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[meadowlander]

42. People don't like being called out on their bullshit, especially not publicly.

But I don't think the solution to that is to stop challenging ideas.

I do think that we need to give each other the benefit of the doubt sometimes instead of jumping right to "you're a racist and you need to go away forever!"

I once had someone accuse me of being a racist because I asked the person sitting next to me, who randomly happened to be Chinese, if she knew if there were any good dim sum restaurants in the area. I wasn't asking her because she was Asian. I was asking her because the conversation happened to be about dim sum, I like it, and she was in my field of vision at the time.

I can see how having to deal with that all day is exhausting, especially if you're used to living in a pretty homogenous culture where you don't usually have to worry about it. But it's also not OK to ask women, LGBTQ+ people and minorities to keep quiet in the name of "Democrat Privilege". If something is wrong, it should be questioned and called out regardless of who is saying it.

I just think there's a way to do it that doesn't assume you know everything about the other persons' intentions or that paints them as a bad person because they said or did one thing that was ignorant or insensitive - especially if it was thirty years ago and they were under 25 or so (i.e. pre-full brain development).

We need to bring back the Socratic method instead of the wagging finger of political correctness. Ask people what they meant and then show them why you don't agree with it using logic and gentle peer pressure.