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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

#841

Post by erulabs »

glial wrote: post #837
somenameforme wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not take claims of something being a "dog whistle" at face value. The entire concept has largely been weaponized and bastardized, appropriately enough as a means of effecting language policing. A perfect example is over the past several years how the media spent quite a lot of energy dedicated to convincing people that "America first" was some sort of a secret dog whistle. [1] The "logic", so far as it can be…

I don't disagree, but to play devil's advocate, maybe the Trump campaign could have used a slogan that wasn't used by the KKK or Nazi sympathizers? If they REALLY believed in the idea behind the slogan, and not the historical connotations of that exact set of two words, they could have done better. But, they didn't. To put a finer point on it, what if they had chosen "America over everything"? Would you still be crit…

I think in the beginning both sides played into it. Trump probably knew there'd be a group of people who would say exactly that, and probably made the bet that a larger group of people would roll their eyes at that point.

Certainly the provocative language (what could probably even semi-fairly be called dog whistling) or maybe better described as "trolling" lost out to the language-policing though.

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

#842

Post by nzach »

Version467 wrote: post #635
imgabe wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no graphic designer or artist, they look brown to me. They still sell them at Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Self-Standing-Lunch-B...

I could be wrong, but I think the parent comment is just a reference to the fact that brown doesn't exist. There's no wavelength that our brains map to brown. Instead what we perceive as brown is just orange, but less bright. And wether we see it as brown or dark orange depends entirely on context.

See this[0] for a longer explanation.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU

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

#843

Post by bilvar »

biorach wrote: post #755
bilvar wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm colourblind so I'd posit that the people who banned the term brown-bag are ableist.

> i'm colourblind so I'd posit that the people who banned the term brown-bag are ableist Upvoted on the optimistic assumption that this was a joke

Of course it is! :)

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

#844

Post by delecti »

jwond wrote: post #833
delecti wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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". I found a few examples if you are interested: > conservatives are objecting after the discovery of a speech by Berkeley Professor Zeus Leonardo in which he discussed the need “to abolish whiteness.” […] “to abolish whiteness is to aboli…

I'll start with addressing the second one, because it sets up the first. To start, the author of that article is himself white. He seems to be saying (and pointing to others who have said) that "whiteness" as a cultural identity leads to white supremacy. For example, "white pride" is white supremacist in a way that "Irish pride" isn't. The article isn't saying anything should happen to people considered white, just that lumping us all into a single "white" identity is a problem.

Meanwhile, the reaction to that first link seems to prove that professor's point. In context, it seems clear to me that he's saying is that people interpret arguments like those presented in the second link as attacks on those people rather than just calling out that singular identity as an issue. He's not saying "the solution to white supremacy is to get rid of white people", he's saying "whiteness as a singular identity is a problem, and pointing out that it's a problem is seen as an attack on white people themselves", which is clearly true based on the reaction to his speech.

Newsweek is trash, but I'll put that aside for the moment. The training seems to be presenting the same arguments as the first two, but badly. A workplace training is really the wrong context to try and make that kind of nuanced point, and that seems to have been an especially clumsy attempt at it.

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

#845

Post by mold_aid »

fleddr wrote: post #658

We should spend less time on the crazy outcomes of these institutes and more time on why they can even exist in the first place. They are somehow funded yet not accountable to anyone. Nobody asked for this, it doesn't help anyone, and it cannot survive the most basic scrutiny of the public or market. And yet it exists and even grows. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with outcomes, the underlying mechanism should be e…

>Similarly, universities are under pressure to appear "on the right side of >history" by aggressive student activists, fueled by the flames of BLM, MeToo, >whichever other social justice outrage.

Oh is Turning Point USA not a social justice group

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

#846

Post by chownie »

mrguyorama wrote: post #830
rayiner wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, “people of color” is now in the “past” as Sierra Club says. The “preferred term today” is “BIPOC” which acknowledges that black and indigenous people are more important than other “people of color.” I don’t remember Asians signing off on this change request; I doubt Hispanics did either.

Why are you attributing a ranking to an initialism?

Initialisms apparently naturally have a hierarchy, like when lesbians invented the LGBT and graciously donated the other letters to good causes.

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

#847

Post by nhchris »

fleddr wrote: post #658

We should spend less time on the crazy outcomes of these institutes and more time on why they can even exist in the first place. They are somehow funded yet not accountable to anyone. Nobody asked for this, it doesn't help anyone, and it cannot survive the most basic scrutiny of the public or market. And yet it exists and even grows. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with outcomes, the underlying mechanism should be e…

> why they can even exist in the first place

They're legally required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its consequences. Let me explain:

The act prohibits discrimination on several protected characteristics, and the Supreme Court has expanded that to cover even things that merely correlate with those characteristics, unless an employer can convincingly show those characteristics are required [1].

But how can employers shield themselves from the legal risk of a discrimination lawsuit, when "discriminating" is so vaguely defined? By showing they engaged in "best effort" not to discriminate, which means mouthing all the right platitudes, employing ever-evolving "best practices", and having departments devoted to the cause (first HR, now DEI).

It's a red queen's race to be the most progressive and anti-racist, plus positive-reinforcement as the alumni of these institutions take up influential positions in society, and these are the results after 60 years of it. Any corporation, school, or university that goes against it, that merely tries to stay neutral, will fall behind and be made a legal and PR example of [2].

[1] To see how harsh a test this is, requiring an IQ test for management positions is prohibited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

[2] https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-j...

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

#848

Post by Izkata »

jraph wrote: post #711
azangru wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If an individual wants me to not refer to them as x because they find it offensive, no problem. It's a pretty big cognitive load though, to remember what everyone finds or doesn't find offensive. This is what bothers me about the recent obsession with pronouns - I have enough trouble remembering people's names; and now I am also asked to remember how to modify my grammar or lexicon when in vicinity of a given perso…

> 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…

> just need to remember which pronouns to designate which people

And over time. Plenty of people who have custom pronouns will also change them occasionally.

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

#849

Post by vannevar »

While I think a lot of these efforts are over-zealous, so is the response overblown. Take one example, the term felon. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors apparently recommended using the term "justice-involved person" instead. In response, the author writes:

"When the San Francisco Board of Supervisors replaces felon with justice-involved person, it is making an ideological claim—that there is something illegitimate about laws, courts, and prisons."

Huh? That's a huge leap. I think it's a lot more likely that the intent was simply to separate the person's state (having been convicted of a crime) from their identity as a human being. Labels like "felon" imply an essential, unchanging quality rather than a transitory state. Lots of people convicted of felonies later go on to live exemplary lives. I agree with the idea of not painting them all with the same brush. There are probably better substitutes than "justice-involved person", granted. But saying that term illegitimizes the court system is hyperbolic.

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

#850

Post by ckemere »

My takeaway from the article was that rather than spending lots of cognitive effort/ capital on language, we should invest in improving access for the disabledn and marginalized, actually stand up for the poor, etc.

For people like me that come to look at the discussion. Quick TL;DR - lots of "I agree, too much wokeness" from people that chose not to get the point. BUT also exciting conversations like "how can I start in trying to make my web material more accessible for the blind." HN community has some really great contributors.

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