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Banning words won’t make the world more just

theatlantic.com

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Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#781

Post by rayiner »

lumb63 wrote: post #776
rayiner wrote: post #233

The Sierra Club guide is hilarious: https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/default/files/sce-authors/u... . > People of color” has in the past served as a collective term for people who are not white. A preferred term today is “BIPOC” referring to Black, Indigenous and people of color, which provides a unifying term for ease of use while still acknowledging the reality that Black and Indigenous people in the United States…

My opinion is the motivation behind “BIPOC” is to exclude Asians, who are rarely considered as minorities due to their economic and academic success.

I think "BIPOC" is designed to be able to exclude or include asians selectively depending on political needs. They want Asians to identify their interests with those of other non-whites, and in opposition to conservative whites. In that context, Asians are "BIPOC." But when it comes to preferential treatment amongst different non-whites, for jobs or admissions, then Asians are in the second-tier of "POC" not the first tier of "BI."

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#782

Post by beardedetim »

wonderwonder wrote: post #719
jraph wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am also asked to remember how to modify my grammar or lexicon when in vicinity of a given person? No? Same grammar regardless of who is near, just need to remember which pronouns to designate which people, which: - is the intuitive one for most people - the asked pronoun for the few people who have pronouns that don't match your intuition. (I also have troubles with remembering names, but pronouns are fine) And f…

I work with maybe 100 people on a consistent basis. I probably know 25 of their names. Many of these interactions are random one offs, large meetings, etc. Many of them are foreign (to me) compounding my difficulty with their names. In addition I'm remote so can't associate names and faces, everyone is just white text on a black background. If any portion of this group started requesting I use varied pronouns I would…

This seems extremely unhealthy for you. Specifically the work environment you are currently in.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#783

Post by Der_Einzige »

yosito wrote: post #557
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identity politics is not unintentional. Those indoctrinated into it may be unaware but the intention is to divide us.

What if we all just stopped for a second and realized that no matter what "side" we're on, we're all just human beings? Namaste.

I wish we could ban cliches on HN. This has less value than "we live in a society"

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#784

Post by tzs »

nomdep wrote: post #218
tzs wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels more like a minefield than a joke. A minefield that gets new mines added every so often just to keep everyone on their toes. It gets new mines because when a word becomes a widely used derogatory term for a group of people we need a non-derogatory word to use instead when when we are trying to talk about people in that group and aren't trying to be derogatory.

That what tone is for! And when is written, you use the context. And when there is no context, you asume the kindest interpretation

So when a word that starts out as a neutral term to describe some condition or collection of people gets adopted over time by the general public as a slur or derogatory term, and that's how it is used 99.9% of the time, we should assume when we hear it out of context it is the 0.1% case?

Also for many of these words most the general public has complete forgotten the non-slur/non-derogatory meaning (or has never known it). No amount of tone will fix that.

Imagine an unmarried couple with a child who gets a copy of the child's medical records from their pediatrician and see the child described as a "retarded bastard". The chances that they will know that "retarded" was once a medical term for someone who is behind on mental development and that "bastard" means a person born out of wedlock are pretty low. At best they are going to be greatly puzzled by the doctor using those words.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#785

Post by slackdog »

franga2000 wrote: post #622
pancrufty wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-American, the dumbest change that affects me daily, is the renaming of the master branch. Master means teacher in romance languages and its variations are part of daily usage. In git there's no "slave" part so it always meant "main" and not "owner" It affects me daily because "look on master" became "look on the main branch" for no advantage to absolutely anyone.

The strangest thing about the git branch controversy is that "master" was clearly used in a master/copy sense, just like you used to have a master music record that was then copied, but at the same time, basically every embedded communication protocol and many distributed computing systems still use terms like "bus master" and straight up "master-slave" configuration. Sure, for many protocols it's a very accurate des…

I believe these sort of 'word bans' are motivated by Whorfianism; basically the idea that the sort of language we use can influence (or even set the bounds of) the kind of thoughts people have. But scientific evidence for Whorfianism is weak at best, and starts to seem particularly absurd when you try to state plainly exactly what you're trying to accomplish in situations like this. In this case, the idea seems to be that we can denormalize the practice of slavery by eliminating metaphorical references to slavery.

If you think about this, it's obviously a complete farce. The sort of people who engage in slavery today are not enabled to do so by such metaphors. And those apathetic to the problem of modern slavery, who might otherwise be doing something about it, were not made apathetic by the metaphors. The premise of fighting slavery by eliminating metaphors to slavery is pure pseudoscience of the highest order.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#786

Post by delecti »

tpoacher wrote: post #750
imoverclocked wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Character and intent is what matters. This. I recently ran up against a filter on Reddit where I used a phrase that I was completely unaware of. My account was flagged for hate speech. The comment had no ill-intent. The problem with language is that we want individual words to have inherent meaning but as people adopt phrases to identify a movement, those meanings get carried along for the ride. eg: until recently,…

I find it highly unlikely that Scott Adams is a "dark dog whistle" kinda guy. At best the most I'd believe would be that "some people who Scott Adams pissed off now like to say that when he says X he actually means Y".

Scott Adams' descent into reactionaryism [1] has not been subtle or quiet. If you were surprised that it eventually exploded in a public way, that just tells me you haven't heard much of anything about him in the past decade.

