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It's a bad look, for sure, but how is this not just run-of-the-mill drunken disorderliness? "Racism" is not really the same thing as racial epithets. If you get drunk and repeatedly call a man a "dick" we don't generally run a story about a "sexist outburst." This strikes me as a wild exaggeration:
Extreme drunkenness can happen among younger generations, for sure. And when your drunk brain looks for the most offensive thing it can say to someone, and your social milieu is one where a racial epithet is the most offensive word you can think of, then the more strongly we disapprove of racial epithets, the more often we're going to hear them from angry, irrational people. Calling that "racism" seems like rhetorical sleight of hand to me.
Imagine a student getting plastered and, noticing her RA's MAGA cap, calling the RA a "Nazi" two hundred times. I can't imagine students putting together a petition demanding the drunk person's expulsion--it would be ridiculous. The drunk girl clearly has some problems, but none of them appear solvable by either tarring her as a "racist" or by expelling her from school.
I expect that if you got drunk and repeatedly called a woman a "cunt" it would be considered a "sexist outburst" however.
Depends on some context, "cunt" has some moderately accepted uses for both genders in some social contexts. There are some situations I could call someone a cunt in front of female friends and have it not be interpreted as sexist at all. "nigger" really doesn't have a non-racist case for use beyond the describe/use distinction.
"cunt" does not mean, "you are womanly and thus bad because women are bad" the way "nigger" implies.
I'm not sure how this relates to my comment, which was just pointing out that calling a woman a "cunt" is more likely to be seen as sexist than calling a man a "dick".
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In your hypothetical, the student is characterizing being a Nazi as detestable. In the real-life event, the student is characterizing being Black as detestable.
I'm skeptical of widespread American anti-Black racism narratives, and I don't think this case supports them (except weakly at the margin). I think it's possible (although unlikely) that the White girl doesn't harbor meaningful animus towards Black people, and that she was just grasping clumsily for an epithet that carried a powerful valence. I also assume the White girl has some fairly serious emotional problems (as do many people, such as myself) which were exacerbated by alcohol use.
Nevertheless, the White girl's behavior was grotesque. I have no objections at all to expelling her from school.
Exactly. The fact that you reach for a racial epithet when you're trying to inflict pain says something. Racism by the classic definition is thinking that someone is inferior or hating them because of their race.
Analogy, a man can't get it up, he's impotent after an accident. His wife says to him, over and over, "Honey it's fine I love you, not your dick, I don't think any less of you at all! You're still just as much a man as you were the day I married you!" Maybe he even believes her. Then she gets drunk one night, and they get into a fight, and she screams at him "You're not even a man, you can't even fuck me, you're a pathetic eunuch, half a man at best!"
Which is the truth? The polite bromides mouths when she's sober, or the hurtful epithets she reaches for when she is drunk? If someone brings it up when they want to hurt you, whatever they say sober you know they think it but they're too polite to say it sober. It's pretty obvious she does think less of him, and that she thinks he ought to think less of himself.
That said, this kind of incident is beneath notice.
I've never really understood this line of thinking, that the "real you" comes out when you're inebriated. Couldn't both sides of her - drunk and sober - represent what she really thinks, such that one could just as well say that when she's drunk she's being too impolite to say the truth?
Taggin @PutAHelmetOn as well, because this relates to his point about the "sacredness of race."
In Vino Veritas.
For a bigger exploration see several chapters of Slingerland's Drunk or listen to him on Rogan, but at core alcohol weakens your ability to suppress impulses you had already. It does not create whole-ass new impulses.
An analogy:
I might get drunk at a party with my wife and hit on one of her female friends (or worse, one of her female enemies!). I might do 8 shots and tell her friend Brittany that she has great tits and we should hang out some time. Afterward, when my wife and/or Brittany's boyfriend confront me, I might say "I'm sorry, I was really drunk, I never would have done that sober." And everyone will understand that what I'm saying is that I wouldn't tell Brittany that I wanted to fuck her if I were sober; it's understood that my urge/impulse/desire to fuck Brittany exists when I'm sober (I'm a straight man after all!) but that absent alcohol I am capable of suppressing that urge in polite society. No one would think that meant that when I'm sober I don't think Brittany has great tits, that would be stupid.
