You might take a lesson from that. 60 seconds spent on Cause A are not necessarily 60 seconds that would otherwise have been spent on Cause B. If Cause A werenât around, they might have just been spent noodling on the internet.
People get involved in the things that appeal to them, or that theyâre passionate about, or that match their particular interests and skill sets. Eventually things get done.
A big part of the problem is that by simply focusing on education you are ignoring the very real effect of institutionalized discrimination. For example, experiments have repeatedly shown that resumes which suggest the applicant is a minority receive substantially less interest than resumes that appear to belong to a white person. So instead of âsimplyâ having to increase minority educational achievements to that of whites (and good luck doing that when public school funding is tied to local property taxes), minorities actually have to surpass whites in order to access the same employment opportunities, unless you actually try to address endemic institutional biases.
There is virtually no opportunity cost to being âpolitically correctâ (i.e., actually caring abut the feelings of people in other social groups), nor is there any resource cost. I mean, if you were politically correct, would it prevent you from helping your friend work on her textbook? âSorry, I canât help you, Iâm too busy being politically correct and/or not watching Cleveland play baseball.â
In fact, being âpolitically correctâ should be endorsed precisely because it is so costless to be PC.
Pretty sure we have better things to be fixing than a name on a baseball teamâŚ
Is there an echo in here?
Hi, welcome to the thread! Weâd all appreciate it if youâd read it before trying to start an argument we already had three days ago.
This post was brought to you by snark.
Great joke, but I feel obliged to let you know exactly how deep the reference goes:
That is true. But to address that, you have to get the real performance of the target subjects on par with ones correlating to less underfunded areas.
âSimplyâ. I did not say it is that simple. The property-tax tie-in is a real problem to address.
But thatâs something that renaming a sports team will certainly not help a notch.
There is a resource cost. It is annoying, and it is turning off the â88% of culturally tone deafâ as somebody labeled it earlier. So you end up with a small group that is knitted tighter together because of their shared âwe are more PC than youâ superiority feelings, and a bigger group that is tired of that circus and will be less likely to offer a helping hand to even the more important causes.
Edit: And they wonât tell you why because youâd then get all loud and judgmental.
Clearly, Latin is the source of this offensive term. Will no one rid us of this troublesome language? Whatâs that you say? Itâs already dead? Well, alright then.
Thanks for the infoâŚhaving no Irish/English/Scottish/Welsh heritage, I had never learned about that earlier ghetto, which is probably the real source of the phrase âbeyond the paleâ in English.
Being PC doesnât have to address it, doesnât pretend to address it, doesnât prevent anyone from addressing it or divert resources from addressing it, but it does help eliminate a part of the problem that even tax funding wonât address: institutional discrimination and bias.
Thatâs possible, but in practice it seems that anti-PC people (like yourself) instead tend to emphasize substantive solutions that could be pursued âinsteadâ (even though, as many have said in this thread, being PC doesnât actually interfere with any other substantive solutions), effectively galvanizing the anti-PC crown into supporting (or claiming to support) more direct action.
Or just silently going screw-you and opting out of the fight.
Admittedly a likely scenario, though I honestly have difficulty believing they would be on board with any substantive measures to begin with. If you believe that Redskins is an inoffensiveâor even complimentaryâname, or that catcalling is a compliment, then itâs unlikely that youâre going to be behind the ârealâ fight against racism or misogyny/sexism⌠unless you think the ârealâ fight is something like condemning lynchings or slavery, or agreeing that letting women vote wasnât a bad idea.
What if it also includes judging (and hiring and paying) people purely by merit? That a $x value of work should be paid $x and not $x*0.8 based on gender? That is quite compatible with considering Redskins an inoffensive name. You are making it offensive by insisting that it is offensive. Without this insistence, it is just a descriptive word.
Youâre saying that PC efforts create the racism/sexism theyâre trying to eliminate, and that non-biased anti-PC people have effectively been subconsciously turned into discriminators even while they decry the hollowness of PC efforts? That people who believe âRedskinsâ is simply a descriptive word (like ânegroâ or âcolored,â I guess) have secretly internalized that the word is offensive? That people made aware of the pay gap (but who think it isnât real but just another bunch of PC bullshit) are more likely to pay women less because of their awareness that PC people claim women are paid less?
