“How do we know the Trump administration is racist? well, they’re all white – and if this had been a white student murdered by a black student or immigrant student in what appears to be a racially-motivated hate crime, they’d have plenty say about it.”
—-A Facebook friend who works at Bowie State, exploiting the tragic death of a black student there at the hands of a white student from the University of Maryland, to attack President Trump in a post on his page.
How hysterical, unfair and unethical is this statement? Let’s see:
1.The administration is not all-white. Even if it was, that would not prove it was racist, except in the warped logic of progressives and social justice warriors. People like my friend know Trump is racist because that’s the narrative, and they just decided that he was, mostly by designating as racist comments that were not, and using race-baiting as substitute for substantive arguments to support their irresponsible love of illegal immigration.
2. The assertion that simply by being white, one must be racist is itself a racist statement. (My friend is white, but this is virtue -signalling on the Left. Denigrate men, whites and conservatives, and that means you are good.)
Addendum: a commenter on the post who had the bad manners to point out that “we know they are racist because they are all white” was a questionable assertion saw his comment immediately deleted.
2. “We know you are racist because we are sure what you would do, though you have never done it.” This kind of reasoning from a faculty member is what Bowie students pay tuition for.
3. In fact, earlier this month a black student attacked and stabbed FOUR white students in Austin, Texas.
The President had no comments, though it was unquestionably a “racially-motivated” crime. Never mind though, you know he wanted to say plenty.
4. Presidents should have nothing to say about such incidents. They are local, they are single events, they don’t prove anything, and their comments can undermine the justice system and inflame public opinion. President Obama never learned that, repeatedly making inappropriate comments about events that were none of his business, often exacerbating racial tensions, as in his uninformed, slanted statement about the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman tragedy. Obama also did exactly what my Facebook friend suggest is racist. He never commented on incidents where whites were the victims, as when Francisco Sanchez, a repeatedly deported Illegal immigrant, shot and killed 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle in 2015. Does that prove Obama was a racist? Of course not! When you are in the grip of irrational Trump paranoia and hate, these standards only apply to this President, not the previous one.
5. My friend’s statement promotes hatred, anger and fear, and fills the echo chamber hyper-partisan misinformation and false narratives. It is as much “hate speech,” indeed more, than anything Richard Spencer could say. The hate is just directed at the President of the United States.
Naturally, the post received many likes.” My friend is, as I noted, a nice guy and a smart man, which makes his post even more disturbing. I considered rebutting him on his page; I even considered putting this post there. He works at the site of the school where the victim was enrolled, though, and I’m sure he is distraught; he doesn’t need me going into ethicist attack mode on him now.
Nevertheless, this and posts like it, appearing every day on social media, weaken and divide the country and incrementally replace rational thought with raw emotion, bigotry and stupidity.
It is wrong, that’s all. Terribly wrong.
Ethics Alarms 
Too much common sense there, Jack.
I agree with you that your quoted statement is wrong and unfair.
But so is this one:
It is as much “hate speech,” indeed more, than anything Richard Spencer could say. The hate is just directed at the President of the United States.
This is a wild moral equivalence, Jack. Spencer argues for state-sponsored segregation and what he calls a “peaceful ethnic cleansing.” There is nothing about your friend’s statement that rises anywhere close to that level. This is just “both sides are just as bad,” or even “the Left is worse,” which may be true in some situations, but is definitely not true in this one.
In addition, “hate speech” is typically understood as speech that targets an entire group on the basis of an immutable characteristic. “Hatred of the president” doesn’t meet that category. And saying that the administration is racist because it is all white, while logically flawed, doesn’t rise to the level of hate speech either.
Hate is hate. Focusing hate and distrust on our institutions and elected leader is more damaging by far than Spencer’s wacko theories. I don’t even know what ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’ is, but it isn’t “hate” speech. I said that because the people who say these things about the President are spreading hate and don’t seem to realize it. It’s easy calling anything fascist says is hateful, but people need to look in the mirror. Making people so distrustful of their own country and leaders is playing with nitro.
You don’t see how hate from a nice, reasonable seeming drama teacher isn’t more insidious than a Richard Spencer rant?
