for anyone who’s wondering why ppl are trashing “civility”: it’s not that everyone just like hates talking things out. it’s that celebrating a person who fought for the oppression of the races of current students is not an idea that should be engaged “with civility”. [Thread]

civility in discourse means giving an equal weight to the opinions of everyone who wants to say something, but with this, everyone’s voice should not have the same weight. on the question of whether to honor lee, you can’t treat the opinion of a minority individual affected (2/6)

by intergenerational trauma from slavery the same as that of a white individual who feels weird about “forgetting” lee’s time with the university. any good that lee has done is massively outweighed by all the bad. (3/6)

civility in discourse would give a platform for defending lee as a person worthy enough of the honor of being a college’s namesake because of his time as the college’s president like that’s enough to redeem him for the irreparable harm of his support for slavery and (4/6)

oppression of black people. doing so would be belittling of minority voices most directly affected by lee’s harm and would not enable the productive dialogue you think civility can give. (5/6)

anyway, i feel this thread was unnecessary bc a lot of other ppl have explained it so much better than me. if engaging in productive discourse matters to you, please research more on your own on why civility can be counterintuitive in advancing change for minorities thanks. (6/6)