This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
Authors
James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, Mike Nayna, Christopher Lord, Alexander Zubatov, Jacob Howland, Rohan Loveland, Shaun Cammack, Jonathan Church, Lisa Bildy, Aaron Preston
One of the nice things about definitions which take into consideration the structure of society is that it discounts the idea that structures designed to reclaim power for those disenfranchised...
One of the nice things about definitions which take into consideration the structure of society is that it discounts the idea that structures designed to reclaim power for those disenfranchised from those who are in power are racist. Too many times have I heard the claim that antiracist policies are actually racist against whites and anti-discriminatory policies are discriminatory towards those they target. This is not a valid argument and many focus far too heavily on the idea that racism is just treating someone differently based on the color of their skin.
Think about it for a second, does anyone REALLY consider themselves racist for having a preference when it comes to dating? If you enjoy tall men, are you racist against countries with typically shorter individuals? If you enjoy women with curves, are you racist against countries in which this body type is uncommon? Most would not argue this is racist, and yet it is, at it's base, preferential behavior - the difference is the intent is not racist and muddying a definition with intent discounts the real negative effects that can happen when someone has good intent but poor execution.
I think perhaps we need to evolve beyond intent and beyond blame. Racist structures exist. I don't care whether you intend for them to exist or not. What I do care about is whether you do something to help dismantle them or not, doubly so if you're a part of said system.
I don't think this is a very good piece. First of all, James Lindsay (the co-founder of New Discourses) is a huge piece of shit who routinely makes horrendously intellectually dishonest arguments...
I don't think this is a very good piece. First of all, James Lindsay (the co-founder of New Discourses) is a huge piece of shit who routinely makes horrendously intellectually dishonest arguments (his recent 2 + 2 = 5 tweetstorm is a good example of it) so I'm immediately skeptical of anything that's linked to him in any way. That said, I'm not familiar with Aaron Preston, so I'll give this article a chance.
If Kendi is correct, then the problem with dictionary definitions of “racism” isn’t merely that D2 isn’t clearly separated from D1; it’s that D1 exists in the first place. If racism simpliciter is inherently systemic or structural, and if its defining feature is the production of inequalities along racial lines, then D1 itself is wrong – the relic of a benighted age, which ought to be pulled from the dictionary like a Confederate statue from its pedestal.
Who is asking for the first definition to be removed? This is a strawman. Mitchum's explicitly stated goal in the linked article is to update the second definition to include a mention of systemic bias. Preston does not at any point explain why he thinks intent is the only thing that matters, he merely asserts it as a known fact.
As it turns out, D1 and D2 in their current forms capture the actual use of “racism” by ordinary English speakers very well.
They may capture it well enough, but that does not mean they cannot be improved to capture the additional ways that people use the term. That is the entire point of a dictionary.
In recent weeks, several acquaintances – one a criminologist – pointed me to this harrowing report on the once overtly-racist culture of the Detroit Police force as an example of “systemic racism.” But it describes a system inhabited by overt racists (as per D1) and neither a system founded on racist views or designed to perpetuate them (as per D2), nor a system that perpetuates racial inequalities regardless of people’s intentions (as per DiAngelo and Kendi).
Does Preston give any evidence as to why he believes the DPD does not systemically perpetuate racism? Does he bother to investigate Detroit's long history of redlining and housing discrimination, of Project Greenlight, of facial recognition tech that gives huge amounts of false positives for Black people? He does not.
Replace the bad actors with good ones, and the system would be transformed.
How? Again, Preston offers no evidence to support this claim.
But here again we have a case in which the intentions of specific people made all the difference to the way the system malfunctioned: the intentions of the witnesses who gave false testimony against MacMillian, of the police who coerced them to do so, and of the district attorney who withheld exculpatory evidence.
I would argue that the system itself is at least partly responsible for the intentions of these specific people, as they exist within the system, and it cannot be handwaved away as unrelated.
And it does so precisely because most English speakers are unwilling to extend the concept of “racism” to phenomena in which racism 1.0 plays no active role, particularly in the present.
