“Three letter acronym.”
Whatcha say about my aunt?
People? Or do you mean just one guy? 
I work in telecom, an industry that is in a close second to the Federal Government when it comes to TMAS.1
1 -Too Many Acronyms Syndrome
Ikr? Wtf!
Anyone who thinks acronymns are racist should be required to go a full week in a business or political context in which they have to pronounce every single thing out by its full name, every time.
I see the complaint regularly. I haven’t kept track of who it is everytime.
It’s TUS
(The Usual Suspect(s))
That idea is making me LGDTTQATSIT!
That is not a TLA. TL;DR
A teacher in San Francisco says that Bernie Sanders’s attire at the inauguration is an example of white privilege.
I think that teacher’s comments are themselves an example of white privilege.
And my comments on the teacher’s comments? Definitely white privilege.
It’s white privilege all the way down.
This rant was written by Brittney Cooper, a feminist who I gather is at least part African-American (she earned her first degree from Howard).
I actually sort of get it. Not that I’m saying Bernie did anything wrong. It’s just good to be aware of this stuff, it doesn’t need to involve shame or guilt.
But dressing down is a huge white privilege. Not everyone can get away with it, and you pretty much have to be white. There’s a reason black people tend to get really dressed up when they go out clubbing or for a big night on the town in a way white people don’t.
Here’s an example from my personal experience. My fiancé (who was a food snob) and I were in San Francisco and we were out walking around early Sunday afternoon, in sightseeing clothes. We passed some really fancy 5 star “special occasion” restaurant that was serving brunch, and did this whole “let’s drop in and grab a bite” thing.
Which was a move that just oozed privilege, and partly because we were so underdressed.
Because the message was “See this 5 star restaurant, this meal you’ve looked forward to for weeks. We eat in places like this every day, it’s like McDonalds to us.”
It was one of the most freaking privileged things I’ve ever done in my life.
So dressing down in public isn’t regarded as slovenly any more? In that case, I just climbed the social ladder without taking a step!
Not if you’re white enough, that’s the point.
I think the idea is that it’s considered disrespectful, and that certain people - and not others - can get away with being disrespectful.
I think. I mean, I live in a country without dress codes, so these concepts are kind of alien to me.
This is a bit like saying “I live in a country without accents.” It’s essentially meaningless.
Dress codes, as being discussed here, are not generally formal rules enforceable by law; they are matters of tradition, etiquette, habit, expectation, self-perception, identity, and a range of other social and cultural factors. The fact that you have internalized the cultural expectations regarding dress codes that exist in your society doesn’t mean that no codes exist.
I’ve never been to Israel, but I’ll bet that if I spent a few months there, I could find a hundred different places and occasions where, if I turned up in certain types of attire, I would be considered strange, inappropriate, an outsider, a nonconformist, or offensive. I might not be locked out of these places, or asked to leave. People might not come up to me and abuse me for my clothing decisions. But that doesn’t mean that the judgment and the social and cultural pressures would be absent.
My example of my own white privilege was when I walked out of the bank after having secured a pretty large loan to expand my business. The bank manager walked me out and as he shook my hand (pre-COVID), I realized that he was wearing a nice suit and tie, and I was wearing jeans held up by a dog lead, and a t-shirt with an open flannel.
I thought to myself that if I wasn’t a white male, I probably couldn’t have gotten away with that.
I’m pretty sure I don’t even own a suit. If I do, it’s in some boxes that haven’t been unpacked in 20 years, and I doubt that the suit I wore for my graduation still fits me.
No, this is true. There may be dress codes, but people ignore them. I’ve seen people show up to weddings in dress pants and a nice shirt - and sandals.
If you go to an average Israeli wedding you’ll see some people in suits and some people in tee shirts, and neither would elicit a second glance; same for funerals. Saying that my country doesn’t have dress codes at all may be a bit hyperbolic, but the dress codes it does have are verrrry broadly defined. Inauguration Bernie wouldn’t have stood out here, because in the highly unlikely event of cold weather here, he wouldn’t have been the only guy dressed like that.
(Of course, you can ignore everything I just said when it comes to religious Israelis - they have well defined, almost byzantine dress codes that I won’t even start getting into).