. What's important is figuring out how you react to it.

As for shame being the only way to learn, if we don't feel shame for our actions, what impetus do we have to change our behavior? If we don't dislike what we did, then why should we have any reason to examine, let alone change, who we are and how we act? Shame is the impetus of our own internal examination. Without it, we have no reason to re-examine ourselves. You yourself touched on this in your conversation with Tiger. You both agreed that 'the problem occurs when the girl refuses to learn'. Well, why is it that she 'refuses to learn'? It's because she feels no shame for her actions.

Everyone has prejudice to some degree.

Should we all be punished then?

Of course we all have prejudice of one sort or another and to varying degrees.


Whether or not someone is punished should depend on what a person does with their prejudice.

Fair enough. I think this really comes down to personal belief.

As far as learning from mistakes, what about empathy? At a young age, I learned not to be racist because I was targeted by racial violence and learned that I shouldn't (and didn't want to) make others feel the things I felt when it happened to me. If I ever did so unwittingly, I would change my behavior because I'd empathize with the negative things I was causing in others, but personally, I wouldn't be ashamed of them because I didn't intentionally cause them. Any more than I would be proud of causing something positive that was a fortunate but unintentional side effect of some other action.

How about if I use mine to lift up your dress?

<<shutter>>

You always know just what to say to turn me on.

Most things come down to personal belief in the end. I simply think that personal belief is shaky ground on which to place any argument, because it can be used to support practically any argument with equal merit.



Empathy is a product of shame.

In order to feel empathy one must feel or think poorly of their own experiences or those of others. How does this happen? If drawing from one's own experiences, shame is easy to tie together. Suppose, for instance, that a person's first experience with racism results in them dismissing the encounter as meaningless drivel. And the same thing happens with the next one, and the next one, and the one after that. If a person approaches each situation with dismissal, then how does that affect how they view others in the same situation? They will end up asking both themselves and others 'why can you not also treat such comments with dismissal, like I do?'. If drawing from another's then we get guilt of the silent. In order to feel empathy for another one must at least witness the event that caused distress. Now, what happens when people see something for the first time? Usually they don't really know how to react to it and, conseqeuntially, end up doing nothing. Then, if they feel guilt and shame for having not done anything that time, they resolve to do something when they see it again. And thus empathy for another is born.

Either way, empathy requires a change in oneself first, which in turn requires an examining of one's own beliefs. Without an impetus for change, development of empathy becomes impossible.

I would need to see an example of this accidental racism you speak of. I'm pretty sure you're referring to bigotry rather than racism, and it would depend on the context.

Let's use the same one I gave Chaski. Gucchi's butt ugly black sweater.

I have a seriously hard time believing that shame is the only thing that keeps people from raping each other.




Because getting kicked in the ribs and having "honkey jew boy" yelled in your face while being physically battered is pretty hard to ignore regardless of whether the words have a ring of truth. Not all empathy or forms of denigration are merely verbal. I did say I was a target of racial violence afterall.

If you don't understand why something like that would bother me, perhaps it's because you've never been put in that situation...maybe you have but I'm guessing not, and that's good. I am glad, genuinely, if you haven't been because I honestly don't wish it on anyone, and I mean that unsarcastically and unabashedly. I absolutely do not want you to know how that feels. But that wish is not descended from shame. It is descended from a desire to make the world overall a better place because that is where I live and keep my stuff.

But, let's say it was only verbal. Let's say I went to school every day and was called stupid and worthless by my teachers. This didn't happen, but let's say that it did. Regardless of whether or not I believed them, wouldn't it be reasonable for me to have a negative reaction to that born out of something other than shame? If I had issues with them doing that to me, it wouldn't be because of shame. Anger maybe. Fear, possibly. Regardless of how "right" you feel and how "wrong" you feel others are...regardless of whether or not you think someone has a point or "rings true," when you feel it's you against the world and you're singled out and spat on, it affects you more negatively than if you feel you have allies or are able to live your life in peace. Basic human psychology.

