Great, another “conservatives are oppressed” rant. He even says that not what it is, but it is. Look, if you use some particular language that other people find offensive, even if you didn’t mean it that way, just apologize. It’s a meme, but it’s also true: we live in a society and your actions can affect other people in ways you didn’t intend.
You can demand anything at any time. Doesn't mean you're getting one. He said something that people took offense to. They demanded an apology. He didn't apologize. I'm not sure why this necessitated a blog article, much less one circulated on Hacker News.
For what it's worth, I'm a white guy who grew up in poverty and have seen more than one trap house. I'm uncomfortable about the use of trap house here, because it's ridiculous. Yale Law School is one of the most privileged places in the US. It demeans the experiences of people who have been subjected to actual poverty and drug-infested areas to equate anything at Yale with a trap house.
Was it such an offensive message that it deserved letters to administration claiming the author is racially insensitive? Was it so offensive, that it required school administrators to hurriedly draft a template apology to make it go away?
As the author said, the term trap house has a common colloquial meaning among certain people; whether one finds it offensive from a "triggering" perspective, it is not in good faith to ignore that and have the person kicked out of a career, in my opinion.
From the ancient human custom of group shunning to the modern dragging, when a person is outside the good graces of their community, they are under threat.
When lots of people are offended, they have the power to refrain from interacting with an individual. And we are social creatures.
Practically speaking, one's power to demand an apology is proportional to what happens to the demandee if you decide they aren't worth interacting with in the future. If you're a social, political, or corporate leader, or a member of a union (formal or informal / social), it can be quite a lot of power.
He’s certainly free to do that and that seems to be what ultimately happened. That being said, he’s free to experience the social consequences of showing himself to be unable or unwilling to read a room.
Accused: Hold on. Let me explain. Some frogs hibernate and it was merely awaking after...
You: Just apologize. You were holding a frog that reanimated. Whether you intended to appear a witch or not, the mob thinks you are. That's what matters. So just bend to their demands and all will be well. The mob won't grow in power with yet another victim. Certainly they will never come for me. I'm an ally. Educate yourself. Be better.
Be honest with what the situation is. This is completely about whether he used language that some people found offensive. They have the right to be offended, have the right to ask for an apology, and have the right to ask the university to demand an apology. No one is threatening death or bodily harm. It’s not a witch hunt.
shadowgovt phrased it well lower in the comment section:
> Honestly, Yale's administration is trying to help.
> This individual's major risk surface isn't what Yale will do to him... It's that his peers have filed his name away in their personal Rolodex-analog as "Someone very, very clueless about tone and reading a room." i.e. "Someone I don't want as partner in my law firm."
Free speech on campus does actually mean freedom from consequences from the administration. Yale might not have to allow free speech on its campus, but it purports to. And what they did was a violation of that principle.
And while the other students are free to harass him for invented crimes, he's free to call them out for doing so.
What consequences did he face from Yale? A couple of conversations with an Associate Dean and Director of DEI? An email stating that Yale didn't agree with his language? Oh, the horror!
He's still at Yale Law School. His blog post is being circulated on Hacker News. Give me some of those consequences.
Honestly, Yale's administration is trying to help.
This individual's major risk surface isn't what Yale will do to him... It's that his peers have filed his name away in their personal Rolodex-analog as "Someone very, very clueless about tone and reading a room." i.e. "Someone I don't want as partner in my law firm."
And the legal profession is (relatively speaking) a tiny community... But big enough that there's rarely only one choice of who to work with. He's severely curtailing his potential future options if he doesn't recognize the value of keeping contacts smooth with relative strangers.
The denouncement clearly wasn't helping him, but since it's Yale, it's not unexpected. Yale itself has a bad racism reputation (https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/05/10/yale-responds-afte...), so the administration can be expected to respond by covering their own asses via declaring their lack of condonement or concurrence with his speech.
The letter they proposed is an acknowledgement that his actions were harmful and a specific declaration of lack of intent. It'd have been a good tack for him to take. Doubling down, instead, that the word choice should not be considered hurtful is risky; definitions are semi-subjective, and the history of the term he chose was clear (reference to a controversial left-wing blog isn't really an excuse; it's basically an argument "Well if shock jocks can use it, why can't I?" Because your profession of choice is lawyer, friend, not audio entertainer).
You've been repeatedly posting flamewar comments and aggressive attacks. We ban accounts that do that. I actually just banned you for this, but then looked closer at comment history and decided to undo that and warn you instead.
