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Suppose sentiment for the name Tyrel was better than for Adolf. Would that indicate anti-white bias? Suppose the name Osama has really poor sentiment. What fudge factor do you add there to correct for possible anti-Muslim bias? Suppose Little Richard and Elton John don't have equal sentiment. Is the lower one because Little Richard is black, or because Elton John is gay?
What we have been seeing lately is an effort to replace unmeasurable bias that is simply assumed to exist and to be unjust and replace it with real bias, encoded in our laws and practices, or in this case, in actual code.
A sibling comments asks you what you mean here. I'd like to know, too. This kind of sentiment is depressingly familiar -- it seems to me that a lot of Chinese people like to vacillate between "China is the best", "China is just doing what other countries are doing", and "China is a developing country" as the situation requires, seemingly without being aware they are doing it at all.
> China is now the dominant world player
This is true, but not in the way I think you would like it to be. If strength is measured only in concrete production or something, then yes, China is by far the strongest. But that's not where real strength comes from. It comes from good ideas. China is not just behind on good ideas, it's actually shackled. Good ideas are dangerous to the CCP, so they are actively suppressed. The natural result is the epidemic of IP stealing that China engages in. You can cheat on your homework and get good grades on tests for a while, but life is not like a test in school. You cannot cheat on the test that nature gives you. To succeed in the test of life, you need innovation and critical thinking skills, and the CCP will not allow there to be an environment in China conducive to the development of critical thinking skills. Nor will it allow the kind of environment where people listen to their own inner sense of right and wrong. People in China are not generally trying to be righteous, they're just trying to become one of the VIPs with back door access to the power. People in China don't trust each other, and rightfully so. Think about the massive secret costs this is imposing on the entire country.
The CCP is a bit like cancer, and a bit like a parasite. It will continue to drain the vitality from China as long as it is in power. Obviously, it is trying to shut the door forever on the possibility that it will ever not be in power. And it is stoking nationalistic notions of superiority as needed to get the support of those it is vampiring.
So it is deeply sad to me to see someone celebrating the spread of the CCP cancer as if it is a happy development. The rest of the world is watching in horror as you guys happily help build your own prison. China really is #1 at something now, leading the way as a technological/surveillance dystopia, serving as a warning to the rest of the world why we have to prevent what is happening in China from happening anywhere else.
If somebody better at Chinese can find anything, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Thanks in advance.
I understand the Guardian's reporter needs to report what people said, but for the love of god, could they please stop giving support to this absurd notion that "corruption" crackdowns in China have anything to do with corruption? They are almost always about power consolidation.
It has been happening already. It's as if we've been gradually smoking less and less, and then a movement comes along that tells us that in order to quit, we actually need to smoke more for the foreseeable future.
Whoever decides the categories has the power to decide whether your organization is compliant. For example, suppose by a miracle that your organization is "correctly diverse" with regard to some set of blessed ethnic groups, hereditary traits, disabilities, etc. Well, your organization is almost certainly not compliant with regard to the left-handed, those who can roll their tongues, those with connected earlobes, those with flat feet, etc. Maybe you have the "correct" number of black people, but do you have the correct number of gay black people? Do you have the correct number of gay black women? How do you feel about sexual orientation or autism being blessed categories, but not, say, albinism, hyperhidrosis, or Marfan syndrome?
As a practical matter, how do you suppose someone would show that they were, say, partly descended from Native Americans? Certificate from a genetics testing lab? Are we going to carry cards in our wallets?
That's not the future I want. Your body is not the important part of you. The important part of you is your mind. I won't help build a hyper-body-focused society.
In the future I envision, nobody cares about anybody's supposed ethnicity. Nobody keeps spreadsheets about it. Nobody specifically considers body attributes during college admissions, or hiring decisions, or really, ever, because it's just not important. Let's not support any efforts to make these things more important.
Assuming good faith here. Let me try again.
