Escaping the Echo Chamber

[Túrin Turambar]

Here’s something which I do think is an overraction -

There have been calls for Virginia’s Governor to resign after a 1984 yearbook photo of him emerged wearing a racist costume (the photo shows a man in blackface next to a man in Klan robes – he hasn’t says which one is him).

This was obviously a pretty silly thing to do, but I’m reluctant to judge someone’s behaviour from thirty-five years ago by modern standards, and equally reluctant to argue that someone’s career in public life should end after it emerged it took part in an offensive joke as a teenager. I’m actually concerned that, with social media, we’re eventually going to struggle to find people willing to go into public life because of something highly embarrassing in their past. The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing video is a harmless example which she was able to laugh off, but it’s a sign of things to come.

[yovargas]

I felt, and still mostly do feel, that way about the Kavanaugh controversy. I don't really understand the position that one negative act decades ago should have some relevance to what we think of them today.

[River]

Well, he was actually in medical school when this happened. I'm not sure what to make of it. There've been some glancing reports it may have been part of a variety show. I'm surprised it never came out earlier.

So far a pattern of racist behavior is not emerging. In fact, he's got a history of not racist behavior. So I'm inclined to sit out the hysteria and chalk it up as a case of really bad judgment 35 years ago. Or maybe he was racist and has been working very hard through his adult life to get better.

He could try going full Kavanaugh and screaming "I LIKE BEER!" at the top of his lungs. That sort of behavior seems to be very effective...for men.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

He is now saying that he is not in the picture. He claims that the reason he first admitted that he was one of the two in the picture was that he was actually thinking of another occasion when he darkened his skin for a Michael Jackson dance contest.

As far as I am concerned, he should resign.

Sent from my LG G6 using Tapatalk

[River]

Yeah I was more sympathetic until that happened. Not sure what's better, resignation or some real, sincere public flagellation.

[Túrin Turambar]

And if he isn't in the photo, why is it in his yearbook page? The entire thing has gone from the embarrassing to the bizarre.

[River]

His communications team is doing a lousy job, that's for sure. Either that or he's ignoring them.

[Frelga]

And did he really offer to use facial recognition to prove he wasn't the one in his KKK hood? (per Nate Silver)

I do think it's a shock that any Republican who demands his resignation but says nothing about Trump is not being smote by a lightning bolt on the spot.

[Dave_LF]

Eh. If lightning bolts worked that way, none of 'em would still be around.

[Frelga]

Case in point

I had forgotten the VA GOP, who called on Northam to resign, previously accused him of betraying his heritage for supporting Confederate monument removal. https://t.co/0tshfwFMlh

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1091840716848943104

[River]

No one's walking away clean from this one...

[Frelga]

It's what happens when a systemic, institutionalized problem is treated like each individual case is a shocking exception.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well said. Frelga.

[Primula Baggins]

An excellent and insightful summation of the swamp we’re all up to our necks in.

[yovargas]

While I find it profoundly uninsightful. That kind of language is part of a bad tendency of the left/liberals to use vaguely defined but emotionally loaded words as part of their lingo. Any attempt to argue against such language is usually met by accusations of bigotry, which immediately shuts down any conversation. Which I don't find very helpful.

In this case, the vaguely defined but emotionally loaded words being "systemic" and "institutionalized", words that seem to imply some sort of formal, official, organized power groups attempting to do....something. Something vast and nefarious. Which is basically the definition of a conspiracy theory, couched in intellectual sounding terms. Like most conspiracy theories you'll be able to cherry pick examples to prove your narrative. But also like most conspiracy theories, well, it's pretty silly.

[Frelga]

Yov, if you are unaware of the systemic and institutionalized history and reality of racism in the United States, then may I recommend that you so some reading?

For example.

The troubling history behind Ralph Northam’s blackface Klan photo

[yovargas]

Yes, I am aware that there were many laws and rules in our nation enforcing segregation and discrimination several decades ago. I assumed you were talking about 2019 though.

[Frelga]

Why, what happened in 2019? Did we get a new president since yesterday?

[Alatar]

echo chamberDictionary result for echo chamber
noun
1.
an enclosed space where sound reverberates.
"purpose-built echo chambers allow the addition of natural-sounding reverberation to the recordings"
2.
an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.
"people are living in partisan and ideological echo chambers"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

If you believe that institutionalized racism in the U.S. ended decades ago, you simply aren't paying attention. That's not being in a partisan echo chamber; that's reality. Ask Tim Scott, the conservative GOP Senator from South Carolina (and the only Republican African-American senator and one of only two GOP African-American members of Congress) and I guarantee you, he would agree. That's not being partisan, it is facing the facts.