Shaming racist speech in public, a discussion

Here’s a learning moment for me: someone made a “master race” reference in the #gohugo forums, where I am a mod. They are a new user, that’s their first post.

I opted for public shaming:

Thoughts? Rather than trying to rally the mods behind this and in making it an example codifying it, and possibly not, I decided to make my personal opinion known. But I’m not sure that’s effective…

I have no data, but I sometimes suspect shame based approaches to this might be more effective than often considered for this kind of thing. I feel like sometimes when we stop and debate the pros and cons of such speech it grants it a kind of legitimacy in public discourse. Where as shaming it; letting it be known it isn’t worthy of consideration denies it that appearance of a legitimate differing opinion.

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Yeah, that is a good way to explain where I’m coming from: if I came down on the new person like this, the power dynamics of me being a mod and wielding authority to censor them becomes part of the narrative. I don’t want them to be shut up, I want them to think about why someone would be grossed out, and hopefully change it in themselves. Yeah. Yeah! :slight_smile: