4 ms·

There are a few reasons they might care: 1) They are secretly racists and the House Master was a racist term, so they liked it (this is what you seem to imply?

There are a few reasons they might care: 1) They are secretly racists and the House Master was a racist term, so they liked it (this is what you seem to imply?) 2) Accepting the change would mean accepting that they were formerly acting in a racist way in using the term House Master (since they are implicitly accepting that 'master' is a racist term) 3) They felt that the House Master was a small but important part of their cultural heritage and continuity as members of / alumni of X University, and now that is now being taken away. 4) They want to draw a line on this kind of change (the give an inch and they'll take a mile theory), rather than be subjected to future demands to change X, Y, and Z also.

jollybean 5y ago
Or the most obvious reason: 'Principle'. Which is to say, something should not be labelled 'blue' if it is not 'blue'? And definitely not 'guilty' if they are indeed not 'guilty'? It's one thing to 'change the name' it's another to do it on the basis of some accusation of very criminal wrongthink.
- jrm4 5y ago
  "Blue", "Not guilty" and e.g. "House Master" are ENTIRELY fundamentally different types of concepts and there's no reason to much compare them. Different cultures call different things blue, and some don't even have blue. Frequently subjective. "Guilty," as you are likely using it -- is emphatically not an objective description of an event that happened in the real world. It is a description of a judge or jury's best evaluation of such given certain evidence. Again, also subjective. The principle that I think you're invoking is something like "prescriptive" (as opposed to descriptive) language, which tends to be useless at best and a dangerous tool that keeps powerful people powerful at worst.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    So those are good points, but I think you're missing the meaning of the term 'Principled' possibly given distraction by the examples that I gave. We can make populist, emotional, political, purely rational and technical appeals, but 'principled' is the approach that I believe should be taken. It shouldn't even be remotely controversial to say that. While 'Blue' is less subjective that 'Guilty' we have 'Principled' ways of assessing those things outside the context of hyperbole. While 'guilty' has much more broad meaning that simply the notion of 'legal guilt' as you're implying, even within that context we can absolutely make objective determination (or try to) given legal parameters aka: Murder is illegal, we have a video of a man shooting someone and killing them, he's admitted to doing it ergo -> he is 'guilty' in a very objective sense. A 'principled' approach would involve trying to assess if there's material objectivity to the degree something is offensive, weighing the gravity of the change, listening to those who are personally aggrieved and trying to determine why, contextualizing the information and making an assessment etc.. An 'unprincipled' approach would be making a decision that appealed so some kind of populist emotion, virtue signalling (in either direction), placating the powerful, ignoring facts, appeasing the loudest voices, doing what 'Twitter' is pressuring to do, caving to threats, applying oddball ideologies, over representing or poorly contextualizing information etc..
    - jrm4 5y ago
      I'm reading your examples of what is principled and unprincipled and I don't find them very convincing; mostly owing to how easy it is to paint genuinely "principled" attempts as being "unprincipled," and perhaps vice-versa? I've seen A LOT of that before.

jollybean 5y ago

Or the most obvious reason: 'Principle'. Which is to say, something should not be labelled 'blue' if it is not 'blue'? And definitely not 'guilty' if they are indeed not 'guilty'? It's one thing to 'change the name' it's another to do it on the basis of some accusation of very criminal wrongthink.

jrm4 5y ago
"Blue", "Not guilty" and e.g. "House Master" are ENTIRELY fundamentally different types of concepts and there's no reason to much compare them. Different cultures call different things blue, and some don't even have blue. Frequently subjective. "Guilty," as you are likely using it -- is emphatically not an objective description of an event that happened in the real world. It is a description of a judge or jury's best evaluation of such given certain evidence. Again, also subjective. The principle that I think you're invoking is something like "prescriptive" (as opposed to descriptive) language, which tends to be useless at best and a dangerous tool that keeps powerful people powerful at worst.
- jollybean 5y ago
  So those are good points, but I think you're missing the meaning of the term 'Principled' possibly given distraction by the examples that I gave. We can make populist, emotional, political, purely rational and technical appeals, but 'principled' is the approach that I believe should be taken. It shouldn't even be remotely controversial to say that. While 'Blue' is less subjective that 'Guilty' we have 'Principled' ways of assessing those things outside the context of hyperbole. While 'guilty' has much more broad meaning that simply the notion of 'legal guilt' as you're implying, even within that context we can absolutely make objective determination (or try to) given legal parameters aka: Murder is illegal, we have a video of a man shooting someone and killing them, he's admitted to doing it ergo -> he is 'guilty' in a very objective sense. A 'principled' approach would involve trying to assess if there's material objectivity to the degree something is offensive, weighing the gravity of the change, listening to those who are personally aggrieved and trying to determine why, contextualizing the information and making an assessment etc.. An 'unprincipled' approach would be making a decision that appealed so some kind of populist emotion, virtue signalling (in either direction), placating the powerful, ignoring facts, appeasing the loudest voices, doing what 'Twitter' is pressuring to do, caving to threats, applying oddball ideologies, over representing or poorly contextualizing information etc..
  - jrm4 5y ago
    I'm reading your examples of what is principled and unprincipled and I don't find them very convincing; mostly owing to how easy it is to paint genuinely "principled" attempts as being "unprincipled," and perhaps vice-versa? I've seen A LOT of that before.