What exactly did closing issues help?

I won't do any (white)mansplaining but I think there was a trainwreck where the learning experience was going to destroy relations and chase away babblers. I guess, for me, nobody should have to pay for others' heavy learning curves (I still lament the thread with RTTG that went horribly some time ago) due to systemic bias.

Overrepresentation by whites, and by males, is a real problem in political forums. Over time people get relegated out of the conversation (their voices become privatized) and this is clearly an issue here.

The only problem I see with my view is that E. Tamaran made a call to let the non-supporting settler voices rant. He clearly didn't mind in this case, so maybe it should have continued.

Moving to rabble reactions.

I am not confused as to why it was closed.

I reread Maysie's post here, and it seemed to me that the problem that Maysie (and remind) had was people discussing whether or not it was a perfect case and if it showed systemic racism. I unfortunately crossposted, and after reading Maysie's post, dropped that line of debate. Others didn't.

At least, that is how I see it.

At a certain point (and sooner rather than later) I suspect people who did this as a habit would receive warnings and/or suspensions and/or banning. This *is* the board's policy and mandate we're talking about. Those who don't respect it ...

... Oh no, those are not tightly crossed fingers you are seeing through your screens. Oh, no!

am not sure just what it is you clarified?

Folks were warned if they did not stop with the oppressive language and actions the thread would be closed, they didn't, it was.

This simply stinks of privilege, and you don't seem to have any notion of it. Perhaps you should do A LOT of reading up on what it means before contributing to any of the forums created for very specific marginalized voices, and not your own.

Agreed

actually the subject of the thread and case i was referring to was that of lucy muthoka, not the pratt case which i agree the sentence was probably harsher due to his being FN.

WRITER:

this is what i mean.  instead of having a rational debate where we respond to what the other is writing, you're just blasting me without addressing any of the points i've raised, and accusing me of being ignorant to privilege for disagreeing with someone on the specifics of a case that is not so simple, even from a FN positive point of view. 

like i said before, i wholeheartedly agree that no one should come into a thread under the FN banner and start denying that systemic racism exists or any other equally absurd claims, but that is not going on here.

Instead of derailing the conversation with claims of privilege, oppressive language, dominating the thread, demands people leave the thread etc. why not just address the points in such a way as to demonstrate that what you're claiming is in fact correct?  then you can make your point as well as make the people who have privilege think about their own possible biases?  

Again, this was a specific case where the sentence was not clearly racist as it was a tragic accident in which i wouldn't generally expect a prison term for the driver.  to equate that with denying entirely that systemic racism exists in terms of sentencing is totally unfair, and to say that for trying to have a conversation about it amounts to being disrespectful/oppressive in the FN forum is unfair.  Where else to better have that conversation?

milo204 wrote:

as someone who posted in the debate we're talking about, the problem to me was that the subject of the thread was to talk about how a particular case was an example of systemic racism in the justice system.  there were disagreements over whether or not this specific case (a tragic car related accident with two deaths, several injuries) was indeed an example of racism, or if the person didn't go to jail because it was a tragic accident.

If you understand what systemic racism is, you understand that racism is a factor in EVERY case.  When you say, "yeah, i understand that there's systemic racism, i just don't think this case is an example of it," then it's not clear to anyone that you actually DO understand.  Because if you did understand, you'd be shutting up.

Do you think the court was simply NOT aware that the victims were FN?  They didn't notice?

Quote:

i think the non FN posters made great pains to say they did not disagree the police/courts system is indeed racist towards Fn's, except in this specific case it didn't appear racism was a motivating factor in the sentencing, which was the claim made by the person who initiated the thread.

How can you think racism is not a factor in the sentencing when you understand that systemic racism means that it doesn't go away?  You keep stating this over and over, making it clear to people that YOU JUST DON'T GET IT.  You're telling us, "Hey, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, but you need to just calm down and listen to me so I can tell you how it is."  And people are telling you that you need to listen/read more and talk/write less, about this issue.

Quote:

i didn't see the debate as being oppressive, just people having a discussion.  i don't think anyone was defending systemic racism or saying it didn't exist or even that it couldn't exist in the case we were talking about, just that it didn't appear judging by what we knew about the case to be a factor in the sentencing.  

If racism wasn't a factor in the sentencing, then where does systemic racism come into play?  Are you getting this yet?

Quote:

my problem is that if that was the subject put forth for discussion in the forum, how can people then be chewed out and accused of being oppressive if they try and discuss the topic raised?  i'm not sure how the thread could have gone in any other direction, and i think the specifics of the case were such that it was not a clear cut situation of racism so there was room to have a logical, rational debate which did not happen.

The thread can not go in another direction until you listen to what people are trying to communicate to you.

