We get into this particular conversation quite frequently on this board. Without aiming to threadshit, here’s my default ‘contribution:’
“A study by scientists at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles, found differences in how self-described liberal and conservative research participants responded to changes in patterns. Participants were asked to tap a keyboard when the letter “M” appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a “W.” The letter “M” appeared four times more frequently than “W,” conditioning participants to press the keyboard on almost every trial. Liberal participants made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw the rare “W,” indicating to the researchers that these participants were better able to accept changes or conflicts in established patterns. The participants were also wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in their anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency and a more appropriate response. Liberals were significantly more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts during the experiment, and this correlated with their greater accuracy in the test.”
I shared an example above in which non-asians decided that the word “Oriental” was no longer culturally sensitive and needed to be removed from the vernacular. An Asian wrote an opinion piece describing how it may have been misguided.
The students in BU PARC have made suggestions about words and phrases they feel are not culturally sensitive. Are you certain that they are in a position to make these recommendations and that their opinions on the matter come from a well informed place?
I’m not playing games. I genuinely don’t know what you mean when you ask whether you “should” use a particular phrase.
Should you say “no can do?” If the connotation of that phrase makes it harder for you to be understood by your listener, you get to choose whether that particular three-word construction is more important than clarifying your intent. If the consequences of your choice mean that people misunderstand your intent - perhaps even misunderstand it as bigoted - you have to live with that.
Frankly, we should all be more concerned about the ambiguous meaning of the word “literally” and why flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.
My point is that language if full of ambiguity and there is an expectation in common parlance that context matters. Pretending that it doesn’t is absurd.
And yet, if I used the term “Oriental food” around my Asians friends, I have no doubt they would look at me askance. Older Black people may still use “Colored” or “Negro”, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to use it.
Not at all! And, I find it really unlikely that the word picnic falls out of use. But if it did, I wouldn’t have any problem changing it to outing or something – I mean, who gives a shit?
See, this is the problem with these conversations. We all know what is acceptable and what no longer is. We even understand the context in which some people can use certain words while others can’t, or can but shouldn’t. But here you are conflating it all together in order to avoid talking about specifics. I provided specific examples from the PARC page. You decided that we were also talking about the word “Negro”. Which we are not.
Actually, I agree with this entirely and it’s funny that we reach entirely different conclusions from it.
An example from my own life. I do a lot of musical theater in the real world (well, I did before the viral shutdown). In the community we sometimes refer to a performer as an “actor-who-sings,” which sounds like a neutral and harmless descriptor. It usually means a performer who is not a strong singer, but makes up for the shortfall by being a very good actor. Some directors, though, use the term derisively, to mean a person who can’t really sing and can’t act nearly as well as they think they can. Back in the Before Times I was in a conversation with an actor friend and used that term, and she - casually, cheerfully - said she hated that term, because she knew some people meant it insultingly.
Now. I meant no harm by it. Should I have kept using it, in that context? Would it have improved our conversation if I had? I chose to change my language, because there are thousands of ways to say the things I want to say and why choose the one that I’ve been explicitly told will bother my audience?
I feel the same way about the list under discussion in this thread. The list is basically saying, Here are some terms you might want to reconsider, depending on your audience and the context of the conversation. If you use these terms, someone might ask you to stop, and if they do, you will have to consider whether these specific words are worth their discomfort. It may never come up, but if it does, now you are forewarned. What is the issue here?
I’ve seen enough examples where the proposed changes came from well off, white, educated progressives, and sometimes were even opposed by those they sought to ‘protect’, to think that’s pretty unlikely. And it’s all very well to say it’s just starting a conversation. Several posters have professed the view that there is no downside to all these PC changes, so it’s not surprising the most radical proposal usually wins.
Again, can you give me an example of when anyone has gotten into anything like trouble for using the phrase “master password”.
I believe that people worry about “PC speech”. I don’t believe that people of good will actually run into trouble with it. I also observe that a lot of word replacements get floated and DON’T catch on. It’s not always the “most extreme” choices that win.
Do you not see the difference between changing the language you use with one person, who has told you personally they don’t like it, and recommending wholesale change to everyone, when most people may well not care and some may have actually preferred the old term? It’s the exact same issue of disregarding the downside of large scale changes, so that any marginal benefit is considered sufficient justification.
I was referring to your post about the term Oriental, and how older Asians use that term. You can tell, because I broke up your post into two, and this response was right below your post about Oriental/Asian. I mean, seriously, WTF?
On the PARC page, that list is meant to be something to think about – they aren’t proscribing (prescribing? Not sure) anything – you can tell because it says so on their page. I don’t know if any of their suggestions will lead to any usage changes. But, if it does, I’m not going to obstinately continue to use some word just because we’ve used it in the past.
This is interesting, although I wonder if it really applies.
The other theory I’ve read is that one of the major distinguishers between politically conservative and liberal is how strongly they feel “disgust”. We are all wired a little differently, and get different doses of the same basic emotions. I’ve seen correlations between how readily someone feels “disgust” and their political persuasion, and that actually seems pretty plausible.
Your response was a non-response to the article I linked because you didn’t seem to have read it. Neither the author (Jayne Tsuchiyama) or Margaret Cho are “older” Asians. The article wasn’t talking about what younger vs. older Asians prefer. The article was about who advocated for the change. So WTF?.. right back at ya.
Again, the conversation isn’t about obstinate insistence on continued use of offensive language. The conversation is about what language can reasonably be said to be offensive and who gets to decide.
If it causes offense to Jews, sure. I’ll use whatever word you want me to use in general contexts. And I’ll continue using the word as I need to in contexts I need to, just as I use other un-PC and racist language when it’s appropriate to. No word is outside my vocabulary and usage, but I will defer to what is considered polite and inoffensive in 95% of contexts.
It isn’t really though, is it?
I mean, if the discussion was purely about how and when words go out of favor, and how we know whether it causes offense then, sure, that’s an interesting and nuanced discussion. And, as your link showed, it needn’t be in one direction; “oriental” might come back as an accepted terms as “black” did.
However, what this thread is actually about is taking one set of guidance from one university, and blowing it up to “Look at the crazy left, trying to ban the word picnic!”
Which is the popular understanding / framing in certain right-wing forums, but is completely disingenuous at best.
I’m using it as an example of what was done with the word “Oriental” based on the linked article. I don’t believe Asians are the worse for wear because “Oriental” is no longer used to describe the Asian community. But the point which appears to continue getting lost in this conversation is how that term became unpopular and what some Asians think about that.