Political Correctness

[UKMikey]

You're very confused.

The home office report looked at multiple studies and these, plus their own preliminary research all showed Asians were over represented.

You can find that here

I can't find it there since your report seems to present several caveats which affect the veracity of your claim that South Asians and black people are overrepresented. It doesn't seem to be making the conclusion that they're more likely to be involved in child sexual exploitation at all. You appear to have seized on the first sentence of section 17 without taking into account subsequent paragraphs such as the one I've bolded.

A number of high-profile cases - including the offending in Rotherham investigated by Professor Alexis Jay, the Rochdale group convicted as a result of Operation Span, and convictions in Telford – have mainly involved men of Pakistani ethnicity.

Beyond specific high-profile cases, the academic literature highlights significant limitations to what can be said about links between ethnicity and this form of offending. Research has found that group-based CSE offenders are most commonly White.

Some studies suggest an over-representation of Black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending. This is due to issues such as data quality problems, the way the samples were selected in studies, and the potential for bias and inaccuracies in the way that ethnicity data is collected.

During our conversations with police forces, we have found that in the operations reflected, offender groups come from diverse backgrounds, with each group being broadly ethnically homogenous. However, there are cases where offenders within groups come from different backgrounds.

Ethnicity Key findings:

• Research on offender ethnicity is limited, and tends to rely on poor quality data. It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about differences in ethnicity of offenders, but it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending.
• A number of studies have indicated an over-representation of Asian and Black offenders in group-based CSE. Most of the same studies show that the majority of offenders are White.
• Community and cultural factors are, however, relevant to understanding and tackling offending. An approach to deterring, disrupting, and preventing offending that is sensitive to the communities in which offending occurs is needed. 75. There is a limited amount of research looking at the ethnicity of perpetrators of group-based CSE, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions about whether or not certain ethnicities are over-represented in this type of offending. What research there is tends to rely on poor-quality data, with issues in a number of areas:
• Data in this space is reliant on ‘known’ or identified offending behaviour, therefore limiting our understanding of group-based CSE in its entirety.
• Law enforcement data can be particularly vulnerable to bias, in terms of those cases that come to the attention of the authorities, and this can impact on the generalisability of such data.
• This can also lead to greater attention being paid to certain types of offenders, making that data more readily identified and recorded.
• Police-collected data on ethnicity uses broad categories and requires the police to assign an ethnicity rather than it being self-reported by offenders. Data is therefore not always accurate; Berelowitz et al. (2012) observed cases of offenders being initially classed as ‘Asian’ but actually coming from other backgrounds, such as White British or Afghan. 45 Jay (2014) 46 Cockbain et al. (2020) 47 Berelowitz et al. (2012) Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation: Characteristics of Offending
• Data on ethnicity are not routinely or consistently collected by police forces and other agencies. As set out below, many research and evidence collections have a lot of missing or incomplete data.

---

Now I'm confused. I'm presenting what as fact? The home office report didn't investigate political correctness

The conclusion that Asians are more likely to be child sex offenders. They may be overrepresented in high profile court cases but I don't know what that proves about the different races' propensity to commit child sex crime and therefore a reason for a subsequent focus by law enforcement on black and Asian suspects over whites in cases of that nature.

 

[HenrySwanson]

I can't find it there since your report seems to present several caveats which affect the veracity of your claim that South Asians and black people are overrepresented. It doesn't seem to be making the conclusion that they're more likely to be involved in child sexual exploitation at all. You appear to have seized on the first sentence of paragraph 17 without taking into account the rest of the paragraph.





The conclusion that Asians are more likely to be child sex offenders. They may be overrepresented in high profile court cases but I don't know what that proves about the different races' propensity to commit child sex crime and therefore a reason for a subsequent focus by law enforcement on black and Asian suspects over whites in cases of that nature.

Yes you should use caution as in theory, all the studies and their own research could be overcounting Asians but at some stage you have to look at the balance of profanities of them all being wrong

 

[inkiphox]

I'd like to preface that at least my experience with 'cancel culture' and PC culture has been with respect to entertainment. Largely I'd like present a hypothetical to illustrate my point. Say you are a stand-up comedian. You primarily make a living off of touring, which you heavily rely on social media to market, as well as any additional skits or content you may provide. You do a show one night where there's a 100 people and you tell a joke that offends about 5-10 of them while it's well received with the majority. Afterwards the 5-10 offended people accost you about the joke, rather sharply and bordering on harassment. You defend the joke and highlight that it's not serious and that it was well received save for them, but you'd take their comments into consideration and would offer them a refund if they weren't happy with the show. Later these 5-10 people go to social media and present the joke entirely out of context and call for your manager, bookers, sponsors etc to drop you, and it develops a large following. The joke continues to do fine at shows, representing that it is not the opinion of the majority. Yet due to the persistence of the social media movement, sponsors and bookers begin dropping your show, and you're even banned from those platforms. You take a massive hit due to negative publicity, despite the joke being taken out of context and even after people come to defend. You lose tons of money and even have your career put into jeopardy. This raises the question, owing to the nature of the situation, is this a justified result if 5-10 were offended by what you said and are not representative of the majority?

I think you basically hit the nail on the head with this one.

---

On an unrelated note, I've seen people openly against the movement of transgender rights to be grouped within the same as cisgender females in every circumstance called transphobic: even those who are transgender themselves. Many of these people criticising the movement who are transgender came out years before a lot of the people partaking in the 'transphobe waaaah!!!1! callouts' too, which makes it even more laughable to say the least. I guess you're just not allowed to mention the fact a lot of the culture surrounding current-day MtFs (in particular) started from 4chan's /r9k/ board sometime in 2015, spread to Tumblr (later Twitter) with Discord then finally putting it in the mainstream as many of /r9k/'s habitants are NEETs with no care for social aptitude whatsoever.