On the other hand, if I get drunk at a party with my wife and I hit on one of her male friends, if I did 12 shots and walked up to Craig and said that I wanted to take him home and bend him over my Eames lounge chair, no amount of pleading about the top shelf tequila would convince them that I'm heterosexual. I might once again plead that I wouldn't have tried to hit on Craig if I were sober because I would suppress the urge to fuck Craig with my full-powered prefrontal cortex, but I couldn't argue that the bourbon created the urge to fuck Craig and I wouldn't have any homosexual impulses if I were sober. That homosexual urge necessarily already existed, before I started drinking, the drinking merely brought it out, suppressed my ability to suppress my urges.
Alcohol causes you to pursue your desires, it does not create those desires.
Same with any other urge I might or might not have. Alcohol doesn't produce new thoughts, just reveals old ones.
So you don't think the prefrontal cortex contributes meaningfully to who you are as a person, and that judgment and reasoning aren't part of your personality? I think this is a strange way to understand the human mind.
I mean, isn't what anti-racists want is for people to use their moral judgment and reasoning abilities to suppress impulses to act racistly? Or is the goal to eliminate every racist urge in all human brains, no matter how deep it's buried?
I wouldn't label myself an "anti-racist" I'd label myself a "non-racist" if forced to. But I don't think
Is as crazy as you think it is. You could get me as drunk as you want, I'll never hit my mother or my wife, or really any woman. That is ingrained in me at a deeper level. One might achieve a similar degree of non-racism with proper cultural upbringing.
Maybe I'm phrasing my argument poorly. Let's use the old Freudian division: in my view the drunk you is your id, your deep and base desires; the sober you is id managed by superego, societal training and politeness, producing the ego. Which we call "you" or your personality is a secondary question, "then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes;" if you yell slurs at black people when drunk your id is racist. It's possible for a person to have a non-racist id, to genuinely not see race as a valid category for insult and negative judgment.
If you believe something inside, but your judgment tells you not to say it out loud, we call that political correctness. If one thinks Black people are inferior, but doesn't say it out loud sober because of political correctness, I'd call that a belief in racism. I think fat people are ugly and inferior, I don't say that out loud because of political correctness, it's a belief I hold, if you get me drunk and in an argument with a fat person I'll probably call him a whale.
What if you don't think Black people are inferior, but the particular person in front of you, who happens to be black, is inferior?
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Even takin this literally - if discrete impulses exist then they are complex, interact, and make up larger impulses. If you're very drunk and stumbling around, then alcohol 'weakens your ability to suppress' your impulse to, say, sway to the right and left as you walk instead of walking correctly. There certainly is an impulse to sway to the right and left, because you do it while walking, but suppressing that 'impulse' is a critical part of normal walking - you subtlely shift to the right and left at various moments to maintain balance. But - is it even really suppression, or is it just a decision not to sway that way? If you have one neuron that tends to activate an output neuron, and another neuron that tends to suppress that - you could say "the neuron suppresses the impulse encoded by the first neuron", or you could just say - it's just a logic gate that's part of a much more complex system.
And alcohol is messing with every 'impulse' that exists, there's no reason it has to emerge from 'racism being unsuppressed'. What if the alcohol suppresses the authentic anti-racism, and all that's left is 'randomly picking bad sounding words'? Maybe when drunk they just decide to insult people. A very gay person can totally call another gay person a fag as an insult, a black person call another black person a nigg-r, when they're very pissed.
A simpler approach, assigning no 'internal motives', is just - alcohol makes you dumber and causes you do to dumb things more or less randomly. If you get blackout drunk and start hitting on women - does that really say anything about your non-drunk behavior, or just that you're really dumb and 'hitting on women' is a fairly simple instinct?
I could see someone doing this because they thought it was incredibly funny in the moment!
Or you could try reading the sources I linked instead of making up goofy ideas I didn't bring up. Same source, next few sentences:
Different effects of alcohol, and of other drugs.
I'll concede that point. I once loved a game of gay chicken, and found it hilarious for a while in college to slap my friend's asses in clubs just to make them uncomfortable. I guess my hypo is presupposing that it was clearly serious which is tough to demonstrate, I'll concede you could fight the hypo.
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But this is the whole anti-racist vs not racist thing. If we live in a free society (I know, big if, but that's the claim) you do not get to police the insides of people's heads. You do not get to demand everyone signs up to your ideology, the most you can demand is that anyone who doesn't agree with you shut up about it (because your ideology currently reigns in 'polite society').