Hate is hate. Focusing hate and distrust on our institutions and elected leader is more damaging by far than Spencer’s wacko theories.
People like Richard Spencer have been cited as inspirations by mass shooters and terrorists. You are wrong.
I don’t even know what ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’ is, but it isn’t “hate” speech.
How is it possible for you to admit you don’t know what something is *and* be so confident that it isn’t hate speech?
Oh, he has been “cited as inspiration” for mass shooters, has he? Well, gee, that settles it.
Come on.
No, “people like him” have been cited. Much the same way people like me have have been cited as inspiration by Nobel Prize winners.
Racism kills, Jack. I don’t know what else there is to say. There is nothing about your friend’s statement that approaches this level of hatred; a big difference is that Spencer spreads hatred against entire minority groups, while your friend’s is confined to a presidential administration. I maintain that your statement was a false equivalence.
Because if it’s so hateful it can be called hate speech, it’s hateful content should be obvious without explication, don’t you think?
Hate Speech…
We’ve got to to remember that anti-Trump imbecilic snowflakes literally considered “Trump 2016” to be hate speech. Hate speech is whatever they say it is; oppose the hate speech baiters and you are the one that’s wrong; logic and reason be damned.
Has anyone else notice how there has been a general shift in tactics from the left, there is a switched from being general race baiters to general hate speech baiters now?
I don’t even like the term “hate speech,” and I rarely use it; in this case it was Jack who brought the term up. I’m merely pointing out that he’s using the term in a radically different way than its common usage.
The term is usually used to describe statements of bigotry against people for an immutable trait. (I prefer to stick with the term “bigotry” when describing such statements, as “hate speech” generally implies that the speech in question should be illegal, such as the “hate speech” laws in Europe.)
Saying that insults against an individual that have nothing to do with their immutable characteristics is “hate speech” is confusing; it conflates totally different types of “hatred.”
Calling Hillary Clinton an evil killer who is obviously guilty of criminal activity because she’s married to Bill isn’t hate speech either. It’s just an illogical insult. Just like Jack’s friend’s post.
I certainly wouldn’t defend such a quote, but I am curious: Do you alert your Facebook friends when you quote them on your blog — albeit anonymously? I’d assume some friends on social media would at least want to be given the opportunity to respond, should they so choose. Otherwise, publicizing the blowing-off-steam comments of Facebook friends in a forum they might not know about seems a little off-base to me. (I am so glad I am not on Facebook myself, by the way.)
I agree; sharing a friend’s comments without alerting them is unethical.
No, it’s not. I do not identify them. Their words are public, or quasi public. I don’t alert bloggers when I quote them. How is it different from quoting public comments to news stories or articles? What’s your theory? It’s not copyright infringement. I don’t require their permission. Facebook etiquette doesn’t require that you get permission before sharing someone’s Facebook post with world, or on Twitter.
It comports with the Golden Rule: anyone is welcome to quote and criticize anything I write on Facebook any time and anywhere.
Jack, you probably gave enough information to identify this person if one wants to.
– male
– white
– Bowie State
– site where the victim was enrolled
and in a comment
– drama teacher
Or anyone could just read what he wrote through his thousand or so friends. What you place on Facebook is open quarry for employers, creditors, marketers and stalkers. I have no qualms about taking a Facebook quote and writing about it, and I view Facebook as no different from a blog. Anyone who doesn’t and posts stupid stuff like that is foolish. Moreover, frankly, the statement was poison. I didn’t feel like embarrassing him in front of his friends, but maybe I should have.
I would ask permission before I used someone’s name (and have.)
Jack, this is known as, “when you don’t like the message, attack the messenger.” You are 100% correct on this particular point, and those who assailed you on it obviously know better, they just want to get a shot in.
When someone publishes a comment on the Internet, they have no rational expectation of privacy. This isn’t a private email or conversation we are talking about, it is public commentary on an open forum, and yes, Facebook is an open forum unless you make a closed one for just a certain group and restrict membership. That is not the case here, as the concern trolls above should well know by the fact that you mentioned his comment was on “his page.”
