Some 30,000 Germans protest against anti-Islam rallies

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37. That would be the stance of many people who hold bigoted views against minority groups...

Someone says something racist or anti-Semitic, someone else rightly tells them the viewpoint is a vile one, and they'd probably trot out the 'one person's vile is another person's virtuous'. I've seen that attitude over at Discussionist, as well as the DU I/P forum now and again back when I spent a few years posting there regularly. I tend to give people who express viewpoints that are imo bigoted the benefit of the doubt, but when I see someone doing it repeatedly that's when the benefit of the doubt fades. Yr at that point for me.

See, being Australian, I have been a bit tone-deaf in the past when it comes to racism in the US. I'm not talking about the blatant stuff, but some stereotypes that are unique to the US and racism there and don't happen in our own racism towards our indigenous population. I got defensive back when a few DUers were yelling at me coz I didn't see a local KFC ad about the Test series with the West Indies involving an Australian supporter sitting amongst a bunch of West Indies supporters and handing out KFC to them as a peace offering as being racist. I got the shits because what I saw was American DUers deliberately ignoring that their own stereotypes aren't stereotypes in other countries, they didn't even know what cricket was, and the ad was meant for us, not them. But I realised I was also deliberately ignoring things like the fact that the ad looked at by Americans was to them racist and the company that made it was based in the US and should have known better and that there was the US racist stereotype of fried chicken and African Americans in there.

The point is that when people have a tone deaf moment, they shouldn't get defensive, nor start informing everyone that they're educating people about reality. What they should do is listen and have a think about what it is that's offending people. It seems pretty damn simple to me...