madfilkentist: My cat Florestan (gray shorthair) (Default)
posted by [personal profile] madfilkentist at 10:00am on 2010-09-09
"Censorious" isn't a word I normally use. Dictionary.com says it means "severely critical; faultfinding; carping." If I called someone a bigot, I'd be "severely critical," though not "faultfinding" or "carping."

Then there's the question of whether someone who does X-like things is an X. Calling a normally non-bigoted person who says one marginally bigoted thing a bigot would be carping.

A bad movie is, tautologically, a bad movie. Someone "who says or does [any] bigoted things [at all]," without regard to the frequency or clear nature of such actions, isn't necessarily a bigot.
minoanmiss: A detail of the Ladies in Blue fresco (La Parisienne)
posted by [personal profile] minoanmiss at 12:05pm on 2010-09-09
People so often use this argument ("by pointing out the bigoted thing I did you have called me a bigot! I'm not a bigot! Therefore the thing I did isn't bigoted and you're entirely wrong and I don't have to listen and I can keep doing it!") to deflect any and all attempts to point out that any one thing they did was bigoted and thus to refuse to learn.
madfilkentist: My cat Florestan (gray shorthair) (Default)
posted by [personal profile] madfilkentist at 01:05pm on 2010-09-09
Such a response would be begging the question (assuming that the act is not bigoted in order to prove that it isn't). But the accuser may be the one who is actually begging the question (assuming that an action is bigoted in order to prove that the person accused is a bigot). E.g., "You don't like Obama. Not liking Obama is racist. Therefore you're a racist. Q.E.D."

Charges of bigotry, racism, and the like are an area where arbitrary accusations are particularly common, so it's particularly important to look out for circular reasoning on both sides.

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