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white su·prem·a·cy; the belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society de·fund; prevent from continuing to receive f

white su·prem·a·cy; the belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society de·fund; prevent from continuing to receive funds Courtesy of the dictionary. This is not hard. Stop entertaining people who redefine words.

dools 5y ago
I think the point the OP is making is that an overt statement such as "White power!!1 Jews will not replace us!!!sixonetikitorches" directly exposes a white supremacist opinion, whereas there are less overt actions that, if analysed thoughtfully, also expose white supremacy. It is very similar to people who say "I'm not racist, I don't think I'm superior to anyone and the dictionary definition of racism is to assume superiority based on race" (this is more or less a direct quote from Pauline Hanson, an Australian Senator who is wildly racist). What I have found in discussions with people who I think are racist, but who deny it, is that they have an emphasis on personal agency and personal responsibility. So while they might be able to happily have black friends, they see, for example, disparaties in incarceration rates not as a social problem but as an aggregation of personal failures. If one believes that a particular race is, on average, more likely to commit the types of crime for which one should be incarcerated, and one sees incarceration as an "inferior" way of life, then the logical conclusion is that they are racist. An interesting thing to note about analysing racism this way is that it can also uncover racist attitudes in the very minority populations who are being discriminated against. Also "defund the police" is a shorthand that typically means "reduce direct law enforcement funding and instead fund other community engagement programs". Of course we need cops, but we don't necessarily need them all armed to the teeth in riot gear showing up for a drug bust (sub-question: do we really need drug busts at all?), and maybe they're not the best first responders in domestic disputes, and so on. Most people for whom "defund the police" is a catchcry recognise this, because there are very few true anarchists in society (and anarchy is kind of where "left meets right" in the political spectrum anyway, which is why libertarianism is such a dangerous and insidious ideology).
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Oddly, several members of the defund movement have said they literally want to defund and abolish the police. It's almost like words mean things? > If one believes that a particular race is, on average, more likely to commit the types of crime for which one should be incarcerated, and one sees incarceration as an "inferior" way of life, then the logical conclusion is that they are racist. You can try to argue that crime rates show disproportional racial representation for a bunch of reasons. Claiming anyone who states the facts is racist is wrong.
  - dools 5y ago
    > Oddly, several members of the defund movement have said they literally want to defund and abolish the police. It's almost like words mean things? Yes those are the "few anarchists" I was referring to. From what I have seen of people discussing the "defund the police" movement it's about a dramatic reform of law enforcement, including much less emphasis on armed police storming about the place. > You can try to argue that crime rates show disproportional racial representation for a bunch of reasons. Claiming anyone who states the facts is racist is wrong. I didn't claim anyone stating the facts is wrong, I made the claim that when people attribute a statistical anomaly like disparity in incarceration rates to an aggregation of personal failures rather than a systemic problem, they are logically being racist (even if they don't see it as such).
    - arp242 5y ago
      One of the BLM co-founders and current directory of the BLM non-profit is one of those "few anarchists" who proposed to outright abolish the police.[1] That article also proposes to abolish prisons, the military, borders, capitalism, and includes phrases such as "U.S. [and its] fabricated borders" and calls to "fight the U.S. state". If you had told me this was written by some troll to make BLM look bad then I'd believe you. To be fair, there are some good things in that article too, it's not all bad; it contains some anecdotes worth hearing, but that doesn't follow that the conclusions are also good. This is also the same person who cited Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong as inspirations, by the way.[2] Yes, really, that Mao. I genuinely thought this was inserted by a vandal on the Wikipedia article when I encountered it last week, but the source pans out. I mean, people don't just get these "abolish the police" and "BLM is a Marxist organisation" out of thin air. Granted, there is a lot of bad-faith trollism from Tucker Carlson and similar people, but if your message is so confused, easily misunderstood, and your leadership says things in support of the most extreme interpretations then quite frankly, you have no one else to blame but yourself. [1]: https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/04/abolition-and-reparations-histories-of-resistance-transformative-justice-and-accountability/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/04/abolition-and-reparatio... [2]: https://time.com/5171270/black-lives-matter-patrisse-cullors/ https://time.com/5171270/black-lives-matter-patrisse-cullors...
throaway3141593 5y ago
> Stop entertaining people who redefine words. I take it you still stick to the original definitions of "fun", "garbled", and "terrible", then? Good on you.
gowld 5y ago
If it's you vs Merriam-Webster, I'll take Merriam-Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defund https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defund > : to withdraw funding from and "withdraw" does not mean "remove completely" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy > 1 : the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races > 2: the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races
- seriousquestion 5y ago
  Interesting. They added that 2nd definition just last October. Here it was prior to October 2020; https://web.archive.org/web/20200901223507/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy https://web.archive.org/web/20200901223507/https://www.merri...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