Given I've hung around Discord circles with a ton of people matching this agenda, and also within various circles with 'truscum' leaning people, and the former group essentially deprecated me without saying because I wasn't close enough to their standard of ways (and a few people actually luring me into things I don't really want to talk about, sorry)... I can't say I'm too satisfied with that overly-toxic movement - or any ultra-progressive neo-communist filled movement.

Transfolk are an inbetween, not the same as cisgender. Human rights yes, but classifying them as cisgender is wrong IMO and opens up all sorts of abusive manner of ways. (Not a coincidence that when the UK changed the way female sex crimes were calculated to include trans women, the rate doubled pretty much, and that's concerning - considering there's a very small amount of transgender people in this country, most tend to emigrate to the US or other countries since it's ironically easier to do stuff there than it is in Europe, yup)

 

[UKMikey]

Yes you should use caution as in theory, all the studies and their own research could be overcounting Asians but at some stage you have to look at the balance of profanities of them all being wrong

Er... what is a "balance of profanities"? Are you using a "no smoke without fire" argument?

At some stage you'll have to join the dots between "high profile court cases featuring Asians" and "Asians are more likely to commit child sexual exploitation, warranting a police focus on them as an ethnic group, political correctness be damned" since I'm not seeing a connection.

 

[UKMikey]

I think you basically hit the nail on the head with this one.

Perhaps you could address @huskeR32's reply, then, since @longshot1314 doesn't seem to be interested in doing so.

Here it is again:

If there's enough of a reaction on social media that the comedy clubs are compelled by economic interest to not book the comedian any longer, and sponsors are compelled by economic interest to not associate with the comedian any longer, then surely many more than 5-10 people are now offended, no?

Unless it's your contention that one must hear something firsthand in order to have the right to be offended by it?

 

[HenrySwanson]

Er... what is a "balance of profanities"? Are you using a "no smoke without fire" argument?

At some stage you'll have to join the dots between "high profile court cases featuring Asians" and "Asians are more likely to commit child sexual exploitation, warranting a police focus on them as an ethnic group" since I'm not seeing a connection.

Probabilities. I'm on my phone.

Connection between what?

 

[UKMikey]

Probabilities. I'm on my phone.

So "no smoke without fire" in the absence of concrete proof, then.

Connection between what?

The things at the beginning of the sentence you quoted.

 

[TexRex]

"Henry Swanson's my name and grasping at straws is my game."

 

[Danoff]

@HenrySwanson, can we talk for a second about how you're constantly taking a side the suggests that ethnicity and race are important markers for behavior? Where does this come from? You love this idea for some reason, why? It's like deep down you're really strongly motivated to think that someone's brain, their decisions, their choices, are strongly correlated with other traits like skin pigmentation, eye, lip, and nose size, etc.

Can we talk about why that is?

 

[huskeR32]

Hmmm rookie error. I said it's not the response that is political correctness, not that it wasn't about it. Using your analogy I was trying to show that it's the cause rather than the effect.

So "political correctness" isn't the accusation of racism, but rather the fear of that accusation? "Political correctness" only exists in the minds of those who are scared of it?

Okay then. We agree. See ya later.

 

[McLaren]

I'd like to preface that at least my experience with 'cancel culture' and PC culture has been with respect to entertainment. Largely I'd like present a hypothetical to illustrate my point. Say you are a stand-up comedian. You primarily make a living off of touring, which you heavily rely on social media to market, as well as any additional skits or content you may provide. You do a show one night where there's a 100 people and you tell a joke that offends about 5-10 of them while it's well received with the majority. Afterwards the 5-10 offended people accost you about the joke, rather sharply and bordering on harassment. You defend the joke and highlight that it's not serious and that it was well received save for them, but you'd take their comments into consideration and would offer them a refund if they weren't happy with the show. Later these 5-10 people go to social media and present the joke entirely out of context and call for your manager, bookers, sponsors etc to drop you, and it develops a large following. The joke continues to do fine at shows, representing that it is not the opinion of the majority. Yet due to the persistence of the social media movement, sponsors and bookers begin dropping your show, and you're even banned from those platforms. You take a massive hit due to negative publicity, despite the joke being taken out of context and even after people come to defend. You lose tons of money and even have your career put into jeopardy. This raises the question, owing to the nature of the situation, is this a justified result if 5-10 were offended by what you said and are not representative of the majority?

The issue I have here is that comedy has a bunch of variables at hand to affect how such a situation plays out.

First off, if the joke is being said during a show, there's little to no chance it receives the end result of your situation unless it's absolutely warranted. The reason for this is, during a show, most folks immediately understand that whatever is said within' the venue, is not to be taken seriously (unless the comedian's setup is meant to have an actual meaning behind the joke; Dave Chappelle's latest work is a pretty solid example of this). Hannibal Buress makes a solid joke about this important factor: "Oh you do stand up? Cool, just do some jokes for us here at the bar. Go ahead, I know when you usually do stand up, there's a stage, and lights, and sound, and a mic, and an audience, and a proper context for stand up". If someone was to make a joke bad enough that the context of the venue can not excuse its offensiveness, chances are it's a really bad joke. But, if your example calls for 90-95% of the crowd enjoying the joke, then it seems highly unlikely those 5-10 people are going to cause enough commotion online to sway others without an equally sizeable chunk of folks hearing the joke, and reacting like the audience did. I think most folks would just think, "You heard a ****ty joke at a comedy show. Get over it". It'd have to be really outlandish to gain any more attention; see Michael Richards below.

