There are a BIG incomprehension in this debate (perhaps due to our poor
english).
We are not obscurantist who want to hide the reality and show a clean world
where everyone are friends !
I think we all agree the better way to speak about racism is to explain with
a neutral point of view the different way of thinking. And we don't think
the actual version of articles we re-wrote are good articles.
Philippe created articles he describe himself as not NPOV. But more than not
NPOV, many french wikipedians think they were false, racist or anti-Semite.
Create a good article on racism can't be done speedily, so our problem was,
what to do with those article until we will be able to propose a NPOV
version. My solution was to put the article in the talk page and use the
usable information of his articles (there are some) and add our own
research.
Aoineko
Wow! This was a fantastic paragraph, buried in
Brion's longer letter,
and it was so good I wanted to just reproduce it here to highlight it.
Brion Vibber wrote:
The current versions of these articles aren't
necessarily the best way
to handle it; I think they would do better to discuss *and debunk*
racist notions as much as possible, putting them in the proper context
so when some kid hears about "racialism" or "reverse racism" and
then
looks it up on Wikipedia they'll see a rational, neutral explanation of
what makes some people think and speak that way -- so they'll
_understand_ why to discount those ideas. Pretending the terms don't
exist or saying "oh, that's just what RACISTS think, if you touch them
it might rub off on you! stay away!" strikes me as ineffective, or even
counterproductive ("look, those Wikipedians are so biased they're afraid
to take us on rationally!"). There are lessons to be learned from the
evil that men do.
--Jimbo
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