  >> : to withdraw funding from > and "withdraw" does not mean "remove completely" It certainly _can_ and usually _does_ mean remove completely. Examples: - "I'm withdrawing my student from this school" - "The peer review committee has decided to withdraw this erroneous paper from publication" - "I would like to withdraw $100 from my checking account" (It means the _whole_ $100) - "He is experiencing heroine withdrawal symptoms" (after not having _any_)
  - joncalhoun 5y ago
    Go to the bank and say, "I would like to withdraw money from my account." Do they hand you your balance in cash, or ask you how much? Obviously one can withdraw all of something, but I'm skeptical of it meaning "all" by default.
arp242 5y ago
Dictionaries don't define the meaning of words; they record the usage.
- Igelau 5y ago
  While this is true, we still go back to them to agree on what the words mean.
- prepend 5y ago
  And if enough people use a different definition then the dictionary changes. That doesn’t mean that I can define words however I like. Since defund has a well and consistently used definition I think it’s going be hard for the connotation to change so that “defund police” means something other than defund police.
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    with the term literally being able to mean figuratively, I'm hesitant to agree.
michaericalribo 5y ago
Your comment strikes me as disingenuous and willfully obstinate. disingenuous (adj) giving a false appearance of simple frankness obstinate (adj) pertinaciously adhering to an opinion pertinacious (adj) marked by an unyieldingly persistent fixedness (as of opinion, purpose, action) that is often annoyingly perverse in fact or in appearance It looks like you simply googled those words and copy-pasted the definitions. I can do that, too (using a more credible dictionary vis-a-vis American usage, to boot. Mine’s MW, yours is Oxford, which is very British; we’re discussing an American company): white supremacy (n) the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races defund (v) to withdraw funding from (as a government-funded program) This isn’t a helpful approach. Prescriptivist appeals to the dictionary and dismissal of others’ viewpoints are not ways of listening to the perspectives of others or empathizing with different experiences, and seem to be actively preventing constructive discussion in this case.
- shard972 5y ago
  @dang flamebaiting against the rules! Oy vey shut it down
- bhupy 5y ago
  > This isn’t a helpful approach. Prescriptivist appeals to the dictionary and dismissal of others’ viewpoints are not ways of listening to the perspectives of others or empathizing with different experiences, and seem to be actively preventing constructive discussion in this case. Agreed. On the flip side, I think it’s just as unhelpful an approach to co-opt a generally understood word (or phrase) and then (unbeknownst to the majority of peers) expand its definition to capture even mainstream behavior that might be construed as undesirable even if not obviously unacceptable, and then beat the same peers in the head with it when they express confusion at the changed meaning of words (or phrases). It’s a cheap rhetorical trick, and gets us further away from collaboratively solving very real and important problems in a pluralistic society.
  - michaericalribo 5y ago
    I hear you. It can be counterproductive to use a totally unfamiliar jargon, especially if it trips the audience up and limits mutual engagement in favor of linguistic squabbling. That said, I respectfully disagree that it’s “just as unhelpful.” Pedantry over definitions distracts from the underlying issues, while new and inventive and nonstandard usage of language can spur critical analysis and jolt us out of our familiar understanding. Telling someone “defund isn’t used that way” shuts down the conversation. Demanding we “defund the police” makes me want to start / pursue / expand the conversation: what the heck do you mean by that? Edit to add: my response sounds overly academic. Another way to put it could be: language is confusing, and it can be problematic if we make it more confusing. But, sometimes I need to get a bit more confused before I can see things in a new / different light, and language can be an effective tool to achieve that “good confusion”
shadowfacts 5y ago
Merriam-Webster is not the ultimate authority on the English language. If people start using the word to mean something else, then, ipso facto, that's what it means.
sagichmal 5y ago
You don't get to assert what other people mean when they say things (shrug)
- bhupy 5y ago
  And conversely, you don’t get to assume that others understand you when you use language in ways that aren’t colloquial. Shared definitions is the bedrock of human communication, and absent that, we’re no better than chimps just grunting past each other.
  - sagichmal 5y ago
    > And conversely, you don’t get to assume that others understand you when you use language in ways that aren’t colloquial. Yep! It was a failure of all parties involved that the two competing definitions of racism weren't laid out on the table, when people started getting huffy. > Shared definitions is the bedrock of human communication, and absent that, we’re no better than chimps just grunting past each other. (laughs) Lay it on thick, why don't you?
    - bhupy 5y ago
      It sounds like we agree! I will say that from the transcripts (and from the way conversations have been going in this thread), the way this usually starts is that one party unilaterally sets the rules of engagement and more or less demands that others accept those terms, and when the others push back on those rules, we all take a step back and admit “failure of all parties”. It would be a lot easier for us to collaborate on these problems if we can be honest with ourselves about who the aggressor is, and who’s caught on the defense in these kinds of heated exchanges in workplace debates.
dang 5y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it's clear from your comment history that you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for. (Actually a lot of the time we don't know, or care, what they're battling for. We care about HN not becoming a flamewar hell site.) If you would please stop doing that and use HN in the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27044182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27044182.