The idea is that saying the n-word while not being black sends a signal of not caring about the word, not giving it enough weight, not caring about the plight of black people. Well, I'm saying that's not true. That information is not in the signal.
Suppose a young white person is sitting in a cafe. They raise a phone to their ear and uses the n-word the way that has become normal, to mean man/person: "hey, what up my (n-word)?"
If I overheard that, I wouldn't think anything of it. They're greeting a friend. I just don't have any notions about how only people of certain ethnicities are allowed to use certain words.
If you did have such notions, you might be offended. But that's in the machinery of your own mind, not the signal. The signal was just "how are you, man/person?"
Suppose you (Thomas) see a black man sitting near the front of a bus. What signal is he sending to you? Not much, right? He's just sitting there. Now, suppose it's the 50s, and it's Alabama, and the onlooker is an older white man. What signal do you suppose that guy gets? He might get a signal that an uppity negro thinks he's the equal of a white man. So, where is the problem? In the sitting, or in the looking?
Now, where is the problem in the situation we're talking about? In the speaking of a word that means man/person, or in the hearing of it?
I imagine there are a lot of black people who just loathe the n-word, and never want to hear it from anyone. This is actually the perspective that makes the most sense to me. But they have to concede that the meaning of the word has changed. The vast majority of the time, it just means man/person. Sorry. I would have preferred we just forget the word, but that's not what happened. Now it means man/person, and our squabble is about whether people who never had anything whatsoever to do with the racial persecution of anyone will be firewalled from certain parts of our language because of their perceived ethnic affiliation.
I'm saying no. It's unfair, and it's not a wise way forward, and just unacceptable to me personally.
If the interpreter sees themselves as a member of a racial group, and thinks that their racial group has ownership over a word, they may get upset if they see an outsider using their word. I understand that. That is what's happening. But the mentality in which someone sees themselves as a member of some separate group because of their race is exactly what I am opposing.
You say our actions send signals. Well, is this guy just drinking water at a water fountain? Is he just sitting on a bus? Or is he sending a "signal" that he thinks he's as good as a white man by drinking from the "wrong" fountain or sitting in the "wrong" seat on the bus? The problem is not entirely within the so-called signal, a big part of it is within the mind of the interpreter.
I know how saying that word would be received by a lot of black people, and I would never do that, as I have a very strong commitment never to harm anyone, and just a lot of general sympathy, compassion, and love for black people. But I have to resist if anyone starts claiming that their race gives them special ownership over words. That is a step in the wrong direction.
It's as much up to me as anybody else. I won't be discounted because you think I don't have the right skin color to have a valid opinion.
> There is something resembling a consensus among black people
I doubt you have any reliable way of knowing whether your claim is true, but it wouldn't matter if it was. I simply don't respect your, or anyone else's, racist notions about what skin colors entitle the wearer to say certain words, any more than I would respect racist notions about who gets to use which drinking fountain.
I have no desire to say that word, but if I want to use it, I will, as is my right as a human, and if someone wants to persecute me because they think my skin color does not authorize me to that word, that is their own racist, neo tribalist, re-segregationist thing, and nothing I've done wrong.
We have done no such thing. Your statement is about as inaccurate and misleading as it could possibly be. The word you are talking about can be heard throughout TV shows, movies, and music. The vast majority of the time, it is not being used in the way you suggest. Your assertion that it is a "rule of our society" is as absurd as claiming the earth is flat.
Are millions of black people across the country stupid not to know not to say it?
If we're going to have this debate via videos, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRJy48JWiHk
I grew up in the south. It's been probably 30 years since I heard anyone use the dreaded word in the traditional derogatory and demeaning way. But, like every other American, I've heard it used thousands upon thousands of times in the new way, and I know exactly what it means: "man", or sometimes just "person". That's all it means. I wish that word had died long ago. But it's still here, for better or worse, and everyone knows it means man/person.
Did the people who supposedly took great offense at the use of this word take great offense at its usage by other people throughout daily life, including being used in probably thousands of programs on Netflix itself?