I am an English speaker. The people in activist circles are English speakers. Why is it that the way we understand the world and the terms we use to describe the world do not matter enough to Preston to be included in a dictionary definition? Throughout the piece Preston deploys this rhetorical tactic:
"ordinary English speakers"
"the ordinary meaning of “racism”"
"most English speakers"
"the average English speaker"
"most English speakers still make a distinction between it and racism simpliciter"
"If you’re a competent English-speaker who uses the words “racism,” “racist,” etc. with their ordinary meanings"
"But the average English speaker... most seem to be using... most are still distinguishing,"
"legions upon legions do not share that understanding"
How convenient that Preston has legions of unnamed people who agree with him.
it will count as a case of activist lexicography that will only strengthen the hold of critical social justice theory on our culture.
What is "Activist Lexicography"? It is not defined in the piece, and Preston gives no evidence as to why it is a bad thing. "Our culture" -- whose culture is Preston talking about? It certainly isn't mine.
I don't want to to quote snipe the author, as I do think there is a bit of value to this piece, but I was left with a bad taste in my mouth overall, summed up best by this part of his conclusion:...
I don't want to to quote snipe the author, as I do think there is a bit of value to this piece, but I was left with a bad taste in my mouth overall, summed up best by this part of his conclusion:
Likewise, [Merriam-Webster editor Sokolowski's] response to the internet rumor that Merriam-Webster plans to update its definition of “racism” to say or imply that only whites can be racist suggests he does not understand that exactly this view is entailed by racism 3.0, as used by “experts in black studies” like DiAngelo and Kendi.
DiAngelo never says this in her book (to the best of my memory) but she also doesn't not say it and I'm not familiar with her work beyond White Fragility. As such, there might be a kernel of truth here, as it relates to her, but it's not one that I'm aware of and doesn't show up in her main contribution to the discourse on racism (at least not as a prominent point). Beyond her though, this is an outright mischaracterization of Kendi. His How to Be Antiracist explores different aspects of racism chapter by chapter, and he devotes chapter 10 to anti-white racism. He tells his own story, detailing how he came to hold racist beliefs about white people as a black man. He then addresses the idea that people of color can be racist, in no uncertain terms:
To be antiracist is to never mistake the global march of White racism for the global march of White people. To be antiracist is to never mistake the antiracist hate of White racism for the racist hate of White people. To be antiracist is to never conflate racist people with White people, knowing there are antiracist Whites and racist non-Whites.
Across his book, Kendi does not limit his definition of racism to purely racism 3.0, as identified in the article. If 1.0 is prejudice, 2.0 is prejudice plus power, and 3.0 is power minus prejudice, he identifies racism on all three fronts, not just the third.
Sokolowski came to this same conclusion and said Merriam-Webster would not be changing their dictionary to represent just the third. Preston directly chastizes Sokolowski coming to the "wrong" conclusion on this, despite the fact that such definitions of racism are not being advocated for by the authors Preston himself cites, and despite the fact that what prompted Sokolowski's comment in the first place was identified as misinformation by Snopes! Snopes wrote their article to investigate the validity of a transparently inflammatory and deliberately dishonest article designed to muddy the waters about the term and stoke fears that definitions of racism are going "too far".
Preston spends most of his time critiquing and misrepresenting the activism of people attempting to define the elements of racism in good faith while only giving the most cursory of nods to people who are poisoning that discussion in bad faith. He then argues that the bad faith interpretations are representative, while the good faith ones carry no weight. As such, I think this largely misses the mark.
Uf! I'm getting a lot of red flags from this site, mainly from how just about every article on its front page seems preoccupied with criticizing wokeness, the preponderance of scare quotes in...
Uf! I'm getting a lot of red flags from this site, mainly from how just about every article on its front page seems preoccupied with criticizing wokeness, the preponderance of scare quotes in their headlines, and the front-and-centeredness of trans-skepticism.
This article's central argument hasn't really changed my mind on that either. He seems to be trying to cloak a disagreement on substance as if it's about precision and semantics and it strikes me as sophistic. He spends a lot of time fixated on the dictionary, but the crux of his issue with it seems to be when he says: "It would be a great boon to people of goodwill to be able to prevent people of ill-will from concealing their villainous motives. But declaring intention irrelevant to racism is not the right move."
Here we see that his issue isn't really about the semantics, his issue is that he disagrees that racism can exist without some kind of mens rea around it. But he doesn't actually argue for why, he just keeps appealing to 'common usage' or 'regular English speakers' as the deciders of the term which is just an appeal to popularity fallacy.