If they are further taking the joke out of context & it gains enough traction for venues to drop you, then at some point, the context will be shown. The comedy community is pretty good about this because it's an extremely important factor for comedians to be successful. A joke needs to be heard in full to gauge its effect. If people go around telling others on Twitter you made a joke at a show including the n-word, there's a high chance it'll get around. That word is a pretty fast track way to be "cancelled" from further venues & the public. However, before that would happen, typically, the joke in full would eventually come out. It's hard to call a joke offensive based on punchline or setup alone, you need the full set to make sense of it. In this case, it will come down how talented you are & how you wrote the joke surrounding the word. I'm going to reference 2 examples here about jokes involving that word where 1 comedian did get cancelled.

Michael Richards attempted to make a "joke" out of a situation & used the n-word. The problem is Micheal was making his remark in the context of speaking to 2 hecklers (although I don't think they were heckling, just being loud during the set). With making jokes at the audience's expense, you have to pull the joke off the top of your head while realizing your joke is being directed at a real individual in front of you. With hecklers/rude folks in the crowd, you can get away with a bit more aggressive comebacks, but you still need to be aware you're talking to someone. Where Michael went wrong is that while he started off his response towards the hecklers in a way that's usually acceptable, it quickly crossed the line when he shouted the n-word several times & amplified the racism behind 2 remarks he made to the men beforehand. Someone else speaks up & Michael continues the interaction as if it's a normal comedian/heckler exchange where both parties basically just tease/mock each other & it remains a funny, impromptu part of the show. But, of course, it's not; Michael crossed the line by letting out real aggression towards an audience member & no matter his attempt to downplay what he did ("Ooooh, this shocks you" to the crowd), he just makes it worse as the interaction goes on.

The other reference is a joke by Louis CK. He starts off his joke by immediately saying, "I thought the n-word the other day. But it wasn't like a racial connotation." Louis does his bit about a dude making coffee with complete dedication & Louis being blown away by it. He ends it by saying, "When I left there, I just had this thought, 'that n-word made the **** out of this coffee'. I don't know why, he wasn't black, it's just what I felt in my heart". This works for 2 reasons; it's clearly indicated as a sign of endearment. And Louis CK has made a career of writing edgy jokes like this with an audience that understands it.

Which circles back to what I said about, "how talented you are". Your talent dictates how you write jokes & therefore, will influence your style as a comedian & the audience that reacts to your jokes. If you're a comedian in the style of Jim Gaffigan, writing an offensive joke about race or something else like rape, murder, etc. is going to be tricky because your style is more upbeat & your audience is more laid back. If you're good at presenting yourself as a shock jock like Daniel Tosh or Anthony Jesselnik, you can get away with much rougher jokes because your audience anticipates it & recognizes you're not serious about what you're saying; your ability to be funny comes in making something uncomfortable combined with an unexpected punchline. This also brings back in Hannibal's bit earlier about, "a proper context for stand up". Jim Gaffigan's jokes work well outside of a comedy venue, Daniel Tosh's joke about replacing his sister's pepper spray with silly string and then one night, she got raped... probably not (btw, that phrase I shared looks pretty bad out of context. However, once the full setup is shared about how he & his sister liked to prank each other aggressively & 1-up the other, it's less offensive & the punchline makes more sense).

Basically to get down to it, your hypothetical requires some further variables. What was the joke? How was written? Does fit in line with your style of comedy & audience?

The issue I have with your conclusion of being cancelled is that again, you acknowledge that 90-95% of the crowd found the joke funny. Even if the 5-10 people attempt to take the joke out of context, considering the fact it's a joke, people are going to want to know the whole bit. You can't just tell folks you wrote an offensive joke about abortion & not expect the general public to want to know how the joke plays out. And if you're talented enough to make that topic funny to the vast majority of the crowd, chances are most people outside your show will laugh too. Or at least a decent enough percentage where the venues won't cancel you over a joke that clearly gets a positive reaction in their settings.

If, if, things however, did go the other way, I think @huskeR32 has covered the alternative with the underlined.

If there's enough of a reaction on social media that the comedy clubs are compelled by economic interest to not book the comedian any longer, and sponsors are compelled by economic interest to not associate with the comedian any longer, then surely many more than 5-10 people are now offended, no?

This would have to be a rare occurrence where you happened to play to the right audiences with a risky joke that the vast majority of the general public doesn't agree with. Would most likely have to easily involve a joke regarding race & performing in dodgy venues to begin with. But, if you're finding repeat success across the country with the joke, it's highly unlikely the general public would backlash against you b/c the entirety of the joke would come out fairly quick.

I think this comes down to 1 or the other: If the audience is 95% happy with the joke at multiple shows, I don't see an online circle of cancellation coming your way. If the venues are on the verge on cancelling your shows because of public backlash, you're not seeing repeat success of the joke.

 

[inkiphox]

Well social media tends to blow things out of proportion and people then 'rally' others into things making them look like more of a thing than they are especially in certain niches and communities online, when the general opinion is much less obsessive on the topic and quite frankly will forget about it in a week's time usually.

See: most YouTuber drama, people talk about it for a week and then noone gives a damn anymore. Thank god I only generally stick to smaller channels and individual videos overall, in fact pretty much everyone I'm subbed to I speak to personally or know on some level lol.

