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Comment by Sunspark | Hacker News Reader

In my life, I have been deaf, hearing impaired, hard of hearing, hearing challenged. I suppose at some point I will be acoustically disadvantaged.

You know what? At the end of the day, I'm still deaf. It's true. I have limitations that others take for granted. If I can't see someone speaking or if I'm out of batteries, we aren't going to be communicating well. That's pretty deaf. I won't be offended, it's just reality.

Changing language does not, and never did, give me preferential treatment. People are always always going to discriminate and pretty words won't stop them.

Character and intent is what matters.

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> Character and intent is what matters.

This. I recently ran up against a filter on Reddit where I used a phrase that I was completely unaware of. My account was flagged for hate speech. The comment had no ill-intent.

The problem with language is that we want individual words to have inherent meaning but as people adopt phrases to identify a movement, those meanings get carried along for the ride. eg: until recently, I would have just curiously nodded along to the phrase "It's ok to be _____" but learned that it's actually a dark dog whistle thanks to Scott Adams.

I suspect the unease you perceive with people using different terms for blindness are unease with their own attachments to those words. Fighting to keep using words with established meaning is laudable IMO. I still use "literally" as not "figuratively" despite the media-dulled connotation.

> I suspect the unease you perceive with people using different terms for blindness are unease with their own attachments to those words.

Nah. I think people are just terrified of coming across as a jerk for not knowing the latest non-offensive term for things. Black? African American? Oh black is ok again? Will I get in trouble with HR/Twitter for calling you blind? And if so, what word do I use instead? Do I ask? Is that awkward? Am I making it awkward??

It feels like a minefield, where the location of the mines change every few months and stepping on a mine could cost you big time.

The language police keep finding new things to get offended by, too. The Stanford “harmful language list” includes things like “user”, “tribe”, “client” and “addict”. Pleasing these people is exhausting.

[1] https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguag...

"Terrified" is a bit much, I think most people just want to get along and are happy to use whatever term is acceptable to those it describes. Our understanding of what those terms are might shift over time, and it may get muddied by well-intentioned people trying a bit hard to avoid offence (or by people clumsily trying to police it) but it's generally progressing fine. And I think as long as you're compassionate, willing to listen and learn it's hard to really fuck up to the point that you're "cancelled" (to the extent that actually exists) unless you're deliberately looking to cause trouble.

I agree it’s usually fine in practice, but I know plenty of people who still find the whole thing quite anxiety inducing.

Having your language policed isn’t an enjoyable experience. Doubly so when it feels counterproductive - like avoiding the word “blind” with blind people who might quite like the term.

I'd say more generally "Being embarrassed isn't an enjoyable experience" - it's embarrassing to find out you're using an offensive word or to feel like you're out of touch, but what's important is what you do with those feelings, how you react.

If someone politely reminds you that some word is inflammatory and not well-liked among a given community it describes, then you can either take it politely or blow up about how the world is going crazy and complain about stuff being "woke". That said if someone goes thermonuclear on you because you used "deaf" instead of "hearing-impaired", yeah that person is clearly a dick, doesn't deserve your time of day (note: just re-purposing the example from earlier, obviously this is not something anyone in this thread has done)

It'd be good to be able to convey that to someone who does feel like there is a "language police" or that it is anxiety-inducing to engage with younger people. I should note though that when I've encountered this - among people being racist or homophobic - people tend to dig in, become stubborn and rant about "woke culture" or genders so clearly the problem cuts both ways (and I hope you can see I'm clearly not the type to fly off the handle at someone for something innocuous).

Is the word “client” offensive? Stanford apparently thinks so. Is “blind” offensive to blind people? Is “mother” offensive? Apparently some people take offence at this stuff. Should I respect them for it? Should I feel embarrassed for being “out of touch” because I don’t side with the censors here?

Being told not to use these terms is language policing. It’s especially odious when it comes from people taking offence on behalf of others. My experience having my language policed isn’t as simple as feeling embarrassed. I would angry at people who demand I stop calling my mother my mother. So would she.

And you don’t merely “feel like” something is anxiety inducing. That’s not how anxiety works. People can and will feel anxiety for all sorts of reasons that might seem ridiculous to you or I. I find awkward scenes in movies anxiety inducing. I don’t just think they’re anxiety inducing - I feel actual anxiety while watching.

