When racism and sexism are so disproportionately embraced by conservatives (e.g what views are espoused by white supremacists or proud boys or <insert recent alt-right mass shooter here>?) you must ask yourself what's _really_ detrimental to the conversation here.

> We're talking on an article where an employee interpreted _silence_ as racism! There is a valid point that (non-bigoted) conservative opinions are being silenced.

If you see a coworker being harassed and you do nothing, that's bad. Even if it doesn't make you a racist, if you see something and don't speak up you demonstrate lack of caring about your coworker. It's valid to point that out, is it not? How is pointing that out silencing conservative opinion?

It's not on people at work to be nice to you if your views are hurtful to those around you. The onus is on you to find out why most of the conscientious and smart people around you find your behavior and/or views abhorrent.

The problem is that your opinion doesn't exist in the a vacuum. If you talk about reducing immigration while saying little to nothing about the horrible treatment of people at our borders, then naturally people are going to take offense because you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely.

I've had many discussions with coworkers with me taking up both stances as a steel man and/or devil's advocate and not once have I felt uncomfortable about the discussion. You should be concerned about certain actions of very powerful people in high offices poisoning the well of discourse before you consider what you're trying to debate because context is everything. I find that is something frequently ignored when people discuss why they feel like they can't speak about certain things.

> If you talk about reducing immigration while saying little to nothing about the horrible treatment of people at our borders, then naturally people are going to take offense because you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely.

I don't care if people are offended. I don't think the topic about humane treatment is two-sided, so I have nothing to add. I think I have to figure out what I think about broader immigration issues, so I choose to talk about that.

I do not subscribe to the implicit ultimatum of "either you are interested in what I consider the most pressing issue, or you're implicitly supporting the opposition". You think it's an elephant in the room and I would say granted that's true, I don't think it's an argument that needs to be rehashed.

I think it will change toward the obvious resolution without additional fanfare (Trump will be gone within my lifetime), so I don't spend time on topics that I think are decided. Policy is always playing catch up. That's how this society works.

If you don't care if people are offended, then you're effectively saying that you give zero weight to their arguments and opinions. That's not a particularly good argumentative tactic and is a great way to ensure your argument is shut down from the get-go.

This isn't an implicit ultimatum either, this is about understanding and addressing the full context of a situation. If you're ignorant of certain aspects people aren't going to mind, but if you willingly try to ignore those aspects then people are going to wonder why.

It's like for example: Trying to talk about how to fix a large problem in a code base without understanding why code functions the way it does. If you just do a large scale refactor, then you break other portions of the system that expected certain behavior and now you have to do all sorts of retrofitting.

> If you don't care if people are offended, then you're effectively saying that you give zero weight to their arguments and opinions

That is only if their opinion is based on (or implied to be based on) their emotional state. Arguments based on emotion are basically zero weight for most philosophical issues (like what problems are more important than others). You have no right to know, what is more important to me, so I think the judgement is ignorant.

> That's not a particularly good argumentative tactic and is a great way to ensure your argument is shut down from the get-go.

My argument about what? My morality? I choose not to care about offending a specific group of people who have a specific interest. No apologies.

> Trying to talk about how to fix a large problem in a code base without understanding why code functions the way it does.

I'm not talking about the same project (or function) as you. One feeds into the other. Ultimately, there is a black-box assumption. I don't have to care about the later components doing their job, when looking at the function that is also complex. Someone should probably be looking at both, but it's not a moral imperative to look at all functions in the world.

What you care about is, by definition, dictated by your emotional state. I for example greatly care about issues that relate to poverty because I've experienced deep poverty before. What you effectively say by saying you don't care if you offend people is that you only care about things that are emotionally relevant to yourself. You touch upon this yourself:

>You have no right to know, what is more important to me, so I think the judgement is ignorant.

This is an argument made from emotion, not philosophically or logically. You're saying that X topic ranks higher emotionally than Y topic.

Which I mean, that's also going to vary based on the context and whom you're arguing with. There's nothing wrong with caring for certain topics than others but it's disengenuous to behave like you're above emotions while making an emotionally charged argument.

> What you care about is, by definition, dictated by your emotional state

I agree with that. Not sure how it's related to why someone else's state should influence my preferences.

> This is an argument made from emotion

It is not. You literally have no legal right. Without that information, you are literally ignorant and unable to make an argument about morality, from my perspective. Morality is personal, but it is a philosophy about maximizing the good across people and time, as I define it.

> There's nothing wrong with caring for certain topics than others but it's disengenuous to behave like you're above emotions while making an emotionally charged argument.

I disagree. I am going to assert that I am a human. I am not above emotion. I can and do, dismiss the arguments posed from an emotional basis. This is a little far away from where we started.

> you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely

I don't rank it above. I just don't think there's anything left to discuss. The moral failure is practical, not philosophical. This is of no interest to me, as I already know what I believe about it. I can and do talk about immigration, without reference and feel that I am on solid moral footing.

That's great advice - but it amounts to 'be careful and qualify your opinion to show you're _not_ racist'. That's exactly what people are complaining about.

The migrant detention issue has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of _legal_ immigration. Bringing it up does nothing other than to distract and prevent discussion on the original topic!

If we could just discuss issues _in good faith_ and stop with the name calling we might actually be able to solve some of them -- together.

I mean, if you're talking about racially charged topics (of which immigration unavoidably is) you should expect to have to be careful. I'm not sure what else to tell you.

The migrant detention issue absolutely relates to legal immigration because if you talk about reducing the number of legal immigrants, depending on your proposal that means people will be reclassified as illegal immigrants and subject to being detained.

You can't talk about immigration while trying to ignore the elephant in the room. Because when people point out the elephant and you ignore it or don't have an answer, then your argument is a poor one.