 

[huskeR32]

Well social media tends to blow things out of proportion and people then 'rally' others into things making them look like more of a thing than they are especially in certain niches and communities online, when the general opinion is much less obsessive on the topic and quite frankly will forget about it in a week's time usually.

People who react to things on social media don't actually care about them, rather they're just performing? How do you know this? What do they gain from doing so? What qualifies an online community as "niche?" What makes you think such communities react any more disingenuously to things than non-niche communities? How have you measured this? What qualifies as "general opinion?" (Is this the same thing as Chrunch's "normal?") Do you tap into that "general opinion" by going online? If so, how do you avoid the pitfalls you yourself just pointed out about online communities being performative? What qualifies as "obsessive?" How did you measure human propensity for obsessiveness before and after the advent of social media? Out of curiosity, how much more obsessive have we gotten now that we have wires in our brains? Why is length of time until general population forgetfulness a useful measure for the legitimacy of a complaint? How did you arrive at one week as the border between illegitimate and legitimate?

 

[inkiphox]

What do they gain from doing so?

Attention and sympathy. Also bonus points for the echo chambers they tend to form on Twitter, for the most part.

What qualifies an online community as "niche?" What makes you think such communities react any more disingenuously to things than non-niche communities?

Not appealing to the likes of casual followers of a specific topic. The definition of "community" here doesn't specifically refer to a forum or dedicated platform, it can mean the circles surrounding a particular person or topic too.

How have you measured this? What qualifies as "general opinion?" (Is this the same thing as Chrunch's "normal?") Do you tap into that "general opinion" by going online?

I haven't got any real statistics to back it up, but I guess just being around certain places (mostly places related to computers and romhacking and such) and certain topics of interest and finding that there's certain things that people in those groups just seem to go up in arms about for reasons that bewilder someone like me, who isn't there to whine constantly about some kind of petty drama on a topic really only important to them - not even seemingly on a personal level to themselves - like 'someone cheated on a speedrun stream' or 'someone else said something that didn't include non-binary people properly'; the kinda stuff I came across in those places. Got to the point I didn't care and left those types of places for the most part (except one place which I happen to maintain an admin status on and the owner is actually my boyfriend, so I'm not really gonna leave it and it's actually quite peaceful there compared to a lot of the other similar places I've been to).

Holy ****ing ****, do I even make any sense when I write bat**** long sentences like that?

If so, how do you avoid the pitfalls you yourself just pointed out about online communities being performative?

Good point, I basically don't. I might myself be performative and obsessive at times admittedly, but it tends to be more over my own issues and not over something someone said that I don't happen to like. Besides, I'm pretty strongly anti-mainstream anyways, I'd deliberately sabotage myself from getting big for the sakes of not letting any kind of internet fame get to my head.

How did you measure human propensity for obsessiveness before and after the advent of social media?

I didn't, but I just noticed people around me talking more about 'Internet celebrity' drama ever since 2016 or so. Before that I never really saw the people I spoke to at the time talking about such stuff nearly as much, that said almost nobody remains from that time period due to... 2017 garbage, basically a long tale of abusive behaviour mostly marked by two individuals (half of which for the first one was my fault anyway).

 

[UKMikey]

Sounds like the old "virtue-signalling" bad faith argument again.

It sounds to me more that if a community is so niche it wouldn't have much of an opportunity to cancel anything and that opinion has to go viral and mainstream before it can make much of a difference.

 

[HenrySwanson]

So "no smoke without fire" in the absence of concrete proof, then.

I chuckle because you said that the majority of offenders are white, which was reached using the same data, and don't question it.

If we look at the studies that made it through to the report (not including the ones in the literature review) the first shows that 28% are Asian. The second showed 21% are Asian. The third looked at groups and found 50% were all Asian. The fourth found 14% were Asian. The last looked at Bristol and said that minority ethnic groups were over-represented.

Now, as I said in the post way back there are limitations with these studies, but bear in mind that the Pakistani population of England and Wales is 2% and the Bangladeshi population of England and Wales is 0.8% you have a cumulated figure of 2.8%. If we're generous we can round it up to 3% to include some of the Indian population. Looking at those studies they are over-represented by a factor ranging from a low of 4.5 times to a high of 16 times across the studies. Also remember that they were over-represented in the preliminary research undertaken by the report authors. Considering they all had different methodolgies and reached the same conclusion, is it not fair to say that it's extremely likely Asians are disprotionately represented among group CSE offenders? As a question, how do you suppose the report authors could conclude the majority of offenders were white?

One must wonder why the report authors didn't undertake a more thorough investigation into offenders, say by finding the ethnicity of those in prison for those offences.

The things at the beginning of the sentence you quoted.

The above should clarify.

So "political correctness" isn't the accusation of racism, but rather the fear of that accusation? "Political correctness" only exists in the minds of those who are scared of it?

Okay then. We agree. See ya later.

So political correctness is just something that exists in the mind that magically manifests itself in numerous individuals in numerous organisations? Mind blown.

@HenrySwanson, can we talk for a second about how you're constantly taking a side the suggests that ethnicity and race are important markers for behavior? Where does this come from? You love this idea for some reason, why? It's like deep down you're really strongly motivated to think that someone's brain, their decisions, their choices, are strongly correlated with other traits like skin pigmentation, eye, lip, and nose size, etc.

Can we talk about why that is?

Always a pleasure.

