> to get to the fundamental question: who gets to decide what’s good for minorities? Progressive white elites. I'm only half joking, hear me out: support for

> to get to the fundamental question: who gets to decide what’s good for minorities? Progressive white elites. I'm only half joking, hear me out: support for same-sex marriage shot up from being a minority position to a majority position only recently in our lifetime: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/PyDKd/3/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/PyDKd/3/ Even Obama wouldn't give a straight answer on this early on in his presidency until Biden forced his hand on it. So there was a lot of debate, a lot of wrangling, I think it's even fair to say that the progressive hetero white elites were at the forefront and leading the charge on this issue, and they ended up convincing society that same-sex couples should have a right to marry and now this right is here to stay (well, maybe), with an overwhelming majority support from Americans. You and I both come from a place where same-sex marriage still isn't legal. There may be few lone progressive voices in Pakistan and Bangladesh that are going against the grain, and one hopes that overtime they succeed in making a dent and a readjustment of values is made in due time. If it was a question of values, the white elites had better values on that one. But application of values on the issue of languages being made gender-neutral is not as clear-cut an issue as same-sex marriage and the stakes are not as high, and frankly I'm not extremely resolute in the position I take of preferring gender-neutrality in everyday language. I want to draw your attention to the paragraph above the one you pasted in which Musa Al-Gharbi says: > [whites] neglect to actually listen to ordinary black or brown folk about what they find offensive, or what their racial priorities are. You're a brown person like me. I don't know if you're still hanging out with brown people in America, but you probably know how incredibly pervasive racism against blacks and hispanics is in this crowd behind closed doors, hell half the lot of them are still clinging to their caste systems so no thank you, I rather prefer to not hear the racial priorities of brown people, I don't want that trojan horse snuck inside America. While some ideas are still in incubation, like the one about gender-neutrality in languages, you are as right as I am at this point; I think our society hasn't settled on the issue. But wouldn't you agree that it shouldn't _just_ be the latinoes and latinas that get to decide on this issue because we're talking about gender-neutrality in American English, others get to have a say in this too because to some degree all immigrants are obliged to integrate to American values and customs. I'm often right there with you when you decry loss of religion and community in American culture, and I put the rampant homelessness in Seattle and San Francisco (indeed some of the most liberal places) squarely on the feet of elite liberals and the housing policies they mainly get to control, so it's not like I'm totally succumbing the floor to progressive liberals and their every whim. But still I posit that western progressivism has a little bit of a leg up on the questions of values, they lead the way with the Enlightenment, there was great nuance in what they offered and they were open to listening to reasoned disagreement, they lead the way with interracial marriage, same-sex marriage, and while the jury is not out on gender-neutral language, I mostly like what they have to say. > Any effort to address the consequences of discrimination has trade offs. White liberals don’t have to live with the social and economic consequences of those policies. It’s completely indefensible to argue that white elites should be able to overrule the views of minorities themselves on those questions. I think we're conflating categories. Broadly speaking, the white academics I think are in the green and their motives are probably fine. White elites, for example in tech, are not on the same side as white academics on the more important and decisive issues like housing -- they are the ones screwing things up for everyone.