Why are we debating if anti-racism has gone too far? In the last two weeks local, state and federal police and soldiers were tear gassing, firing rubber bullets and beating peaceful protestors up.
Being assaulted and arrested by the police for free speech is a clear first amendment violation. Being fired for saying something racist is much more constitutionally (and morally) ambiguous.
The author's point is that "racist" is being stretched to include being neutral: if white silence = violence, then you're now a racist if you don't actively plaster your social media with BLM slogans. "If you're not with us, you're against us! Burn the witch!"
Isn't it possible for some to have their ability to communicate freely strangled by political correctness and their legitimate fear of being treated as a racist while others are literally strangled by actual racists for being black often with few consequences?
It often seems like hypocrisy not baseball is the national pastime.
> It often seems like hypocrisy not baseball is the national pastime.
I would say that failing to properly identify the root problem is the national pastime.
We gave the government vast powers over everyone's lives, believing that that power would be used to fix social problems.
Instead that power is used by corrupt government officials (cops are by no means the only ones) to act out whatever prejudices they happen to have (racism is by no means the only one) with impunity.
The root problem is the power. Humans simply cannot be trusted with that level of power over other humans. Such power will always be misused. You can't fix that by fixing a particular prejudice. Even if you could wave a magic wand and guarantee that no cop anywhere would ever be racist again, that wouldn't fix the corruption; the corrupt cops would just find some other excuse to harass citizens for no good reason. You have to fix the corruption. And that means limiting the power that government has over people's lives.
Being assaulted and arrested by the police for free speech is a clear first amendment violation. Being fired for saying something racist is much more constitutionally (and morally) ambiguous.