No permission is either ethically or reasonably required for any level of response. The end.
You are right, of course.
My doubts arise from being unable to determine for certain whether my decision not to cause a Facebook uproar was out of a desire not upset some friends in the aftermath of a tragedy, as I think it is, or just a failure of guts.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Usually, when I was about to disembowel a fellow-blogger’s argument (if he was on my network, anyway), I would notify them so they could respond; not out of a sense of obligation, but more from a desire to prevent a shooting war between members of the family. But in the cases where I failed to do that, virtually everyone reacted with the proper spirit of lively open debate. Times have changed, though, that much is certain.
So in the case of a friend, I can see that being a similar matter. It’s a courtesy that I think depends upon the instant case, and not something amenable to a rule. I don’t think it is ethically necessary, by any means.
Jack Marshall wrote, “My doubts arise from being unable to determine for certain whether my decision not to cause a Facebook uproar was out of a desire not upset some friends in the aftermath of a tragedy, as I think it is, or just a failure of guts.”
For the most part, I choose to make Facebook a place where I can set aside conflict with my friends; I do this for two reasons:
1. Out of respect for my friends.
2. Just to have a relatively conflict free zone with my friends, call it my online safe haven if you want.
As you know, sometimes I choose to engage on Facebook, but in general I choose not to. I’ve noticed over the years that it’s more likely for me to engage with friends of friends rather than directly with friends. I use the Julie Principal or the unfollow choice on Facebook with friends until things get way out of hand and then I make a choice too either directly engage and/or select unfriend.
How you choose to deal with comments on Facebook is just a choice Jack; how you make each of those individual choices depends on the situation and the things that makes you the person you are. Don’t second guess these kinds of choices, accept them. It’s always better to choose when and where you have conflict.
… or simply refuse to wade through the toxic swamp that is social media. I refuse to use it in any public sense.
I liked the message just fine, except for the part of the argument that I directly challenged. But Jack was right to call his friend’s comment stupid.
That said, were I the friend in question, I’d rather be told my argument would be presented to a crowd and mocked than to not be told.
Nope. If you post in a public forum, you’re accountable. Do you think every blog that attacks me alerts me first? Hardly ever. Blow off steam! So if someone posts a racist rant on Facebook, they get a “blow off steam” dispensation?
I believe I have done this twice, both intended to address the comments, not to attack the individual. Frankly, my friend is incidental. What he wrote is significant because of the conduct it typifies.
As I noted, I disagree, but you, Chris and Zanshin raised enough doubts about my position that I did alert him. Now watch him delete my message and defriend me.
Unwise, Jack. Your doubts are 100% unfounded, and Chris and Zanshin are 100% wrong.
If you write it on the Internet, it will never go away. If you communicate ON ANY electronic medium, it will never go away. The NSA has admitted they record EVERY phone call and text in the USA. No one listens to them (other than a term searching robot) but they are there for when the government wants to look into you, for whatever reason.
I tell my friends that they should never write anything they would be embarrassed for everyone to see on the front page of CNN. It will be used against you later. Any other outcome is moral luck.
The difference between LOVE and SEND?
Send is forever!
Glenn, I stated that a reader of this blog could probably identify Jack’s Facebook friend, given the provided information.
Now you tell me what is (100% no less) is wrong with that claim.
Lets play a game, Zunshin. Take what Jack wrote, and using only the public tools a normal Internet user would have access to, identify Jack’s friend. Email Jack and he will tell us if you are correct.
Otherwise, Glenn is correct.
Hello Sluckwully, It took me about 10 minutes to find a name with a high probability.
However, I can’t very if that person wrote the specific post Jack discussed here because (my guess) it is not publicly posted.
However, I have send the name to Jack.
I trust to validate the name.
My entire point, sir, is that you made an assertion (“a reader of this blog could probably identify Jack’s Facebook friend, given the provided information.“) that now you are backing away from: (“However, I can’t very if that person wrote the specific post Jack discussed…“)
No hard feelings, Zanshin. Just asking for credible assertions to be backed up. I might learn something 🙂
And my point, sir, is that you made an assertion (“a reader of this blog cannot identify Jack’s Facebook friend, given the provided information and my little game will prove this.“) that now you are backing away from: (“I trust [Jack] to validate the name “)
The assertion you made “he [= Jack] will tell us if you are correct” is not credible at all.
