> You'll never get everyone to settle on the same moral values so it's inevitable that you'll get someone who is unapologetic about some value they hold.
I'm less familiar with Rust community moderation, but as an example of what not to do, I would offer up the Go maintainers' strategy of advertising unrelated, partisan, ideological content on their web pages and then shutting down any kind of critical conversation about it. To be clear (if only so people know what they're downvoting!), I'm an avid Go enthusiast--the language is great and the maintainers are generally good at designing a language; however, I sharply disagree with their approach to managing the community.
I mean they certainly have a partisan stance re: prisons and incarceration. Not to say whether it's a good stance or not, but it's certainly partisan. Partisan doesn't mean "I disagree with this."
But whatever it is and whatever your opinion of it, it's hard to make a cogent argument that it belongs as a banner on the front page of a programming language website.
> I mean they certainly have a partisan stance re: prisons and incarceration.
I did not realize that providing counsel to inmates was a partisan issue.
> But whatever it is and whatever your opinion of it, it's hard to make a cogent argument that it belongs as a banner on the front page of a programming language website.
Unrelated to your comment maybe, but not the thread. It's certainly germane whether your choose to acknowledge it or not.
I'm clearly not referring to "providing counsel" and it takes only 10-15 seconds of reading their homepage to see policy positions that any reasonable person could consider partisan. But nice straw man. Let me know when you're interested in an actual discussion and not this nonsense.
At this point, the slogan "black lives matter" seems to be more of a partisan talking point than any kind of indication that the person using it does, in fact, consider black lives to actually matter. Up to and including shooting white people somehow being more of an attack on the notion that black lives matter than shooting and killing a black teenager, just because of the perceived partisan affiliation of the shooters...
EJI has fought against the death penalty and taken sides on other partisan issues. I wouldn't call it a partisan organization myself, but I can see how someone could reasonably form that opinion.
Generally speaking, organizations providing statements in favor of human rights have been in fairly safe territory. Historically, businesses supporting desegregation, the Civil Rights Act, LGBTQ inclusivity, or other human rights issues have been either unharmed or benefitted from the stance, even if there's no material contribution to the cause, and even if the fight for human rights is partisan (it almost always is.)
No one disputes the human rights of black people. What is disputed is whether police killings are racially motivated or whether American police are too often heavy handed irrespective of race (94% of Americans believe that some police reform is needed[0]).
Of course, virtually everyone understands that blacks are killed disproportionately by police, but that doesn't imply a racial motive when we know for fact that there are disparities in the commission of violent crime, rates of police interaction, etc which could also explain the disparity in shootings.
And of course, the particular remedial policies depend significantly on the answers to these questions. In particular, people who identify strongly with BLM are much more likely to advocate defunding or abolishing the police (but are also the least happy that inadequate policing led citizens to defend themselves during various BLM riots in 2020, including the Rittenhouse case).
Further still, there's a lot of controversy over whether violence or non-violence are the appropriate way to seek the reforms one desires, with virtually the whole of the media downplaying or actively justifying political violence (even invoking MLK's "riots are the language of the oppressed" out of context[1]) right up until January 6th, 2021 when political violence abruptly and rightly regained its "reprehensible" designation.
Further still, contrary to the media portrait, a majority of black Americans don't support violent protest or the abolition or defunding of police--like most other Americans, they want sensible police reform[0].
So yes, BLM is quite controversial in American politics for reasons which have little to do with clear cut advocacy for human rights.
[0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/315962/americans-say-policing-n...
[1]: One of the more memorable examples was CNN adding the "fiery but mostly peaceful" caption as a journalist sporting a gas mask reported against a backdrop of a dozen burning vehicles.
Black Lives Matter is a slogan used by disparate groups for a variety of causes. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" is necessarily one focused on the human rights of black people.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the US also involved violent riots by some actors, and there was public debate between sides on whether segregation was intrinsically a cause of inequality, similar to how there is debate today between sides on whether our criminal justice system is intrinsically a cause of racial inequality. If one didn't view segregation as intrinsically unequal, they might claim that the Civil Rights Movement (though focused on many other issues as is BLM) had "little to do with human rights." Supporting the Civil Rights Movement, a movement that contained numerous groups, goals, and actors (both violent and non-violent), was still a position that doesn't seem to have harmed organizations of the day, and may have even benefitted them.
> Black Lives Matter is a slogan used by disparate groups for a variety of causes. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" is necessarily one focused on the human rights of black people.
