Since it appears you can read, and you proclaim critical thinking as one of your "specialties," go back and read what I said then.
Okay, I did.
At the time I last made my argument (and it actually does address the question of intentionality that arises in the weirdly elaborate examples you offer above)
No it doesn't. You gave an example about two kids in a slapfight, which got laughed off the board by people other than me.
Then you resorted to argument by anecdote: "I know people who are offended by the Gorilla." Well, bully for them. As I, and everyone else who disagreed with you, pointed out, some people will get offended by anything.
Here's what you may not be considering: Claiming offense is empowering, in this day and age. If you run in mainly liberal circles (and my politics are well left of center, by the way), a sure way to gain attention and sympathy is to declare that you have been wronged by someone's insensitivity. Some people abuse this tactic, and I'm sure you are aware of that.
Abdul-Jabbar (whose alleged objection to the Gorilla started the discussion) had a chip on his shoulder his whole career. He caught a lot of flack (unfairly) for his Muslim conversion, and the media were never warm to him because he wasn't much of an interview. During his heyday, he was as dominant as any player in the league has ever been, and yet he didn't enter much into discussions of "greatest player ever," and still doesn't.
The point is, Abdul-Jabbar has an axe to grind. So when he spouts off and says that the Gorilla is racist, I don't put a lot of stock in it. He has been wronged, and I sympathize with him, but that doesn't give him carte blanche to cast aspersions on anything he doesn't like.
You made the analogy of accidentally causing harm to someone and then apologizing afterward. Like most reasonable people, I agree that an apology is appropriate in such cases. However, most of us have been in situations where someone claims to have been injured, or put out in some other way, when actually the claim is bogus. Should we be obliged to apologize in such cases? I would say no, and I would go further: We should not apologize in such cases, because that rewards the other party for dishonesty.
Next comes the question of what constitutes a reasonable threshold for "injuring" (let's use the term broadly to include non-physical injury) another person. For example, let's say you get on an elevator, and the other person looks at you sternly and says, "You're breathing my air, get off at the next floor." Maybe the person actually believes that you are wronging him by "breathing his air," but I say, tough. It is an inappropriate demand, and he has a societal obligation to develop more tolerance for such inconveniences.
I can offer a more realistic example. If you are trying to eat at a fast-food restaurant, it will often be the case that there are no empty tables, but some tables that could comfortably seat several people have only one customer. Generally, our sense of "privacy rights" sends us to an empty table when possible, but if one person is by himself at a six-seater, isn't it okay to sit with him? And if we ask first whether it's okay, and he says no, should that be binding? Is it reasonable for his tolerance for table company to be so low? Does rewarding such behavior benefit society?
My point is that being able to recognize when offense is not intended is, itself, a societal value. Behaviors that are out of step with societal priorities should, generally speaking, be punished, not rewarded.
Finally, I want to make some points about the tone of this argument:
In the original Abdul-Jabbar/Gorilla thread, which I did not participate in, you first pledged that all conversation was in friendship. But as soon as you ran into perfectly civil disagreement, you
(a) resorted to the smug, "I'm sorry if I've pulled anyone out of their comfort zones,"
(b) called another person's argument "deeply illogical and fact-deprived,"
(c) and then moved on to the personal attack, "And worse you seem to feel really good about it."
In your next post, you apologized for losing control, but rather than continue the discourse, you simply dropped the topic. Classic hit and run.
When I entered the discussion in another thread, I alluded to "accusing people of racism," which you protested that you didn't do. Technically, you're right. You accused people of insensitivity and ignorance, but not literally of racism, so I concede that point.
Nonetheless, then you became very hostile about my having accused you of racism, when actually what I wrote was, "the ability to 'connect the dots' and find an offensive interpretation says much more about the one doing the interpreting than it does about the circumstances themselves." I think if you re-read that you'll realize that it does not make any charge of racism; the accusation is more along the lines of cynical, self-serving grandstanding.
The consistent picture is of someone who looks for racial offense where it is not intended. I did not come close to calling you a racist. I said that you have ulterior motives for constructing a specious argument and are an intellectual coward, and I stand by that. But I am not calling you a racist.