Did you ask Jack before you posted your challenge whether he would tell us if I were correct?
No hard feelings, slickwilly. Just asking for credible assertions to be backed up. We all might learn something.
Wait, what? That was not logical. I backed away from nothing. I still say you cannot identify the original writer. Just because you say something is so, does not make it true.
Your obfuscating reply tells me what I need to know, and ignore your opinions from now on.
(Zanshin correctly identified the original writer. I did not confirm it, because I do not, as I said, desire to embarrass the individual. However, I also don’t want to leave a false impression. He proved his point.)
Shhhhh…
“Zanshin correctly identified the original writer…He proved his point.”
Then I admit Zanshin was correct, and I am even MORE scared of the limited privacy Facebook and the Internet provide.
well done, Zanshin!
Thanks Jack for validating my results and thanks slickwilly for accepting so gracious the outcome of this challenge.
slickwilly, regarding my obfuscating reply. It was partly obfuscating because I choose to follow the format of your reply. My apologies for that.
However the essence of my criticism of your comments is crystal clear:
a. In the challenge post you wrote: “he [= Jack] will tell us if you are correct”.
b. in your My-entire-point-sir post you wrote, “I trust [Jack] to validate the name “.
In my understanding the claim “I trust he will” is weaker that the claim “He will” and was therefore perceived by me as a backing away from the original (= stronger) statement.
This also made me believe that you had not asked Jack before you laid down the challenge whether he would cooperate with your game/challenge.
And that means that the statement “he [= Jack] will tell us if you are correct” was not a credible statement at the moment you uttered this statement.
And it is only moral luck for you that eventually Jack decided to verify my results of the challenge.
I hope that this better explains my line of thought and will result in you not ignoring my opinions from now on.
Fair enough. Written communication is imperfect, and leads to misunderstandings.
This entire discussion regarding the identity of the Facebook poster should never have happened! Jack’s intent was not to present something that could be traced back to the Facebook poster thus respecting that friend by giving him anonymity in this discussion.
Jack’s choice regarding his friends anonymity should have been respected. Your comment May 23, 2017 at 1:15 am should not have been publicly posted, you should have sent the message directly to Jack via a personal email.
Even though some use online anonymity for nefarious purposes, the choice of online anonymity, for whatever reason, should not be intentionally undermined.
Be that as it may, I did not think it could be done. I will not make that mistake again: it is EASY to find what someone wrote.
This thread will be my response to all the pals (“we have to get you on FacePlant, etc., you don’t know what you’re missing.”) whose mission is to get me “connected” to my deep, dark past.
Which might include a bacchanalian Lake Travis hoot with that gal from Austin during the long, hot summer of ’77…
Hi Zoltar Speaks!
I can see/feel/understand where you are coming from regarding my comment where I claimed that Jack probably gave enough information to identify his Facebook friend if one wants to.
I will add the option to send a message directly to Jack via a personal email and the corresponding criteria in my decision process to my repertoire.
Fair point. I shouldn’t have included you. My apologies.
Thanks for your apologies.
Regardless of the outcome, I think you made the right call by letting him know. As I said, if my friend were to quote me in a blog post, I’d prefer to be notified, even if I were unnamed. I wouldn’t expect the same from a stranger, but I would expect it from a friend.
Hopefully he will respond with productive dialogue and you will remain friends.
The ominous sign is his deleting a polite response asking why the fact that they were “all white” proved they were racists.
I’ve disliked Mr Trump for decades now, and thoroughly enjoyed when late night took potshots at him in the 90s. But like it or not, he is the president. You’d need something far more substantive than the mass of Watergate evidence, and these petty actions just waste everyone’s time and energy. They’re just going to bore everyone, like the peaceful car’s alarm that keeps shrieking. They just keep crying ‘wolf,’ without pause.
