Title : "There seems to be genuine confusion over what a well-meaning person can say without offending someone."
link : "There seems to be genuine confusion over what a well-meaning person can say without offending someone."
"There seems to be genuine confusion over what a well-meaning person can say without offending someone."
"According to Pew, a majority of Americans believe there isn’t any agreement on what language is considered sexist or racist of late.... You might find yourself wondering: Can I use that word? Am I not supposed to say that anymore?... [W]e enlisted the help of the polling firm Morning Consult to survey a representative sample of over 4,000 Americans...."This is a very useful and entertaining exploration by the New York Times. Let me just highlight — uplift and highlight — a few things that stood out for us here at Meadhouse:
First, the overview:
The least-said things in the test were politically correct neologisms — "chestfeeding" (bleechh), "Global South" (never heard of it), "Latinx," "A.A.P.I.," "BIPOC," and "Low-income" (for "third world"). The only old-time expression that was equally off limits was "spaz," which was always an insult — though John McWhorter, one of the quoted commentators, considered the possibility that some people may have thought it was a decent way to refer to a medical condition. My sense is that might have been true in England.
Speaking of John McWhorter, this caught our eye:
I don't know the histories of “A.A.P.I.” or “BIPOC” in detail, but none of these terms emerged from the folk, as it were. They are enlightened suggestions from the educated and the highly activist. It isn’t an accident that I learned of all of them on Columbia’s campus.
"The folk" — do we say that? I'm afraid I'd be shunned around here — the UW campus — if I talked about language emerging (or not emerging) "from the folk." But it's okay with me. Go ahead and contribute to making it okay, Professor McWhorter.
He goes on to observe that "African American" is a term most used by people who are not themselves in the category. He cites the long influence of Jesse Jackson, who made a point of announcing, back in the 1980s, that henceforth "African American" was the respectful and appropriate term. These days, the people most likely to use it are female Democrats.
Meanwhile:
McWhorter is denied his own preference! His "black" gets hypercorrected to "Black." But at least he can write "Black" (if not "black") and isn't forced all the way to "African American."
He's also critical of the effort to require "Latino" over "Hispanic":
I am struck... how in my overeducated world, “Latino” has all but taken the place of “Hispanic,” which I process as a relic of the 1980s and before, while in my heavily Latino neighborhood, “Hispanic” and “Spanish” are the preferred terms among Latinos themselves. This top-down approach to language is perhaps inevitable, as the people most committed to this kind of change tend to be more educated, given to thinking about groups and actions in the abstract – as opposed to those who may be too busy living an existence to be concerned about the labels for it. In any case, where we are headed is that a certain sliver of our population will control a rich jargon of prescribed terms, of little import to most people.
That's the last line of the article, which makes it seem as though McWhorter is ceding power to the "certain sliver" over "the folk." But I suspect that he prefers the language that percolates through the people — the language of the folk — and that the NYT cuts off the discussion where it does because it prefers the elite — the certain sliver — and wants to keep titillating those of us inside the sliver with a feeling that "the folk" are — in their folksy hearts — racist, sexist, xenophobic homophobes.
And then Meade sent me a screenshot of this...
... and said "I'm offended by calling it a 'panic.'"
Me, I question the causality. Let's assume the right did panic when it first heard that we needed to stop saying "pregnant woman" and "breastfeeding" and start saying "birthing parent" and "chestfeeding." Whether "the right" actually got scared or just disgusted and annoyed by this pressure toward inclusion, various righties (and others) spoke up and said it was ridiculous or otherwise bad to push people to use these weird new expressions and that it was fine for people to continue to use our normal, familiar speech or that it was important to give distinction and visibility to women. This response may have convinced a lot of people not to repress their natural speech patterns and not obediently to yield to the prescriptions of those who pose as their betters.
