3 ms·

Everyone has biases, and you're not exempt. If you know that your language might be grossly misinterpreted, consider changing it, if only for your own image. >

Everyone has biases, and you're not exempt. If you know that your language might be grossly misinterpreted, consider changing it, if only for your own image. > If I say "Christian Communities hate gays", you'll probably think of one or two specific communities. That might be true for me, but I'm thinking of "Protestant Christian evangelicals and co." as one community, so...

rpmisms 3y ago
> If you know that your language might be grossly misinterpreted, consider changing it, if only for your own image. No, if only to make a point. > That might be true for me, but I'm thinking of "Protestant Christian evangelicals and co." as one community, so... Yup. What I expected. I'm positively full of bias, and happy to admit it.
- vacuity 3y ago
  And my point is that "Muslim communities bombed Israel" is not an obviously reasonable statement. If Reuters or AP posted an article with that phrasing, I'd wonder if some party other than Hamas was fighting Israel now. At that point, why not just say "Muslims bombed Israel"? It's technically true but also wildly disingenuous. You'd have to qualify it with a bunch of details in order to make it an honest, good-faith statement.
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    But it's the literal truth, and using a descriptor on a group of people acting does not attribute the action to all people who fit the descriptor. Not all mammals are dogs, and that shouldn't need to be said.
    - Yoric 3y ago
      You're confusing semantics and subtext. The clear subtext in your examples is "Jews" (not "some Jews"), "Muslims" (not "some Muslims"), "Christians" (not "some Christians"). A racist (or variant thereof) will not say "all Jews"/"all Muslims"/"all Gays"/... , they'll just casually namedrop "Jews" (or even a single Jewish personality), "Muslims" (or even a single Muslim personality), "Gays" (or even a single Gay personality), and use this as a dogwhistle.

rpmisms 3y ago

> If you know that your language might be grossly misinterpreted, consider changing it, if only for your own image. No, if only to make a point. > That might be true for me, but I'm thinking of "Protestant Christian evangelicals and co." as one community, so... Yup. What I expected. I'm positively full of bias, and happy to admit it.

vacuity 3y ago
And my point is that "Muslim communities bombed Israel" is not an obviously reasonable statement. If Reuters or AP posted an article with that phrasing, I'd wonder if some party other than Hamas was fighting Israel now. At that point, why not just say "Muslims bombed Israel"? It's technically true but also wildly disingenuous. You'd have to qualify it with a bunch of details in order to make it an honest, good-faith statement.
- rpmisms 3y ago
  But it's the literal truth, and using a descriptor on a group of people acting does not attribute the action to all people who fit the descriptor. Not all mammals are dogs, and that shouldn't need to be said.
  - Yoric 3y ago
    You're confusing semantics and subtext. The clear subtext in your examples is "Jews" (not "some Jews"), "Muslims" (not "some Muslims"), "Christians" (not "some Christians"). A racist (or variant thereof) will not say "all Jews"/"all Muslims"/"all Gays"/... , they'll just casually namedrop "Jews" (or even a single Jewish personality), "Muslims" (or even a single Muslim personality), "Gays" (or even a single Gay personality), and use this as a dogwhistle.