You don't have much context, so I'll fill you in. 8bit was lamenting how terrible it is to be in an engineering school as a black man, and I responded that he needs to be careful about his frame of mind. It's all too easy to start accepting failure because you push the responsibility of success outside of yourself (they're just racist, nothing I could do...). I got muted for it, and then told he was successful because he's able to show up to class and that most of his fellow black males are in prison (which is not having a very high expectation of yourself). It was advice from one older minority to a younger, and yes, I got called racist for it. I've been called a nigger in my lifetime, I've had the experience of people following me around in the local store to make sure I don't steal anything. I too have had to deal with the police, and I was once fired for my perceived religious beliefs. Shit happens, but blaming it on racism is a mistake. Never allow the responsibility for your own success to be anywhere but outside of yourself. Everyone has challenges in life, but if experience has taught us anything, it's that a black man can become the president of the United States if he's willing to work at it. How many other races can say the same? edit: I encourage to read up on Bill Cosby and some of the controversies he's stirred up. He's a fairly successful black man whom I happen to agree with. As for your other points, the term is called 'self-policing'. Your trepidations about PM's are easily remedied by simply allowing person to mute on the PM itself, in which case the mutee still gets the communication. It certainly gives more context than randomly being muted does.How does providing a list of people who have muted a post creator make it clear why someone was muted? I don't see that at all here.
That's part of the reason why I'm arguing that the mute functionality as is actively hurts actual discourse on this site. There are always going to be those who get offended when you challenge them in that manner. Because they have the power to force you out of the conversation, you cannot challenge ideas on this site unless the person you're challenging simply has a bit of fairness to them.