I’m happy for you that you never feel anxious about the idea of getting yelled at for your word choices. I wish everyone had that privilege. But we don’t live in that world. Lots of people - rightly or wrongly - feel terrorised by the idea of using the wrong words and getting yelled at for it. And I think that sucks for them! The experience you have - of people getting defensive about this stuff - where do you think that reaction comes from? I think it’s a social immune reaction to being told what to say. People hate that.

> Is the word “client” offensive? Stanford apparently thinks so

Has someone singled you out and told you that you're being offensive for using the word "client"? I suspect not, I think you've overreacted to this a bit. The document you linked has this in its third paragraph:

> The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language.

So they're stating ahead of time they're not trying to get rid of this and create a form of "newspeak" or whatever, they're outlining some words some people use that have a variety of different implications and suggesting some alternatives to them in some contexts. The word "client" is under their "Imprecise" section, they suggest "user" instead. It is worth noting that I have personally encountered its ambiguity - a “client” in my current role can variously mean:

- a user or a person

- one of the accounts of that user/person

- a hospital or healthcare provider

- the application calling an API (“client” in OpenID Connect)

- a package/lib we published to call an API

We can either live with the idea that “client” is always going to need clarification, or start using the terms Person, Account, Organization, Client and API Client (respectively).

> Is “blind” offensive to blind people? Is “mother” offensive?

Have you been confronted for saying "blind" or "mother"? This sounds very hypothetical. If you want to have my feelings on “blind” check out what I said about “deaf” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35007350 - two of the words interpreted as euphemisms were actually broader than strictly "deaf", and one sounded comical.

> Should I feel embarrassed for being “out of touch” because I don’t side with the censors here?

You've mixed things up a bit here, and I hope it was by accident so I'll clarify. This "embarrassed" was me contextualising what people feel in the situation where, for example, Andy uses an antiquated and offensive term to refer to an ethnic minority without realising it, then Bob corrects them. In your terms Bob has "policed" Andy, and it's not nice to feel that. I'm saying that what's actually happening here is Andy is embarrassed or ashamed, which is a thing that can happen easily (they could've called Andy "Albert" or farted or something else) and that's why they feel bad. What happens next is on Andy - they could do what they do in all other embarrassing situations and say "ah sorry I didn't realise" or they could fly off the handle and dig their heels in. There's obviously a limit to how forgiving people are, I don't think Andy would get off lightly for using the n-word, for example.

So I can't think why you should feel embarrassed about the existence of this document, but I also can't think why you'd get so upset about it if it isn't affecting how you talk or causing problems in your life.

> I would angry at people who demand I stop calling my mother my mother

Who is demanding that? Is someone in your life telling you to do this? If they are - tell them to fuck off, that's none of their business. If not ... why are you inventing a situation where someone tells you not to call your mother "mother"?

With the situations you've brought up, it sounds like you're more annoyed about the idea of being told what to say, than anyone actually doing it to you. That sounds anxiety-inducing but I don't know what I can suggest that would help. For what it's worth if you're a famous Gen Z streamer then yeah you're going to be held to some pretty high standards language-wise, and people will outright be looking to cause drama (and tbh they often court it and play it up themselves but that's another matter). The rest of us aren't held to that standard, and normally people don't enter a conversation looking to destroy their conversation partner, they usually go in with best intentions and if you meet them at that level and act respectfully there's not a great deal that can go wrong. When that's not the case (in a small amount of situations) and you're dealing with an oddball, you can excuse yourself or you can nod along and then later text your partner or best friend about the weirdo you spoke to :) It's very unlikely they would be in a position to cause you any trouble in either case.

> Have you been confronted for saying "blind" or "mother"? This sounds very hypothetical.

I brought up blind people and mothers to reference other parts of this thread. Seems like the thread has gotten a lot longer since I read it, and I suppose its context can't be assumed now. Blind people[1], Mothers:

> For example, it seems like we can't say "mother" anymore in medical settings. For my partner's entire pregnancy, our providers only referred to "birthing people" because of some tiny number of trans men that exist and also want to give birth. I support trans people living however they want, but my mother was a mother, goddammit, not a "birthing person", and I don't appreciate anyone implying that this word and identity are somehow offensive. At work, a "women in engineering" group got renamed to something bland like "gender minorities in tech".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35000800

Imagine what its like as an employee at a hospital with that policy. You might personally disagree with it, but what are you going to do? Have a friendly chat with HR about it? (And risk your career in the process?) Or get in line, but feel torn up inside about it?