Thatâs a bit of a stretch to me.But if youâre talking about the effect that awareness has on the victims of institutional discrimination, then youâre essentially describing the stereotype threat, wherein those who are aware of negative social perception actually perform worse than they should (on academic tests, at least), likely because theyâre trying too hard and feel too much to counter the stereotype instead of simply focusing on the task at hand.
Iâm pretty sure you werenât talking about the effect on victims, though, not least because victims are already aware of the discriminatory effect of non-PC actions and words.
No, you are completely misunderstanding my words.
I am saying you are contributing to victimization of people. Without your push for âlanguage purityâ, they may not consider the descriptive words as So Bad.
The real problem are not the words but the underlying perceptions. If you change the words, people wanting to call the other people in a bad way will adjust and use your prescribed words, and then over the years shift their meaning (assisted with the loud noises of the PC Brigades who take a lot of their powers from the minioutrages they gladly propagate) and youâll be back where you started, just now with different words. Efforts wasted, nobody helped, only thing achieved is some temporary feel-good âchangeâ.
Then why are you pushing for making them more aware of negative perceptions, and insist on bringing the negative contexts even where there can be none? Shouldnât the people instead be biased towards considering certain words neutral instead of bad? Arenât you doing more harm than good, as good (and especially feel-good) intentions often do?
People who want to deliberately insult people will always find a way to do so. Whether itâs with one ancient epithet or a recent epithet, theyâll find a way to do so. Being politically correct is about curbing inadvertent and less intentional offences. 80% of the US may think the word âRedskinsâ is fine, especially since they say it only offends maybe 40% (donât know the real number off the top of my head) of Native Americans. Does the anti-PC approach of saying this word is fine help the 40% of natives who will continue to be offended? Or does taking the PC approach and making the word socially taboo help the 40% who are offended? Sure, the word âRedskinsâ may then be co-opted by virulent racists, but itâs not like they donât have words and other ways they can express their racism with right now. So there is no real increase in intentionally racist acts, but a real decrease in inadvertent or gratuitous racism.
Because the stereotype threat already exists even in contexts people think is purely PC. Stereotypes like girls are bad at STEM are seen as fun, acceptable, and even accurate by lots of anti-PC people, yet they contribute to lower test scores by women on STEM-oriented tests. Telling people that this is a good, neutral and acceptable way of thinking or describing girls isnât going to help the girls perform better: itâs just going to make it easier for people to think these stereotypes are innocent and consequence free.
Offended people will always find a way to get offended. For some it is the same kind of a kick as offending for some others. And you can construct pretty much anything as offensive to somebody, thus turning daily life into a minefield of worries and preemptive self-censorship.
By most people not fretting over the language minutiae, both the offending and offended subgroups are marginalized in effect and wonât get any extra attention by acting either way.
The I-want-to-be-offended people will keep being offended and they will find something else, driving the agenda if allowed and pushing the boundaries further. There is only a small fraction of them, but they tend to be LOUD.
Not construing everything possible as racist is a more effective (and less annoying to the 80%) approach for fighting inadvertent racism. If it is not perceived that way and freaked out on, it is not consequential. Requires much fewer people to act/convince and you are already 80% successful. Admittedly, it is less fun than rallying troops around the Outrage Of The Week.
When in doubt, choose to not be offended. It is easier for you and for everybody else. By insisting that a word is offensive you are making it so even if it wasnât.
âŚand these are inaccurate. And can be countered by subtle actions from early enough age. By fighting it at the level of mere words youâre just repeating and strengthening it. Work on the underlying factors, and let the words-based stuff fizzle out over a decade or three; time flies so fast it will be like tomorrow. Fast solutions attempting to change the surface of the culture wonât work.
And youâre pulling together different concepts (a fitting descriptive name vs an inaccurate group property description), in a rather ineffectual attempt to get me into defensive.
Iâd vote for the âAbsurdly Ignorant Racist Dickheadsâ⌠Can you imagine the logo for that!