Contrary to what's been written by some I don't think ethnicity is a contributing factor for criminal behaviour. It's far more to do with the socio-economic circumstances and culture that these groups find themselves in. For example, many Pakistanis dislike being lumped in with these grooming gang offenders, and blame compatriots who are from the Mirpur region for the negative connotations many in the press make. Mirpuris make up a significant amount of offenders, and come from a village culture different to other Pakistanis. With the black population and knife crime you have a stronger association with the black-Caribbean contingent rather than the black-Africans, and this is likely due to cultural differences as well as other factors like educational attainment and single parent households. In my family on my father's (Jamaican) side I know many gang members who settled in Birmingham - and with gang culture you get knife crime. What I do believe has a causal effect is religion. Christian theology, history and preachers all (IMO) contribute to homophobic attitudes in believers, and this has real consequences on gay individuals. With Islam you see death to apostates, death to those who insult the religion and people killed every day in its name so I see it as more violent than others, at least in the present day.

As for the difference in brains and how functions resulting from them may be linked to ethnic groups, I'm conflicted. Coming from a medical background I think there are variations, as there are in so many components of the human body but how much that influences cognitive ability, reason, emotion? I'm not sure.

My main reason for posting such things however, which I don't think comes across well, is to investigate and (hopefully, where appropriate) remedy, rather than stigmatise and antagonise.

 

[UKMikey]

I chuckle because you said that the majority of offenders are white, which was reached using the same data, and don't question it.

If we look at the studies that made it through to the report (not including the ones in the literature review) the first shows that 28% are Asian. The second showed 21% are Asian. The third looked at groups and found 50% were all Asian. The fourth found 14% were Asian. The last looked at Bristol and said that minority ethnic groups were over-represented.

Now, as I said in the post way back there are limitations with these studies, but bear in mind that the Pakistani population of England and Wales is 2% and the Bangladeshi population of England and Wales is 0.8% you have a cumulated figure of 2.8%. If we're generous we can round it up to 3% to include some of the Indian population. Looking at those studies they are over-represented by a factor ranging from a low of 4.5 times to a high of 16 times across the studies. Also remember that they were over-represented in the preliminary research undertaken by the report authors. Considering they all had different methodolgies and reached the same conclusion, is it not fair to say that it's extremely likely Asians are disprotionately represented among group CSE offenders? As a question, how do you suppose the report authors could conclude the majority of offenders were white?

One must wonder why the report authors didn't undertake a more thorough investigation into offenders, say by finding the ethnicity of those in prison for those offences.

From what I read and quoted in the report they got their data from working with the police. I'm not disputing that more than 2.8% of high profile court cases involved South Asians. I'm disputing that this reflects that South Asians are more likely to exploit children for sexual reasons.

The report outlines possible reasons for why this is in the passages I quoted but basically it sounds like the police would have to have arrested 100% of exploiters in order for the arrest statistics to reflect racial characteristics. Your hypothesis doesn't account for the possibility that Asians or black people are being disproportionately investigated, arrested, tried and convicted which would hardly be a laughing matter.

I'll leave it for others on this forum to decide whether or not they're convinced by the remainder of your conjecture.

 

[UKMikey]

A linguist explains how the far-right hijacked political correctness:

https://www.talkdecoded.com/blog/2016/11/29/political-correctness-wanted-dead-or-alive

 

[huskeR32]

So political correctness is just something that exists in the mind that magically manifests itself in numerous individuals in numerous organisations?

If by "magically" you mean "through the very basic means of human communication," then sure. People don't like facing consequences; it's far easier to say that everybody else is just too sensitive, and, hey that shouldn't be my problem. This is an attractive idea, I can admit that. And so they all gather in their echo chambers and barf out diatribes about the "political correctness" boogeyman, and... Voila! A bunch of people all very un-magically buying into an idea that lets them be a little more comfortable with their bigotry.

Here's the thing you keep missing - all of these situations where people find themselves supposedly trapped by "political correctness" can't be anything more than imaginary. If someone doesn't do something for fear of "politically correct" backlash, then the feared potential "political correctness" isn't given a chance to actually materialize. How can there be a reaction to something that someone chose not to do? (Hint: there can't be.)

The "conditioning" you speak of may very well exist, but it's largely self-inflicted by people martyring themselves, speculating what would have happened had they done what they really wanted to do.

 

[Danoff]

Contrary to what's been written by some I don't think ethnicity is a contributing factor for criminal behaviour. It's far more to do with the socio-economic circumstances and culture that these groups find themselves in. For example, many Pakistanis dislike being lumped in with these grooming gang offenders, and blame compatriots who are from the Mirpur region for the negative connotations many in the press make. Mirpuris make up a significant amount of offenders, and come from a village culture different to other Pakistanis. With the black population and knife crime you have a stronger association with the black-Caribbean contingent rather than the black-Africans, and this is likely due to cultural differences as well as other factors like educational attainment and single parent households.

It's so strange to me that you're talking about black-Caribbeans and black-Africans in London. Are they not just Londoners? Your statement here is first predicated on that being black is significant, and then that being (ancestrally?) from the Caribbean or African regions are significant.

Have you asked yourself why you're not pursuing arguments about socioeconomic links to crime? Or single-parent links to crime? For some reason you're interested in calling out the differences between black-Caribbean and black-African links to crime, and I have no idea why that would be the case. You imply that there is a culture, and I guess by inference that this culture pertains to violent crime, associated with being black-Caribbean or black-African. I'm curious why you make that assumption.

In my family on my father's (Jamaican) side I know many gang members who settled in Birmingham - and with gang culture you get knife crime.

