An example that comes to mind. I’m at a scientific conference right now. All of the presentations are in English, and generally, most publications are in English. Being a native English speaker, I have a tremendous advantage in science. It is far easier for me to get papers published, it is easier for me to be understood at conferences.
Is this inherently racist? No.
Am I racist for having this advantage? No.
Is it systemically racist and rooted in historical racism? Yes. Of course, it is. English is the dominant language in science (and other domains) primarily because of the British Empire and the policies surrounding colonialism and imperialism, which were racist.
Being “woke” means understanding this last point. It doesn’t mean I need to flog myself. It doesn’t mean I need to feel guilty about it. It means I should be aware of it, and I should make an active effort to counter the system of privilege, i.e., being anti-racist.
I didn’t listen to the whole thing. Most of it sounded like pseudo-scientific philosophical bullshit to me. But as a general rule, I am extremely skeptical of any longwinded, rambling, quasi-scientific, explanations that try to tell people:
You aren’t being repressed
You are being lied to about being repressed
There is a natural order to things that we need to accept that just happens to work out where I am on the upper end and you are on the lower end
It actually explains a lot of Trumpism. Keep telling people there is no objective or scientific truth and it’s just Liberals trying to exert power and influence.
Ehhhhhhh…that’s kind of something a stupid person might say.
That’s the kind of thing “wokeness” addresses. Someone isn’t stupid just because they have a different life experience than you do.
I knew fireflies were real, but assumed their portrayal in movies and cartoons was greatly exaggerated until I saw them in person for the first time last year.
I think I know what you mean here when you say “rooted in historical racism” but I don’t know what you mean in this statement by “systematically racist”. Can you elaborate?
Since it is enormously convenient for there to be a single language of science, what would a choice of language that is not systematically racist look like?
Every language is going to be systemically beneficial to one group over another. The point isn’t to completely eliminate this; it is to recognize it, take its effect into account, and make adjustments accordingly.
Something like Esperanto that is nobody’s first language . Think of it this way:
Everything is a trade off in time and effort. We don’t make doctors learn Latin anymore because we think that their time would be better spent learning medicine. A Chinese physicist needs to spend significant time studying the English language to be able to keep up to date with current research and get published. That is effort that a native English speaker does not have to expend.
More importantly, if English is the official language of science, then research conducted by English speakers has an advantage in the global market space. And if you don’t acknowledge this you are not accurate judging the quality of the work done and then it looks like English speakers are just naturally better at science and deserve more grants, more published papers, and more prestigious positions.
One spitball solution thrown off by a random poster on a messageboard doesn’t represent any sort of thesis statement for “wokeness.” That’s ridiculous.
“Systematically racist” was a typo. I meant “systemic racism”, i.e. is it an example of systemic racism. My apologies for any confusion.
English being the world’s dominant language in science (and other domains) isn’t intentional or done maliciously in general (a$$holes abound of course). It is just the way the system (of science) has developed as a result of human history. But that also doesn’t make it right or fair, and the right and fair thing to do is to try to address these things in a reasonable fashion (different people will disagree of course on what is reasonable). So being woke, if I were to describe it succinctly in an elevator pitch style, is simply that awareness to how culture, history, etc. influence us all and our society even in ways which may not be obvious or intentional, but are malign.
Lots of people are neo-Marxists or postmodernists, it’s not some secret shame. They are both current trends of thought in the humanities - and I use “current” here very loosely, they’ve been around since the 20s for neo-Marxism, and 40s for postmodernism. They are well-established and almost stuffily old-school. Turn over most modern Arts departments and you’ll see a host of postmodernists scuttle out into the light. They have plenty of modern adherents, and descendant schools (like CRT) and most academics wouldn’t even bother to label themselves postmodernists because that’s just part of the background.
You missed my point. I was answering the question of how it could be completely eliminated, not if we should. Today, there would be a huge cost to doing that. And even if we did go to a “language of science”, there would be downsides. It could reduce the accessibility of scientific research by the general public.
The real point is that the barrier you feel to interacting with the scientific mainstream if all science had to be published in Esperanto is the same barrier all none English speakers now face.
Sure one way to even the playing field would be to make everyone learn a new language to do science. But it is not the only way. Of course, pretending that an almost impossible method of addressing injustice is the only way is a good strategy to hang on to privilege without feeling guilty (see reparations, land reform, etc.).
Under the current system, some people just get to use their first language while other people have to work harder to learn a second language. That’s not fair … so your solution is to make it equally bad for everyone? And never mind that the extra benefit learning English means you can speak the local language if you travel to English speaking countries. Instead you learn a second language that is the native language nowhere.