Stanford University: List of harmful words to eliminate from use
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(We've merged this thread thither)
My favorite diversity term as it fails to see the irony of trying to prevent colonialism by inserting an English letter and pronunciation onto another group's language. That is, it is pronounced Latin-Ex and not Latin-Equis whereas latino and latina are actually Spanish words used without issue in Latin America.
You can’t remove gender from Latino languages… the entire language would need to be created from scratch.
> Latinx was invented by white people to alleviate their own guilt.
As a descriptivist, I dont see the word going away, so I might as well figure out a way I want to say it.
It’s inherently not kind to say “I don’t think you’re smart” but do we really want to eliminate being able to say that? Are we all just going to be 100% nice to each other all the time and only say kind things about others.
I don’t think so. People do bad and stupid shit all the time. We should be able to express that.
An overused phrase but this is quite literally 1984.
Well, most of the "context" is really bad or straight up wrong. "Balls to the wall" probably references a governor on a motor. A cakewalk being a black tradition shouldn't make it any more controversial than Jazz. "Rule of thumb" almost certainly didn't refer to the wife-beating myth. Same with "Hip Hip Hooray" being a... Nazi rallying cry? Really?
"Gangbusters - Unnecessarily invokes the notion of police action against "gangs" in a positive light, which may have racial undertones." Uhhhh.. Hmmm. Okay.
"Although the term has its origins in Greek literature, the subsequent negative connotations with the word "spade" means that the phrase should be used with caution or not at all." Uhhhh.... what?
And my personal favorite ironic entry: "Instead of TONE DEAF, consider using UNENLIGHTENED". As if anyone here who actually cared about the origin of words would think that "unenlightened" wouldn't be more offensive on several levels.
And I do not know what the end goal of lists like this are. Does this history of a word count, or just how it's used? Is keeping a magic list of bad words actually going to increase inclusion? If anything, it seems like outgroups would be the most likely ones to not know the secret list of no-no words.
> marshall forces, gather together
> This phrase suggests an impending attack by the "savages" and should be avoided.
I wonder if I would get a pass for using it being czech and pointing out it was actually invented by Hussites.
But I like the idea of never ever using "standup meeting" again