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I disagree. I 100% agree with and accept that racism is a huge problem, and that black people are definitely at a huge disadvantage in a number of areas. HOWE

I disagree. I 100% agree with and accept that racism is a huge problem, and that black people are definitely at a huge disadvantage in a number of areas. HOWEVER. I think that white people using it is fine as long as it's not serious, targeted harrasment. It's not a litmus test because it finds in me a false positive.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
Why does it have to be a perfectly accurate litmus test in your eyes? As in, maybe there are very few false positives — who cares? A test that has a tiny false positive rate is usually still a very good test. So it could still function broadly to indicate who does or doesn’t take on-going racial disparity seriously, and if the relatively few genuine false positive people are seen by the public as somehow endorsing that the word’s generic use is OK, it’s probably going to lead to more widespread use by the much greater number of people who plan to use it in the racist, true positive sense, and then disingenuously say it’s “just a word,” or it’s ok because it “wasn’t targeted harassment.”
- earenndil 8y ago
  The people who intend to use such a word in a racist sense will already be expressing racist ideas, so what? I see no reason why the common usage of every word should not be normalized. There should be no word that the simple utterance of it, context-free, is taken as offensive. Not profanity, not slurs, not dialectic variations, whatever. Because that simply acts as a roadblock in communication in that people get hung up on the specific word used. I don't think it has to be a perfect litmus test, but I don't see why it's an even marginally accurate one.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    But the utterance comes with conditional probability of racism. Prob(racist | utters n-word) is high. You’re essentially saying to ignore this fact unless you happen to have extra info to further condition on extra context. But I see no reason why anyone would. It’s just a matter of basic evidence, basic posterior probability.
    - earenndil 8y ago
      I think that it's much easier to simply observe how they use such a word, rather than making blanket statements. If someone says "I'm tired of seeing fucking niggers on the bus all the time!" then they're clearly being callous, racist, and insensitive. If, on the other hand, someone says "let's have an intelligent conversation about usage of the word 'nigger,'" they're clearly not; but the former statement corresponds almost exactly to "I'm tired of seeing fucking black people on the bus all the time!" and the latter to "let's have an intelligent conversation on the use of the n-word." In other words, being racist and using that word are orthogonal; the reason that blatant racists are more likely to use such a word is that they presumably have less ability to see what is socially acceptable or morally right, and that they have less restraint. In other words, racist people's higher likelihood of using such a word is purely incidental, not a direct correlation. An analogy might be getting a higher insurance premium because you live in city X and actuaries notices that city X has a higher-than-average rate of crashes. Even though city X is quite large, and you live towards the north side, but all the crashes happen on the north side because it's a poorer part of town so driving education is worse.
      - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