If we can agree that this slogan is controversial, then it seems like we should be able to agree that the Go project could make its points better by avoiding a controversial slogan and instead using an unambiguous statement. Certainly this should be open for discussion.
Moreover, I could make a similar statement about "All Lives Matter", which is necessarily focused on human rights, but most people steer clear of the slogan because the media has worked to associate it with right-wing groups and now it is only used by right-wing groups--good faith people strive to make their points in ways which are unambiguously good faith; bad faith people use motte and bailey rhetoric which is what the Go team appears to be doing (they are certainly aware of the controversial nature of the slogan and refuse to discuss it).
> The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the US also involved violent riots by some actors
Right, and we collectively rebuked those actors and raised up non-violent actors as exemplars for social change.
> there was public debate between sides on whether segregation was intrinsically a cause of inequality, similar to how there is debate today between sides on whether our criminal justice system is intrinsically a cause of racial inequality.
Public debate is fine. Burning and looting neighborhoods, attacking innocent people, etc is not.
> If one didn't view segregation as intrinsically unequal, they might claim that the Civil Rights Movement (though focused on many other issues as is BLM) had "little to do with human rights."
Right, but through public debate and other non-violent means, we made the case that segregation is intrinsically unequal. With respect to BLM, note that there was an enormous effort to punish people for criticizing BLM.
> Supporting the Civil Rights Movement, a movement that contained numerous groups, goals, and actors (both violent and non-violent), was still a position that doesn't seem to have harmed organizations of the day, and may have even benefitted them.
We supported the Civil Rights Movement because it largely emphasized non-violence. We supported the movement in spite of its violent elements, and the violent and nationalist figures remained controversial right up until BLM folks made them popular.
In a political environment where one party openly allies with those that seek a white ethnostate[1] and the other sees a compromise solution that normalizes and rationalizes the existence of its opposition[2], the fair and equal application of the law is not just partisan, it is increasingly countercultural.
Only a small minority of Americans--including ~80% of black Americans--even accept your framing of the problem. In particular, by all appearances, police shootings aren't unequally distributed by race when we account for even the most obvious relevant factors (e.g., violent crime rates), but your whole framing depends on this. In other words, if this isn't true, then the Republicans and a significant minority (if not majority) of Democrats aren't white nationalists but rather opposed to police reforms which can't work* because the problem is misstated.
"Framing" is irrelevant to my statement. I provided concrete evidence of the two mainstream political parties doing exactly what I said they were doing.
How a particular slogan like "defund the police" polls is not relevant to the impact of moving $193 billion annual local dollars of police funding to better structured, community-centered alternatives.
Conflating evidence-based policy goals and research with how people feel about them in the current present moment is classic misdirection.
> I provided concrete evidence of the two mainstream political parties doing exactly what I said they were doing.
Your first article (from Buzzfeed of all places) didn't demonstrate a white nationalist agenda, and if you think the second article supports your point (that Biden is content with whatever white nationalism exists within the Republican party) then I'm not sure we read the same article. The article I read clearly depicts Joe Biden's views that America needs two political parties, that American politics should revert back to the more functional pre-Trump years (and presumably before the alleged mainstreaming of white nationalism that you purport), and that Republicans who want to stay Republicans should do so while voting for Biden. None of that seems controversial at all.
> How a particular slogan like "defund the police" polls is not relevant to the impact of moving $193 billion annual local dollars of police funding to better structured, community-centered alternatives.
You don't think it's a problem that Black Americans overwhelmingly reject policies (as well as rhetoric and ideology) that are purportedly in their interest?
> Conflating evidence-based policy goals and research with how people feel about them in the current present moment is classic misdirection.
"Defund/abolish the police" policy goals aren't evidence based. If you'd like to retreat to the moderate position that we should increase social services while reforming policing, then welcome to the moderate club.
>"Defund/abolish the police" policy goals aren't evidence based.
This is absolutely false. Community groups have been putting together actionable, concrete and evidence-based abolition-centered strategies since the first slave-catchers were paid by the state. Educate yourself.
I'm less familiar with Rust community moderation, but as an example of what not to do, I would offer up the Go maintainers' strategy of advertising unrelated, partisan, ideological content on their web pages and then shutting down any kind of critical conversation about it. To be clear (if only so people know what they're downvoting!), I'm an avid Go enthusiast--the language is great and the maintainers are generally good at designing a language; however, I sharply disagree with their approach to managing the community.