Does this sudden upswell in irrelevant language policing not seem like some kind of coordinated op to discredit BLM? I don’t question that real people fall for it, but considering how wildly successful it’s been at distracting from material demands, like ending police violence, and how much the media has embraced these stories while ignoring ongoing protests, has me a little tinfoily...
I don't think it's meant to discredit BLM although it might end up doing that.
Some people genuinely feel outsiders in a field, or might not see it as a real possibility because it feels foreign. Some parts of language and culture might actually maintain that, although (generally speaking) not due to malice by other people. Other parts just are, and don't actually do much of anything.
Some people then want to change that feeling of outsideness, some more than others. Some of the people who personally feel the most strongly about it are the people coming from the backgrounds that aren't traditionally associated with tech. They're often also from ethnic minorities, or women.
Some of those people feel extremely strongly about it.
It gets tied to their other experiences with being at a disadvantage, or of blatant racism.
Others (partially rightly) then want to support it. But some of those people who have experienced disadvantage are really, really angry, and want to attack everything that reminds them of the injustice they've experienced. And because some honestly unrelated things become mentally tied to that, they also become microaggressions, or something. (Microaggressions are probably a real thing, but if you start wanting to catch all of them, you'll also end up catching a lot of false positives. Specificity and sensitivity and all that.)
Then there are people who actually either feel subconsciously threatened by others competing for the same positions, status and authority, or who are actually racists and feel other ethnic groups shouldn't get the same things they have. Those two groups of people aren't the same, although they probably intertwine. And it's actually quite human to feel the former in various degrees. Maybe even the latter, considering how common it is in the world, but it's easier to see that as nefarious.
And then there are people who just don't like unnecessary change. And those who just don't like the feeling of someone else pushing a way of speaking, thinking or acting on them without really good reason. (I think a lot of HN readers fall into that latter category, as do many classical liberals. I certainly do.)
A lot of people just fall into one social group and context out of the above, because humans are herd animals and having a group is massively important to the vast majority of us.
All of that somehow leads to an unholy mess. Actual racists want to push their agenda and attack those whom they see as their political enemies; opposing any agenda that purports to be antiracist seems to play into the hands of racists; some people get caught in the middle because they don't want to support the racists but also don't like the idea that the language they're used to using needs to change, especially if it doesn't seem like a big thing; some of those not-a-big-things appear to be big things to other people, but who can tell who's really right; others get caught in the middle because they're a bit insecure of their own position and are thus disincentivized of advancing other people's positions, yet don't want to associate with the blatant racists either.
Some get caught in the middle because they want things to make sense to them, and "we all need to get behind this because someone somewhere has the emotional need for that" doesn't cut it. Because there are 7 billion emotional needs, and that's if you only count humans.
So the requirement of hypersensitivity (and even blatantly creating problems) makes many people who aren't even racist uncomfortable; the actual racists use this to their advantage, and overreaction by antiracists provides ample attack surface; and in the eyes of those who feel very strongly about antiracism opposing any of their views (including about microaggressions) become something to oppose. Meanwhile, some of the people in the middle actually have mildly racist views, or feel threatened, or just want to maintain more of a status quo because they're, by personality, somewhat conservative people who don't like rapid change. Or they dislike being pushed into something, or out of something (such as use of language). But because some of the people in the middle are actually supportive of mild racism, or uncomfortable of facing the reality of it, attacking the middle also becomes a valid argument.
And because people don't like feeling like being attacked, some of the people in that middle then gravitate towards the right-wing end. Because the racists aren't attacking them; it seems like the strong antiracists are.
You then end up with two polar opposites that reinforce themselves, and each other. And with some people caught in the middle who, for better or for worse reasons, don't really want to side with either.
Sorry if I got carried away. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
I honestly don't think the people pushing for language policing in a hypersensitive manner are trying to discredit BLM, and I'm not really sure most of them are necessarily "virtue-signaling" either. Some of them are, but most of them are probably just reacting to something that they either personally find offensive (even though their actual enemy is the real racists, not (most of) those in the middle) or to something their in-group opposes.
It's just a complex social dynamic, not a conspiracy.