That just seems fundamentally dishonest to me. Especially as he's trying to have it both ways with his descriptivism/perscriptivism. He wants to be descriptivist in that we should defer to what he terms 'common usage' or 'regular English speakers' use for a term but he wants to deny any development in the term from expanding/improving understandings of the social dynamics underlying race. Like we should just freeze this term in its present without any compelling rationale as to why. If there was an argument being made that this expansion doesn't serve our purposes well that might be something. But he's not really making that argument.
It's just a really sloppy article through and through. Nothing but bad arguments hidden behind a veneer of fancy words and smugness, which is to be expected from anything that James Lindsay has a...
It's just a really sloppy article through and through. Nothing but bad arguments hidden behind a veneer of fancy words and smugness, which is to be expected from anything that James Lindsay has a hand in.
Agreed on all points. I have also perceived a seemingly higher incidence of worrisome mire in the content that has washed up here recently; you've been here awhile too so you know this site is...
Agreed on all points. I have also perceived a seemingly higher incidence of worrisome mire in the content that has washed up here recently; you've been here awhile too so you know this site is pretty slow... I am hoping this is a fluke in the tides or an oversensitivity on my part, though I am trying not to be naive about it.
This is probably more suited for a metadiscussion on ~tildes butI think it's mostly just an outcome of the site being slow. Stuff that goes against the grain, even a little, tends to stand out. I...
I am hoping this is a fluke in the tides or an oversensitivity on my part, though I am trying not to be naive about it.
This is probably more suited for a metadiscussion on ~tildes butI think it's mostly just an outcome of the site being slow. Stuff that goes against the grain, even a little, tends to stand out. I think on many of these issues the consensus opinions are well known enough that they don't get any engagement and, consequently, contributors don't post it.
It's not just you. I'm hoping bad faith is not involved, and that this is due to a bad culture fit*, but I struggle to believe it when it comes to things like this. * I, at least, don't think that...
It's not just you. I'm hoping bad faith is not involved, and that this is due to a bad culture fit*, but I struggle to believe it when it comes to things like this.
* I, at least, don't think that arguing for argument's sake, bringing up controversial topics to enable discussion, is not what Tildes is about.
Nice little read. I will only ever use racism in a 1.0 context, and pretty much everyone I know is the same, including the black side of my family. I wonder if the explosion of 3.0 racism is...
Nice little read. I will only ever use racism in a 1.0 context, and pretty much everyone I know is the same, including the black side of my family. I wonder if the explosion of 3.0 racism is largely environmental, folks who live in places where 1.0 racism is largely absent, but oppressive systems still exist. Maybe it makes sense to hijack the word in that context, but we've got counties in rural America where otherwise popular incumbent mayors can lose elections for adopting a black baby, so alternate definitions just seem to muddy the waters, and take power away from a useful label.
I don't understand. Words can mean many things and dictionaries describe those pluralistically.. we keep histories of connotations but I think this discrete "versioning" bears only a tenuous...
I don't understand. Words can mean many things and dictionaries describe those pluralistically.. we keep histories of connotations but I think this discrete "versioning" bears only a tenuous relation to the way the word has grown in use over time. Do you really feel like the broader systemic idea of racism somehow detracts from the more direct usage? In what sense? "Muddies the water" is a strange idiom for this complaint...
I think the argument for muddying the water being accurate vernacular is pretty simple. If Sheriff Kelly's got a personal problem with black folks, he's a racist. Obvious enough, but now we have...
I think the argument for muddying the water being accurate vernacular is pretty simple. If Sheriff Kelly's got a personal problem with black folks, he's a racist. Obvious enough, but now we have to clarify what we mean, because we aren't using the word in the same way a lot of the local students use it when they call the university a racist institution. The Sheriff is refusing to hire black patrolman candidates on the basis of race. The students are objecting to main campus underrepresentation of women, racial, and sexual minorities and label anyone in opposition to the student senate majority proposal to create a university committee to address this as a racist, on the basis that they perpetuate systemic racism. The two are not the same, and most local folks just don't care if someone is branded with the term by students, because the label is low value. Shoot I stopped caring myself as a student, once protestors decided that the black president of the university was a racist because he held a position of power in an oppressive institution. 3.0 racism is a low value label that allows people to dismiss 1.0 racism as people (in this case students) just being too cavalier with labels. Until bigotry on the basis of race is a rare anomaly, I think it should own the linguistic domain of racism.
Let's entertain for a second that a word should only have one meaning and that the adoption of a new meaning should only happen when the first meaning loses value or importance. Who is to measure...