> for example, Andy uses an antiquated and offensive term to refer to an ethnic minority without realising it, then Bob corrects them. In your terms Bob has "policed" Andy

Thats not what comes to mind when I think about andy having his words policed. I think about things like, people getting viciously attacked on social media for not being woke enough (like what has apparently happened to knitters on instagram[2], and to the young adult fiction community). Or people being told at your workplace that all mention of the word "mother" is banned, that the word is only spoken by antisocial people and the implication hanging that anyone who uses that term will be fired.

Its this "my way or banishment" attitude that makes people feel afraid and angry. Yes; this also happens in 1-on-1 conversations. But as you say, its rarer there. Its so much worse in larger groups like communities and workplaces.

When Stanford publishes a list of "harmful language", or Google adds an AI-powered "inclusive language detector" to google docs[3], they're not having a one-on-one conversation - with all the subtly that comes along with that. They're a powerful institution enforcing their politics by telling their employees what words and ideas will put your job at risk.

If you disagree with the opinions of people on instagram, or twitter, or your employer, there's no subtly. And usually no room for differences of opinion. People either get in line, or they risk getting ostracized from their community and fired from their job. Google has made their stance on this quite clear. Employees either toe the company line re: politics, or they get fired. The same is happening in the academy, and plenty of other places. The intention might be good, but there's a lot of diversity of opinion that is being suppressed as a result.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35006381

[2] https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...

[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7dk8m/googles-ai-powered-in...

Waaaait a minute you’re making some enormous leaps here. You’ve read a comment where someone says “it seems like we can't say "mother" anymore…” and have then projected it into this scenario where the word “mother” is banned as hospital policy, and where nurses live in fear of not speaking it lest they be fired.

You’ve described your anxiety about using the wrong language when talking to people … and you’re referring to some third-hand accounts of random online interactions on social media. I think you might need to step back from the computer for a bit and use less social media, because this anxiety does seem a bit self-inflicted. You’re describing reading about a handful of things that happened to other people, have assumed they are bigger and more universal than they are and as a result it’s caused you to be anxious about speaking to people in real life.

I think if you take my original advice - speak to some people in good faith, don’t set out to trigger or “own” them - you’ll find that your assumptions about how much of a minefield these interactions can be are completely unfounded.

In particular if you take the time to listen to some of the perspectives of people who are the subject of some of these changes in language (for example, trans people) you’ll find that they’re just regular people like you or I, who just want to live with a bit of dignity and get treated with a normal amount of respect. They often have to deal with a lot of very explicit hatred, so they tend to be quite forgiving if you mistakenly flub a pronoun, or if you accidentally use their pre-transition name out of habit since you knew them for years prior. You still need to try, it might not come easily at first but it’ll be fine if you enter into a conversation with the best intentions.

How do you think a policy like that is implemented at a hospital? I can tell you what happens - HR pulls everyone into a compulsory meeting (or series of meetings). No trans people are present. The old language (“mother”) is named as trans phobic and new language (“birth parent”) is presented as company policy. The implication - explicit or implicit - is that anyone using the old language is a transphobe and will be sacked. Are there any questions? Do you want to get in line or risk being fired for transphobia? There are no questions.

At universities they’re getting people to write “diversity and inclusion statements”. To get a job you have to write an essay talking about how hiring you will further the goals of diversity - at least how the woke mob has defined it. There is no polite conversation. Disagreeing with the policy is not a winning move if you value your career.

Online it’s obviously a bloodbath. A Finnish traditional knitting magazine was torn apart by social media for being “nazis”. Apparently they didn’t have any black people interested in traditional Finnish knit ware. The magazine immediately disbanded.

Do you think polite conversations would help in any of these situations? No. The politics of all this are not up for debate. Look at your own stance in this thread - you assume anyone who isn’t on board with the new language is transphobic. This is what I’m afraid of!

