3 ms·

I think “We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site.” is quite pain in its meaning. Do you just object to the existence of the lis

by jrmg 4y ago

I think “We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site.” is quite pain in its meaning. Do you just object to the existence of the list? Or am I misunderstanding and you’re just saying it’s weird to list them all together, and not attempting to ascribe value (or lack thereof) to the list? I still think my original question stands - why wouldn’t I want to avoid most of these terms? Isn’t the list useful if I would?

cipheredStones 4y ago
> Do you just object to the existence of the list? I object to the existence of this particular list because I think it's extremely poorly done - to the point of being actively harmful to efforts to reduce offensive language - and would be incredibly confusing to anyone who didn't already have the fairly deep linguistic and cultural competence required to know which parts to take seriously and which parts to ignore. I don't object to the general existence of lists of this type, but I do think they're often subject to the same pathologies this one is. > I still think my original question stands - why wouldn’t I want to avoid most of these terms? Isn’t the list useful if I would? I think a huge section of this list is not helpful to anybody. "Red team", "yellow team", and "black box" have nothing to do with race whatsoever, for example, nor would a reasonable person think they did; eliminating them from your vocabulary would do no more to address racial injustice than eliminating "armadillo" would. And I do think there are costs to urging people to monitor their speech to greater and greater degrees for rapidly decreasing - and in many cases zero - benefit.
- jrmg 4y ago
  Thanks. I understand your position better now, and agree with more of it than I first thought. I don’t think our positions are so divergent as to be problematic in real life - though I suspect I will continue to monitor my speech a little more than I you think is advisable. I wish online forums encouraged civil discussion like this more than they seem to. So much knee-jerk even here.
jamincan 4y ago
I see a list like this potentially being more harmful than helpful in a few respects: 1. By saying certain phrases could be understood to be harmful, even when they aren't commonly understood to be and explicitly don't have racist or sexist etymologies, the list is actually reinforcing the threads of harmful stereotypes in our language. Black box is not a racist term; adding it to a list like this just associates black=bad, which is not something we should want at all. 2. Lists like this encourage black-and-white thinking about language that ignores context. It's the same sort of thinking that leads to your white uncle complaining that rappers use the n word, so why can't he? Words don't hurt; how words are used hurt. 3. Lists like this are ripe for abuse. While I have heard interesting discussions about how certain language can be harmful (The Allusionist podcast recently had an interesting discussion over terms like neuro-divergent, neuro-typical, autism and so on), it is often used in a bullying way to dismiss and discredit someone who is trying to engage in good faith rather than to educate. Consider "rule of thumb". The etymology presented is wrong, but wide spread. Maybe the fact that many people believe this is enough to avoid it, but the list doesn't present this nuance and instead perpetuates the myth.
Xelynega 4y ago
I see it quite opposite. "We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site" means literally nothing but "we shouldn't be held accountable for intermingling actual racial slurs with misinterpreted Wikipedia articles". I don't see how trying to cover your ass at the start of an article somehow invalidates the content of the article.

by jrmg 4y ago

cipheredStones 4y ago

> Do you just object to the existence of the list? I object to the existence of this particular list because I think it's extremely poorly done - to the point of being actively harmful to efforts to reduce offensive language - and would be incredibly confusing to anyone who didn't already have the fairly deep linguistic and cultural competence required to know which parts to take seriously and which parts to ignore. I don't object to the general existence of lists of this type, but I do think they're often subject to the same pathologies this one is. > I still think my original question stands - why wouldn’t I want to avoid most of these terms? Isn’t the list useful if I would? I think a huge section of this list is not helpful to anybody. "Red team", "yellow team", and "black box" have nothing to do with race whatsoever, for example, nor would a reasonable person think they did; eliminating them from your vocabulary would do no more to address racial injustice than eliminating "armadillo" would. And I do think there are costs to urging people to monitor their speech to greater and greater degrees for rapidly decreasing - and in many cases zero - benefit.

jrmg 4y ago
Thanks. I understand your position better now, and agree with more of it than I first thought. I don’t think our positions are so divergent as to be problematic in real life - though I suspect I will continue to monitor my speech a little more than I you think is advisable. I wish online forums encouraged civil discussion like this more than they seem to. So much knee-jerk even here.

jamincan 4y ago

I see a list like this potentially being more harmful than helpful in a few respects: 1. By saying certain phrases could be understood to be harmful, even when they aren't commonly understood to be and explicitly don't have racist or sexist etymologies, the list is actually reinforcing the threads of harmful stereotypes in our language. Black box is not a racist term; adding it to a list like this just associates black=bad, which is not something we should want at all. 2. Lists like this encourage black-and-white thinking about language that ignores context. It's the same sort of thinking that leads to your white uncle complaining that rappers use the n word, so why can't he? Words don't hurt; how words are used hurt. 3. Lists like this are ripe for abuse. While I have heard interesting discussions about how certain language can be harmful (The Allusionist podcast recently had an interesting discussion over terms like neuro-divergent, neuro-typical, autism and so on), it is often used in a bullying way to dismiss and discredit someone who is trying to engage in good faith rather than to educate. Consider "rule of thumb". The etymology presented is wrong, but wide spread. Maybe the fact that many people believe this is enough to avoid it, but the list doesn't present this nuance and instead perpetuates the myth.

Xelynega 4y ago

I see it quite opposite. "We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site" means literally nothing but "we shouldn't be held accountable for intermingling actual racial slurs with misinterpreted Wikipedia articles". I don't see how trying to cover your ass at the start of an article somehow invalidates the content of the article.