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kgraves

This reminds me of a quote:

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" - Desmond Tutu

And being silent is not even an option, because now "silence is violence".

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> "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" - Desmond Tutu

I don't really like this quote.

It starts off with a false premise, because neutrality is required in order to have justice. A neutral assessment of oppression is that it's wrong.

What Desmond Tutu is really getting at is that so-called "neutrality" which defends the status quo when the status quo is oppression is wrong. But that's not what actual neutrality would do.

And then the quote gets put forth to quash demands for actual neutrality as illegitimate, even when the people in need of it are the victims rather than the oppressors.

> It starts off with a false premise, because neutrality is required in order to have justice.

I mean that's just not true? There are quite a few subjects that are currently polarized where each side considers theirs to be just and enforcing it justice.

> neutrality is required in order to have justice.

This seems like the opposite of the truth. Surely justice in most cases is looking at a dispute between two or more parties and deciding which party is right and which is wrong and to what extent. It’s very much the opposite of neutrality.

As a very basic example, neutrality in adjudicating a theft of property is to side with the thief and not demand the return of the property.

As I said to another comment, this is all just a restatement in flowery terms of “if you’re not with me you’re against me”. And that should scare people.

> “if you’re not with me you’re against me”

...but in many situations, that's accurate.

Someone who was 'neutral' in the civil rights era on the topic of Jim Crow would be implicitly supporting Jim Crow. Their neutrality implies tolerance of the injustice that was the state of things at the time.

What major injustices do you perceive are happening today in the United States that require laws equivalent to the Jim Crow laws?

No one is turning a blind eye to our society's problems. I think we're all just wondering what major justice it is we need to deliver.

Well, recently there was gay marriage and other gay rights issues. Maybe trans issues are more topical right now.

> No one is turning a blind eye to our society's problems.

Is this a serious statement?

I find this statement confusing. The Jim Crow laws were a source of injustice, not an answer to it. Did you mean the civil rights act and related laws?

Tolerance is not support. That's why we have different words for it. For example, you probably tolerate the marketing of sugary drinks. Does that mean you support Coca Cola?

It's not always support, but in the case of status quo injustice, it's tacit support.

Political change does not happen overnight, or everything would already be perfect. I would much rather someone "implicitly support Jim Crow" while remaining open to change when the tide finally shifts, than for them to be forced to pick a side and dig in their heels as an explicit supporter.

“You always told me ‘It takes time.’ It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’ and my sisters’ time. How much time do you want for your progress?”

- James Baldwin

I don't see how that is a response to the core of what I said. It's lamentable that change takes so long, and this is often used as an excuse to discourage progress. But I was making the point that when you force an indifferent person to pick a side, you're most likely creating more opposition to your cause.

It may not even be indifference just plain ole laziness or being cautionary.

I'm fascinated by how each of these restatements in some ways say the exact same thing but also strongly imply very different moral choices. Another restatement might be: "If you don't die on this hill, you leave me to die on it."

I think the key difference between Tutu's phrasing and "if you're not with me you're against me", is that the former presumes some people don't have the luxury of choosing sides and they are requesting support from people who do. If you are, for example, Black in the US, you can't really choose to not make racism a priority, since you will experience its effects whether you like it or not.

"If you're not with me you're against me" doesn't imply anything about the speaker's own agency. In that sense, I think it's a less compassionate thing to say, because the listener chould just as well ask them to change sides. Tutu's framing makes it clearer that not everyone has that freedom.

I don't really understand your comment; do you agree or disagree with the quote?

Why do you think that is necessary? The quote exists. It has relevance to the conversation. Can't it just be that?

Everyone’s political signaling detector had its sensitivity cranked up.

People tend to choose silence not from indifference, but as a form of self-preservation. So it makes sense to me that you would want to do this, but it is absolutely not a neutral position.

Ah but the definition of justice isn't exactly absolute, is it? It's also subject to bias, interpretation, information, and tons of grey area isn't it?

It's not really all that grey currently. The contrast has in fact gone way up.

don't worry logic is on your side, claiming that silence, or the absence of something, is an affirmative of something else, is a classic fallacy: https://reflectioncube.com/2018/04/05/argument-from-silence-...

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