Question labelled bad faith post without much reasoning

Question

I had posted this question, it was closed with reason said that it is bad faith post. I am in disagreement with this, one of the replies hinted there maybe some underlying racism in my post, but I quickly explained that saying that race and intelligence is gene traits separately inherited. Have also given a rebbutal to the comment by mod directly underneath my post.

Could any other reason be given as a fault in my post which I may have missed or any point missing in the rebutals I have given? if there is none, could my post be reopened please?

Answer 1

Please keep in mind that readers/listeners have a difficult time distinguishing between malignant 'bad faith' and honest, innocent ignorance. In a better world people tend to extend good faith to speakers — giving the speaker the benefit of the doubt about problematic statements — but unfortunately the modern world has weaponized willful ignorance to such an extent that benefit-of-the-doubt is given sparingly, if at all. The onus is now on the writer to be clear in his speech.

I'm making this point specifically about this part of your question:

The manifestation of race based differences are due to the different genes in people and the environment they grew up in. Taking the idea of affirmative action to the logical extreme, wouldn't society in the future have AA based on literally what genes a person has? This seems a bit absurd to me.

On this track, would we be compromising the quality of the candidates in the upper position as in attempts to give equivalent gene reservation (sic), wouldn't we push those with worser genes (chance for disease, lower cognitive ability) into upper position.

Now, we could write this off as simple misunderstanding of the sciences involved and spend some time in an answer correcting the assumptions implicit in this question: e.g., the assumption that race can predict quality of performance, and thus that AA would automatically push inferior candidates into upper positions. But in the real world this assumption has been stated and refuted so extensively over the last hundred years or so, by so many disparate individuals, that it's difficult to believe there is good faith behind yet another restatement. I mean, one of the following must be true:

1. You make such statements in complete innocence, which means you've done literally no investigation or research, but are merely parroting the 'common knowledge' of some particular, parochial community, or...
2. You are informed an aware of the many arguments that have refuted this position, but choose to avoid them because they don't fit well within your given worldview, or...
3. You are informed an aware of the many arguments that have refuted this position, can understand and process them, but actively ignore them because they conflict with a social or political agenda that is important to you.

None of us know which of these three is true, none of us will ever know which of these three is true, and no statements you can make to the contrary will be believable. The mere act of making such frequently refuted assumptions (without acknowledgement of the refutations) damages your credibility. You may have intentions as pure as the driven snow for all we know, but that's between you and you on the inside of your skull. What we see is a recitation of some of the most problematic and pugnacious claims from centuries of dyed-in-the-wool white ethno-nationalism.

If you want us to treat you as a morally good author (°1), it becomes increasingly difficult to treat you as an intelligent author. If you want us to treat you as an intelligent author (°3), it becomes increasingly difficult to treat you as a morally good author. And the alternative in which we see you as presenting a basically decent but small-minded viewpoint (°2) isn't all that thrilling for anyone. Can you blame people for just wanting to be rid of this question?

Answer 2

As I wrote in the comment when I closed the question: "Politics Stack Exchange is a Q&A site, not a debate forum." As the help center article "What topics can I ask about here" says:

Politics Stack Exchange is for objective questions about governments, policies and political processes. It is not a place to advance opinions or debate, but rather for exchanging objective information about the policies, processes, and personalities that comprise the political arena.

The question is starting with a very short question on a very controversial issue ("Should we have Affirmative Action?"). And even that question is phrased in the style of a rhetorical question which could very well be the opening paragraph of a Tucker Carlson segment on Fox News:

Exactly, why the idea of AA to increase the representation of minority group through methods is gaining prominence? I don't

And then it continues with three paragraphs where the author gives an essay about their personal views on the issue.

In a comment you said:

the idea of starting of a debate was not my intention.

But I can't really see a way to reply to a question phrased like this without debating the author.

And as we saw, debating you is exactly what happened in the answer that was posted before I closed the question. To which you replied by debating back. For not intending to start a debate, you were not just pretty successful at starting a debate, you were also pretty eager to continue that debate.

You further stated:

The nature of the question/answer being felt as sharing of one's thought is inevitable on this site. As it's people who are writing question and answers and whatever is written by people inherit the biases of people.

I disagree. A proper on-topic question should be understandable without stating ones own opinions on the matter. When the question is not understandable and answerable without knowing the subjective opinions of the author, then it is not an objective questions about governments, policies and political processes.

Answer 3

One reason it's not so good is it starts by saying Affirmative Action is new. That's wrong by about 70 years. A simple search would have found that out. Basically, the question starts with a huge lie, less than 2 weeks after Martin Luther King day.

Later on, the question groups US blacks with Asians. That doesn't make any sense. Black people in the US are a unique category of discrimination, due to slavery. This is not a little known fact. No one thinks the KKK worked as hard against Asians, or that there was a similar anti-Asian terror group, or there were White and Colored/Asian drinking fountains. Now Chinese (who count as Asian, I assume?) had it bad, but in a similar category (but worse) as Irish or Italians and so on. Grouping "dark skinned and Asians" is so awkward that it's almost like deliberately lying about Jim Crow.

Adding your thoughts just muddies the question. You already told us you don't know anything about affirmative action. Adding way-off-base guesses doesn't improve the question -- we believe you know nothing about the topic -- you don't have to prove it.

Now we come to the part where you say that people with inferior genes shouldn't have important jobs. Searching "inferior genes" quickly takes you to "Eugenics". Searching for that brings up Wikipedia's page explaining that it's bad and was most famous in Nazi Germany. This isn't just some search trick -- a Family Feud with "inferior genes" as the clue would have that in the 100 people surveyed. So pretty much, that whole "Some thoughts I've had" section in the question could be retitled "According to Hitler", since those are the only people who talk about genes that way.

To sum up, the tone is polite, but the content, all of it, is super racist -- like what you'd find on a White Supremacist site. I hope this helps.