dools 5y ago

I think the point the OP is making is that an overt statement such as "White power!!1 Jews will not replace us!!!sixonetikitorches" directly exposes a white supremacist opinion, whereas there are less overt actions that, if analysed thoughtfully, also expose white supremacy. It is very similar to people who say "I'm not racist, I don't think I'm superior to anyone and the dictionary definition of racism is to assume superiority based on race" (this is more or less a direct quote from Pauline Hanson, an Australian Senator who is wildly racist). What I have found in discussions with people who I think are racist, but who deny it, is that they have an emphasis on personal agency and personal responsibility. So while they might be able to happily have black friends, they see, for example, disparaties in incarceration rates not as a social problem but as an aggregation of personal failures. If one believes that a particular race is, on average, more likely to commit the types of crime for which one should be incarcerated, and one sees incarceration as an "inferior" way of life, then the logical conclusion is that they are racist. An interesting thing to note about analysing racism this way is that it can also uncover racist attitudes in the very minority populations who are being discriminated against. Also "defund the police" is a shorthand that typically means "reduce direct law enforcement funding and instead fund other community engagement programs". Of course we need cops, but we don't necessarily need them all armed to the teeth in riot gear showing up for a drug bust (sub-question: do we really need drug busts at all?), and maybe they're not the best first responders in domestic disputes, and so on. Most people for whom "defund the police" is a catchcry recognise this, because there are very few true anarchists in society (and anarchy is kind of where "left meets right" in the political spectrum anyway, which is why libertarianism is such a dangerous and insidious ideology).