...gang culture. Perhaps not black-Caribbean culture.

What I do believe has a causal effect is religion. Christian theology, history and preachers all (IMO) contribute to homophobic attitudes in believers, and this has real consequences on gay individuals. With Islam you see death to apostates, death to those who insult the religion and people killed every day in its name so I see it as more violent than others, at least in the present day.

Certainly religion has motivated (and been the scapegoat for) crimes for centuries. I'm not going to defend religion, and I'll leave you that soapbox. But if you don't think there's a causal link, why do you keep finding yourself talking about racial statistics and looking for racial links?

As for the difference in brains and how functions resulting from them may be linked to ethnic groups, I'm conflicted. Coming from a medical background I think there are variations, as there are in so many components of the human body but how much that influences cognitive ability, reason, emotion? I'm not sure.

My main reason for posting such things however, which I don't think comes across well, is to investigate and (hopefully, where appropriate) remedy, rather than stigmatise and antagonise.

You seem genuinely captivated by this subject. I was hoping to explore more deeply why this particular subject captivates you so much. Have you had some personal experience? It sounds like you may have family ties to gang crime.

 

[longshot1314]

@McLaren I was trying to illustrate a point regarding vocal minorities on social media here, at least to the best of my abilities but I'd agree that context of the joke, the situation, environment absolutely matter. The main point I'm trying to make at least in respect to cancel culture is whether if a vocal minority disagrees with you does that justify severe consequences? At least with respect to twitter and social media which much of entertainment takes as gospel it matters.

Also the comparison feels absolutely appropriate given the recent report that Gina Carano was fired from Star Wars, since it highlights the exact circumstances I was trying to emulate in that post. There's certainly a point where one could consider her views as problematic but when compared to those within Lucasfilm story group such as Pablo Hidalgo it creates a double standard. Also much of the entertainment response was to take the absolute most severe interpretation of anything she said, whether it was meant to be that way or not. It raises the question at what point is it reasonable to deplatform or fire someone for their views. At least with respect to Star Wars or other still relevant sci-fi series for that matter, that the choice of writers and producers to embrace identity politics has been unpopular, yet they don't seem to be willing to step down from that position despite diminishing returns, but will argue that someone such as Carano is "damaging to the brand" despite the level of popularity she has amongst the fans who can actually be counted as long term investments.

 

[Tornado]

Whether or not fans like the alleged identity politics in their Star Wars media is irrelevant to the fact that she worked for Disney and Disney is likely the most risk-averse company in all of entertainment; and she knew that well since this is the second blow up regarding her social media actions in the past four months.




If Carano was dumb enough to even skirt the line when her paychecks are signed by "Fired the director of their billion dollar movie franchise for mild jokes he told on Twitter a decade prior that they knew about when hiring him" Incorporated, she certainly doesn't deserve her job, no.

 

[McLaren]

@McLaren I was trying to illustrate a point regarding vocal minorities on social media here, at least to the best of my abilities but I'd agree that context of the joke, the situation, environment absolutely matter. The main point I'm trying to make at least in respect to cancel culture is whether if a vocal minority disagrees with you does that justify severe consequences? At least with respect to twitter and social media which much of entertainment takes as gospel it matters.

I get the point you were after, but the issue is your hypothetical isn't realistic with ground work laid out. If you ended up cancelled as a result, the joke couldn't have been successful as claimed & what @huskeR32 said remains correct; far more than just a minority must have found issue with the joke.

Also the comparison feels absolutely appropriate given the recent report that Gina Carano was fired from Star Wars, since it highlights the exact circumstances I was trying to emulate in that post. There's certainly a point where one could consider her views as problematic but when compared to those within Lucasfilm story group such as Pablo Hidalgo it creates a double standard. Also much of the entertainment response was to take the absolute most severe interpretation of anything she said, whether it was meant to be that way or not. It raises the question at what point is it reasonable to deplatform or fire someone for their views. At least with respect to Star Wars or other still relevant sci-fi series for that matter, that the choice of writers and producers to embrace identity politics has been unpopular, yet they don't seem to be willing to step down from that position despite diminishing returns, but will argue that someone such as Carano is "damaging to the brand" despite the level of popularity she has amongst the fans who can actually be counted as long term investments.

2 things here.

1. Gina has caused controversy for Disney multiple times. Choosing not to say anything during BLM's blackout, I got it til' she tried to explain why she wouldn't say anything, creating the first small backlash. Making a mocking bio of pronouns on Twitter until Pedro explained why she was wrong? More backlash. Making unproven comments about masks, anti-vaccination, & election fraud? Way, way more invitation for creating backlash that Disney has to deal with. In fact, she reportedly apologized 3 days ago.

It’s gotten to the point where #FireGinaCarano is a regular trend on Twitter, with various reports pointing to Lucasfilm itching to get rid of the former MMA star in order to distance themselves from the bad press. According to a new piece of intel, though, it’s possible that Carano has managed to defuse the situation somewhat, as insider Daniel Richtman has shared on his Patreon page today that the actress has apologized to the studio privately for her social media behavior.

https://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/gina-carano-reportedly-apologized-disney-social-media-behavior/

Note the other link there; Jon Favreau was trying to help her stay on 4 weeks ago.