Let's entertain for a second that a word should only have one meaning and that the adoption of a new meaning should only happen when the first meaning loses value or importance. Who is to measure when racism 1.0 is officially over and we can move on to dismantling systems which disenfranchise as opposed to individuals who do? Why are you gatekeeping the definition of a word? It's wild to me that you, or anyone, would choose this hill to fight on. What inspires you to have such a strong stance on the definition of a word?
This is why I said in my initial post that it seems to functionally behave as regionalist vernacular. You've asked a question which no one can ever answer, but people can and do adopt different...
Who is to measure when racism 1.0 is officially over and we can move on to dismantling systems which disenfranchise as opposed to individuals who do?
This is why I said in my initial post that it seems to functionally behave as regionalist vernacular. You've asked a question which no one can ever answer, but people can and do adopt different meanings in different communities. As far as my eyes can see, most folks in the online communities I'm in prefer 3.0 and view 1.0 as reductive. Most folks in my real life communities use 1.0 and either don't know about, or choose not to use 3.0 language. I think 3.0 paints with a wide brush, and takes away a useful label. We may not be able to say "At X.YZ percent we decree that we change our vernacular", but folks interpret things insofar as they are useful to their lives.
Why are you gatekeeping the definition of a word? It's wild to me that you, or anyone, would choose this hill to fight on. What inspires you to have such a strong stance on the definition of a word?
This seems needlessly hostile. That said, language is important, and how we use words is important. The old linguist anti-joke where you just say a bunch of random words in the form of a question in response to a declaration of descriptivist absolutism works because humans rely on conveyance, and cannot transfer Platonic forms from one mind to another via magic telepathic waves.
I don't see how it takes away a label. The 1.0 label is a criticism of people. The 3.0 label is a criticism of systems. Intentionality matters in 1.0 because it's about people. But systems don't...
I think 3.0 paints with a wide brush, and takes away a useful label.
I don't see how it takes away a label. The 1.0 label is a criticism of people. The 3.0 label is a criticism of systems. Intentionality matters in 1.0 because it's about people. But systems don't have intentionality so there's no reason to get hung up on it.
People seem perfectly able to talk about the design outcomes of a system whether they're intentional or unintentional. We can call a building "unfriendly to disabled people" for example. This doesn't affect the conventional use of the term "unfriendly." It's well understood that it just means the design of the building works in a way that makes it difficult for people with certain mobility issues to access it. In fact, this is quite useful because those buildings (and our systems) are designed by people ultimately. It ascribes a little bit of responsibility to the designers, making them accountable for the outcomes of their work along these dimensions, without necessarily saying they are, themselves, engaging in invidious discrimination.
And all that besides, English speakers are well able to negotiate way more ambiguous definitions. We have words that are their own antonyms! We'll cleave this distinction somehow.
We started talking about this in the thread about the term demisexual the other day, where someone worried that labels might be more significant as axes for derision/dismissal than as useful...
We started talking about this in the thread about the term demisexual the other day, where someone worried that labels might be more significant as axes for derision/dismissal than as useful identifiers. I don't get concern over homonyms and homophones. They are extremely common and generally easy to contextualize in almost every circumstance including domains like web search where you might need to specify what you're looking for...
I actually saw the volume of comments on that thread and decided not to click on it, lol. Sounds like I made the right choice. To be fair the words "biweekly," "bimonthly," "biannually," etc....
We started talking about this in the thread about the term demisexual the other day, where someone worried that labels might be more significant as axes for derision/dismissal than as useful identifiers.
I actually saw the volume of comments on that thread and decided not to click on it, lol. Sounds like I made the right choice.
I don't get concern over homonyms and homophones.
To be fair the words "biweekly," "bimonthly," "biannually," etc. bother me a lot. :-p
Yeah, good miss. As in this thread I think the top responses eventually coalesced into serviceable critique but definitely spooky when the topic and first run of responses tend toward...
Yeah, good miss. As in this thread I think the top responses eventually coalesced into serviceable critique but definitely spooky when the topic and first run of responses tend toward centrist/socially apathetic viewpoints.
Then why the complaint of multiple definitions? They encompass very similar ideas. Or was this just a musing on how people can be stuck on different definitions depending on how knowledgeable they...
You've asked a question which no one can ever answer, but people can and do adopt different meanings in different communities.