Here's how the thread can go in another direction:

You calm down.  Don't get defensive.  Forget about trying to communicate to us that you know what we're saying.  You don't.  That's ok.  This is not about you being a bad person.  We just want you to realize that what you're saying is hurtful.  You can keep saying it, but it's going to keep being hurtful.

When someone tells you that what you're saying is hurtful, the best thing to do is just to stop.  Stop and think about it.  Unless your goal is to be hurtful.  Don't try to explain, don't try to justify, just stop.  Don't come back later and say that you thought about it but you don't think it was hurtful.  Just stop.

Realize that there's something that you're just not getting.

Nobody wants to chew you out or accuse you of being oppressive--they just want to communicate to you when what you're saying is hurtful for someone.  Because, you wanna know, and not keep hurting people, right?  Because, then you'll understand better, and we'll all be able to have discussions more smoothly.

So don't take it personally, and don't be afraid to admit that you've got more to learn. :)

laine lowe wrote:

What I don't get is why so many people were so invested in disproving the perception that the sentance given was rather light and that systemic racism against Aboriginal people might have been at play. As I mentioned in the previous thread, it seemed pretty damn light to me and I felt as shocked and dismayed as most Members of Cross Lake.

One hopes that its just because people have too much time on their hands. What people don't seem to understand is that systemic racism is so hard to pin down that in any given case their will be "arguments" that can be made to cast doubt upon the assertion that it is in play. Indeed, in these case the crown argues a plausible case. If it were not plausible, there would be no case. So, in fact, the way to determine systemic racism, is actually not through individual cases, but by looking at the broaders statistics.

These statistics indicate that the effect of systemic racism is a likely to be present in any given court case involving FN's people. How else can we explain the statistics for incarceration of FN's people? Systemic racism is everywhere, because the society is racist, at it root. How this appears in real life is often hard to determine, but it exists to a greater or lesser extent in any given event that happens in our society involving FN people,

al-Qa'bong wrote:

A "Books" thread was just closed.  Closed, mind you, not burned.

It's unlikely that I would ever read a book written by Christie Blatchford, but I wouldn't have minded reading a discussion about its contents, repulsive as they may be.

I don't know about everyone else, but I really dislike such censorship on babble.

 I wrote some comments about it but it was closed when I posted.  I know the OP was trolling but regardless this book and the POV of what occured in Caledonia will likely get some press and be spun in that direction.  

 Since I didn't get the chance to comment on that thread I'll post it here because I think it's a very important point of how people from some quarters are approaching and spinning it for public consumption. 

 I watched the first part of the interview and caught it right away.  Blatchford stated quite blatantly that she didn't and still doesn't know much about the land claim and that's okay because that part doesn't matter to her book and the points she makes in her book.   How someone can write a book, any book for that matter without knowing or understanding one of the main factors if not the key factor that informed ALL of the events and peoples actions, on all levels, is just wrong.    Regardless of ones POV it's like trying to do a puzzle with half the pieces and no big picture to go by.   She states that the Canadian gov't doesn't recognize the claim as legitimate and that somehow speaks to it's relevance. Good enough for her.    Well no duh Christie, that lack of recognition was the point and the main factor that started it all and informed everything that subsequently happened.    

 This is the spin, dismiss it's relevance as some minor player.  Whether done out of sheer ignorance or on purpose it's just wrong and very annoying.   However I've seen it work on people ever since the issue first started.  

It's great to know that "Dump on Maysie Day" is being celebrated early this year.

I've re-opened the thread. You just had to ask nicely you know.

babble has a problem, has always had a problem, of attracting and keeping posters of colour. Indeed, the Canadian liberal left shares this affliction. While it's nice for some of us to flex our intellectual muscles critiquing Blatchford's "Who will think of the suburbanites?" cri de coeur, the fact that such a discussion is happening is a significant barrier to creating and maintaining a space where FN posters (in this case) can feel comfortable talking about fundamental issues--where the starting point isn't: "Well, sure we took your land, but do you have to be so gosh darned impolite about it?" but: "We took your land and we need to make reparations for a few centuries of genocide and cultural eradication."

This is not an easy question to resolve. And it's made more difficult when certain babblers are determined to challenge every attempt to fix this endemic problem. Maysie and I don't know the solution--although Maysie has been working on it for a couple decades--but it would be nice if other babblers engaged in this community failing in good faith, and with a determination to fix it, rather than to stymie, question, niggle and attack any humble attempt to do so.

So when you disagree with a thread closure, it would be nice if we took the above as the operating ideology, rather than framing it in terms of "book burning" and "censorship." Such an approach is not only unfair and untrue, but harmful to the overall health and diversity-building project of the community.

Unionist wrote:

[...] I realized I was wrong. [...]

Best [s]band name[/s] tattoo EVER! It should be mandatory upon signing up.