Can't condone racism but it's definitely a case of, "If you curtail someone else's free speech just because you don't like what they're saying, don't be surprised when someone curtails yours."
From my PoV, racism is very bad, but so is policing speach inside people's homes. Enforcing it in any useful way also requires a very scary surveillance state.
How would racist conversation in the home be policed? As others have said, it would seem to imply or necessitate an (even more) excessive degree of surveillance. And why racism specifically? Why not sexist, ageist, ableist, gender identity/sexual identity and religiously intolerant conversation as well.
I picked racism as an example that most people on my friends list would be against - because I wanted to know how many of them would want to ban people from having private discussions about it.
Making racist conversations illegal would require first defining exactly what is and is not racist. I imagine that would be a nigh on impossible task. If you asked 100 people if certain things were or were not racist, you would get a wide variation of opinion.
If it were illegal to express racist opinions then how would racists find out they were wrong? That sort of thing.
The ONE book question really is just unanswerable though, for me anyway! I picked one that started me thinking about a lot of different things which are very very important to me right now, but a lot of my life (and interests - such as linguistics, etc) had already happened by then.
I don't really understand what you mean by "represent me". There are books I like, and some a like a lot, but should a book I like represent me? Should it be one that illustrates my personality or philosophy?
I think it's interesting that people are choosing dystopian fiction and WW2 satire to 'represent them'. It suggests to me that you're getting variable interpretations - you state in your later post that what you were expecting here was a 'defining novel'. The book I choose to best represent me is not the one I would choose as my 'defining novel'. I suspect the same would be even truer for, say, Erin.
Brave New World would be in my top ten - because it illustrates things about modern society, and humanity, which are important to me. I can see other people feeling the same way about, say, 1984 and the modern Orwellian state.
I guess different people feel that their worldview/approach to life is represented by different things.
I can't think of what is meant by a book that represents me. There are various books in which I've felt resonance between me and the characters. There are various books that have felt special to me at various times and which bit by bit have defined parts of my life. But a single book would just be a part of my past, a part of my life experience. I don't think I even remember most of the books I've read.
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"They came for the skinheads, and I laughed. Then they came for the Goths..."
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Is the question about racist conversations at home in reference to something?
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The ONE book question really is just unanswerable though, for me anyway! I picked one that started me thinking about a lot of different things which are very very important to me right now, but a lot of my life (and interests - such as linguistics, etc) had already happened by then.
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I guess different people feel that their worldview/approach to life is represented by different things.
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