And like the situation I was actually in, I have a feeling it would teach me to not call other people stupid and worthless because I wouldn't want to make them angry or fearful. It would be bad for me if they felt those things toward me. It would be bad for the community I live in if they felt them at all.

And let's turn this logic back to you and your OP...see this isn't really a rabbit hole...this is exactly what you started this thread over.

You ask:



Why should you concern yourself about whether or not someone who unintentionally caused someone else to be offended is reprimanded or shamed for that offense if you don't feel that they have a point or a ring of truth? Why let it bother you as it seems to in your original post on this thread along with subsequent posts in our exchange?

Why do you rush to the defense of those who are offended by something that may have been unintentional in your theoretical situation there, but immediately question why I would have a negative reaction to the same treatment, albeit treatment that was unequivocally and absolutely intentional, and suggest I shouldn't have had one unless I somehow thought I deserved the treatment I was getting? This is weird.

Does a black person who gets called a racial epithet have your okay to let it bother them if they don't think the person doing it "has a point" or "rings true?" Do you honestly not think that is a reasonable reaction? If you don't, what was the point of this thread? If you do, what was the point of your question to me?

Look, you're simply not going to convince me that I was ashamed of what happened to me because I wasn't and will never be, or that shame is why I don't do the same things to others. Or that I will ever be ashamed of something that I cause if I did not intend it to happen. Okay? You're just wrong if you think that about me.

And I have a seriously hard time believing that selfish altruism is an adequate shield to protect people against anything. The thing about selfishness is that it's inherently selfish. As soon as it becomes inconvenient, most toss it aside like trash. I refuse to put my emotional well being in the faith of the kindness of strangers. As soon as it becomes inconvenient for them to look out for you, they will drop you to look after their own interests.



So we have shifted the conversation from accidental verbal, or otherwise intangible, racism to intentional full on assault. Regardless, the crux of my point has been simply this: We cannot control how other people treat us, we can only control how we feel about their treatment and decide how to treat others in response.



And this is the very shame I have been talking about this entire time. In order to convince you that it is 'you against the world', the antagonizer must first isolate you from others. They must plant into your mind that 'you are alone and no one will help you because of who you are'. They must force you to question who you are as a person in order to isolate you. They must shame you to such a degree that you begin questioning who you are. If they cannot do that, nothing is stopping you from looking to your friends, your family, your idols, your community and saying 'I am not alone'.

Just because something is a part of basic human psychology, does not make it right or desirable. Our susceptibility to embracing something based on faith rather than attempting to sort through the resulting cognitive dissonance is not something I would characterize as helpful or desirable.



And some people are perfectly fine with that outcome. Let's take people over 70 for instance. A not insignificant portion of that demographic thinks nothing of using words like nigger to describe black people, or chink to describe Asians. Clearly they should be old and wise enough to know that such words affect those denigrated negatively. Just as clearly is that they don't care. Neither alienation from society nor community is enough of a deterrent to curb their habits.



As an attempt to reframe the discussion of race along more helpful lines of thought. As I have stated to you before, I have no skin in this race. I don't care which public opinion wins, because ultimately I don't care what either side thinks of me or my opinions. I simply wished to frame a discussion around what both sides of the debate have a right to do and say, as opposed to what they should do and say. Clearly the opening question failed in that intent spectacularly given what followed.



As I've said already, you or anyone else have no need of my okay to decide whether or not something bothers either you or them. Only you can decide that. Neither am I saying that shame for your actions is necessarily an end goal. Sometimes it can be but it doesn't have to be.

To share a bit of personal information, I'm very intimately aware of feelings of isolation. I struggled with it for years. I am not ashamed of either the outcome of that ordeal, or what caused it. It's a thing that happened, and while I didn't like it, it helped shape me into who I am today and I'm okay with that. I do, however, candidly acknowledge that those feelings of isolation were birthed from the thoughts in the back of my mind. Thoughts of worthlessness. Of uselessness. Of shame. Thoughts birthed from stereotypes. When I speak of feelings of shame, this is what I refer to. I withdrew from support and believed myself alone because of that shame, and only by confronting those feelings could I begin to move forward.