Also, "it's okay to be white" is not a hidden rake of a dogwhistle to stumble on. If that were a serious position, it immediately leads to the question of "who is saying otherwise". And then you learn about replacement theory, "a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory" [2], and realize what Scott Adams was really saying without saying.

Lots of language policing is dumb. Hell, language policing would drive me away from even using "dumb". Scott Adams did not stumble into this controversy through zealous language policing, he charged into it with eyes open, and knew exactly what he was saying.

[1] I think the word is actually reactionism, but chrome's spellcheck prefers reactionaryism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#787

Post by crazygringo »

cesarb wrote: post #757
crazygringo wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not by common usage of the word. Particularly because I'm not sure I've ever come across a case in my life when a speaker or writer wanted to include people from both continents as a single group. It's just not a label that's useful for much of anything. "North or South American" isn't a particularly meaningful or relevant concept at all. In contrast with e.g. "Latin American" which is very useful/meaningful. And if…

> Particularly because I'm not sure I've ever come across a case in my life when a speaker or writer wanted to include people from both continents as a single group. That's the thing: for many people, it's a single continent, called just "America", which can be further subdivided into "North America", "Central America", and "South America" (but these three are not continents, they're subdivisions within a single cont…

That's fine, but it still doesn't change the fact that there isn't really a need for a word to refer to its inhabitants collectively.

The same way Oceania is often considered a continent, but nobody ever refers to people there as "Oceanians" in a way that includes both modern Australians and Polynesians, for example.

I'm just saying that calling people in the USA "Americans" isn't taking away from an otherwise useful/important modern-day usage. Regardless of whether you consider it to be two continents or one.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#788

Post by amluto »

throwawayacc5 wrote: post #368
superfrank wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hardworking: I’m struggling to come up with something even as credible as the last two. Maybe it’s ableist: some people can’t work hard. I'm guessing the logic is something similar the absolutely ridiculous (IMO) graphic I've linked below from the National Museum of African American History & Culture which lists a lot of aspects of white culture in the United States. One of the many items on their list was the "Pro…

The first time I saw that I was convinced it was a 4chan troll. I was so sure it was an elaborate 4chan ruse that when shared by someone else at work I instinctively told them it's a racist 4chan meme and they shouldn't be sharing that at work. It took some back and forth with links from the actual museum before it hit me that it was real . I was speechless.

The link in that tweet is IMO quite problematic, too:

https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiten...

Since when are “white people” a monolithic group with all these privileges? There are many different groups of people who would be generally considered white, and they have very diverse stories, privileges, and disadvantages. There are plenty of so-called white people who do not feel they have all these privileges. Just to pick on an easy one:

> I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed

Many “white” women would disagree with this, although the extent might depend on where they go shopping.

There are clearly many forms of discrimination that happen due to the ability of some groups to be easily recognized at a quick glance (regardless of whether that recognition is accurate), but that is far from the only form of social injustice in the US.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#789

Post by Der_Einzige »

KielFisch wrote: post #680
lynx23 wrote: post #363

What was it, 10 to 20 years ago, people started to be noticeably nervous when they were coming near a description of my disability. It used to be so simple. I am 100% blind, and guess what, I prefer the term blind because it is pretty descriptive and relatively short. But all of a sudden, people external to the community started to fumble around with "visually challenged", and all the nonsense variations of that in m…

Recently I came across a discussion on Twitter where a selection of scientists were arguing that the long-used term "blind peer review" (i.e. where the authors do not know the identities of the reviewers, and vice versa) could be construed as able-ist and should be referred to as "anonymous peer review". I'm all in favour of using inclusive language, but at the time this discussion struck me as odd because I've never…

Hehe, wait until you hear about the controversy cause by calling something "their most seminal work".

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#790

Post by arbitrarian »

KielFisch wrote: post #680
lynx23 wrote: post #363

What was it, 10 to 20 years ago, people started to be noticeably nervous when they were coming near a description of my disability. It used to be so simple. I am 100% blind, and guess what, I prefer the term blind because it is pretty descriptive and relatively short. But all of a sudden, people external to the community started to fumble around with "visually challenged", and all the nonsense variations of that in m…

Recently I came across a discussion on Twitter where a selection of scientists were arguing that the long-used term "blind peer review" (i.e. where the authors do not know the identities of the reviewers, and vice versa) could be construed as able-ist and should be referred to as "anonymous peer review". I'm all in favour of using inclusive language, but at the time this discussion struck me as odd because I've never…

Not OC, but I am also totally blind, so I'll bite. IMHO, just more silliness. The biggest problems that I as a blind person face don't generally stem from my blindness. Don't get me wrong, it's incredibly inconvenient, and causes a whole host of problems. But the biggest, most life altering problems tend to stem from societies misconceptions. And the best weapon we have against misconceptions is communication. But all this fuss over words does not aid communication in any way. In fact, I think it does the exact opposite.

The only thing the language police have done for us is to make communication more awkward. How am I supposed to have a real conversation with anyone if they're constantly worried they're going to not use the right code words (which, by the way, change routinely). How is a blind person supposed to convince a potential employer that they can handle the work when they (according to the language police) can't even handle people using regular words. People learn by asking questions, and people aren't likely to ask questions if they are afraid of stepping on a verbal landmine and being labeled insensitive, or worse.

I don't know who the language police think they're serving by all this outrage and/or false concern, but it certainly isn't me. If I need to, I can get offended on my own behalf just fine thanks.

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