You can't attack other users regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. It's also not ok to use HN for ideological and political flamewar. If you would please stop doing these things and use HN as intended from now on, we'd appreciate it. The rules are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Well, I appreciate the warning I suppose. I created this pseudonym to post (what I consider valid but) semi-controversial comments that some find politically untenable, so perhaps I overcommitted to the mission. Although I think you’ll find I rarely start a political discussion in a non-political thread – I’m keenly aware of the risk of polluting the board with that which is why I try to join existing politics threads rather than start them.
FWIW, when my most recently flagged comment has 16 upvotes, perhaps there is something to it. On the other hand, this one you’re replying to was aggressive but I think you’ll find it to be an outlier, and that I have sparse history of personal (let alone “aggressive”) attacks against anyone who isn’t a public figure or trying to be.
Anyway, keep up the good work, I’ll avoid the personal attacks. But I’m not gonna change the perspective I bring to these discussions, so if that’s the issue you can just ban me now.
Well, if you are specifically looking for a word, any word, that might be loosely connected to your marginalized community that was spoken by someone who follows an opposing political tradition..then “apparently”.
I thought his dissection of the word “corny” as a possible slur to his Native American background was a perfect illustration of how ridiculous his situation truly was.
> The Yale administrators did not believe I had been racist by using the phrase “trap house.”
+
> an email was sent to Yale Law’s entire second-year class “condemn[ing] in the strongest possible terms” the “pejorative and racist language” in the invitation.
==
Yale Law administration was happy to lie to their entire second-year class.
If true, then the administration was more interested about protecting their brand, than caring about the health and wellbeing of any of their students
"pejorative and racist language" does not equal being racist. The article seems pretty clear that the author had no idea the language had racial roots (if they can be called that given it's kinda racist to assume that a drug den is race related) and therefore they were not being racist. I take that at face value because I also only had a modern surface level knowledge of the term "trap house" from similar contexts.
In a way this seems like the perfect use for an "I'm sorry you were offended" "apology".
It's possible to say racist things without intending to be racist. In fact, it's extremely likely given how much of American culture is pretty firmly grounded in a racist history; a lot of common sayings started as racially-charged stereotypes. So these racist sayings are propagated forward by people innocently unaware of their origins and implied meaning.
Whether one, having learned that history, changes one's choice of language or shrugs, says "I didn't invent the term so its use is not my problem," and charges forward will influence the kind of company one keeps in our society.
Question: if 100,000,000 people use some common phrase, innocently unaware of its history/roots, and one person finds a racist definition for it from 200 years ago, why should the entire population be beholden to an outdated definition? Shouldn’t we be able to change the definition (after all, that’s exactly what dictionaries do)
> It's possible to say racist things without intending to be racist
This is still using loose language to try and equate two things that are not equal, "saying racist things" is still not the same thing as "being racist". Though it's getting closer, intent and context definitely matters.
ex. I use the term "black" to describe to people when applicable. There was a blip of time when that was a racist thing to say, some people probably still think it would be better to say "african-american" and might think the language is racist. But my use of the term is not because I am being racist.
The issue here is that there are those who would abuse good faith and nuance, but I generally think it's pretty obvious when it happens, and this seems to not be one of those times. It can be fatiguing to continually need to use critical thinking, but it's not something we can just stop doing if we want to keep progressing.
> "saying racist things" is still not the same thing as "being racist"
I think whether that assertion is true hinges on whether one is of the opinion that there is meaningful difference between one's actions and the content of one's character or whether "ye shall know them by their fruits," as it were.
But even if we use the duality approach of separating action from character: if one does a racist thing unintentionally, then given the opportunity to do so, does not apologize, I would be understanding of those who choose to believe that the action was a reflection of the content of the actor's heart.
Apologies are something we do when we've done wrong, after all. Whether the wrong was intended.
I mean this sincerely, do public apologies ever help in situations like this? Anecdotally, I always seem to see them backfire as insincere or insufficient.
46 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadEveryone is also free to judge these people on their actions.
For what it's worth, I'm a white guy who grew up in poverty and have seen more than one trap house. I'm uncomfortable about the use of trap house here, because it's ridiculous. Yale Law School is one of the most privileged places in the US. It demeans the experiences of people who have been subjected to actual poverty and drug-infested areas to equate anything at Yale with a trap house.
As the author said, the term trap house has a common colloquial meaning among certain people; whether one finds it offensive from a "triggering" perspective, it is not in good faith to ignore that and have the person kicked out of a career, in my opinion.
It's important and should be on hacker news because one day they'll come for you.
When lots of people are offended, they have the power to refrain from interacting with an individual. And we are social creatures.
