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On the topic of romans and meanings changing, the word decimation used to mean the killing of one in ten in the Roman legions as a way to get military disciplin

On the topic of romans and meanings changing, the word decimation used to mean the killing of one in ten in the Roman legions as a way to get military discipline. Nowadays there is no connection to Roman legions nor killing and actually is used to refer as a synonimous to anyhalation in general. It annoys me this slave thing because racism or xenophobia are often very complex and real problems of disaffection and social innequality yet we are policing words as if it has any corrective impact.

yellowapple 6y ago
> yet we are policing words as if it has any corrective impact. Exactly. There are far bigger fish to fry than whether or not some piece of software uses terms that can be misconstrued to be somehow racist (riddle me this: is BDSM inherently racist because that subculture uses "master" and "slave" terminology?). We (at least here in the US) are in dire need of widespread reforms throughout our "justice" system, particularly when it comes to police and prisons. We are also facing an ongoing issue of white supremacists infesting our government at all levels. Harassing open-source projects over what words they use is a petty and pointless distraction from these very real issues that have very real and very strong impacts on American minorities. I can't speak to other countries and their race relations, but my impression from hearing about their attitudes toward immigrants/refugees is that they ain't much better.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > I can't speak to other countries and their race relations, but my impression from hearing about their attitudes toward immigrants/refugees is that they ain't much better. I wouldn't conflate the two, they are not connected. After WW2, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe were forced to migrate to Germany. There obviously was no race-issue, as they were not only the same race, they were the same ethnicity, they spoke the same language. And still they weren't welcome by the local population, as their arrival primarily meant that whatever the locals had would now be shared. Pretty much all opposition to immigration is economic. Race doesn't play a part in the motivation, it's a secondary thing that comes into play afterwards. If immigration was a (significant, visible) net benefit to every person in the country (it is not, and you'll usually find the anti-immigration opinions with those who stand to lose from immigration, and, unsurprisingly, the pro-immigration stance with those who stand to gain), there would be much, much fewer objections. Consider a headline like "Nigerian billionaire seeks to immigrate and promises to invest in the rust belt and create tens of thousands of jobs in manufacturing". Do you believe Trump-supporters would protest that person's immigration?

yellowapple 6y ago

> yet we are policing words as if it has any corrective impact. Exactly. There are far bigger fish to fry than whether or not some piece of software uses terms that can be misconstrued to be somehow racist (riddle me this: is BDSM inherently racist because that subculture uses "master" and "slave" terminology?). We (at least here in the US) are in dire need of widespread reforms throughout our "justice" system, particularly when it comes to police and prisons. We are also facing an ongoing issue of white supremacists infesting our government at all levels. Harassing open-source projects over what words they use is a petty and pointless distraction from these very real issues that have very real and very strong impacts on American minorities. I can't speak to other countries and their race relations, but my impression from hearing about their attitudes toward immigrants/refugees is that they ain't much better.

luckylion 6y ago
> I can't speak to other countries and their race relations, but my impression from hearing about their attitudes toward immigrants/refugees is that they ain't much better. I wouldn't conflate the two, they are not connected. After WW2, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe were forced to migrate to Germany. There obviously was no race-issue, as they were not only the same race, they were the same ethnicity, they spoke the same language. And still they weren't welcome by the local population, as their arrival primarily meant that whatever the locals had would now be shared. Pretty much all opposition to immigration is economic. Race doesn't play a part in the motivation, it's a secondary thing that comes into play afterwards. If immigration was a (significant, visible) net benefit to every person in the country (it is not, and you'll usually find the anti-immigration opinions with those who stand to lose from immigration, and, unsurprisingly, the pro-immigration stance with those who stand to gain), there would be much, much fewer objections. Consider a headline like "Nigerian billionaire seeks to immigrate and promises to invest in the rust belt and create tens of thousands of jobs in manufacturing". Do you believe Trump-supporters would protest that person's immigration?