The report notes that “the feeling inside Lucasfilm is generally disdain for Carano as well,” but “the problem for all of those who hate Carano based on her worldview and political positions is that Jon Favreau isn’t publicly political… and word on the street is he doesn’t care one iota for the divisiveness.” Pirates and Princesses then goes on to claim that “if Carano was employed in any other part of Lucasfilm, she’d be gone, and she would have been let go long ago. The question now is whether or not Favreau can protect her.”

https://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/jon-favreau-reportedly-protecting-gina-carano-fired-mandalorian/

You're asking, "at what point" is it reasonable to fire someone? Reportedly apologizing for your behavior only to do it again days later is a pretty solid point for a company to draw the line. Esp. when it seems Disney/LucasFilm already had multiple instances of controversy from Gina to influence their decision to fire her before she apologized.

2. Gina is not quite that popular of a character on the show. She is constantly criticized for her stiff acting, and her character isn't that necessary to the story going forward. The ending of season 2 can do a pretty good job at wrapping up her arc. If there's enough backlash multiple times with #FireGinaCarano, then her level of popularity must not be as high as assumed, either.

 

[TexRex]

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

 

[UKMikey]

"Vocal minority makes hashtag trend" sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. Sure it's less than half the users of Twitter, but it doesn't sound like an insignificant niche which should be ignored.

At any rate, whether it is or not is up to the company paying the checks. If they feel the backlash can hurt their bottom line then they're more likely to take action.

However, if the people who support Carano's toxic comments regarding BLM, the holocaust, Covid and pronoun usage felt that strongly about reinstating her they could always get a #HireGinaCarano hashtag going and make their feelings heard.

 

[longshot1314]

@McLaren and @UKMikey doing some digging into the examples of Carano's comments that gizmodo very conveniently tagged, there's nothing that she's said or done that I can construe as being outright promoting hate or calling for people to act on it, or harass people. Her views can certainly be deemed as problematic in some cases but not overtly hostile or hateful. With regards to the twitter pronouns, her posting 'beep bop boop' came after she was persistently harassed to declare her pronouns, which she has every right not to do if she wishes. Even the post that apparently is what got her fired does not say anything racist or anti-Semitic, if anything it was highlighting that there's parallels in how people can be turned against their neighbors for the sake authoritarianism. I did not see any comment attached to what she shared so it's difficult to infer what her intent was in posting it, but assuming anything by it, including in the negative is an overreach. Going by her actual actions, she's seemingly been one of the few actors willing to reach out to the fans and apparently deeply cares about being a part of Star Wars and the people who care about, going by the interview she recently did on Drunk3PO's channel per below. Sure you can claim that maybe she's acting in the interview but you guys did already say she's a bad actor.


Disney has the right to fire or hire anyone they want, that's not the issue here. The issue is the double standard has existed, especially within Disney and they have repeatedly employed people who have been outright toxic towards the fans. The fact that Pablo Hidalgo still has a job is testament to this. For those of you not familiar with the most recent issue with Hidalgo, he essentially mocked youtuber Star Wars Theory for his reaction to Luke Skywalker's return in The Mandalorian where he visibly cried over Luke's return. What can be more damaging to your IP than one of your employees outwardly mocking someone who's expressing a strong emotional reaction to your product? Isn't that the very point of creating anything that falls within art? To add more to that, Theory's emotional reaction to Luke came out of him being a cancer survivor and Luke's character being an inspiration to him. This kind of outright disdain is unacceptable, yet by not firing Hidalgo Disney is basically declaring that you can actively deride people but as long as you agree with the company culture it's fine. This has been going on since the backlash to The Last Jedi since rather than addressing valid criticism towards the movie and product, they double downed on a campaign to demonize detractors by manufacturing false narratives, and blaming all the backlash on toxic fans, racists, misogynists, and even Russian bots.

Now to head off the counter arguments in chronological order with regards to the fandom. With respect to Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best's personal struggles following episode 1, the entertainment media had consistently wrote and published articles towards both actors and their characters which was not representative of the fandom at large, but it was used to deride fans despite it being a persistent thread amongst media, such with articles like Newsweeks' telling a 9 year old he stinks. Best who was nearly driven to suicide had tweeted about using the specific words of "media backlash", he could of easily said fans. In Best's case it was the fact that entertainment media had locked onto the idea of Jar Jar being a racist caricature, to which was persistently stated and addressed towards him in interviews. The fans were mostly divided or indifferent towards his character, yet in subsequent years this was picked up to be deemed as "the fans" and not the media.

With TFA there was a narrative pushed in media that fans were upset with the concept of a black stormtrooper with respect to John Boyega's character, yet further investigation yielded little to zero evidence of this actually being the case with fans in the run up to the Force Awakens. Meanwhile Disney quietly minimized his appearance on the poster for the movie in China and later sidelined his character in subsequent movies to the point where he became a meme in RoS. Great job Disney 👍

With TLJ there was a narrative surrounding harassment and racism again from fans, this time with respect to both Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran, and media subsequently cited it as the reason both actors dropped out of social media. In Kelly's case the evidence for persistent targeted harassment was inclusive with some cases of tweets and images suggesting the possibility of being manufactured, the was also evidence to suggest that she may have been under social media NDA entering in to filming for RoS. Daisy similarly fell into this loop though in her case she had cited leaving social media to being due to not liking it in the first place and even cited the toxicity of 'social media' not the fans as being a reason. Also with Kelly's story also happened to show up around the time Solo came out, and there's a case to be made that the story was fabricated or overblown to cover up the fact that Disney had lost 80 million on the movies release due to the backlash to TLJ.

