Look: People who say ‘illegals’ when referring to illegal aliens tend to belong to a certain group. They see nothing wrong with the word and its usage. But when other people hear them use it, they are put into a category. Some people are proud to belong to that category. Others would prefer not to be stereotyped. If those people do not want to be associated with a certain category, they can stop saying ‘illegals’. If they don’t care, or are proud of being lumped in that category, they can use it. But they can’t complain when people hear them and decide they are bigots, ‘low-information voters’, or anything else associated with the category of people who are most associated with using the term.
I can’t help but notice that you used the noun “bigots” there instead of an adjectival phrase like “bigoted individuals”. (I mean, I don’t see that one is more pejorative than the other – but I’m curious as to whether you’re doing that because you think one of those is pejorative and the other wouldn’t be.)
BTW- I can’t stand Trump the man and I can’t stand Trump the president.
But this is exactly the kind of hairsplitting talk (about how to talk) that gave “political correctness” a bad name. And allowed people like Trump to use the term to club to death all normal standards of decency.
You may think so, but you’d be wrong. Similarly, it’s acceptable to refer to a male homosexual as “a gay man” but not “a gay”.
Illegals vs illegal aliens has a further wrinkle in that illegal alien suggests that the illegality pertains to the alienness, while illegal subsumes the entire identity. Words have power and how we group people affects how we think about people. Marking an entire population as being illegal leads us down a dark path. Ask Germany about it sometime.
Wait, marking an entire population of “illegal aliens” as being “illegal” leads us down a dark path? All this time, I thought the lesson to learn from Germany was something other than “broad-brush adjectives are fine, but not broad-brush nouns.”
But, look, as per your line about Germany, I thought the problem back then wasn’t whether Jews were to be called parasitical or parasites, or monsters or monstrous; or whether “subhuman” or “inferior” were getting thrown around as adjectives or nouns. I’d always thought the problem was that they were wrong.
To liken saying “illegal” about people who in fact are illegal aliens seems to blur over that. If we catch you committing a felony, we call you a felon – a person, but defined by that offense – just like we call a criminal a criminal, or whatever. Surely the Germans you invoked were guilty of more than undifferentiating accuracy?
And calling black people niggers is offensive but, you know, technically accurate, because a nigger is just a black person, right?
I’m sure in 1939, in many social circles, Jews weren’t referred to as subhuman, or monsters, or parasites, but simply as Jews. Everything else you’re saying was implied.
Any time you draw a line between us and them it’s ripe for abuse, because it makes it easier to stop thinking about them as real people. And yes, this includes criminals, or felons, or “illegals.”
What’s being objected to is using the same word as a noun instead of as an adjective. The word you’re tossing around there is objectionable as either, ain’t it? Is anyone out there cool with it as one but not as the other?
Well, look, the other fella was just now drawing a line with “bigots” as the other. And, as this is the SDMB, I doubt anyone would object if I simply and accurately referred to Trump as “a liar” instead of taking the time to specify that he’s a man who tells a lot of lies. Or if some Republican got called out as a hypocrite. Or whatever.
I’ll admit, people are coming at you from all different directions on this. Maybe I shouldn’t have jumped into the fray.
I don’t think people object to “illegal” as a descriptor because of some sort of language purity thing. The difference between the shorthand and longhand is that “illegal immigrant” has maintained a certain level of sterility, while illegal is seen as simply a snarl word. The distinction between adjective/noun is only brought up as a rebuttal to the eye-batting defense that people aren’t using it as a snarl word. If you don’t mean to snarl, the logic goes, then why go out of your way to use improper grammar? It comes off as a dog-whistle, a way to say one thing but maintain plausible deniability.
To me, it doesn’t make a difference, in the same way that “There are a lot of Jews on the East side of town” might be a completely sterile statement if I’m telling someone where to get a good bagel, but means something else if I’m at a Klan rally. In the latter case, I’d be counting on, and reinforcing, my listeners’ existing prejudices.
Indeed, there’s been a lot of talk during and since the campaign, most notably after the deplorables incident, about not painting all Trump voters with the same broad brush for precisely this reason – when you dismiss all Trump supporters as bigots, then you stop thinking of them as people you can reason with, people who may have voted in rational self-interest, and ultimately people in general. They just become “them,” who must be defeated at all costs, and that’s clearly not healthy.
Although I’ll draw a distinction here. “Bigot” describes a person who exhibits certain behaviors, “illegal” as shorthand for “illegal immigrant” just describes a state of being, especially in the case of undocumented minors who didn’t consent to being brought to the US. There’s a difference.
Thing is, they’re gonna do it anyway. We aren’t empowering or permitting anyone to do anything, far less are we compelling them. At one time, I knew several persons of a conservative bent that I respected. This lot, they don’t qualify. So I sometimes cringe at excessive verbal force. But again, they aren’t waiting for my permission.
And if these people get their way, others will suffer, and of that lot, some of them will die. This is not the utter indifference of the tumbling dice, this is by intent, by design, by insisting. The stakes are too high for tea and doilies.
One important difference there is, if I’m calling Trump a liar, a bigot, or a hypocrite, I’m trying to be insulting to him, so if there’s a distinction between how offensive a word is when used as a noun versus an adjective, I’m mostly okay with that. And if that usage is offensive to the larger liar/bigot/hypocrite community… I’m also okay with that.