Practically speaking, one's power to demand an apology is proportional to what happens to the demandee if you decide they aren't worth interacting with in the future. If you're a social, political, or corporate leader, or a member of a union (formal or informal / social), it can be quite a lot of power.
Not being racist, but ...
Not a conservatives are being oppressed rant, but ...
Its almost a cliche
I disagree. You apologize if you believe you did something wrong. If you do not feel what you did was wrong, do not apologize.
Accused: Hold on. Let me explain. Some frogs hibernate and it was merely awaking after...
You: Just apologize. You were holding a frog that reanimated. Whether you intended to appear a witch or not, the mob thinks you are. That's what matters. So just bend to their demands and all will be well. The mob won't grow in power with yet another victim. Certainly they will never come for me. I'm an ally. Educate yourself. Be better.
shadowgovt phrased it well lower in the comment section:
> Honestly, Yale's administration is trying to help.
> This individual's major risk surface isn't what Yale will do to him... It's that his peers have filed his name away in their personal Rolodex-analog as "Someone very, very clueless about tone and reading a room." i.e. "Someone I don't want as partner in my law firm."
And while the other students are free to harass him for invented crimes, he's free to call them out for doing so.
He's still at Yale Law School. His blog post is being circulated on Hacker News. Give me some of those consequences.
Ever hear “through the use of force or threat of force”?
This individual's major risk surface isn't what Yale will do to him... It's that his peers have filed his name away in their personal Rolodex-analog as "Someone very, very clueless about tone and reading a room." i.e. "Someone I don't want as partner in my law firm."
And the legal profession is (relatively speaking) a tiny community... But big enough that there's rarely only one choice of who to work with. He's severely curtailing his potential future options if he doesn't recognize the value of keeping contacts smooth with relative strangers.
IMO, an apology just looks like an admission of guilt in this case.
The letter they proposed is an acknowledgement that his actions were harmful and a specific declaration of lack of intent. It'd have been a good tack for him to take. Doubling down, instead, that the word choice should not be considered hurtful is risky; definitions are semi-subjective, and the history of the term he chose was clear (reference to a controversial left-wing blog isn't really an excuse; it's basically an argument "Well if shock jocks can use it, why can't I?" Because your profession of choice is lawyer, friend, not audio entertainer).
I rarely use this term, but – clown world. Absolute clown world. You are one of the clowns, congrats.
You can't attack other users regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. It's also not ok to use HN for ideological and political flamewar. If you would please stop doing these things and use HN as intended from now on, we'd appreciate it. The rules are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
FWIW, when my most recently flagged comment has 16 upvotes, perhaps there is something to it. On the other hand, this one you’re replying to was aggressive but I think you’ll find it to be an outlier, and that I have sparse history of personal (let alone “aggressive”) attacks against anyone who isn’t a public figure or trying to be.
Anyway, keep up the good work, I’ll avoid the personal attacks. But I’m not gonna change the perspective I bring to these discussions, so if that’s the issue you can just ban me now.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I thought his dissection of the word “corny” as a possible slur to his Native American background was a perfect illustration of how ridiculous his situation truly was.
+
> an email was sent to Yale Law’s entire second-year class “condemn[ing] in the strongest possible terms” the “pejorative and racist language” in the invitation.
==
Yale Law administration was happy to lie to their entire second-year class.
If true, then the administration was more interested about protecting their brand, than caring about the health and wellbeing of any of their students
In a way this seems like the perfect use for an "I'm sorry you were offended" "apology".
Whether one, having learned that history, changes one's choice of language or shrugs, says "I didn't invent the term so its use is not my problem," and charges forward will influence the kind of company one keeps in our society.
This is still using loose language to try and equate two things that are not equal, "saying racist things" is still not the same thing as "being racist". Though it's getting closer, intent and context definitely matters.
ex. I use the term "black" to describe to people when applicable. There was a blip of time when that was a racist thing to say, some people probably still think it would be better to say "african-american" and might think the language is racist. But my use of the term is not because I am being racist.
The issue here is that there are those who would abuse good faith and nuance, but I generally think it's pretty obvious when it happens, and this seems to not be one of those times. It can be fatiguing to continually need to use critical thinking, but it's not something we can just stop doing if we want to keep progressing.
I think whether that assertion is true hinges on whether one is of the opinion that there is meaningful difference between one's actions and the content of one's character or whether "ye shall know them by their fruits," as it were.
But even if we use the duality approach of separating action from character: if one does a racist thing unintentionally, then given the opportunity to do so, does not apologize, I would be understanding of those who choose to believe that the action was a reflection of the content of the actor's heart.
Apologies are something we do when we've done wrong, after all. Whether the wrong was intended.