‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by xenihn on Friday November 27, 2020 @11:19PM (#25235238)

Conspiracy theory time: That's not a quirk with our language, there's a deliberate lack of distinction between the country and the people. During the Cold War, you could say "Soviet" instead of "Russian" to clearly demarcate between the nation and the nationality. We don't have a modern equivalent for the PRC, and that's because someone wants it that way. It'd be trivial for a new term to be pushed through media, but it's not being done, even though we clearly need one.

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by dragonwriter on Saturday November 28, 2020 @12:28AM (#25235519)

> During the Cold War, you could say "Soviet" instead of "Russian" to clearly demarcate between the nation and the nationality

That's not what that distinguished. It distinguished whether you were talking about things pertaining to the USSR and those specifically having to do with Russia; the same rough difference as between “American” and “Californian” (or, perhaps a better analogy would be “British” and “English”.)

> We don't have a modern equivalent for the PRC

Mostly because China didn't conquer a bunch of neighbors and create a name for the resulting state distinct from “China”, which remains as the name for the absolutely dominant component.

But, again, while the Soviet/Russian distinction did exist, it did not serve the purpose you describe, and we didn't have any linguistic distinction that did.

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by ljlolel on Saturday November 28, 2020 @03:09AM (#25236122)

You've got a bit to learn about Tibet, HK, Xinjiang ( a muslim region), and soon Taiwan

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by dragonwriter on Saturday November 28, 2020 @03:17AM (#25236155)

> You've got a bit to learn about Tibet, HK, Xinjiang ( a muslim region), and soon Taiwan

Or, you've got to read to the end of the sentence:

> Mostly because China didn't conquer a bunch of neighbors and create a name for the resulting state distinct from “China”

That last part matters.

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by xenihn on Saturday November 28, 2020 @06:08AM (#25236916)

You know China doesn't refer to themselves as China, right? China is Portugese in origin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_China

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by wan23 on Saturday November 28, 2020 @10:32AM (#25238127)

China definitely refers to themselves as China when speaking English just like the United States refers to itself as 美利坚合众国 or just 美国 when speaking Chinese.

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by evan_ on Friday November 27, 2020 @11:55PM (#25235387)

> you could say "Soviet" instead of "Russian" to clearly demarcate between the nation and the nationality.

The demonym for the people who lived in the Soviet Union was “Soviet.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by xenihn on Saturday November 28, 2020 @12:01AM (#25235417)

Sure, but if you had neighbors who immigrated to the US from Moscow in the late 80s, would you refer to them as "Soviet" or "Russian"?

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Re:‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase by Mediterraneo10 on Saturday November 28, 2020 @05:26AM (#25236756)

Jews, who formed such a large part of the emigration from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s to the USA, often bristle at being called "Russian". Yes, their language is now Russian after Eastern Europe's Jews have shifted away from Yiddish, but they still don't consider themselves Russians. For example, my own mother-in-law is a member of this emigre demographic and insists on being referred to as "a Jew from the Soviet Union".

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