If someone says that people “don’t matter much”, that can be intended as “don’t matter much to broader society, which is bad” or it can mean “don’t matter much to me personally” which is callous and dehumanizing and an awful thing to say.
People who are “outcasts” are those who are cast out of society. That word, by itself, implies nothing about the “agency” of those cast out. Innocents can be cast out. They can become outcasts.
People who are “forgotten” can be forgotten by broader society – which is bad – even if (of course) not forgotten by their families. It isn’t good or right when broader society forgets, or doesn’t care. That’s actually a huge part of the problem.
I’m not a mind-reader.
I don’t know for certain that any of these more charitable readings were what was originally intended. But there’s no stretch for any of them, and it’s not especially helpful to jump immediately to the worst possible interpretation.
That said, I guess I’m a little confused as to what you want the rules of the SDMB to be. Which, of course, might merit a detailed ATMB thread of its own where you elucidate what rules you think should be added/changed/removed, and which IMHO would be an interesting discussion.
As has been pointed out, they were not outcasts. They were stolen.
The post you are defending, and the one you’ve just produced, are written as if the only society that matters was the one that took the children, and had taken the territory, by force of arms. It was not, and despite its determined efforts is not, the only society involved in this mess, and most definitely should not be discussed here as if it’s the only one that matters. To do so is an insult to everyone else involved.
Stealing them is casting them out from where they were, where they belonged.
Patently false.
Saying that broader society has forgotten them is not anywhere close, not even in the same universe, as saying that that broader society is the only society that matters, or the only perspective that matters.
I’m not a mind-reader, and I don’t know what the other poster actually meant. But your reaction to my words has been outright falsehood.
Wait, are you saying Canada WASN’T taken by force of arms? I mean, it basically was. Even though much of it was ceded through treaty, the reality is those treaties were highly one-sided in large part because one side was a thousand times more capable of force.
The meaning of “Forgotten” and “outcast” in that context certainly struck me as being in the sense of “persons whose welfare are extremely neglected and disregarded by the powerful.” If I were to tell you that the homeless are “forgotten,” surely you would not take that to mean that their existence has literally escaped the memory of people who loved those individuals? Isn’t it clear that means the meaning in the first sentence of this paragraph? I thought that was a fairly common usage of that word.
No, I’m saying that it was. I don’t see how you’re getting any other interpretation from “had taken the territory by force of arms.”
It isn’t only a matter of individual families. It’s a matter of the entire society they were stolen from – as part of a deliberate and explicit attempt to destroy that society.
ETA: And even in the context of individual families: I’ve never seen a kidnap victim referred to as an “outcast”.
There’s no way you can characterize his posts in the ATMB thread as “really pissed”. He was, in fact, in remarkable control of his temper, given the provocations he was presented with there.
But do you allow that it might be more so for indigenous people, especially in the face of overt genocide denialism?
American Heritage: one that has been excluded from a society or system.
I don’t think it’s a particularly felicitous choice. It’s not a word I would have personally chosen. But I also don’t think it’s horribly wide of the mark. Those children who were stolen were literally cast out from where they belonged.
And a key point here is that the “agency” of outcasts doesn’t come into play, which was one of the repeated complaints. Innocents can be outcasts. Even if the word is wrong, it’s not so far afield as to automatically imply guilt among those who were stripped away from their homes and families.
That’s perfectly reasonable, of course.
But to repeat, what it “usually means” still does not automatically imply guilt. “Outcast” includes those wrongfully cast out.
More broadly: Precision in word choice is a high hurdle to demand of other human beings, most especially when precision in word interpretation is also imperfect. When you get down to it, basically no-one speaks or reads well off the cuff.
Were they rejected or excluded from the families that they were taken from?
I really don’t see how that follows. If someone kidnaps your child, did you cast them out?
Yes they can be. In some societies, children are sometimes rejected or excluded from the community through no fault of their own. This was not what happened here. These children were taken.
It is the attempts to defend this term more than the arguments against it that most sway my opinion that it is a remarkably terrible label to put upon these children.
No, they were not - “cast out” would mean that their place of origin did the casting. Casting as an action is one of pushing, not pulling. That was not what happened here.
“Stolen” and “cast out” are mutually exclusive.
And continuing to insist they’re synonyms is starting to seem like deliberate misuse. And continuing doing so in a thread that’s about mod action against someone who got justifiably angry at such mischaracterization seems unnecessarily provocative.
They were not cast out by the society they were part of. They were deliberately kidnapped and dragged out of it by the society that had won the war. If someone is taken away by force, or for that matter if they leave voluntarily, they are not “cast out.”
Again, I have never before seen anyone trying to claim that kidnap victims have by the act of kidnapping been “cast out”.
Of course innocents can be outcasts. That’s not the point.
The objection isn’t that calling the kidnapped children outcasts is putting blame on them. The objection is that it’s categorizing their treatment as being no different from the way society often treats individuals outcast by their own society, rather than being – as it explicitly was – part of an intention to destroy an entire society.
When I read “outcast” in the original thread, it didn’t ping my radar as problematic. I was initially confused why Banquet_Bear found it insulting. But I listened to him, and thanks to his explanations (and yes, his anger), I realized it was offensive as hell. If I were kidnapped, would I be bothered to be called an outcast? Fuck yeah.
We all have blind spots. That was one of mine. It’s not a character flaw to have one. But it’s a problem if you aren’t willing to listen to others and examine your blind spots.
For those saying you don’t see the racism, or “outcast” is valid from a certain perspective, try looking from someone else’s perspective. For those arguing that we still need civility, look at the way you are saying it. Listen to the BIPOC who are telling you that it is offensive.
It was, repeatedly, a point of the poster I was referring to even if it was not the point in your own posts.
The claim was made, repeatedly, that the word was used to assign blame to victims as if they had “agency”. This can easily be cited, if you missed it.
I accept that this is not your point, and in your estimation not the point. And that’s fine. I think you make a good argument here. I’m inclined to agree with you. I would just point out that it is easy to miss the point from your perspective when one of the primary purposes of my own post was to point out that this assumption of agency, from another poster who was not you, was not well founded.
Likewise this:
I think that’s also a reasonable argument.
“I don’t think it’s a particularly felicitous choice.”
“It’s not a word I would have personally chosen.”
My “defense” of the word has hardly been iron.
This paragraph basically encapsulates my broader views here:
I think people are – still, again, repeatedly – expecting perfect precision in a context in which it is not possible.
People aren’t expecting perfection, but we are hoping for listening, acknowledgement of an offense, and attempt to repair the damage. Instead I see a lot of defense.
It’s not asking for perfect precision to not call kidnapping victims “outcasts”.
And it would be fine if the poster then said, “My bad, you’re right, they are not outcasts.” But instead they doubled down and insisted it was appropriate.
That is sort of a point – but the victims were not only the children. The victims were also their parents, their other relatives, and their entire communities. The implication of calling the children outcasts is in part to blame those victims.
This.
A response of ‘whoops, that was terrible wording, sorry, what I meant was x’ would have been one thing. To have multiple people insisting that there’s no reason for anyone to take offense from the words is something else altogether.