It's an Emperor's New Clothes situation. Everyone could see the emperor was naked. Everyone could see that "chestfeeding" and "birthing parent" were not necessary replacements for "pregnant woman" and "breastfeeding." But most people were disinclined to stand out and say so. It took the impetuous little boy to say out loud that the emperor was naked, and it took some "panicked" right-wingers to decry the prissy terms "chestfeeding" and "birthing parent."
This is a very useful and entertaining exploration by the New York Times. Let me just highlight — uplift and highlight — a few things that stood out for us here at Meadhouse:
First, the overview:
The least-said things in the test were politically correct neologisms — "chestfeeding" (bleechh), "Global South" (never heard of it), "Latinx," "A.A.P.I.," "BIPOC," and "Low-income" (for "third world"). The only old-time expression that was equally off limits was "spaz," which was always an insult — though John McWhorter, one of the quoted commentators, considered the possibility that some people may have thought it was a decent way to refer to a medical condition. My sense is that might have been true in England.
Speaking of John McWhorter, this caught our eye:
I don't know the histories of “A.A.P.I.” or “BIPOC” in detail, but none of these terms emerged from the folk, as it were. They are enlightened suggestions from the educated and the highly activist. It isn’t an accident that I learned of all of them on Columbia’s campus.
"The folk" — do we say that? I'm afraid I'd be shunned around here — the UW campus — if I talked about language emerging (or not emerging) "from the folk." But it's okay with me. Go ahead and contribute to making it okay, Professor McWhorter.
He goes on to observe that "African American" is a term most used by people who are not themselves in the category. He cites the long influence of Jesse Jackson, who made a point of announcing, back in the 1980s, that henceforth "African American" was the respectful and appropriate term. These days, the people most likely to use it are female Democrats.
Meanwhile:
McWhorter is denied his own preference! His "black" gets hypercorrected to "Black." But at least he can write "Black" (if not "black") and isn't forced all the way to "African American."
He's also critical of the effort to require "Latino" over "Hispanic":
I am struck... how in my overeducated world, “Latino” has all but taken the place of “Hispanic,” which I process as a relic of the 1980s and before, while in my heavily Latino neighborhood, “Hispanic” and “Spanish” are the preferred terms among Latinos themselves. This top-down approach to language is perhaps inevitable, as the people most committed to this kind of change tend to be more educated, given to thinking about groups and actions in the abstract – as opposed to those who may be too busy living an existence to be concerned about the labels for it. In any case, where we are headed is that a certain sliver of our population will control a rich jargon of prescribed terms, of little import to most people.
That's the last line of the article, which makes it seem as though McWhorter is ceding power to the "certain sliver" over "the folk." But I suspect that he prefers the language that percolates through the people — the language of the folk — and that the NYT cuts off the discussion where it does because it prefers the elite — the certain sliver — and wants to keep titillating those of us inside the sliver with a feeling that "the folk" are — in their folksy hearts — racist, sexist, xenophobic homophobes.
And then Meade sent me a screenshot of this...
... and said "I'm offended by calling it a 'panic.'"
Me, I question the causality. Let's assume the right did panic when it first heard that we needed to stop saying "pregnant woman" and "breastfeeding" and start saying "birthing parent" and "chestfeeding." Whether "the right" actually got scared or just disgusted and annoyed by this pressure toward inclusion, various righties (and others) spoke up and said it was ridiculous or otherwise bad to push people to use these weird new expressions and that it was fine for people to continue to use our normal, familiar speech or that it was important to give distinction and visibility to women. This response may have convinced a lot of people not to repress their natural speech patterns and not obediently to yield to the prescriptions of those who pose as their betters.
It's an Emperor's New Clothes situation. Everyone could see the emperor was naked. Everyone could see that "chestfeeding" and "birthing parent" were not necessary replacements for "pregnant woman" and "breastfeeding." But most people were disinclined to stand out and say so. It took the impetuous little boy to say out loud that the emperor was naked, and it took some "panicked" right-wingers to decry the prissy terms "chestfeeding" and "birthing parent."
Thus articles "There seems to be genuine confusion over what a well-meaning person can say without offending someone."
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