Even with that, I am slightly heartened at this: ‘The President had no comments.’ Sadly people of all stripes die on a daily basis. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Your “friend” has turned (hopefully temporarly) into a lunatic whose logic makes absolutely no sense. Anyway the term “racist” has long since outlived it’s usefulness. I guess it’s supposed to shame and humiliate with the object to make the person so labeled a pariah. Another weapon in the hands of the left.
The term ‘racist’ is now semantically equal to ‘idiot,’ and the content is just as null. Those they intend to shame no longer care.
If everything is an emergency, nothing is. If everything you do or say is racist, nothing is.
Have you heard of the trope, “Then Let Me be Evil”?
I wonder when the trope “Let Me be Racist” come into play.
…since I have not choice but the be racist, according to most progressives… That there is irony!
This is the thing that gets me about social media — the low barrier for production and amplification of echo-chamber emotional sewage.
That’s what this virtue-signalling nonsense is — emotional sewage that is polluting our culture to the point that it threatens to become the mainstream, and remove reasonable people to the rump.
When interactions were mostly one-to-one or one-to-few, emotional sewage like this tended to get sorted out very quickly because the perpetrators were forced to deal face-to-face with their peers and address rational arguments against their effluvia. In the end, it was contained, often reconsidered and refined into something less putrid and, if not exactly reasoned, at least reasonable in a broad sense.
With social media, which provides a one-to-many construct, there is no such refinement. Raw emotional sewage is dumped out there and amplified, taking it from revolting straight to toxic. The sewer rats all band together in their virtuous righteousness, oblivious to the funk they produce and the normal people they sicken, and attack those who dare to disagree like hungry piranha.
Social media has enabled this sad state of affairs, but blaming the medium is very much like blaming the knife or gun for murder. What social media has proven is that if you can get a pack together on any given point that is large and aggressive enough, you can crush dissent on a massive scale, and drive differing viewpoints from the marketplace of ideas no matter how messed up your own views are.
Benjamin Franklin once answered a lady regarding the form of government the Founders produced in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and he answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” 230 years later, Dr. Franklin’s words haunt us — can we keep our republic, or will it drown in emotional sewage?
Great post, Glenn.
Thank you!
Now if only that last paragraph weren’t such a grammatical fail… 🙂
I’ll clean it up as soon as I get this deadline doc out.
Just so we’re clear, I meant my last paragraph and the double “answered.”
We have already lost the Republic… we are a aristocracy with some trappings of democracy. This was moved along when Senators became populist glory hogs (I’m looking at YOU, John McCain.)
“Denigrate men, whites and conservatives, and that means you are good.”
Might additional animosity be apportioned if the…um…perps are Southern, overweight, and (heaven forbid) practitioners of a certain religion.
“simply by being white, one must be racist”
This theme is by no means novel or groundbreaking, though we may have a problem here.
Currently practicing SJW and UW Madison student (forgive the redundancy) Eneale Pickett is the “entrepreneur” whose “brainchild” is all the rage on the Madison campus.
That brainchild? A hoodie that proudly, if with breathtakingly crippling imbecilic stupidity, proclaims: “All White People Are Racist.”
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/29645/
The possible problem: Would this addlepated inanity be protected as intellectual property?
Honestly, most of these epically hive-minded morons will experience the shock of their short lives when they leave the comforting, ideologically entrenched Lefty confines of Higher Indoctrination.
To anyone that has someone graduating soon, allow me to humbly recommend a gift: Charles Murray’s “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don’ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life.”
if properly utilized, as in ‘read with an open mind,’ it will GREATLY facilitate their transition to the “real world.”
It’s just me, but I think that if I were in Jack’s place and depending on my closeness with the Facebook friend, I would have sent the man a private message. In it, I would have made a couple of the points Jack makes here, probably in a more gentle way but nonetheless firm and earnestly expressed, before I posted anything on my blog with focus on the friend’s post. I would not have promised the friend that I would not blog about his post. But, depending on the friend’s response to my private message, I might or might not have blogged on the friend’s post.
