How is my question opinion-based?

Question

My question, Did idioms using "black" as a metaphor ever demonstrate racial animus?, was closed as "opinion-based". I genuinely can't understand why, because I am explicitly seeking citations from the historical record to demonstrate the thought process behind such terms:

I'm looking for any historical evidence of, e.g., contemporary writing that would demonstrate that speakers had it in mind to associate a list of people to be denied access to a place or resource, with their skin colour or other markers of racial identification.

How is this a matter of opinion?

The comment feedback I got:

Yes, but there's no evidence to suggest that racism is the origin.

sounds to me exactly like an attempt at an answer, not pointing out an issue with the question. If there is no evidence, then that answers my question, which is whether or not there is evidence. (Of course, it would be stronger with evidence of other underlying ideas.)

I also disagree with

Sounds like something for out Linguistics sister site.

because the question is about the societal conditions behind the formation of such words, not technical details like grammar. (As far as I can tell, there is no Sociology site.)

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Since it was referenced in a deleted comment: I don't really see how this policy applies - because obviously a question along the lines of "were people in the past as racist as some people seem to be implying?" (which is already an uncharitable reading) doesn't justify current racism, nor would it make sense to even attempt that justification.

Of course, my expectation is that people didn't actually use such terms deliberately to perpetuate racism - but I couldn't find a clear refutation of that idea in my own research. Some people today seem intent on crafting a narrative around a belief that these terms really did have a racist origin. If it turned out that their argument had a historical basis (which I have never seen them cite), that would actually force me to rethink it. But if they are simply hand-waving around the idea that the word contains a term with contemporary racial meaning, I can dismiss that easily.

But as a point of procedure: if a question is off topic, it should be closed as off topic - not as opinion-based. Further, if something seemingly on topic is non-obviously off topic, it should have a specific carve-out in close reasons.

Answer 1

Something that isn't directly addressed anywhere as far as I can tell, not all of those close voters might have agreed with the closing reason. I think the closing reason that gets the most votes gets posted as the main reason, even if e.g. 3 others chose three separate reasons.

Moreover, StackExchange makes it difficult to be precise with close reasons. Sometimes it's a multitude of factors, but only one gets chosen. Sometimes none of the options are perfect, so one that is chosen is "close enough", even if it doesn't fit the technical reason.

As you can see, there's no "off-topic" reason given (a fault, I might add, that 100% lies with SE's top-level teams, not with the individual sites).

Moreover, you can't readily change the reason without fully retracting a vote to close.

TED's advice is great for dealing with closure, but I'd pay attention more to the comments than SE's limited (and often misleading) closing reason.

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On this particular question, although as you can see I didn't vote to close it, I can see why some people might presume that there is too much subjectivity involved to answer your question accurately. We can't, for example, read people's minds as to whether they had a racial reason for choosing the color term in question. You might want to ask specifically about written sources, which can help steer the conversation away from abstract, subjective interpretations to concrete, objective descriptions of the past.

Answer 2

Honestly was going to look into it to see if it was answerable myself. We are probably one of the more difficult sites to successfully ask a question on. Additionally, I suspect you may have run into a soft version of this site policy on extra scrutiny for heavily-trolled topics. We get racist Nazi trolls here at a rate you wouldn't believe, so our userbase is very careful with questions on topics racists like, particularly from users they don't know and trust.

Its nothing personal. This site is very attractive to racist trolls for some reason. (I think they don't like how history currently portrays them, and sees us as somehow being their chance to change that.) If we weren't careful, it would be quite easy for it to fill up with their hurtful racist crap. What you don't see is how many times in the past we have been burned trying to work with a new user who turned out to just be looking to racism all over the site.

I get that you feel you can make a good case that everything about that question is OK. However, given the topic and its potential to be hurtful to both visitors and the site itself if handled poorly, being arguably OK may not be good enough.

My suggestions would be one of two things:

1. Work with all the commentors to assuage their concerns as best you can with edits to the question (not arguing they are wrong in the comments!) As the question poster, comments from your side are best used to find some common ground with people who have a problem, so you can edit the question to assuage their concerns.

2. Perhaps ask a question or three here on less potentially hurtful topics. That would give you a better feel for how to ask a question that stays open here on topics where doing that is easier, and would give our moderating users a good feel for where you are coming from when you ask questions.