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"Once upon a time, I was discriminated against. I now practice that discrimination against others and am proud to be doing so."
Rejoicing in intentionally being part of the problem rather than part of the solution leads me to believe that person is a substandard human being. It's not much more complex than that.
Where does he say he is discriminating against others?
I don't discriminate against black students, it's just that the white ones are my favorite!
"When I was in school, I was bullied for my conservative beliefs, even by teachers. So I became a teacher, and now conservative students are my favorites." Would you infer that I am a loser who discriminates against liberal students? Or, would you perhaps draw a more charitable inference, such as that I support conservative students, within the bounds of teacher ethics? I am betting the latter. Yet you do not extend that charity to a member of your outgroup.
Why did you change the example away from race and into political opinions? Please write the same post with the quote being about a white teacher being bullied by black students when he was young, and now whites being his favorites, and tell me with a straight face you'd see absolutely no issue with that.
Well, pay up. Yeah the conservative example seems pretty wildly inappropriate to me. I don't see why he should know his students political opinions, and to the extent they came up in class, he definitely shouldn't be uploading videos on TikTok about how they're his favorites. And yes, a teacher that does upload this sort of stuff to TikTok is very likely engaging in discriminatory behavior. When I was in school some teachers whre playing favorites even when they were doing their best to maintain a front of neutrality, someone who publicly blasts his preferences for everyone to see probably has no breaks in the classroom.
And note that you have now changed the subject. The claim was that the teacher was "practic[ing] that discrimination against others." I.e., bullying others, or somehow harming others. Not the same as giving a benefit to your favorite student (not that that is necessarily ethical). Especially where, in the context of the quote, that means providing emotional support, or sponsoring an LGBT club, or the like (which is perfectly ethical). There is no evidence that this guy is doing anything other than that, and your insistence otherwise says more about your biases than his.
No I haven't, but before we get on to that, what I would like to note, is that you're still refusing to say you'd see no issue in the white teacher who used to be bullied by black kids example.
Yeah, giving preferential treatment to students you like more is, in fact, bullying, and harming others.
I see no reason why I should assume that's what it means in the context of the quote. Also, preferential treatment in providing emotional support is still discrimination.
I'm not insisting on anything, you asked me whether or not I would be ok with a conservative teacher making an analogous video, and I explained why it would be wrong. Stop putting words in my mouth, and concede you were wrong, please.
It is not discriminating against others, as the OP claimed.
You wrote in defense of someone who made that exact claim.
You said, "a teacher that does upload this sort of stuff to TikTok is very likely engaging in discriminatory behavior."
How is preferential treatment not discrimination? Aren't they basically synonyms?
By making an analogy to a white teacher bullied by black kids, which you are refusing to engage with for the third time. Why?
"Given my experience with how people behave, I think it's reasonable to believe a teacher who acts this way is discriminating his students" is not "insisting" a specific teacher must be engaging in specific behavior. You're entitled to believe the guy is a perfectly fine teacher, but you seemed confused as to why anyone could disagree, I was trying to explain where this belief is coming from.
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That's hardly fair. Being just slightly charitable, what they mean by 'favourite students' fairly clearly does not imply any genuine preferential treatment or discrimination in respect of grades, discipline and so forth.
So someone saying "whites are my favorite" also wouldn't imply preferential treatment or discrimination, right?
I don't think the two are apposite. His comments - which I think were kind of silly but basically harmless, I mean it was one line in some guys short video, who really cares - just mean that he is particularly happy to see gay students doing well personally because of the change that represents from his personal experience. I don't know in what context such a line of thinking could emerge in the case of whites.
How do you determine, from the outside, that the guy meant it in this harmless way?
Why? The context is perfectly analogous. Dude goes to school, gets bullied by black kids. Teachers, media, and the general culture push racist Critical Race Theory-derived ideas about the White Supremacist Cis-Heteronormative Patriarchy. Grows up to become a teacher, and makes a TikTok video with a throwaway line about how white kids are his favorite, and it just means that he is particularly happy to see white students doing well personally because of the change that represents from his personal experience.
I don't think the general level of homophobia encountered across the, in this case, United States decades ago, is on the same level as anti-white prejudice.
This hardly seems relevant, people don't go around doing calculus about their relative levels of oppression. We shouldn't expect a white guy that got bullied, systemically and personally, to say "well, I guess the general levels of prejudice against me weren't as bad as they were for gay people" any more than we should expect a gay person to say "well, I guess the general levels of prejudice against me weren't as bad as they were for black people", etc.
Also while the general levels of prejudice against cisstaightwhite people probably lower, the elite levels of prejudice are probably higher than they were for gay people when this guy was growing up.
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