This girl straight up said the word that can't be said, so I understand 'polite society' is going to throw the book at her. But if we are throwing the book at her because slurring a word over and over again to upset someone is proof she is racist in her heart - if we are going to start policing people's hearts - then there is no hope for society and its time to get out the grey hoodie and sunglasses.
I'm not really arguing punishment here, I agree wholeheartedly that hate crime and hate speech laws are total violations of basic enlightenment principles. We should punish actions not motivations.
I just found the arguments in favor of the girl to be very narcissist's prayer: the same people arguing she wasn't racist were also arguing that she shouldn't be expelled if she was.
Sorry, I didn't mean to direct my post at you, I meant the royal you but I should have realised how it would look. This whole thing is just so frustrating. There is an element of the narcissist's prayer there, but I do think it's because racial politics has become totalitarian in its true sense - nothing outside of racial politics. They're two separate positions, but if one is on the anti racist side one can't accept either of them, leaving the not racist side full of people who believe in both, or people willing to align them.
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Alcohol reduces your inhibitions. Your inhibitions might prevent you from saying an unpleasant truth out loud. Of course, they might also prevent you from saying an unpleasant UNtruth that you know will be devastating, because drunk you is an asshole that will say anything to win an argument.
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That's a nice analogy but should it also apply to people who think there are demons living in their walls after they smoke crack or any other psychoactive drug. Very compulsive and out of character behavior isn't even that uncommon among drunks. I doubt it has that much to do with one's "true character".
It's in vino veritas, not in coca veritas or in LSD veritas. Trying to apply it to other drugs, or to mental illnesses, makes it iffy. Alcohol has a specific known effect by a specific mechanism. Positing a similarity to other substances will work in some ways but not others, I lack the experiences to speak to it.
If you told me she was tweaking on meth or tripping on acid, the whole tenor of the event changes doesn't it?
"In LSD veritas" was the CIA's motto in the 60s. They tried with alcohol, but determined that alcohol wasn't good enough to be used to determine anyone's true sentiments. (neither was LSD)
People react very differently to drunkeness. Some get sad, violent, horny, lethargic, delusional or paranoid. Not all drunk behavior can be interpreted as uninhibited desire.
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I guess I'm saying that the suppression of that desire is as real as it's unleashing. So the prioritizing of the bad behavior/utterance as Real You is just pessimism in disguise. You can just as well focus on the part of you displayed when you're not drunk and say that's the authentic you and the authentic opinion.
Getting sober can reveal old thoughts as well, unmasking the desire, hidden all along deep down, to be a better person.
I see what you mean, it depends on what we mean by describing a person as being x.
When I describe someone as heterosexual or homosexual, I'm referring to their sexual desires, not necessarily to their behavior. If you're a man who wants to fuck men you're a homosexual (or bi but we're going to ignore that for simplicity). It doesn't matter if you successfully suppress that or never get the opportunity, the identity is in the desire not the act.
Ditto racism. I'd define being a racist as having a belief or theory of racial Animus. I don't follow Kendi, I don't think actions are racist by impact alone, only by intention.
If you, on the other hand, define identities by their impact, then it would make sense to say sobriety is the "real" state.
I'm reminded of a quote from Shogun that I've got an effortpost around in the hopper:
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Firstly, thanks for the tag! I was debating whether to post my comment top(per) level or here, and because I'm a karma whore, I chose the latter.
I appreciate the link and learning something new! It reminds me of people who argue that Kanye's mental illness can't create whole-ass antisemitism, only exacerbate existing prejudice. I'm inclined to agree with everything you say here, but I'm not sure it addresses the cognitive algorithm nara and me are independently describing.
The drunkenness reveals the urge to be mean to someone (maybe it's because they're black or maybe because they punched me). If I was sober, I wouldn't be mean to them. But because I'm gonna be mean, I'm gonna execute a meanness strategy. Noticing they are black, I choose the Gamer Word because it lets me inflict violence (so I've heard) without even bruising my knuckles! I imagine I can execute this meanness strategy sober, too.
This sort of argument originally occurred to me because of the times I've been hurt by what people say to me, and every time I can recall, it was because they were set off by something (not alcohol, in any of the cases). Rather than say, "gee I guess all these people secretly hate people like me," I just decided it was because they were heated and angry.