Then why the complaint of multiple definitions? They encompass very similar ideas. Or was this just a musing on how people can be stuck on different definitions depending on how knowledgeable they are in a subject?
I think 3.0 paints with a wide brush, and takes away a useful label.
but both can exist? This is what's wonderful about language and how we can use it to be more specific
This seems needlessly hostile.
Apologies the intent was not hostility, merely curiosity. You seemed to be taking a very strong stance to me and I find it fascinating.
My complaint is more oriented towards pushing everyone to use 3.0 as if the 1.0 definition is some relic of a bygone era, as if all the world's communities have more 3.0 problems than 1.0...
My complaint is more oriented towards pushing everyone to use 3.0 as if the 1.0 definition is some relic of a bygone era, as if all the world's communities have more 3.0 problems than 1.0 problems. My argument is then simply that communities definitely exist where the former considerations greatly outweigh the later, and so the former's utility also greatly outweighs the latter, and the push to change the language in these communities is harmful, because you take away a useful tool to identify racists.
This gets back to my original question of when to move on from a definition and expand it - change in language is always gradual and the state of the world will vary from location to location and...
This gets back to my original question of when to move on from a definition and expand it - change in language is always gradual and the state of the world will vary from location to location and even within certain circles such as those which are social. How do you rectify the 'correct' path to additional definitions? Why must you deprive the communities which are tackling 3.0 because they have tackled 1.0 or those which wish to tackle both at the same time, but in different ways? What language can they use to describe and confront the problems they face? Why do additional definitions deprive other definitions? I doubt you'd find many who would insist that 3.0 is a definition which replaces 1.0, to me and most that I have spoken with it is meant to enhance and deepen the conversation, to tackle more complicated problems without discounting the simple problems we also face.
Wait, what was it that you stopped caring about? Having to clarify what we mean does not really seem like a burden, given the goal of maintaining the kind of nuance it seems like you're talking...
Wait, what was it that you stopped caring about? Having to clarify what we mean does not really seem like a burden, given the goal of maintaining the kind of nuance it seems like you're talking about having lost in the case of a student group attempting to criticize an oppressive institution.
What was that bit about somebody's mayor catching flak for adopting a black child? Is that something I can look into?
The clamors of the student senate for various reforms by means of targeting specific university employees, basically. The grandstanding of the senate was pretty unreal by the time I left college,...
The clamors of the student senate for various reforms by means of targeting specific university employees, basically. The grandstanding of the senate was pretty unreal by the time I left college, and I decided they weren't worth listening to, which I think administration, faculty, staff, and townies probably agreed upon well before I joined the club.
With regards to the mayor thing, I'm fairly certain nothing is out there that would've been documented. I don't even know if the county in question has a local paper. That said, the place in particular is pretty much a wonderland of racism, where black families who move in to the county seat were forced out by hook or by crook. Not sure if it's still that way, but it was when I left my hometown for good about 5-6 years ago.
Grandstanding is certainly indulgent. I thought you were saying that you had lost interest in the wider theory of how racism effects individual interactions and what can be done about it. I think...
Grandstanding is certainly indulgent. I thought you were saying that you had lost interest in the wider theory of how racism effects individual interactions and what can be done about it. I think it's important to think creatively about this problem, and to an extent to follow in when solutions are attempted -- which often means having to clarify intentions and reflect on outcomes. A student union might struggle to maintain a consistent and effective practice, but I don't think that reflects on the usefulness of the terms they use.
One of the nice things about definitions which take into consideration the structure of society is that it discounts the idea that structures designed to reclaim power for those disenfranchised from those who are in power are racist. Too many times have I heard the claim that antiracist policies are actually racist against whites and anti-discriminatory policies are discriminatory towards those they target. This is not a valid argument and many focus far too heavily on the idea that racism is just treating someone differently based on the color of their skin.
Think about it for a second, does anyone REALLY consider themselves racist for having a preference when it comes to dating? If you enjoy tall men, are you racist against countries with typically shorter individuals? If you enjoy women with curves, are you racist against countries in which this body type is uncommon? Most would not argue this is racist, and yet it is, at it's base, preferential behavior - the difference is the intent is not racist and muddying a definition with intent discounts the real negative effects that can happen when someone has good intent but poor execution.
I think perhaps we need to evolve beyond intent and beyond blame. Racist structures exist. I don't care whether you intend for them to exist or not. What I do care about is whether you do something to help dismantle them or not, doubly so if you're a part of said system.