I’ve spoken to my trans friends about this and had lovely conversations. They aren’t a club who speaks with one mind. One of my trans friends hates the woke movement. She feels singled out and awkward whenever people go around and ask pronouns. She wishes people assumed her gender. In her words: “I wish my gender could go back to being the least interesting thing about me”. She hates that non-trans people mis represent her views. Another trans friend goes by they/it and loves the new world the woke movement is creating.

But it’s honestly not my trans friends I’m afraid of. It’s corporate HR. It’s university admissions. It’s crazy people on Twitter.

And I’m not alone in being afraid of all this. Read the other comments in this thread. I’ve got dozens of upvotes in the comment when I mentioned being terrified. The fear is real. Half of US college students say they are afraid to sometimes speak their mind in class[1]. Fighting political correctness is the new rallying cry for the right, because feeling oppressed by this stuff is so common.

I’m not afraid because I’m transphobic. (I’m not, and I adore my trans friends). I’m afraid because some people with your politics go around insisting anyone with a nuanced view is a monster and needs to be attacked and “educated” until they get in line. It’s awful.

[1] https://www.intelligent.com/college-students-fear-expressing...

There's honestly too much to go into here. I feel like you're just fucking around with me if I'm honest, if that's true then congratulations I've spent about ~30 mins typing out and reading comments :-/

> some people with your politics go around insisting anyone with a nuanced view is a monster

People with these politics aren't calling me, with my nuanced views, a monster. If you're really afraid, maybe your views just aren't that nuanced?

Look I commented because I thought you seemed like a nervous wreck, completely afraid to engage with my generation, and I figured I could reassure you a bit. If you really have a couple of trans friends, well maybe I misjudged, maybe you're not that insulated and in need of assistance after all!

Thanks for the conversation. I’m not a nervous wreck, thanks in large part to not being on Twitter. Sorry if I came across that way.

And yeah, I’ve had a lot of conversations about this stuff. Thanks for trying to help. But It’s usually impossible to logic someone out of a feeling.

To close, I think there’s more than enough reasons for feeling afraid of the woke mob if you look for them. Whether or not that’s a good idea? Hard to say.

>"Terrified" is a bit much, I think most people just want to get along and are happy to use whatever term is acceptable to those it describes.

I'm supposing some people might be more anxious about it than others, and in different contexts. If you see a lot of stuff in the news about people saying things you might have said and getting hounded for it that might make you super anxious - you don't know the etiquette anymore!!

I mean people get anxious about getting robbed when they read a robbery happened, why shouldn't they get anxious about having their life destroyed for something they said if they read someone got their life destroyed in that way.

Yeah that's something where you'd hope people could step back and realise that the news is often sensationalised and seeks out salacious stories of people being "cancelled" because they get people riled up and engaged. I still think that if you're open-minded, conscientious and not looking for conflict you can navigate a conversation with even the most extremely over-sensitive of people without having any issues.

I think you can too, when you’re in person and in a calm situation. And when there’s trust between you. And when you have some skills at conflict resolution.

I’m comparatively good at this stuff, and even I find it very tiring even in best case scenarios. I dated someone who was very woke about a decade ago. She and I eventually decided to just never talk about politics. She would get really worked up over small disagreements that avoiding the subject entirely was the only strategy we found to keep the peace. And that was despite agreeing on about 95% of our political opinions.

As someone not from US working in a US company I'm terrified. Literally.

Terrified might be a bit strong but fearful or afraid isn't.

I am definitely afraid of stepping on a verbal landmine in a work context. This is my meal ticket, and what's keeping my family housed. There is a very real fear or stepping on toes, even if accidental, and that translates to behaviors.

I'm also afraid of sticking my neck out in heated situations. I've had to push back managers, PMs, and other coworkers in ways that will often make them angry. I've seen the race card get played against other managers, so I have to CYA on any vaguely negative interaction.

It sounds like you've got a pretty stressful workplace overall to be honest. I don't exactly want to be having debates about the big social issues of today with my colleagues, but on the other hand I don't think anyone should feel like they are walking on eggshells.

When was “Black” not okay. “Blacks” sure.

"It's ok to be _____" but learned that it's actually a dark dog whistle thanks to Scott Adams.

The fact that someone can be labeled something, because they use a phrase which is currently, out of the blue, a big deal? And you can only know if you obsessively read all sorts of popculture websites, or fluff news stories daily?

That's very sad.

