There are sections in the wiki that talk about posting etiquette when you’re angry: Please do not be personally rude even when people are really really annoying. Always try and argue the point not the person. If you get into a big fight with someone then sometimes it's hard to get out of the spiral. Flamewars never end well and we try to avoid them because sometimes people get cornered and go nuts and we have to boot them out. This is regrettable and (thankfully) rare. I try to remember this from time to time.
I agree that it was never in the non-existent Barbelith charter to do our best to talk informatively to people even when they have said things that trigger a reaction in us to see red. To some extent I see appeals to the nature of this site and it’s perceived values as a smokescreen behind which we evade personal responsibility with a brisk comment that’s the equivalent of “Well, there’s no sign on the door saying that we seek to educate.” Who cares if there is or isn’t? Whether you choose to try to educate and inform or not, be clear on that choice, the way you’ve chosen to do it, your motivations for doing it and what you are aiming to achieve. And be clear that it was your choice. Be responsible for it and the effects it may have.
Where this applies to people who commit potential or actual hate crimes on Barbelith is much more highly charged, because whenever a hate crime is committed it’s not just the group it was targeted against (whether that targeting was intentional or not) who is aggrieved. It’s everyone in earshot, everyone who can read the post, and arguably even the person who posted it, whether they understand the issue or not. I don’t think hate crimes is necessarily too strong a term having experienced the way these things are policed, or are supposed to be policed. Because these posts have the capability of harming the whole community it’s understandable that the many members of the community choose to comment in anger. At best those comments are an intelligent refutation of the ideas espoused by the poster. They also allow us to vent our anger, to give it an outlet, and that’s also understandable. They allow us to publicly state our values, in that they make it clear what we are not, or what we believe we are not. There are also occasions at which I wonder whether the comments are an othering of the horrible recognition of the same prejudice within ourselves, or the remembrance of prejudice in ourselves, or a resemblance we recognise on some level to prejudices that we hold, and the need to push all of that outwards and away from ourselves and onto a public scapegoat. They can be one or all of the above, or any combination.
All of that is understandable and we have a huge variety of choices in how we can respond, more than we probably ever realise, and we are responsible for those choices, arguably even when we never realised we had them. Something that I’ve found fascinating recently is the willing removal of one of these options in service of what I believe to be the best way to do my job dealing with hate crimes for the police, and that’s the personal choice to remove the option of reacting in anger at all. Sometimes I come away from those calls and I’m spitting fire, at which point I have to take a break, or pray, or speak in tongues, or breathe deep, or get another jasmine tea, or massage the point at which my skull joins my neck, or stand up and shake it off, or tell someone about it and sometimes analyse (by myself or with the help of others) whether my anger is justifiable. I try to have a few ways up my sleeve of dealing with this anger so it’s not still in my system for the next call, and sometimes I fail to do that. One of the best ways of dealing with this kind of anger to very calmly and rationally detail my opinions of the caller’s prejudice in the police log (when it’s appropriate for me to do so) with no emotive language, so that any officers dealing with the situation are aware of my experience in a manner that is professional and balanced.
And it’s thankless, apart from those rare instances in which colleagues or supervisors are aware of my work and give me feedback. I’ll usually never know whether I got through to them. I have only the duration of the call to speak to the person, we’ll probably never know each other outside of that environment. But what’s interesting is the effect that it has on me and developing my flexibility in ways to handle those situations. I find myself wondering about the person I’m talking to, about what ways I could employ to introduce the ideas, about whether I can make them see other points of view, how I can draw their attention to the effects of their actions, whether I’m betraying that I’m angry in my tone of voice or communication style, thinking about where their beliefs come from and what it might take for them to change. At my best I approach these situations as a fresh unknown wondering what might be possible. And often I’ll fail. Some of them might never chose to listen, or I’ll notice something I’ve done that’s caused my efforts to collapse through being inept. But if I don’t act from a belief in what is possible from the outset I might let opportunities pass me by. So it’s not just about the person I’m trying to talk to, but also about me and how I can change myself.
But then the situations aren’t fully comparable. I spend ten hours a day getting paid to adopt that approach. None of us get paid for our hours on Barbelith (with the possible exception of grant who I believe sometimes uses it as a resource for story ideas for work and therefore may have a vested interest in this place having a high content value. He’s one of our most educational and non-confrontational posters). We have other demands on our time, and attempting to understand and communicate with people whose opinions we hate takes a lot of time and effort and soul-searching. And while this is all true, Barbelith is always at its best when we turn our ability to critique on ourselves and our posts at the same time as on other people and their posts, so that what we put on here best represents us and our thoughts and we are sure that everything we put on this site is of the highest value we can manage at any given moment.
Yeah, it’s an ideal and I’m probably quite an idealistic (read: insufferable) person. Do with as you will. |