        This already is what we do. We observe whether someone just uses the word or if they show the respect of at least referring to it as “the n-word” when there is a meta-context of discussing it. That’s no different than what you propose, except that there’s far less risk of either incidentally triggering someone for whom the word itself materially carries a weight of trauma, and far less risk of making it seem like the word is OK to say so long as you do mental gymnastics about the context of how you said it (something which people who want to use it racially would like to do to avoid punishment). Allowing people to scapegoat their clearly racist usage of the word, under the pretense that it’s OK as long as the intended usage is not meant to be offensive, is particularly terrible, as it shifts the blame of “being offended” onto the class of people for whom it is a racial slur. It’s tacit racism endorsement 101. What you describe seems like it contributes nothing in the way of actually bolstering free speech or better identifying slur usage from discussion usage. The current way already serves those purposes better, and without the extra risks that your described point of view carries with it.
tptacek 8y ago
It's not up to you. There is something resembling a consensus among black people and the very large number of people who agree with you about the problem of racism in America that using the word --- even to sing along to a hip-hop song --- signals that you don't care about the word, and are willing to use it casually. You are free to disagree with that consensus. But knowing about it, and using the word anyways, makes a statement. You can't pretend not to know, and people won't care if you try. And there is no amount of message board reasoning you can apply that will reliably scramble the signal you send when you use the word. You might get lucky --- hell, you'll probably usually be lucky --- and no consequence will befall you for saying the n-word. But eventually your luck will run out. That's what happened here! Notice that Netflix makes it pretty clear that this chucklefuck had an opportunity to climb out of the hole he dug for himself. There was a black Netflix employee group. He apparently even addressed it, after the incident. And didn't mention what he'd said. He's not a recent arrival to this country; he's a well-to-do middle-aged white executive. What would it have cost him to mollify their concern? How much sympathy can you muster for him? Also, it's not like this is unique to black people and the N-word. LGBT people have similar words and we have reached similar detentes about them.
- anatoly 8y ago
  >It's not up to you. There is something resembling a consensus among black people and the very large number of people who agree with you about the problem of racism in America that using the word --- even to sing along to a hip-hop song --- signals that you don't care about the word, and are willing to use it casually. I think "singing along" is not a sharp enough distinction - the Netflix guy, in a meeting about sensitive words, was presumably saying something like "The words that are awful and completely out of bounds and should never be used, like c-, f- or n-..." Such a use is firmly on the other side of a use-mention boundary in the way that singing along some lyrics is not. So it seems striking (at least to this non-American) that it should be considered heavily tabooed in this way. In a discussion on reddit, someone said "Within the last fifteen years, I've had readings in university English classes that contained said word and we're discussed and quoted in class with no one batting an eye. This was also the case in highschool before this. There's a big difference between referring to a Twain or Goines novel and using the word maliciously or with any intent beyond dispassionate quotations." So are they wrong, or was there a huge shift in the social norm of using the word in the last 15 years (discuss in class vs being ostracized and fired, both for mentioning the word with full awareness of its awful context) or is the consensus not really quite a consensus yet, and asserting that it is, like in the Netflix CEO's letter or your comment, are (well-meant) attempts at driving it further along? >Also, it's not like this is unique to black people and the N-word. LGBT people have similar words and we have reached similar detentes about them. That sounds strange to me. Are you sure? Presumably you mean the word f-, but I think I see or hear the word being discussed and quoted in the context and with the awareness of its awfulness quite often without heavy, or any, social consequences.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