I don't think this is a very good piece. First of all, James Lindsay (the co-founder of New Discourses) is a huge piece of shit who routinely makes horrendously intellectually dishonest arguments (his recent 2 + 2 = 5 tweetstorm is a good example of it) so I'm immediately skeptical of anything that's linked to him in any way. That said, I'm not familiar with Aaron Preston, so I'll give this article a chance.
Who is asking for the first definition to be removed? This is a strawman. Mitchum's explicitly stated goal in the linked article is to update the second definition to include a mention of systemic bias. Preston does not at any point explain why he thinks intent is the only thing that matters, he merely asserts it as a known fact.
They may capture it well enough, but that does not mean they cannot be improved to capture the additional ways that people use the term. That is the entire point of a dictionary.
Does Preston give any evidence as to why he believes the DPD does not systemically perpetuate racism? Does he bother to investigate Detroit's long history of redlining and housing discrimination, of Project Greenlight, of facial recognition tech that gives huge amounts of false positives for Black people? He does not.
How? Again, Preston offers no evidence to support this claim.
I would argue that the system itself is at least partly responsible for the intentions of these specific people, as they exist within the system, and it cannot be handwaved away as unrelated.
I am an English speaker. The people in activist circles are English speakers. Why is it that the way we understand the world and the terms we use to describe the world do not matter enough to Preston to be included in a dictionary definition? Throughout the piece Preston deploys this rhetorical tactic:
How convenient that Preston has legions of unnamed people who agree with him.
What is "Activist Lexicography"? It is not defined in the piece, and Preston gives no evidence as to why it is a bad thing. "Our culture" -- whose culture is Preston talking about? It certainly isn't mine.
I don't want to to quote snipe the author, as I do think there is a bit of value to this piece, but I was left with a bad taste in my mouth overall, summed up best by this part of his conclusion:
DiAngelo never says this in her book (to the best of my memory) but she also doesn't not say it and I'm not familiar with her work beyond White Fragility. As such, there might be a kernel of truth here, as it relates to her, but it's not one that I'm aware of and doesn't show up in her main contribution to the discourse on racism (at least not as a prominent point). Beyond her though, this is an outright mischaracterization of Kendi. His How to Be Antiracist explores different aspects of racism chapter by chapter, and he devotes chapter 10 to anti-white racism. He tells his own story, detailing how he came to hold racist beliefs about white people as a black man. He then addresses the idea that people of color can be racist, in no uncertain terms:
Across his book, Kendi does not limit his definition of racism to purely racism 3.0, as identified in the article. If 1.0 is prejudice, 2.0 is prejudice plus power, and 3.0 is power minus prejudice, he identifies racism on all three fronts, not just the third.
Sokolowski came to this same conclusion and said Merriam-Webster would not be changing their dictionary to represent just the third. Preston directly chastizes Sokolowski coming to the "wrong" conclusion on this, despite the fact that such definitions of racism are not being advocated for by the authors Preston himself cites, and despite the fact that what prompted Sokolowski's comment in the first place was identified as misinformation by Snopes! Snopes wrote their article to investigate the validity of a transparently inflammatory and deliberately dishonest article designed to muddy the waters about the term and stoke fears that definitions of racism are going "too far".
Preston spends most of his time critiquing and misrepresenting the activism of people attempting to define the elements of racism in good faith while only giving the most cursory of nods to people who are poisoning that discussion in bad faith. He then argues that the bad faith interpretations are representative, while the good faith ones carry no weight. As such, I think this largely misses the mark.
Uf! I'm getting a lot of red flags from this site, mainly from how just about every article on its front page seems preoccupied with criticizing wokeness, the preponderance of scare quotes in their headlines, and the front-and-centeredness of trans-skepticism.
This article's central argument hasn't really changed my mind on that either. He seems to be trying to cloak a disagreement on substance as if it's about precision and semantics and it strikes me as sophistic. He spends a lot of time fixated on the dictionary, but the crux of his issue with it seems to be when he says: "It would be a great boon to people of goodwill to be able to prevent people of ill-will from concealing their villainous motives. But declaring intention irrelevant to racism is not the right move."
Here we see that his issue isn't really about the semantics, his issue is that he disagrees that racism can exist without some kind of mens rea around it. But he doesn't actually argue for why, he just keeps appealing to 'common usage' or 'regular English speakers' as the deciders of the term which is just an appeal to popularity fallacy.
