Racism at work…

You could suggest they watch the film The Swimmers, which does give an insight into why people chose to leave their original country for somewhere else – of course it may go over their heads. As a father to daughters I found it a difficult watch at times.

Good call. Mrs C got her parents watching this whilst they were staying with us back in June. MiL’s (who is savable) reaction was “I’d never really thought about it from that angle”. FiL (who is not) sat through it in stony silence. And he’s father to two daughters, one of whom was a high level swimmer. Empathy and decentering is just beyond some people.

Not sure where a lot of you guys work, but i’m not holding my hopes on his work colleagues taking time out to watch a motivational movie based around immigrants, from his wording i feel he may be on the outside looking in, so grassing them up probably isn’t a suitable route either, if they even have a functioning HR department that is.

As previous, work life, actual life, that’s the split, find another job if it’s that bad, learn how to work with them and forget about them the minute you finish if you can’t.

No-one gets far arguing with people like that because it’s not about reason, they’re not going to change their minds?

I think the thing thats worth considering what ‘opinion’ is and the role it plays in peoples lives.

People form opinions very easily – when we first encounter something, someone, somewhere, a situation we almost instantly form an opinion about it. We have opinions on almost everything we’re aware of regardless of how much or little knowledge we have about those things.

It requires no effort to form an opinion, we literally do it without thinking, but once someone has formed ‘an opinion’ for whatever  reason they’ll often then work really quite had to defend, justify, and rationalise it.

We seem to treat opinions as if they have value, ‘everyone has the right to an opinion’ apparently, although I’m not sure where that right in enshrined. It’s probably more correct to say ‘everyone has the right to an informed option’ and it’s the right to information that we should be defending. But our opinions are pretty much something we’re hostage to.

We should really treat opinions as our weaknesses. In situations where facts are critical we strive to try and factor opinions out, and often fail. Bias and expectation and tradition sneak in and sabotage all sorts of efforts to seek objective truth.

In the instance of arguing with a racist what you have to consider is that at some point that person has arrived at that opinion quite by accident – they’ve acquired a sense of suspicion, a fear, a distaste, an sense of superiority, an unease of a certain kind of other for no particular rational reason. I think racism and anti-immigration is often really not much more, deep down, than impostor syndrome.  But once someone has those kinds of feelings about those kinds of others they’ll grasp at anything that will rationalise and justify that feeling. That they are right to be scared, that they are right to feel threatened.

Whether those rationalising notions are true, or relevant, or proportional doesnt really matter because people don’t rigorously, objectively vet information that flatters their opinion. It’s too thrilling to hear. Nobody looks that kind of gift horse in the mouth.

But the ‘facts’ that people grasp on to are far less preciously held than the opinion that they help bolster. Truth is less important that truthiness. There isn’t true and false in  relation to the opinion you hold – things are true if you agree with them, if that same thing is shown to unfounded, then is simply becomes ‘the sort of thing that would the true’. It may be factually wrong, but you were right to believe it. And in a short while people forget that it was a lie and it’ll become one of their truths again.

What’s import to consider is – absolutely nobody is immune from this. Some people recognise their subjectivity more readily than others but nobody can eradicate it. Some people have been happily coached treat their opinions as the essence of their being and actively shield them from the truth.

I don’t want to start a fight but I feel like a bit of a lone voice of moderate reason and could do with at least some direction to properly fact checked info on both the key agitators and the arguments that are used.

Adam Rutherford had a great little series on Radio 4 called ‘How to argue with a racist’, which is sadly no longer on BBC Sounds (seems never more pertinent really, they should put it back up) but a quick search suggests there are numerous podcasts with him talking on the subject as in interviewee (and theres a book by the same title). But… forget facts and fact checking. Its feelings. Facts (and falsehoods) are just decoration.

The best thing to do is make it clear what they’re saying is unacceptable. The best way to do that would probably be to go to management and say “with all the riots and stuff that’s going on at the moment, a few people have started making racist comments. Please can you make it clear this isn’t acceptable in the workplace?” An all staff email, or signs up around the place, saying that discriminatory comments are not acceptable and anyone making them will be disciplined, will have more effect in at least showing them what they’re saying isn’t OK than you arguing with them.

As if by magic, an email has just come round my work saying that we’re not going to be effected by the disorder, and generally making it clear that it’s not OK.

Like it or not 14% of voters voted reform last month.

Well they lost, shouldn’t they “just get over it”?

Erm, winter fuel payments haven’t stopped.  They’re means tested as they should have been in the first place.  This first year could be difficult, but let’s see what Labour do in subsequent years about the boundaries of entitlement.  At the moment around 1m of 13m are around the boundaries and it’s a sharp cutoff, but may be tapered in subsequent years.

Just remind them – correlation isn’t causation.

Labour are trying to unpick 14y of mismanagement and failed policies – did the Tories/UKIP/Brexit manage to do ANYTHING about immigration even with the fuel payment?  No they just made us poorer and then tried to buy their way out of the mess they made in the first place.  Had they not shafted the exchange rate for gas and oil imports, the WFP might not have been required by so many.  Had they invested properly in energy, the Ukraine crisis might not have led to such sharp swings in domestic energy prices.  Had they properly kept green energy prices detached from gas prices in contracts, perhaps energy prices wouldn’t have been so volatile.

Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. Good riddance to them and their 7% following.

Erm, winter fuel payments haven’t stopped.  They’re means tested as they should have been in the first place.

Quite rightly – and I say that as a pensioner who won’t be getting the payment this year.

As bigblackshed said.

It requires no effort to form an opinion, we literally do it without thinking, but once someone has formed ‘an opinion’ for whatever reason they’ll often then work really quite had to defend, justify, and rationalise it.

One thing I’ve caught myself doing in recent times is reading things and instinctively reacting with “no it isn’t,” the reason being that I read another opinion piece which said something different about two minutes ago. I’m trying really hard not to do this but it’s alarmingly difficult.

Both mainstream media and social media knows this. You can plant an idea in someone’s head and once it’s there inertia takes hold even if you subsequently recant the statement.

How many cover versions are better than the original song?  Why?  Because you heard it first.