I was un-friended by a Facebook friend sometime after Trump’s election, without warning or explanation – an acquaintance since childhood, a close friend in the “Wonder Years.” Yup: He is a life-long leftist and voter for Democrat candidates. But, to be honest, the discovery of the severing did not hurt. It temporarily enraged, but, hey, life’s too short to solve everyone else’s problems – though never too short for “kind confrontation.”
The ties from one’s nascency run deep; Richard Dreyfuss’ grown up Gordie Lachance said it best in “Stand By Me”
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
I turned 12 fifty years ago this month: picked up my first regular paying gig, delivering the Milwaukee Journal.
I suffered a similar disappointment when I executed my first act of civil disobedience: wearing cutoff shorts [HUGE taboo!] to 6th Grade Graduation.
My ‘best friend’ and I decided to rock the Glenn Stephens Elementary world
by wearing cutoffs (this was the ’60’s after all) to the ceremony.
There I sat, squirming in the openly withering attention given my inappropriate attire waiting for Steve to show.
In he skulked, sans cutoffs, my modest edginess kicked up to the sheer horror of twisting in the wind as the only one in violation.
He: “My mom caught me going out the door and told me I couldn’t wear cutoffs to graduation.”
With all my vitals off the charts, I was able to summon little sympathy for his gutlessness.
My point? You’re likely money ahead.
Your ‘unfriended’ friend is the kind of person you’d discover you can’t count on when the shit hit the shinola.
“Your ‘unfriended’ friend is the kind of person you’d discover you can’t count on when the shit hit the shinola.”
Thanks Paul, I enjoyed your story from your younger youthful times. You reminded me of an incident from that same point in my life where you were, involving that “unfriend,” that I had almost blocked out. Sure enough, in that incident, he behaved exactly as you admonished. There I go, being Lucky again – now, I don’t regret not having stayed in touch with him in the years between high school and Facebook.
That’s a factor: this guy is a friend in the sense that we did a project together years ago, we parted on good terms, and I would say hello to him on the street. I know you better than I know him.
Social media is becoming somewhat of a infectious virus in our society these days, it’s seems to be inspiring thoughtless instant gratification releases of personal frustrations without using any critical thinking prior to pressing the submit button and then similar comments are encouraged by people pressing the “like” button which some think makes it acceptable behavior and therefore “okay”.
Psychologist and Psychiatrists are going to have an influx of patients until people figure out how to effectively deal with this social media phenomenon on their own without it screwing up their psyche.
I’d be interested to hear the opinions of John Billingsley & dragin_dragon about this social media phenomenon.
At the time I was practicing outpatient psychiatry, I don’t think social media use led directly to much of an increase in mental health issues although it sometimes exacerbated other problems, particularly relationship problems, people had. Your words “thoughtless instant gratification” describe the heart of the problem. It is just too easy to hit the send button and the self-censoring that people do when they are in face-to-face conversation seems to be totally turned off when they start typing. I’ve talked to quite a few people, primarily younger adults, who seem to believe that words they post should be given less credence than what they verbalize. Some seem surprised that I take what they post, primarily talking here about threats of self-harm, at face value.
There have been some positive aspects in terms of mental health. The ubiquitous cellphone and access to Facebook makes it possible for people who have suicidal thoughts to easily message or call for help. My experience has been that people receiving messages like that do step in and do what’s right. Being able to go back and look at texts, e-mails, and social media posts can often be helpful when evaluating someone.
The excellent comments above and those on the David Leavitt post have pretty well covered most of my other thoughts about social media. As regards my own posting, slickwilly is my shepherd. I try to keep in mind that anything I post can show up when and where I least expect it or want it.
Do you have a link to the post?
No….
Chris: ” That said, were I the friend in question, I’d rather be told my argument would be presented to a crowd and mocked than to not be told.” Reading this in the light of the whole argument about the ethics of criticizing someone’s post
Does this apply to Trump’s tweets?
How is a Trump tweet different to a post on Facebook?
What?
I am not Trump’s friend.
Are you seriously arguing that there is no distinction between mocking a statement by a public figure and mocking a statement by a friend? Are you arguing that I should notify Trump every time I mock one of his tweets?
You can’t be saying either of those things…so what are you saying?
Ummmm… Trump is POTUS?