> No black person chooses to be born black. Casting judgement on any individual black person for the actions of other black people is unethical for that reason.

Casting judgement on any individual for the actions of other individuals who share characteristics with them is generally unethical, period. The individual's ability to choose the particular identifying characteristics shouldn't be relevant.

I'm pretty sure you don't want to be making the argument that it's ethical to judge people based on elements of their identity, so long as those elements have been selected by that person's choice!

> I'm pretty sure you don't want to be making the argument that it's ethical to judge people based on elements of their identity, so long as those elements have been selected by that person's choice!

That's a strange argument to make. If the chosen identity element is associated with negative characteristics, then it stands to reason that it's, well, reasonable to judge them based on those characteristics.

If it quacks, it's probably a duck. If it wears a police uniform it probably a) does bad stuff, b) enables cover-ups of that bad stuff, or c) lacks the courage to speak out against the bad stuff. This isn't because of their identity, it's because this is a characteristic that is widely documented to be incredibly common among cops.

People can choose to not adopt identity elements that have bad reputations. People can't choose not to be black.

So, someone who chooses to undergo gender reassignment therapy can be judged based on the characteristics of all people who have made the same choice?

Someone who chooses to wear heavy makeup and revealing clothing while standing on the street waiting for their Uber can be fairly judged to be a prostitute?

I don't think this is the argument you're making, but this is how the standard you are setting can be applied.

I don't think the element of choice in identity elements makes a difference either way. I think you should just avoid overgeneralizing, period.

Instead of, you know, inventing reasons why is fine to overgeneralize when you want to, but not when you don't want others to.

> If it wears a police uniform it probably a) does bad stuff, b) enables cover-ups of that bad stuff, or c) lacks the courage to speak out against the bad stuff.

"Probably"? Based on what prevalence rate? What percentage of police officers engage in each of these behaviors? You're making a wild assumption here, likely with nothing more than your own anecdotal understanding of these issues.

I think it's more likely you just have a media diet that is high in examples of these behaviors happening, but without the context that explains exactly how often they're actually happening.

I'm not denying that these things happen, and happen frequently! But there are a lot of police officers in the US alone, and even 1% of them doing each of these things is a large number of absolute cases. But a rate of 1% isn't sufficient to generalize to the entire population. At a rate of 10%, I would probably still refrain from extrapolating to the whole, but would start to question individual interactions, and would start to be sympathetic to this kind of generalization.

But due to the lack of evidence around prevalence of bad behavior, I'm skeptical of anyone who generalizes to this degree, especially given the poor quality of information anecdotally collected from the Internet.

> People can choose to not adopt identity elements that have bad reputations. People can't choose not to be black.

If people never adopt identity elements that have bad reputations, how can those reputations ever be improved? If you want the quality of policing to improve, the last thing your want to do is convince everyone who wants to make a difference that they shouldn't even try. If you want policing to improve, you should be encouraging the best people you know to join up and to force out the bad behavior through reform.

People cannot choose to be black, but they can choose to make an effort to destroy the negative stereotypes associated with their race.

You seem to be arguing that generalizations are always externally imposed and immutable, neither of which is true. Your argument is actively damaging to any efforts to improve the perceptions of both groups.

People don’t choose to have gender dysphoria, and you can’t judge someone for receiving healthcare to manage their well-being. If you want to make the argument that gender affirming care isn’t healthcare then kindly don’t respond because I’m not trying to invite hate and transphobia.

I really cannot be bothered to respond to the rest of this because you’re starting from a place of not being familiar enough with this topic at all for this to be a meaningful exchange. I really hope you make time to educate yourself better on this topic and do so with an open mind and compassion

> People don’t choose to have gender dysphoria, and you can’t judge someone for receiving healthcare to manage their well-being.

I phrased what I said much more precisely than this. I said nothing about gender dysphoria, and was instead specifically talking about a therapy one might choose to undergo as treatment. Medical treatments should always be a choice, right?

But no, instead you decide to completely misrepresent what I said, and used then use that single misrepresentation as basis to dismiss my entire argument.

You claim to want a meaningful exchange, but this is how you choose to do it? This makes me skeptical you're interested in "meaningful exchange" in the first place.