vorpalhex 5y ago
Oddly, several members of the defund movement have said they literally want to defund and abolish the police. It's almost like words mean things? > If one believes that a particular race is, on average, more likely to commit the types of crime for which one should be incarcerated, and one sees incarceration as an "inferior" way of life, then the logical conclusion is that they are racist. You can try to argue that crime rates show disproportional racial representation for a bunch of reasons. Claiming anyone who states the facts is racist is wrong.
- dools 5y ago
  > Oddly, several members of the defund movement have said they literally want to defund and abolish the police. It's almost like words mean things? Yes those are the "few anarchists" I was referring to. From what I have seen of people discussing the "defund the police" movement it's about a dramatic reform of law enforcement, including much less emphasis on armed police storming about the place. > You can try to argue that crime rates show disproportional racial representation for a bunch of reasons. Claiming anyone who states the facts is racist is wrong. I didn't claim anyone stating the facts is wrong, I made the claim that when people attribute a statistical anomaly like disparity in incarceration rates to an aggregation of personal failures rather than a systemic problem, they are logically being racist (even if they don't see it as such).
  - arp242 5y ago
    One of the BLM co-founders and current directory of the BLM non-profit is one of those "few anarchists" who proposed to outright abolish the police.[1] That article also proposes to abolish prisons, the military, borders, capitalism, and includes phrases such as "U.S. [and its] fabricated borders" and calls to "fight the U.S. state". If you had told me this was written by some troll to make BLM look bad then I'd believe you. To be fair, there are some good things in that article too, it's not all bad; it contains some anecdotes worth hearing, but that doesn't follow that the conclusions are also good. This is also the same person who cited Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong as inspirations, by the way.[2] Yes, really, that Mao. I genuinely thought this was inserted by a vandal on the Wikipedia article when I encountered it last week, but the source pans out. I mean, people don't just get these "abolish the police" and "BLM is a Marxist organisation" out of thin air. Granted, there is a lot of bad-faith trollism from Tucker Carlson and similar people, but if your message is so confused, easily misunderstood, and your leadership says things in support of the most extreme interpretations then quite frankly, you have no one else to blame but yourself. [1]: https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/04/abolition-and-reparations-histories-of-resistance-transformative-justice-and-accountability/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/04/abolition-and-reparatio... [2]: https://time.com/5171270/black-lives-matter-patrisse-cullors/ https://time.com/5171270/black-lives-matter-patrisse-cullors...

throaway3141593 5y ago

> Stop entertaining people who redefine words. I take it you still stick to the original definitions of "fun", "garbled", and "terrible", then? Good on you.

gowld 5y ago

If it's you vs Merriam-Webster, I'll take Merriam-Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defund https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defund > : to withdraw funding from and "withdraw" does not mean "remove completely" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy > 1 : the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races > 2: the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races

seriousquestion 5y ago
Interesting. They added that 2nd definition just last October. Here it was prior to October 2020; https://web.archive.org/web/20200901223507/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy https://web.archive.org/web/20200901223507/https://www.merri...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
>> : to withdraw funding from > and "withdraw" does not mean "remove completely" It certainly _can_ and usually _does_ mean remove completely. Examples: - "I'm withdrawing my student from this school" - "The peer review committee has decided to withdraw this erroneous paper from publication" - "I would like to withdraw $100 from my checking account" (It means the _whole_ $100) - "He is experiencing heroine withdrawal symptoms" (after not having _any_)
- joncalhoun 5y ago
  Go to the bank and say, "I would like to withdraw money from my account." Do they hand you your balance in cash, or ask you how much? Obviously one can withdraw all of something, but I'm skeptical of it meaning "all" by default.

arp242 5y ago

Dictionaries don't define the meaning of words; they record the usage.