That just seems fundamentally dishonest to me. Especially as he's trying to have it both ways with his descriptivism/perscriptivism. He wants to be descriptivist in that we should defer to what he terms 'common usage' or 'regular English speakers' use for a term but he wants to deny any development in the term from expanding/improving understandings of the social dynamics underlying race. Like we should just freeze this term in its present without any compelling rationale as to why. If there was an argument being made that this expansion doesn't serve our purposes well that might be something. But he's not really making that argument.
It's just a really sloppy article through and through. Nothing but bad arguments hidden behind a veneer of fancy words and smugness, which is to be expected from anything that James Lindsay has a hand in.
Agreed on all points. I have also perceived a seemingly higher incidence of worrisome mire in the content that has washed up here recently; you've been here awhile too so you know this site is pretty slow... I am hoping this is a fluke in the tides or an oversensitivity on my part, though I am trying not to be naive about it.
This is probably more suited for a metadiscussion on ~tildes butI think it's mostly just an outcome of the site being slow. Stuff that goes against the grain, even a little, tends to stand out. I think on many of these issues the consensus opinions are well known enough that they don't get any engagement and, consequently, contributors don't post it.
It's not just you. I'm hoping bad faith is not involved, and that this is due to a bad culture fit*, but I struggle to believe it when it comes to things like this.
* I, at least, don't think that arguing for argument's sake, bringing up controversial topics to enable discussion, is not what Tildes is about.
Nice little read. I will only ever use racism in a 1.0 context, and pretty much everyone I know is the same, including the black side of my family. I wonder if the explosion of 3.0 racism is largely environmental, folks who live in places where 1.0 racism is largely absent, but oppressive systems still exist. Maybe it makes sense to hijack the word in that context, but we've got counties in rural America where otherwise popular incumbent mayors can lose elections for adopting a black baby, so alternate definitions just seem to muddy the waters, and take power away from a useful label.
I don't understand. Words can mean many things and dictionaries describe those pluralistically.. we keep histories of connotations but I think this discrete "versioning" bears only a tenuous relation to the way the word has grown in use over time. Do you really feel like the broader systemic idea of racism somehow detracts from the more direct usage? In what sense? "Muddies the water" is a strange idiom for this complaint...
I think the argument for muddying the water being accurate vernacular is pretty simple. If Sheriff Kelly's got a personal problem with black folks, he's a racist. Obvious enough, but now we have to clarify what we mean, because we aren't using the word in the same way a lot of the local students use it when they call the university a racist institution. The Sheriff is refusing to hire black patrolman candidates on the basis of race. The students are objecting to main campus underrepresentation of women, racial, and sexual minorities and label anyone in opposition to the student senate majority proposal to create a university committee to address this as a racist, on the basis that they perpetuate systemic racism. The two are not the same, and most local folks just don't care if someone is branded with the term by students, because the label is low value. Shoot I stopped caring myself as a student, once protestors decided that the black president of the university was a racist because he held a position of power in an oppressive institution. 3.0 racism is a low value label that allows people to dismiss 1.0 racism as people (in this case students) just being too cavalier with labels. Until bigotry on the basis of race is a rare anomaly, I think it should own the linguistic domain of racism.
Let's entertain for a second that a word should only have one meaning and that the adoption of a new meaning should only happen when the first meaning loses value or importance. Who is to measure when racism 1.0 is officially over and we can move on to dismantling systems which disenfranchise as opposed to individuals who do? Why are you gatekeeping the definition of a word? It's wild to me that you, or anyone, would choose this hill to fight on. What inspires you to have such a strong stance on the definition of a word?
This is why I said in my initial post that it seems to functionally behave as regionalist vernacular. You've asked a question which no one can ever answer, but people can and do adopt different meanings in different communities. As far as my eyes can see, most folks in the online communities I'm in prefer 3.0 and view 1.0 as reductive. Most folks in my real life communities use 1.0 and either don't know about, or choose not to use 3.0 language. I think 3.0 paints with a wide brush, and takes away a useful label. We may not be able to say "At X.YZ percent we decree that we change our vernacular", but folks interpret things insofar as they are useful to their lives.
