Re raising awareness, there is no way to say "We're trying to stop slavery in the Middle East and shut down the human Black Markets" without offending someone.
Is there a reason can't you just call this a Slave Market ? I mean, wikipedia has a page entitled just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_market. If you wish to disambiguate from historical you could add 'modern', 'contemporary', 'underground', or 'secret' very easily.
As to the location, it might be the case that the middle east is where you were involved, but I rather suspect that a) not all the slaves sold remain in that area and b) this does not only happen in that area. Certainly I have read of modern slavery occurring here in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. I have certainly read of women from China, Nigeria and Eastern European countries for instance, being trafficked for prostitution in recent years and I'm pretty sure that this is not the whole story. You are doing great work[0] actively working against slavery, right? If your organisation were successful in the middle east, would it then simply close down?
[0] and thank you for that.
You really can't spend the 30 seconds needed to think about "hmm, maybe be a bit careful about the words I'm using here in case my message gets lost in criticism of my language"?
As others have said, finding a non-offensive synonym for "Black market" takes a single search, about 5 seconds. Is it really that time-critical? Where are you sending these messages that those 30 seconds are "life or death" yet they're spread widely enough to be potentially offensive?
"messing up" involves what, exactly? Because it seems to me that using a racist term is more likely to divert the attention from your message, not less.
If I had thought there was a situation where "every second counts" was actually true, it would be human trafficking. You seem to disagree.
> Because it seems to me that using a racist term is more likely to divert the attention from your message, not less.
"Black market" is definitely a "racist" term now? GP only gave it as a potential example, or at least that's how I read it. The point is that wording the message like that is not actually going to divert attention. Except for the few people trying to police speech at every turn—and who will try to harm him over it—even though the message itself did its job (a far more helpful job than the people trying to police speech would ever do, for that matter).
There is a difference in knowing the meaning of a word and knowing the myriad of ways a word can be perceived by your audience. One is very easy the other is a gargantuan task.
In other words, all words are given meaning by the listener, not the speaker. Your intentions when saying something are irrelevant (but are usually taken into consideration because no communication is perfect).
You, accidentally, hit the nail on the head. I'm pretty sure that the intended audience often gets the message just fine.
The mobs trying to police everyone else's speech are never the intended audience; they just butt in to try to control how everyone else talks regardless of how much they actually care about the topic, group or subject matter.
In this particular example, I highly doubt that anyone in the middle of working against slave trade cares about whether anyone used the words "black market". It's only later, if that ever were discussed on twitter or reddit, etc, that one would start finding people taking issue with that choice of words.
If the "mobs" are receiving a message not intended for them, the onus lies on the communicator to resolve this.
I also think it's really funny that you're assuming you know what people involved in fighting the slave trade want. Are you currently doing that?
That's just terrific: I joke around with my friends in private chat, there's a leak, a twitter mob gets ahold of the data and doesn't like my joke. They then try to get me at my job, ultimately getting me fired.
All of that was my fault... As said by you.
> Are you currently doing that?
... I don't know how to answer this. The very root comment you're currently arguing against was made by such a person. We're inside that comment thread...
Did you make the original statement? I'm confused. You said that people shouldn't be an armchair analyst in discussions. Then you proceeded to do it. I then called you out on it.
It matters if you choose your audience. I agree, if you make a statement in public, say on twitter, then you've chosen the audience. The world.
Choose your words wisely, listen, react, respond.
It says nothing about the intent of the listener. A listener can intentionally take a statement in good faith or bad faith. If your statement is taken in bad faith and weaponized against you it's hard to respond over the chorus of the angry mob waiting to skewer the new victim. People enjoy being outraged. Usually, once your side of the story comes out they have moved onto their next cause and could care less what you really meant.
So, as others have said, it's better to just say nothing.
You can't control other people's sensibilities. If you find that your actions don't return responses that you want, you should consider adjusting your actions.
What's the saying? Doing the same thing expecting different results is the definition of crazy?