Sure. But you should do your research on the phrase and the polling company that pretends it is a straightforward question before going on a racist screed to get away from a racial group.

I would not take claims of something being a "dog whistle" at face value. The entire concept has largely been weaponized and bastardized, appropriately enough as a means of effecting language policing. A perfect example is over the past several years how the media spent quite a lot of energy dedicated to convincing people that "America first" was some sort of a secret dog whistle. [1] The "logic", so far as it can be called that, runs that e.g. the KKK also liked this concept and slogan. So if you like this concept and slogan you're therefore somehow secretly dog whistling for the KKK. It's just a mind-bogglingly stupid idea. If the head of the KKK really liked Honey Nut Cheerios then I suppose that also becomes a secret dog whistle?

It's simply a way to attack things without actually considering what's being said. I think if you polled Americans, white/black/brown/blue/green and orange, almost all would agree that the government should put the interests of the country and the people above the interests of other countries and the people of other countries. But in a world where political power emerges from divisions in society, that sort of unity is dangerous. So rather than attack the idea, which would be likely to backfire, they instead chose to attack our language. And it was successful. People who still believe anything the media says became cautious about advocating for things like 'America first', because they didn't want to be seen as e.g. endorsing the KKK.

By contrast those who are actively skeptical of the media, mostly disregarded what they did and continued to happily advocate for 'America first.' Now the members from the other group not only were no longer comfortable saying 'America first', but even began to see those as advocating for it as secret racists, or even KKK advocates. Divisions widened, policy destroyed (or at least made into a partisan affair), language policed, mission succeeded.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/21/end-of-the-ame...

I couldn't agree more. The "dog whistle" concept is somewhat brilliant as an iron-clad logic trap though. Any time anyone is saying something you don't want to engage with, you can ignore everything they're saying and claim they're really saying something else. There is absolutely nothing the person can do to change your mind, because you can make their words mean whatever you want!

The exact second you stop engaging with what people are saying, and start deciding what they actually mean, is the exact second you stop all learning and all growth.

These terms "dog whistle", "normalizing", "shifting the overton window" are all just means of being able to ignore the argument itself in favor of ad hominem.

I don't disagree, but to play devil's advocate, maybe the Trump campaign could have used a slogan that wasn't used by the KKK or Nazi sympathizers? If they REALLY believed in the idea behind the slogan, and not the historical connotations of that exact set of two words, they could have done better. But, they didn't.

To put a finer point on it, what if they had chosen "America over everything"? Would you still be criticizing those who detect certain...implications in the phrase?

edit: I am generally not sympathetic to language policing. But I'm not so sure this is language policing.

I think in the beginning both sides played into it. Trump probably knew there'd be a group of people who would say exactly that, and probably made the bet that a larger group of people would roll their eyes at that point.

Certainly the provocative language (what could probably even semi-fairly be called dog whistling) or maybe better described as "trolling" lost out to the language-policing though.

I find it highly unlikely that Scott Adams is a "dark dog whistle" kinda guy.

At best the most I'd believe would be that "some people who Scott Adams pissed off now like to say that when he says X he actually means Y".

Scott Adams' descent into reactionaryism [1] has not been subtle or quiet. If you were surprised that it eventually exploded in a public way, that just tells me you haven't heard much of anything about him in the past decade.

Also, "it's okay to be white" is not a hidden rake of a dogwhistle to stumble on. If that were a serious position, it immediately leads to the question of "who is saying otherwise". And then you learn about replacement theory, "a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory" [2], and realize what Scott Adams was really saying without saying.

Lots of language policing is dumb. Hell, language policing would drive me away from even using "dumb". Scott Adams did not stumble into this controversy through zealous language policing, he charged into it with eyes open, and knew exactly what he was saying.

[1] I think the word is actually reactionism, but chrome's spellcheck prefers reactionaryism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement

> Also, "it's okay to be white" is not a hidden rake of a dogwhistle to stumble on. If that were a serious position, it immediately leads to the question of "who is saying otherwise".

I found a few examples if you are interested:

> conservatives are objecting after the discovery of a speech by Berkeley Professor Zeus Leonardo in which he discussed the need “to abolish whiteness.” […] “to abolish whiteness is to abolish white people”

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/03/02/abolish-white-people-b...

> Abolishing whiteness has never been more urgent

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/11/17/abolishing-whi...

