Re: Grammar

[John Haltiwanger <john.haltiwanger@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Marcin Borkowski
<mbork@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl> wrote:
> Dnia Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 01:06:27PM +0000, John Haltiwanger napisa&#322;(a):
>> On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Marcin Borkowski
>> <mbork@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > what an interesting discussion!
>> >
>> > My personal point of view is that the so-called "political correctness"
>> > is something I actively fight against, by means of NOT using "they" or
>> > "Afroamericans" or other such strange inventions.  These new words
>> > somehow remind me of Orwell's 1984...
>>
>> So what do you write instead? Negro?
>
> And what's wrong with "Negro"?  AFAIK, it means "black", so it just
> describes the reality.  This is what a word should do, right?  And btw,
> the term "Afroamerican" doesn't really make much sense to me: what would
> you call a Negro, born in France, and living in Germany, when you wanted
> to distinguish him from a white man?  (Please note that by "man", I mean
> "a human being of any sex";).)
>
> To be more serious: I accept that there might be a problem caused by the
> fact that I am not a native speaker of English.  I suspect that somehow
> the neutral term "Negro" started being used in a derogatory fashion, and
> that it might be unpleasant to black people to be called Negroes.  And
> that's why I usually say just "black people".

So what is your issue here then? You are already working by the rules
I proposed:

using the words that the group wishes to be called by (or at least not
using the words which they don't).

BTW, 'Negro' is definitely not a term to be used for referring to
black Americans. IIRC, it is a positive term in Brazil. The point is
to be aware of these things and to respect people's wishes regarding
them, rather than blithely pretending that any name you use should
automatically be fine simply because, well, YOU don't see the problem
with using the term Negro (for instance).

>> 'Political correctness' can be onerous, and often contradictory to my
>> anti-authoritarian nature, but in the end it is not "the Man" who
>> issues requests for language changes so much as the marginalized
>> groups that take issue with existing phrasing. Afroamericans, for
>> instance, was deprecated sometime around that year 1984.. It all boils
>> down to whether you care about what the people concerned are saying,
>> which is why I note the author's position when I encounter it. (Rather
>> than throwing their paper away, ala Khaled).
>
> Well, "onerous" might not be the best word.  "Scary" might be better.
>
> You see, I am quite convinced that trying to manipulate language "by
> hand" is a very bad idea.  Maybe this is partly because I live in a
> former Communist country (Poland); we have seen such things in the past.
> Another reason maybe that it seems to me that one of the first groups to
> talk about "political correctness" (maybe even coining the phrase, I
> don't know) were feminists, who did so much more harm to women in
> general than we usually imagine.

I understand your sensitivity vis a vis Regime Imposed language
tuning. You have got to be kidding me with that anti-feminist talk,
though. I'm not going to go there with you, especially after your
explanation below.

>> This is always a contentious issue when software/coder types are
>> involved, one of the serious reasons why female participation in IT
>> (in general) and FLoSS (in particular) are so low: many men in these
>> circles will not, or can not, give room to critical complaints. The
>> problem always originates in the person complaining---they need to be
>> less serious, no one around here cares so stfu, etc. This is a serious
>> issue, and this is probably one of the least contentious starting
>> points for encountering it. That theory would be thrown away because
>> it attempts to consciously address real gender inequalities is a
>> depressing thought.
>
> I am not sure that I understood your point, but I am quite convinced
> that the low percentage of women in mathematics or IT is caused
> primarily by the simple fact that an average female brain is not well
> fit for this particular purpose.  (Of course, we all know notable
> exceptions.  Also note that "better/worse fit for one particular
> purpose" is completely unrelated to "better/worse in general".)

I'd laugh at this if it wasn't the same shit that's been going around
for years in the math/IT circles. Socialization is the cause behind
this, not natural differences in brain structure. If the society has
decided to accept and repeat this "fact" over and over, and men will
generally act as if it is true (pushing out females who make the
attempt), then it will come to "appear" as true. But that doesn't make
it any less BS.

Put out some science for that one, dude.
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