Why does it have to be a perfectly accurate litmus test in your eyes? As in, maybe there are very few false positives — who cares? A test that has a tiny false positive rate is usually still a very good test. So it could still function broadly to indicate who does or doesn’t take on-going racial disparity seriously, and if the relatively few genuine false positive people are seen by the public as somehow endorsing that the word’s generic use is OK, it’s probably going to lead to more widespread use by the much greater number of people who plan to use it in the racist, true positive sense, and then disingenuously say it’s “just a word,” or it’s ok because it “wasn’t targeted harassment.”

earenndil 8y ago
The people who intend to use such a word in a racist sense will already be expressing racist ideas, so what? I see no reason why the common usage of every word should not be normalized. There should be no word that the simple utterance of it, context-free, is taken as offensive. Not profanity, not slurs, not dialectic variations, whatever. Because that simply acts as a roadblock in communication in that people get hung up on the specific word used. I don't think it has to be a perfect litmus test, but I don't see why it's an even marginally accurate one.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  But the utterance comes with conditional probability of racism. Prob(racist | utters n-word) is high. You’re essentially saying to ignore this fact unless you happen to have extra info to further condition on extra context. But I see no reason why anyone would. It’s just a matter of basic evidence, basic posterior probability.
  - earenndil 8y ago
    I think that it's much easier to simply observe how they use such a word, rather than making blanket statements. If someone says "I'm tired of seeing fucking niggers on the bus all the time!" then they're clearly being callous, racist, and insensitive. If, on the other hand, someone says "let's have an intelligent conversation about usage of the word 'nigger,'" they're clearly not; but the former statement corresponds almost exactly to "I'm tired of seeing fucking black people on the bus all the time!" and the latter to "let's have an intelligent conversation on the use of the n-word." In other words, being racist and using that word are orthogonal; the reason that blatant racists are more likely to use such a word is that they presumably have less ability to see what is socially acceptable or morally right, and that they have less restraint. In other words, racist people's higher likelihood of using such a word is purely incidental, not a direct correlation. An analogy might be getting a higher insurance premium because you live in city X and actuaries notices that city X has a higher-than-average rate of crashes. Even though city X is quite large, and you live towards the north side, but all the crashes happen on the north side because it's a poorer part of town so driving education is worse.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      This already is what we do. We observe whether someone just uses the word or if they show the respect of at least referring to it as “the n-word” when there is a meta-context of discussing it. That’s no different than what you propose, except that there’s far less risk of either incidentally triggering someone for whom the word itself materially carries a weight of trauma, and far less risk of making it seem like the word is OK to say so long as you do mental gymnastics about the context of how you said it (something which people who want to use it racially would like to do to avoid punishment). Allowing people to scapegoat their clearly racist usage of the word, under the pretense that it’s OK as long as the intended usage is not meant to be offensive, is particularly terrible, as it shifts the blame of “being offended” onto the class of people for whom it is a racial slur. It’s tacit racism endorsement 101. What you describe seems like it contributes nothing in the way of actually bolstering free speech or better identifying slur usage from discussion usage. The current way already serves those purposes better, and without the extra risks that your described point of view carries with it.

tptacek 8y ago

It's not up to you. There is something resembling a consensus among black people and the very large number of people who agree with you about the problem of racism in America that using the word --- even to sing along to a hip-hop song --- signals that you don't care about the word, and are willing to use it casually. You are free to disagree with that consensus. But knowing about it, and using the word anyways, makes a statement. You can't pretend not to know, and people won't care if you try. And there is no amount of message board reasoning you can apply that will reliably scramble the signal you send when you use the word. You might get lucky --- hell, you'll probably usually be lucky --- and no consequence will befall you for saying the n-word. But eventually your luck will run out. That's what happened here! Notice that Netflix makes it pretty clear that this chucklefuck had an opportunity to climb out of the hole he dug for himself. There was a black Netflix employee group. He apparently even addressed it, after the incident. And didn't mention what he'd said. He's not a recent arrival to this country; he's a well-to-do middle-aged white executive. What would it have cost him to mollify their concern? How much sympathy can you muster for him? Also, it's not like this is unique to black people and the N-word. LGBT people have similar words and we have reached similar detentes about them.

anatoly 8y ago
>It's not up to you. There is something resembling a consensus among black people and the very large number of people who agree with you about the problem of racism in America that using the word --- even to sing along to a hip-hop song --- signals that you don't care about the word, and are willing to use it casually. I think "singing along" is not a sharp enough distinction - the Netflix guy, in a meeting about sensitive words, was presumably saying something like "The words that are awful and completely out of bounds and should never be used, like c-, f- or n-..." Such a use is firmly on the other side of a use-mention boundary in the way that singing along some lyrics is not. So it seems striking (at least to this non-American) that it should be considered heavily tabooed in this way. In a discussion on reddit, someone said "Within the last fifteen years, I've had readings in university English classes that contained said word and we're discussed and quoted in class with no one batting an eye. This was also the case in highschool before this. There's a big difference between referring to a Twain or Goines novel and using the word maliciously or with any intent beyond dispassionate quotations." So are they wrong, or was there a huge shift in the social norm of using the word in the last 15 years (discuss in class vs being ostracized and fired, both for mentioning the word with full awareness of its awful context) or is the consensus not really quite a consensus yet, and asserting that it is, like in the Netflix CEO's letter or your comment, are (well-meant) attempts at driving it further along? >Also, it's not like this is unique to black people and the N-word. LGBT people have similar words and we have reached similar detentes about them. That sounds strange to me. Are you sure? Presumably you mean the word f-, but I think I see or hear the word being discussed and quoted in the context and with the awareness of its awfulness quite often without heavy, or any, social consequences.