> "It's okay to be white" campaign.
Are you saying this is reasonable?
EDIT: Here come the downvotes. You can't prove I meant X... oh the irony.
Are you saying this is reasonable?
EDIT: Here come the downvotes. You can't prove I meant X... oh the irony.
It is truly a subversive phrase because it takes control of the argument from a place that requires, IMO, a lot of basics to be explained and/or challenged... which most people don't want to sit through. It's like a self-generating mine field of arguments.
It depends on the context of the comment.
This phasing in particular was literally created by 4chan people, for the purpose of demonstrating some sort of anti SJW agenda.
> This means people who know both terms are at constant risk of arguments of the form "You're weak-manning me!" "No, you're motte-and-baileying me!".
Have you ever considered that if you need to do a lot of explaining, and not even your own parents follow your logic, but the other person can persuasively summarize their argument... you might just be wrong?
A question for people downvoting:
Do you think I’m wrong or do you just not like what I’m saying?
It seems easy to correct me about the Harvard admissions point, if I’m just factually mistaken.
Por qué no los dos?
You don't see that half, because the left didn't take that side. There was no winning either way.
I have a browser extension [1] that lets me set custom tags on HN users. I'm not unconflicted about using it, since I have some ideological hangups that tell me to let people's words speak for themselves and to not let someone's history muddy the waters of a discussion in the present. That being said, HN isn't anonymous and it's a comparatively small community and I decided I might as well try keeping track (to some extent) of who's saying what here because it's practicable and there are other places I can experience death-of-the-author just fine. Besides, it reminds me that jacquesm sorted two metric tons of lego using legos and machine learning that one time, so now that always makes me smile when I see him comment.
So here I am, looking at your comment and trying to figure out what it tells me about you as a commenter - what I would want to remember about you if I saw you again. It needs to be fairly terse, to fit.
The first idea that arrives is "It's not reasonable to be white." I dismiss this immediately, because it's the most cynical and least-founded take on your comment (though darkly funny to me).
The second idea is "The 'It's ok to be white' campaign is not reasonable." I turn this over in my mind a few times and even start typing it out. But while I'm typing, I re-read your edit and pause. Then I realize - I'm doing exactly what that blogpost described. "What did 0xff00ffee mean here?"
What if all you meant to do is ask is the literal question "Are you saying that the 'It's ok to be white' campaign is reasonable?" And it's hard for me to even come up with a way of phrasing this in such a way that it sufficiently emphasises the literal, un-euphemistic, un-implicating character that I'm trying describe.
Then I pause again and realize that I've fallen down a semantic rabbithole and there's a snowball's chance in hell that you meant your comment in the third way. And by this time I've read your next comment [2] and am aware that you're aware of the ambiguous, scissor statement nature of your original comment and the amount of context that must be conveyed in order to disambiguate it. This humanises you. Instead of a snarky internet signaller, you become a real person, with parents whose views you care about and who's already expended effort trying to convey the that large context to people without setting off the self-generating minefield that you know exists. The snappy comment wasn't because you haven't stopped caring about changing people's minds; you're just tired of arguing with apparently superficial people who aren't prepared to take context into account (and you were responding to someone who may be a particularly strong example of such).
So I guess you're "a real human bean".
0: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication
Precisely!
I didn't want to assume what the parent was asking, so I asked for more information.
With a highly-context-sensitive phrase like this it is best to ask them to explain. If it is asked in sincerity a conversation can evolve. If it is asked with an obvious attempt to deliver the subtext, it is quite clear in about 3-4 sentences.
I appreciate your documented thought process. I notice you diligently approach the phrase prima-facie and observe the semantics, but then don't move beyond that. You were super close there with "what did 0xff00ffee mean?", then moved on.
Beyond lexing and yaccing some tokens, there is one very important question, often referred to by historians as part of analysis via the "Period View":
"What is happening culturally (socially and politically) at that time and geography when the phrase was uttered?"
Much like how historical record needs to be digested in context, which is where many of the logical dissections of ideological slogans have a colossal, debilitating blind spot.
Not to say semantic analysis is wrong or irrelevant, it is just half of the process. A necessary half, but only half.
Middle-class white people have increasingly witnessed a media and a left-wing political coalition that can vilify them with impunity for gain, be that entertainment value or the easy political cohesion that hate can generate. So, I'd argue it's important to make room for and accept the very tepid and nonthreatening "It's okay to be white." Because if we don't, what follows that will be less palatable.
"Angry black woman" was a trope looooooooooong before Karen hit your screen. If you only care about meanness when it's targeted at white people, then this is not a meme problem; this is a you problem.