https://qoto.org/@Pat/107122564291693893

@Pat: again, we agree about a lot 👏
Commenting on a few points of yours:

“I know that most actors self-identify as ‘progressive’, whatever that means, but the above-the-line producers, directors, editors who decide what the final product looks like – those guys are putting out racist content.”

I meant those people, yes: actors, directors, producers and scriptwriters. Especially the celebrity types.

“I watch a lot films, and 8 out of 10 Hollywood films have racist content.”

Since you watch a lot of films, I’ll assume you’ve watched at least ten Hollywood films released in 2020. Among those, there should be (at least) eight films with “racist content”, according to you. Would you care listing eight 2020 Hollywood films plus a succint description of the racist content in each?

“As I said, college is supposed to teach those critical reasoning skills, so kids can learn to put those things into context themselves. But they come into college from a wide range of experiences.”

OK, I could concede that seventeen-year-olds might need those warnings and explanations. Let’s assume some of them may be that immature or simply inexperienced.

Would you then concede that, in principle, nobody above twenty should need trigger warnings, advisories about “graphic” or “explicit” content, edited or softened versions of books/films/photographs/paintings, etc?

“People of color are still portrayed stereotypically in a lot of Hollywood films.”

I’d generalise with this variant of your own sentence, to summarise my position: “people of color are still portrayed stereotypically in a lot of Hollywood films places.”

#Stereotypes, as useful heuristics and for humour, are everywhere, and that is not always a bad thing. People like me (software engineers, Spaniards, forty-somethings, introverts) are portrayed stereotypically all the time — as are native Americans, poets, paraplegics, lesbians, counterfeiters, libertarians, participants in eating contests, CEO’s, Mormons, British pensioners, and chemistry students.

This fixation with (against) stereotypes about very narrow subsets of the population, simply because those subsets endured very specific miserable situations at particular places and at particular times, is inconsistent, distracting, and exhausting. The majority of the population today does not discriminate against blacks any more than they unconsciously discriminate against British pensioners, Mormons, or introverts. But this atmosphere of denunciation, extreme sensitivity, and guilty-unless-proven-innocent makes us all fearful, suspicious, less creative and free, and much less fun.

Let’s combat #racism, and all other forms of meaningful discrimination, where they occur. But only there.

/cc @bonifartius