• Question: Do you think people are too sensitive? Like regarding ethics or racism, just in general.

    Asked by gwenstefani to Adam, Chris, Eleanor, Jessamyn, Sinead on 14 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Christian Wirtz

      Christian Wirtz answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Hi Gwen,

      I think there is a balance that has to be kept in this but there are certainly cases where I think people overreact. I think everyone is equal, regardless of race, heritage or belief system.
      We hear cases of people banning children from playing cowboys and Indians in school because in their game they would be chasing down an ethnic minority (just as it was done in history). In those cases all of us wonder what is going on in the minds of the people who make these decisions. But discriminating someone for their heritage is wrong ; is it suddenly right if only children do it?

      The problem is, where do you draw the line? We can all distinguish in the extremes, when something is definitely racist or something is a seemingly completely ridiculous overreaction. It’s a very gray area and the people in power who have to make a decision don’t want to offend anyone because it could cost them their job or even get their gouvernment into trouble (think about how quick some newspapers are to pick up this stuff). So they ban a lot of things outright just to be on the safe side.

    • Photo: Eleanor Holmes

      Eleanor Holmes answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      I try to pretend we live in a world where nobody even notices race (or religion or gender or ethnic grouping) and everyone just treats each other the same and gets along. That’s the way I try to live my life. Unfortunately the word is not like that (yet) and racism and bigotry are all around us.

      I guess people have to go with what they feel in the moment about a situation and that’s usually OK. Some people find a comment racist or sexist or whatever and other people don’t and we debate or ignore it. One thing that annoys me is when people say they “Hate it when *insert race, gender or minority here* does X thing” And I think, do you hate when they do it? Or do you hate when ANYONE does it? Like would you not mind if an Irish person was doing that instead of, say, a Spanish person. Sometimes we don’t think when we talk.

      But then there’s the issue of legislating for these issues. And that’s when it all gets tricky. As Chris pointed out, the politicians don’t want to risk pissing anyone off, so they tend to be very conservative in their policies. I don’t know if this is a bad thing. Ethics tends to get bound up in religion and I think this is a bad thing.

      This is a very complicated issue and a very complicated question. Thank you for asking it and getting me to think about it. I don’t have much of an answer for you. But I think it’s good to even talk about it.

    • Photo: Adam Murphy

      Adam Murphy answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      Hey, this is a great, but really tricky question. And I’d say there’s no right or wrong answers here.

      But my opinion is no, people are allowed take offence in whatever they want! If you feel an issue hurts you, you every right to be hurt by it.

      My only problem is when people take offence against something scientific. Like, there are people who think vaccines are terrible and get offended that they’re used, but every piece of scientific evidence says that vaccines are brilliant. That’s the only thing that ever bothers me!

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