2 ms·

When you use a catch-phrase associated with racists, and you are trying to be an effective communicator, and you are not a racist: then you use a different phra

by dsr_ 6y ago

When you use a catch-phrase associated with racists, and you are trying to be an effective communicator, and you are not a racist: then you use a different phrase next time. If you're not trying to communicate effectively, or if you are trying to communicate your sympathy with racism, you keep using that phrase. Language is a tool.

zajio1am 6y ago
Everyone is responsible for their own heuristics to judge other people. Other people are not responsible for behaving in accordance to your heuristics, it is your error if you misjudge them. Therefore, if someone uses a phrase also used by racists/communists/some other baddies, and does not fall into that category, it is your error to guess that someone does. It is just victim-blaming for error of judgement.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  Words are tools of communication. They have meanings. Those meanings shift over time, and according to context. In the context of a programming discussion, "Just hash the string and see if you get a match" is a reasonable and meaningful thing to say. In the context of cooking breakfast, it's meaningless drivel. Reasonable people try to use words that their current audience will understand in the current context. If they make a mistake, they learn from it. Unreasonable people insist that they are being victim-blamed.
  - Proziam 6y ago
    > Words are tools of communication. They have meanings. Those meanings shift over time, and according to context. This is exactly correct. Not everyone's experiences are the same, leading different people to wrap a situation or a statement in different context. When some people hear BLM they wrap it in the context of the ideology of the founders, or in the riots they see on television, or in the intense anti-[insert group] hate on social media. Those people aren't racists, and they would happily work with you to combat corruption in our politics and policing. They want the world to be better, they simply disagree with how the movement is organized. > Unreasonable people insist that they are being victim-blamed. People who said 'All lives matter' early on were labeled racists and attacked mercilessly on social media and television. I don't believe these people are all unreasonable.
philwelch 6y ago
There’s an interesting corollary of that: multiple “Black Lives Matter” organizations believe in ending capitalism and dismantling the family. By your argument, nobody should use the phrase “black lives matter” either unless they, like the founders of that BLM org, actually are literal Marxists. Maybe you are a Marxist and you think it’s a grand idea to abolish capitalism and the nuclear family. But actually, effective communication is a little beside the point here. If you effectively communicated that you wanted to abolish capitalism and the nuclear family, nobody would care or pay attention. If you instead hid those ideas under a slogan specifically chosen to be as undeniable as possible, you can sneak a lot of things in pretty fast.

by dsr_ 6y ago

zajio1am 6y ago

Everyone is responsible for their own heuristics to judge other people. Other people are not responsible for behaving in accordance to your heuristics, it is your error if you misjudge them. Therefore, if someone uses a phrase also used by racists/communists/some other baddies, and does not fall into that category, it is your error to guess that someone does. It is just victim-blaming for error of judgement.

dsr_ 6y ago
Words are tools of communication. They have meanings. Those meanings shift over time, and according to context. In the context of a programming discussion, "Just hash the string and see if you get a match" is a reasonable and meaningful thing to say. In the context of cooking breakfast, it's meaningless drivel. Reasonable people try to use words that their current audience will understand in the current context. If they make a mistake, they learn from it. Unreasonable people insist that they are being victim-blamed.
- Proziam 6y ago
  > Words are tools of communication. They have meanings. Those meanings shift over time, and according to context. This is exactly correct. Not everyone's experiences are the same, leading different people to wrap a situation or a statement in different context. When some people hear BLM they wrap it in the context of the ideology of the founders, or in the riots they see on television, or in the intense anti-[insert group] hate on social media. Those people aren't racists, and they would happily work with you to combat corruption in our politics and policing. They want the world to be better, they simply disagree with how the movement is organized. > Unreasonable people insist that they are being victim-blamed. People who said 'All lives matter' early on were labeled racists and attacked mercilessly on social media and television. I don't believe these people are all unreasonable.

philwelch 6y ago

There’s an interesting corollary of that: multiple “Black Lives Matter” organizations believe in ending capitalism and dismantling the family. By your argument, nobody should use the phrase “black lives matter” either unless they, like the founders of that BLM org, actually are literal Marxists. Maybe you are a Marxist and you think it’s a grand idea to abolish capitalism and the nuclear family. But actually, effective communication is a little beside the point here. If you effectively communicated that you wanted to abolish capitalism and the nuclear family, nobody would care or pay attention. If you instead hid those ideas under a slogan specifically chosen to be as undeniable as possible, you can sneak a lot of things in pretty fast.