Originally Posted by
azcavalier
*WARNING* Long post. Read if you want to think and discuss.
Unpopular in the circles in which she tends to operate. I'm from RURAL Virginia, but I work on a college campus. TBH, I'm a moderate conservative. I'm not right-wing enough for my home county, but I'm too conservative for my college colleagues. But Gina Carano is more conservative than I am, and she's working in a much more liberal atmosphere. So, her views would be viewed as toxic in that environment.
If anyone is interested, here is a Facebook post by my brother. He is more liberal, but he's very level-headed (and doesn't think that the opposing political viewpoint is evil). After reading his post and thinking about it, I think he's dead on here.
"There is something of a moral panic happening around the idea of “cancel culture”, both on the political right generally and specifically among some members of the left intelligentsia. If you aren’t familiar with it, the basic idea is that “the left” has started to “cancel” (get fired, get kicked off social media, and/or generally gang up on) people who express non-politically correct opinions. Some recent purported examples of someone being “cancelled” include Gina Carano, who up until last week played a popular character on Disney’s “The Mandalorian”, and who was released from that show in the wake of posting comments on Instagram to the effect that hating someone for their political views is similar to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust (for the record: this is not true). Carano has also posted opinions to the effect that mask wearing does not help stop the spread of COVID, and that there was significant voter fraud in the election (for the record: neither of these claims is true either). In the wake of these posts, the hashtag #FireGinaCarano trended on Instagram, and a few days after that Disney released her from the show.
Perhaps more seriously, there’s a popular set of ideas spreading rooted in “critical race theory” (CRT). CRT has a bunch of tenets, and a deep dive into it is well beyond the scope I want to address here, but in very broad terms it examines how society relates to ideas of race and power, and in particular, how our current society was built on top of white supremacy and works to perpetuate the power of white people. Which seems fair enough; almost nobody denies that race, real, constructed, or other, has an impact on society and vice versa, and examining that relationship seems like a valuable thing to do. And no one with even the slightest knowledge of American history will seriously dispute the pervasive effect of white supremacy on the shape of American society, at least up through the 1980s.
But the popular ideas spread in the name of CRT, perhaps most notoriously by Robin DiAngelo in her book "White Fragility" (which I’ll call WF, to distinguish it from the far more nuanced ideas contained in CRT) -- sometimes posit that a) much of what we generally accept as Enlightenment Values, including meritocracy, legal neutrality, and even logical reasoning and the scientific method, are in fact tools of white supremacy; and b) that there is no intellectually honest way to disagree with or even interrogate the tenets of WF. Anyone who questions is a racist. WT therefore acts like a red pill for those who accept its ideas.
What’s a liberal white Christian scientist to do in the face of these sorts of ideas?
I’m not sure I have a complete answer, because It Depends(tm). Liberals strive for tolerance of others and their life choices, but contrary to popular opinion on the right that does not imply that we have to tolerate intolerance or be hypocrites. Your right to your opinion stops when your fist meets my face, and all that. There really are some opinions out there that are beyond what any functioning society can accept; in the United States, for instance, these would include that Donald Trump should be President for life, that Hitler had it about right regarding Jews, that slavery was a net good for black people. You have a right to wear a swastika t-shirt and not be arrested -- but that’s all. You can’t wear that t-shirt to your job as a customer service rep in the morning and expect to still be employed at lunchtime.
On the other hand, any functioning Christian has to make significant allowances for humans being human. We believe in forgiveness, in redemption. We don’t believe in immediate punishment for every bad act. That was Satan’s plan, not God’s, which is why the world is the way it is.
All that being said, here’s what I’m absolutely certain of: mob violence against other human beings is uniformly bad. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the denomination formerly known as The Mormons), I can attest to this. There’s a reason we are a nation of laws and not of opinions, and for me that reason lies in the graves of the leaders of my church -- and a couple of ancestors -- who were murdered for their religious beliefs. And make no mistake, trending a hashtag to get someone fired because you disagree with what they say is a form of violence. So you will not see me forwarding any incitements to get a private citizen fired or deplatformed for their public statements unless those statements are themselves incitements to hatred or violence. And the problem with social media is exactly this: it actively enables and even encourages just this sort of mob violence.
I’m also absolutely certain that any system of beliefs that equates skepticism to heresy -- as WF does -- forfeits anything else true it might have to say. This is the proverbial teaspoon of dog poop in the chocolate pie.
Finally, I’m fairly well convinced that WF is the logical opposite of Nazism, in the sense that both WF and Nazism posit that race is the principal (only?) framework around which society can be understood; the two ideologies then take that conclusion in different directions. But I don’t accept the premise. I don’t wish to live in a world where the fundamental Nazi premise that the nature of society is a struggle between races is the correct one, and as a Christian I *can’t* accept that premise.
Racism is real, *structural* racism is also real, and liberal thinkers have some valuable things to say about both. White fragility (the concept, not the book), is also real. Of course it is; we're all humans, and we're all fragile. We need to think of ourselves as good people, almost no matter what we think or how we act, and becoming defensive when challenged with our own failures is one of the most natural instincts there is. But to address the reality (and real harms) of racism without causing further damage doesn't require becoming anti-racist, as DiAngelo defines it. But I think it may require becoming anti-fragile. We have to be open to claims of harm from others without becoming intellectually closed ourselves, on either side of the debate.
So what are we to do with Gina Carano? Well, there really is a struggle for the soul of the United States, and that struggle is important. Its outcome will have real effects on real people. And Carano is -- in my opinion -- on the wrong side of it. But getting her fired for her political views won’t help resolve it. There are better ways, more effective ways, ways that will cause less harm and fewer broken relationships. Loving your enemy is a better way of turning her into your friend than drop-kicking her."