> You are trying to tell me that the phrase is supposed to make me think in racist terms, right?
No, I am saying the phrase is meant to be interpreted in a racial context by the target audience while passing off as non-racial. Non of the phrases I listed are racial by the dictionary definition.
The difference between a dog-whistle and a regular whistle is that dog-whistles are inaudible to humans and go unnoticed, hence the "dog-whistle" tag for such coded language.
OK. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Which is not what you're doing when you reduce the question to saying one particular word is the issue rather than only an example of blindly ignoring context. (Which is not even the case here since we're now offended by niggle, niggardly, niggard and ?? and who knows what else). The issue is making the language less expressive at the instigation of 1) people who can't understand context and 2) sophomoric racists who take advantage of the people who can't understand context. Neither group should be rewarded by ceding the use of completely harmless and expressive words.
Please don't be racist, it's inappropriate and unprofessional. If you didn't mean it this way please consider how others may view your language in future, thanks.
> who knows what else […] making the language less expressive
There’s that slippery slope again. English isn’t getting less expressive, that will never happen. That right there is the “imagined, absurd end result”. The number of English words that have become politically incorrect over our lifetimes is completely dwarfed by 1) the better, more expressive synonyms and alternatives available and 2) the number of new words introduced into English over the same period.
I hear you, and I agree that it’s stupid that a couple of previously unrelated words have become tainted, and they shouldn’t have been. But it’s too late, it happened… in this case, over a hundred years ago.
Nobody is being rewarded. Racist word usage doesn’t seek to remove words from our lexicon. The words don’t actually go away, the choice to use or not use certain words is yours to make. Whether we offer other cultures any respect by choosing to avoid any innocuous words that happen to have a higher probability of being taken the wrong way is purely a personal decision. Which is why arguing about it might not be the best look, even if you’re right, right?
> There is not a damn thing offensive about a combination of <color><noun>.
Do I ever have a new word for you. Have you ever heard of the term 'yellow peril'? Color coding is a remarkably easy and efficient way to encode racial stereotypes and spread propaganda.
Nowadays the association with said color is lessened (though some elements still appear among racists) but it seems rather ignorant of history to ignore the uses of color coding for racial dogwhistles.
Stupidier things have happened in the past. I bet more than half of HN wouldn't know that quote if you removed the "white" part, so not so unlikely that someone who doesn't know it, sends it to others as the sentiment (without the "white" part) is actually pretty good.
That reminds me of a conversation I had nearly a decade ago with a black (African immigrant) friend. I don't remember the details, but basically he said that he was annoyed that the words "dark" and "black" had negative connotations. I knew him well enough to know that he wasn't trolling, and that this was something that had seriously taken an emotional toll on him.
Ever since then I've been thinking about this -- maybe it does bother a lot of black folks? And, think of very little whose conception of words is primitive, and how they might associate the words together.
I don't really know what I'm getting it. It's very hard to make any sort of conclusion here. I mean, what's the cure -- we make a prescriptive linguistic change that color-based words can't be used anymore? That's not happening.
> The implication is that: Only a racist would disagree with me.
rquantz is stating clearly that the word is offensive and implying therefore it's wrong to use it. If that is an issue, I believe it certainly should be raised.
What's interesting is that drawing attention to such things is now what is 'politically incorrect'.
>ot informed that “blocklist” is still racist because it “looks similar to blacklist”
wtf?? Are we going to rename while loops too because it looks too close to "white"? Or blockchain because it looks too close to "blackchain" (slavery reference)?
Having a calm and well-mannered conversation doesn't mean much. It's possible to state the most outrageous and appalling opinions calmly and politely and then dismiss any passionate and emotional response as "uncivil". Most long-time HN readers will remember A Modest Proposal from one of the many previous times it has been referenced, which demonstrates this principle quite neatly by presenting a truly monstrous proposition in the calmest and most soft-spoken way possible to make a point about the cruelty inherent in the issue it addresses.
It's not necessarily always the form of conversation that's undesirable. Far more important is the content. HN has a bias towards form over content sometimes but it seems that in this case Dang clearly flagged it for content, not form.
Your argument looks like it can be summarized as:
1. Acknowledging racial categories is racist.
2. Acknowledging racial categories is harmful.
3. Skin tone modifiers acknowledge racial categories.
Therefore skin tone modifiers are bad.
But the first premise is already blatantly malformed: when most people say something is "racist" they either refer to prejudice and discrimination, or they refer to systemic injustices and power imbalances within society as a whole. Acknowledging that racial categories exist in our society is a requirement to acknowledge that racism in this sense exists at all and that it is harming people.
What you're doing instead is inverting the semantics of "racist" (1) so that it frames the entire basis for being able to talk about these injustices as bad and harmful. This only works because you know that "racist" has this established meaning of being something that is harmful, which is something you don't even bother establishing for your new meaning (2).
You also don't demonstrate the third premise.
People in other comments on this article have already pointed out that prior to skin tone modifiers these emojis were defined as being often presented as yellow but also often as light skinned by default and in fact if you look at the original Japanese characters they were often presented as yellow outlines on a white background, suggestive of light skin. Others have also pointed out that while yellow is often considered a cartoonish skin color because of The Simpsons, the show clearly used yellow as a substitute for light skin as it portrayed Apu, Carl and other darker skinned characters with shades of brown instead. So while a solid yellow rendering might not be as clearly "white" as a light skinned rendering, it was still suggestive of light skin.
But you don't make the argument that defaulting to implicit light skin is better than providing a range of options for specific skin colors in addition to the less specific default. You omit the argument completely and thus suggest the yellow would have been entirely neutral, which is demonstrably not the case.
And in fact you mostly avoid stating any of these premises explicitly at all even if your claim depends on all of them. This means any criticism levelled at face value will likely read as incoherent (because it attacks a conclusion based on premises that were never stated) or irrelevant (because it attacks the premises themselves despite your comment not including them).
But given how you use language in this comment and others, and the phrases you chose to sprinkle throughout, I'm fairly certain you know this. You're not interested in discussing whether providing skin tone modifiers was the right solution because you don't want people to even acknowledge the problem. You want to win based on appearances by provoking the other side into emotional reactions so you can claim to be rational without having to provide an actual argument or addressing any criticism.
> For non-Black people, the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive (even when singing a song or reading a script)
> whether you consider something racist or not has no actual impact on the usage of the term
Thats true
> for using common terminology in a way you don’t like.
When did it become common terminology? I am 47 years old and don't remember that term ever being used until the last presidential election as a means to vilify people of color.
Maybe I just wasn't paying attention the other 44 years?
They are, but their usage is limited to linguistic segregation. Nothing better to keep people in check than enforcing a correlation between the words they are allowed to use and the color of their skin.
>If you're going to assert that every white person is "racist" regardless of their beliefs, you render the term meaningless and might as well just say "white".
Sure, but that'll get you temp-banned from Facebook, so you have to spell it wypipo.
Can we stop using “make X Y again”? The phrase it references is a racist dogwhistle. Let’s not normalize it.
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