UFC 248: Adesanya vs. Romero

I wasn't going to make this post, but I do feel that ban is a bit hairy-chested. Unless there was another pejorative in there that has been redacted, I don't think what Free wrote was essentially racist and that's an important distinction to make.  It was definitely tactless and insensitive (you know even as I wrote that it felt rich coming from me) due to historicity but even that's complicated. For example, it was quite common in Northern Africa especially but throughout Africa generally for Rival tribes to collaborate with both Arabic (Arabs took literally millions of slaves from Africa and did so for over one thousand years) and European slavers and capture and sell their enemies into slavery. You'd  be hard pushed to find any culture anywhere that hasn't practiced it in some for or another. It's up there with hooking as a human go-to and we've had more than one civilization whose entire economies were dependent on it (looking at you, Norway). 



But I digress. Anyway, although there's no legal definition for hate speech, for better or worse, it's generally accepted that for something to qualify as hate speech there has to be clear employment of pejorative or discriminatory language.Because Slavery--or perhaps more specifically, being enslaved, is not something unique to the African experience--did not simply happen to Africans, it is not pejorative to state that an African is behaving like a slave. The word  slave itself is also not pejorative any more than any other noun--the word 'horse'. It is non-specific in regards to any particular group.

I mentioned Arabic Slavers earlier. Those same Arabic slavers also enslaved Circassians, who were and are caucasian. Additionally at various points in History, The English, Spanish, Greeks, French, and Portugese were all captured and sold into slavery.

Now, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that nobody (yourself included Greg) would bat an eye if Free had said any fighter from the aforementioned nationalities were acting like ***** slaves. But why not? How is the rule different? If having being made a slave is the qualifier, then it would be equally discriminatory. Things have to make sense. There must be coherence, equality before the Law.

I know that it's important to keep racism off these boards. I get it. But it's also important that punishments are only issued when the intent is clear and that guilt is not established through inference. That's not how Laws work, and not how they are meant to work. Presumed innocent until proven guilty--not guilty until proven innocent. As above so below. Things must be able to resolve.


Anyway, I hope you'll go on being careful with that Axe, Greg. I know it's annoying as **** to be criticized, and normally I wouldn't do it because as I have said many times before I think you do an excellent job keeping the moderation fair and balanced on this site. But I feel this particular ban was a bit much over spilled milk. I am sure you did correctly identify what it was Free was thinking of, but again, we don't punish people for thought-crime. We haven't quite yet tipped over into INGSOC. He's definitely an idiot, but what he wrote wasn't categorically racist.

* Edited at 02.13.2020, 12:12 AM ET *

@Jmug how do you..... know? Belief is not knowledge. As of this very minute there are people in Asylums who believe they are the lord and savior Jesus Christ. Since you used inverted commas it would appear you are not even certain ( "Joke") as to what the spirit of intent was. Either that, or you think it was an allusion to a smear. I don't read it that way at all. For me to read it that way, he'd have had to have used 'Black' or 'African' as a prefix to the word 'slave'. He  didn't. He used '*****', which is racially indeterminate. What Greg and yourself have done is arrive at the conclusion through inference. You have both supposed. And that is apophenia.

And it leads to scenarios such as this; people being accused of racism for  having adopted dogs with white fur.





Now, I'm sure that both of you think this is patently ridiculous. I have to believe that's true. But what you both need to understand is that you've done essentially the same thing as whoever posted this; you have made a value judgement via non sequitur.

I ask you both to at least consider the implications of what the world would look like if that process was broadly instituted. Imagine a world in which when speaking, you need not refer to any definite article but could still not just accused, but convicted, of all manner of things because what you literally said had an abstract component that could be related to something else not through facts, but through sophistry. 

That would be a world in which neither of you would want to live.

That's all I'm going to say about this debacle.

* Edited at 02.13.2020, 3:35 PM ET *