Prior to this I had mentioned the broad stroking of TLJ detractors into being racists, misogynists, etc. Additional to this was the twitter activist mob that had taken TLJ's posturing of it's shallow, I mean deeper themes with identity politics as cause to defend the movie with complete disregard to opposing arguments, and these people took upon themselves to persistently harass fans who didn't like the movie and talked about it, even going as far as making fake accounts to harass people and deliberately taking comments out of context to portray people as that particular image. There were even false flags set up within fan communities to post fake racist remarks in attempt to get groups de-platformed. Disney said nothing in response to it and just let it happen. (look up the situation that happened with Jason Ward and the Down with Disney Account)

So to circle this back to political correctness, the main problem stands with the double standard and the fact that a blind eye is turned towards harassment and worse actions so long as it fits a particularly narrative. Regardless about how you feel regarding a person's view, the point to be made is to be respectful and frankly free speech should always apply with the exception being calls for violence, hate and cases of outright harassment. I'd also argue that a precedent is and continues to be set that even a single mistake or transgression, even if the circumstances and nature of it could go down as far as misinterpretation, could be used as grounds for dismissal both with the workplace and with respect to online presence. This can even go down as far as someone being offended by ideas even in the case that they are reasonable arguments. Lastly pressuring compelled speech is wrong. Not saying something does not make you complicit in supporting the most extreme opposition of what someone is trying to get you to support. You may simply not wish to comment and you have every right to do that and that should not be a reflection on your character or grounds for dismissal

 

[McLaren]

You’re speaking on other things I have no knowledge of, so I’m going to reiterate a major point with Gina.

Take whatever it was she said, right wing, left wing, etc etc out of the equation. She was doing something the studio didn’t like. Her boss convinced the studio to not fire her. She continued doing “whatever” it was that made the studio upset. She then meets and apologizes for her behavior/comments to the studio. She returns back to the public eye and continues doing what the studio doesn’t like.

That’s where I find the firing completely justifiable. You don’t have a fellow employee save your job and you don’t apologize to your employer only to get back into controversy. The employer clearly saw Jon’s efforts were wasted and the apology was not sincere. Any one of us wasting away such opportunities to keep our job after whatever reason would likely see our employer follow the same route.

The issue regarding double standards and those other individuals is an issue to be taken up between Disney and them independently; those fighting for Gina to keep her job bc others did loses strength bc Disney actively gave her chances to, at the very least, stay away from controversial statements and they accepted her initial apology. She pissed it away and that’s her own fault. The wrongs of others involved with Disney unfortunately can’t excuse the leeway Disney afforded her for months.

 

[Joey D]

ven the post that apparently is what got her fired does not say anything racist or anti-Semitic, if anything it was highlighting that there's parallels in how people can be turned against their neighbors for the sake authoritarianism.

She compared how conservatives are being treated to how Jews were treated in Nazi Germany. Since conservatives aren't being rounded up and gassed, shot, enslaved, or experimented on, I'd say she's definitely putting forth anti-Semitic ideas.

Honestly, she got a really good taste of how free speech works (not as in the First Amendment free speech, but just free speech in general). You can say or think whatever you want, but you're not free from the consequences of saying it out loud in a public forum. Or to put it another way, as @TexRex said she played a stupid game and won a stupid prize. Even I, the non-entertainer, knows that one does not simply 🤬 with the Mouse.

 

[UKMikey]

I'd also argue that a precedent is and continues to be set that even a single mistake or transgression, even if the circumstances and nature of it could go down as far as misinterpretation, could be used as grounds for dismissal both with the workplace and with respect to online presence.

I'm not sure what this has to do with Carano's multiple instances of making posts that fans found objectionable. Nor do I see why Disney should commit commercial suicide by ignoring the wishes of those fans. You may not see what's objectionable about comparing anti-conservative backlash to the final solution but they did.

Like I said above, where's the save Gina campaign? All I see is people pissing and moaning about leftist narratives which seem to me to be frankly nonexistent.

When Disney fired James Gunn it wasn't lefties calling for his dismissal. It was the result of a campaign instigated by right-wing blogger Mike "Pizzagate" Cernovich. When he was reinstated it was because fans wanted him back. I haven't seen that happening with Carano and, whether you want to frame it as double standards on their behalf or not, the fact remains that media corporations are going to act in the best interests of their bottom line.

 

[TexRex]

...gang culture.

I'd like to see this meaningfully addressed. I brought it up a couple times...

The takeaway here is that correlation between ideology and extremism does not imply causation. It is in this way that the officials were correct to deny that "ethnicity" (this is not meaningful) was a factor in the grooming for sexual exploitation. Perhaps you ought to look at the gang dynamic before "ethnicity," as illicit activity does seem to be a common theme in gangs across all cultures.

Individuals twist the words of others to justify the extreme acts they wish to perpetrate. Indeed, individuals twist those words to aid in coercing others to perpetrate extreme acts. "Ethnicity" plays no role in this, as it isn't meaningful. Again...do have a look at the gang dynamic.

...but he apparently didn't think it worthy of consideration as it garnered no response. A not insignificant part of me suspects he sees acknowledging this as weakening his preferred narrative.

Like I said above, where's the save Gina campaign? All I see is people pissing and moaning about leftist narratives which seem to me to be frankly nonexistent.

When Disney fired James Gunn it wasn't lefties calling for his dismissal. It was the result of a campaign instigated by right-wing blogger Mike "Pizzagate" Cernovich. When he was reinstated it was because fans wanted him back. I haven't seen that happening with Carano and, whether you want to frame it as double standards on their behalf or not, the fact remains that media corporations are going to act in the best interests of their bottom line.

Unsurprisingly, Cernovich is among those bitching and moaning.