This seems needlessly hostile. That said, language is important, and how we use words is important. The old linguist anti-joke where you just say a bunch of random words in the form of a question in response to a declaration of descriptivist absolutism works because humans rely on conveyance, and cannot transfer Platonic forms from one mind to another via magic telepathic waves.
I don't see how it takes away a label. The 1.0 label is a criticism of people. The 3.0 label is a criticism of systems. Intentionality matters in 1.0 because it's about people. But systems don't have intentionality so there's no reason to get hung up on it.
People seem perfectly able to talk about the design outcomes of a system whether they're intentional or unintentional. We can call a building "unfriendly to disabled people" for example. This doesn't affect the conventional use of the term "unfriendly." It's well understood that it just means the design of the building works in a way that makes it difficult for people with certain mobility issues to access it. In fact, this is quite useful because those buildings (and our systems) are designed by people ultimately. It ascribes a little bit of responsibility to the designers, making them accountable for the outcomes of their work along these dimensions, without necessarily saying they are, themselves, engaging in invidious discrimination.
And all that besides, English speakers are well able to negotiate way more ambiguous definitions. We have words that are their own antonyms! We'll cleave this distinction somehow.
We started talking about this in the thread about the term demisexual the other day, where someone worried that labels might be more significant as axes for derision/dismissal than as useful identifiers. I don't get concern over homonyms and homophones. They are extremely common and generally easy to contextualize in almost every circumstance including domains like web search where you might need to specify what you're looking for...
I actually saw the volume of comments on that thread and decided not to click on it, lol. Sounds like I made the right choice.
To be fair the words "biweekly," "bimonthly," "biannually," etc. bother me a lot. :-p
Yeah, good miss. As in this thread I think the top responses eventually coalesced into serviceable critique but definitely spooky when the topic and first run of responses tend toward centrist/socially apathetic viewpoints.
Then why the complaint of multiple definitions? They encompass very similar ideas. Or was this just a musing on how people can be stuck on different definitions depending on how knowledgeable they are in a subject?
but both can exist? This is what's wonderful about language and how we can use it to be more specific
Apologies the intent was not hostility, merely curiosity. You seemed to be taking a very strong stance to me and I find it fascinating.
My complaint is more oriented towards pushing everyone to use 3.0 as if the 1.0 definition is some relic of a bygone era, as if all the world's communities have more 3.0 problems than 1.0 problems. My argument is then simply that communities definitely exist where the former considerations greatly outweigh the later, and so the former's utility also greatly outweighs the latter, and the push to change the language in these communities is harmful, because you take away a useful tool to identify racists.
This gets back to my original question of when to move on from a definition and expand it - change in language is always gradual and the state of the world will vary from location to location and even within certain circles such as those which are social. How do you rectify the 'correct' path to additional definitions? Why must you deprive the communities which are tackling 3.0 because they have tackled 1.0 or those which wish to tackle both at the same time, but in different ways? What language can they use to describe and confront the problems they face? Why do additional definitions deprive other definitions? I doubt you'd find many who would insist that 3.0 is a definition which replaces 1.0, to me and most that I have spoken with it is meant to enhance and deepen the conversation, to tackle more complicated problems without discounting the simple problems we also face.
Wait, what was it that you stopped caring about? Having to clarify what we mean does not really seem like a burden, given the goal of maintaining the kind of nuance it seems like you're talking about having lost in the case of a student group attempting to criticize an oppressive institution.
What was that bit about somebody's mayor catching flak for adopting a black child? Is that something I can look into?
The clamors of the student senate for various reforms by means of targeting specific university employees, basically. The grandstanding of the senate was pretty unreal by the time I left college, and I decided they weren't worth listening to, which I think administration, faculty, staff, and townies probably agreed upon well before I joined the club.
With regards to the mayor thing, I'm fairly certain nothing is out there that would've been documented. I don't even know if the county in question has a local paper. That said, the place in particular is pretty much a wonderland of racism, where black families who move in to the county seat were forced out by hook or by crook. Not sure if it's still that way, but it was when I left my hometown for good about 5-6 years ago.
Grandstanding is certainly indulgent. I thought you were saying that you had lost interest in the wider theory of how racism effects individual interactions and what can be done about it. I think it's important to think creatively about this problem, and to an extent to follow in when solutions are attempted -- which often means having to clarify intentions and reflect on outcomes. A student union might struggle to maintain a consistent and effective practice, but I don't think that reflects on the usefulness of the terms they use.