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Notes -
I don't think it has a strong moral valence either way.
Part of the modern discourse disconnect I didn't really mention is also how we mentally model feelings. I think some progressives believe (and this isn't actually all that unreasonable) that your feelings are so strongly interconnected with each other across scenarios. In that model, it would be bad, because this emotion of "danger" would inevitably bleed over to other innocuous situations (for example, maybe you then innately also feel even a Black coworker in a white collar workplace to be somehow more 'dangerous' than other colleagues, all else equal).
I disagree on two fronts with this progressive logic. First I think context is pretty strong in these situations. Second I think progressives often are very guilty of assuming all emotions are equally valid and real (and thus by implication must be sourced in some internalized attitude). Flatly speaking this is just wrong. Humans do not actually have amazing control over their emotions, and it's not uncommon for emotions to show up that aren't even all that deeply connected to the fabric of our existence and attitudes. They just show up. Rather than judge the emotion, we should judge the reaction to them, and feel free to discard them at times. Obviously we aren't like, ignorant or unaware of emotions - sometimes we do need to process them - but they shouldn't dominate our lives in every single regard, and we can generate emotions too to some extent (not just be dominated by them).
Progressives are correct that emotions can be data worthy of self-reflection (if I see a Black guy and feel uncomfortable, why might that be?), but they've messed up the scale of the matter pretty badly (it's absolutely not something automatically worthy of a moral panic).
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