Igelau 5y ago
While this is true, we still go back to them to agree on what the words mean.
prepend 5y ago
And if enough people use a different definition then the dictionary changes. That doesn’t mean that I can define words however I like. Since defund has a well and consistently used definition I think it’s going be hard for the connotation to change so that “defund police” means something other than defund police.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  with the term literally being able to mean figuratively, I'm hesitant to agree.

michaericalribo 5y ago

Your comment strikes me as disingenuous and willfully obstinate. disingenuous (adj) giving a false appearance of simple frankness obstinate (adj) pertinaciously adhering to an opinion pertinacious (adj) marked by an unyieldingly persistent fixedness (as of opinion, purpose, action) that is often annoyingly perverse in fact or in appearance It looks like you simply googled those words and copy-pasted the definitions. I can do that, too (using a more credible dictionary vis-a-vis American usage, to boot. Mine’s MW, yours is Oxford, which is very British; we’re discussing an American company): white supremacy (n) the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races defund (v) to withdraw funding from (as a government-funded program) This isn’t a helpful approach. Prescriptivist appeals to the dictionary and dismissal of others’ viewpoints are not ways of listening to the perspectives of others or empathizing with different experiences, and seem to be actively preventing constructive discussion in this case.

shard972 5y ago
@dang flamebaiting against the rules! Oy vey shut it down
bhupy 5y ago
> This isn’t a helpful approach. Prescriptivist appeals to the dictionary and dismissal of others’ viewpoints are not ways of listening to the perspectives of others or empathizing with different experiences, and seem to be actively preventing constructive discussion in this case. Agreed. On the flip side, I think it’s just as unhelpful an approach to co-opt a generally understood word (or phrase) and then (unbeknownst to the majority of peers) expand its definition to capture even mainstream behavior that might be construed as undesirable even if not obviously unacceptable, and then beat the same peers in the head with it when they express confusion at the changed meaning of words (or phrases). It’s a cheap rhetorical trick, and gets us further away from collaboratively solving very real and important problems in a pluralistic society.
- michaericalribo 5y ago
  I hear you. It can be counterproductive to use a totally unfamiliar jargon, especially if it trips the audience up and limits mutual engagement in favor of linguistic squabbling. That said, I respectfully disagree that it’s “just as unhelpful.” Pedantry over definitions distracts from the underlying issues, while new and inventive and nonstandard usage of language can spur critical analysis and jolt us out of our familiar understanding. Telling someone “defund isn’t used that way” shuts down the conversation. Demanding we “defund the police” makes me want to start / pursue / expand the conversation: what the heck do you mean by that? Edit to add: my response sounds overly academic. Another way to put it could be: language is confusing, and it can be problematic if we make it more confusing. But, sometimes I need to get a bit more confused before I can see things in a new / different light, and language can be an effective tool to achieve that “good confusion”

shadowfacts 5y ago

Merriam-Webster is not the ultimate authority on the English language. If people start using the word to mean something else, then, ipso facto, that's what it means.

sagichmal 5y ago

You don't get to assert what other people mean when they say things (shrug)

bhupy 5y ago
And conversely, you don’t get to assume that others understand you when you use language in ways that aren’t colloquial. Shared definitions is the bedrock of human communication, and absent that, we’re no better than chimps just grunting past each other.
- sagichmal 5y ago
  > And conversely, you don’t get to assume that others understand you when you use language in ways that aren’t colloquial. Yep! It was a failure of all parties involved that the two competing definitions of racism weren't laid out on the table, when people started getting huffy. > Shared definitions is the bedrock of human communication, and absent that, we’re no better than chimps just grunting past each other. (laughs) Lay it on thick, why don't you?
  - bhupy 5y ago
    It sounds like we agree! I will say that from the transcripts (and from the way conversations have been going in this thread), the way this usually starts is that one party unilaterally sets the rules of engagement and more or less demands that others accept those terms, and when the others push back on those rules, we all take a step back and admit “failure of all parties”. It would be a lot easier for us to collaborate on these problems if we can be honest with ourselves about who the aggressor is, and who’s caught on the defense in these kinds of heated exchanges in workplace debates.

dang 5y ago

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it's clear from your comment history that you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for. (Actually a lot of the time we don't know, or care, what they're battling for. We care about HN not becoming a flamewar hell site.) If you would please stop doing that and use HN in the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27044182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27044182.