I'm not sure what kind of evidence could distinguish either of our theories. In both cases, there is a need to distinguish why some drunk people yell epithets and some don't (equivalently: why some schizos post about Jews and some don't), and each of us go towards un-factual conclusions to support our moral intuitions.
That's fair. "One can shout bigger at a Black woman repeatedly but that doesn't mean one is racist!" Just strikes me as epistemicly similar to people in an earlier thread saying "One can post castration fetish material to a castration fetish site, and then totally separately one can publish medical guidelines on voluntary castration, they aren't necessarily connected!"
Trying to shrug it off on society by saying well she said it because she knows it hurts because other people think that, even if she doesn't; that strikes me as more like Kendi, a racism without racists.
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I would say that the unfiltered (or at least, less filtered) side of you comes out when you're inebriated. This is the "real you" if you consider those filters to be an artificial construct constraining your true self, but I would not agree. Behavioral filters, like habits, generally are constructed, but they are constructed by a long series of choices that are morally attributable to yourself.
Similarly, however, the choice to become inebriated is a choice to relax those filters (involuntary intoxication is another matter), and that is also a decision with moral weight. In short, if you don't like what you tend to do while drunk...don't get drunk.
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Mostly that you think it will inflict pain. It may mean you're a racist, but it might just mean you know you've got a magic word to harm people. I don't think it really matters in this case; going on a drunken tirade is reasonably punishable without determining if the drunks heart was pure or not.
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No. In my hypothetical and in the real-life event, a drunk person chooses the word that seems most likely to offend the person they are confronting. "Characterizing X as detestable" is just far, far too much cognition to attribute to someone this drunk.
As I've said, I'm confident that expulsion solves nothing in this case. But I could probably be persuaded that this girl should be expelled for her behavior (including both heavy drinking and resisting arrest), conditional on other students routinely being expelled for similar behaviors. What bothers me is the idea of expelling students because they said a naughty word (yes, even if they said it 200 times). If the line between expulsion and not-expulsion is "did you say a racial slur," that violates my intuitions regarding the importance of freedom of speech, thought, and inquiry in institutions of higher education.
If I say that Martin Shkreli is an asshole, I'm probably not exercising too much cognition. I'm certainly not consciously/explicitly characterizing anuses as bad. Indeed, there's a reasonable case that assholes (anuses) are good - after all, what's the alternative? Still, in context, there's some clear background knowledge: assholes are detestable.
So you're suggesting that broad principles of free speech require public colleges to treat student speech in a content-neutral way, with no special treatment for the communication of ideas we find abhorrent, including racial slurs? That seems fine, although it's not the position most public American colleges seem to take (certainly not in practice). It's hard to imagine how this would even function if implemented literally. How could student work possibly be evaluated in this context?
I'm suggesting that there is no "hate speech" exception to the First Amendment. The University of Kentucky is a public institution, and thus bound (through the incorporation doctrine) by the First Amendment.
Are you sure about that? I haven't taken a recent poll or anything, but in my experience it is the private universities where this tends to be more of a challenge. Public universities are aware that they are bound by law to permit offensive speech, and failure to do so can result in substantial judgments against them.
In this particular case, the (many!) physical altercations likely give adequate cover to the university if it decides to expel the drunk girl for assault, but only if nobody involved in the process accidentally writes an email or makes a speech about the epithet. If the university says "we're expelling this student for racism," they might very well lose the resulting viewpoint discrimination lawsuit.
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In the same way that kids telling their little brother that he's adopted don't hate orphans, they just like teasing their little brother.
I think this example supports my position. Yes, the older brother is trying to rile the younger brother. But there's also common knowledge across the participants that the older brother holds that it's undesirable to be adopted.
It's undesirable to be adopted because it means you aren't as much a part of the family as he is, it means your parents don't love you as much as the children they gave birth too. It wouldn't matter if adopted children were considered heroes by society, it would still be hurtful, because inside your family your status is diminished. When we were little, my parents were very strict about cursing, so we invented our own insults. My little sister (5 or 6 years old) wanted to be a princess, so we called her a puncess. It upset the absolute shit out of her, she cried so much about it that my parents added puncess to the list of curses we had better not say if we valued our hides. Because it didn't matter what the word was, our intention was to hurt her and we put all the venom we could into it.
Words can not hurt you. It is the way words are used, the intentions behind their use which hurts, and then only as much as you let them. And we have set up a system which rewards people for being hurt. Would you be ok with her being expelled for shouting asshole 200 times?
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