> Coca-Cola, Facing Backlash, Says 'Be Less White' Learning Plan Was About Workplace Inclusion

https://www.newsweek.com/coca-cola-facing-backlash-says-less...

I'll start with addressing the second one, because it sets up the first. To start, the author of that article is himself white. He seems to be saying (and pointing to others who have said) that "whiteness" as a cultural identity leads to white supremacy. For example, "white pride" is white supremacist in a way that "Irish pride" isn't. The article isn't saying anything should happen to people considered white, just that lumping us all into a single "white" identity is a problem.

Meanwhile, the reaction to that first link seems to prove that professor's point. In context, it seems clear to me that he's saying is that people interpret arguments like those presented in the second link as attacks on those people rather than just calling out that singular identity as an issue. He's not saying "the solution to white supremacy is to get rid of white people", he's saying "whiteness as a singular identity is a problem, and pointing out that it's a problem is seen as an attack on white people themselves", which is clearly true based on the reaction to his speech.

Newsweek is trash, but I'll put that aside for the moment. The training seems to be presenting the same arguments as the first two, but badly. A workplace training is really the wrong context to try and make that kind of nuanced point, and that seems to have been an especially clumsy attempt at it.

> The article isn't saying anything should happen to people considered white, just that lumping us all into a single "white" identity is a problem.

And yet, it seems to be that many Americans – including Americans like this university professor – are actually huge on doing exactly that.

Growing up in 1980s/1990s Australia, there was very little talk about "white" or "who is white". At school, this kid was Irish, this one Italian, another Croatian, Lebanese, Chinese, Indian, Filipino, etc – who was "white" and who wasn't? Who knew and who cared–"white" (in a racial sense) was not a frequently used word in our vocabulary. Even the school curriculum avoided the term – 1788 was presented as the start of the "European settlement" or "British settlement" of Australia, I don't remember any teacher ever saying "white" in that context.

But, in the last 10–15 years or so, there's been this big influx of talk about "white" and "whiteness" – which mostly seems to be coming from the US, and (my impression is) predominantly from that part of America which this university professor represents.

Australia wasn't always like that – we did once have a "white Australia policy". But, as we dismantled it (a gradual process between 1940 and 1970), I think we collectively decided that the best way to be less racist was to stop lumping people into coarse racial categories such as "white". Hence, post-1970 Australian officialdom was very happy to put people in ethnicity/nationality categories – British, New Zealander, Aboriginal, Maori, German, Jewish, Irish, Italian, Lebanese, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, Egyptian, Somalian, Sudanese, South African, etc, etc, etc – but studiously avoided the use of terms such as "white". Most Americans seem to have never got that memo, and the creeping Americanisation of Australia seems to be injecting that kind of "white" talk back into the conversation.

I'm really not qualified to say much on the subject of race in any other countries, but I think coming at that professor from an external perspective misses context. Pushing the audience to recognize that the system is classifying them as "white" is true for a US audience. The fact that it seems like he's pushing whiteness isn't because he's wrong, it's because he's not talking to you.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's especially surprising that the US's cultural export also includes our deeply unhealthy relationship to race.

> Unfortunately, I don't think it's especially surprising that the US's cultural export also includes our deeply unhealthy relationship to race.

I still think that professor LeVine is busy pushing that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race".

An example of how he does it, is by promoting Noel Ignatiev's very dubious "How the Irish Became White" theory. Both Ignatiev, and LeVine, ignore that most anti-Irish sentiment was actually anti-Catholic – so long as the majority of Irish immigrants to the US were Protestants, anti-Irish sentiments were almost unheard of, and they only began when Catholics came to outnumber Protestants among immigrants from Ireland to the US. At which point Protestant Irish Americans rebranded themselves as "Scots-Irish" to make clear that they weren't Catholics, hence escaping that prejudice and discrimination. Ignatiev is taking something which was fundamentally about religion, and misrepresenting it as something about race – which is one of the ways in which people like Ignatiev and LeVine keep on pushing that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race". In fact, I'd even say that their refusal to acknowledge the reality of anti-Catholicism, and their denial of it in an attempt to transform it into a form of "racism", is a sign of their own anti-Catholic prejudice.

For a scholarly criticism of Ignatiev's whole "Irish Became White" theory, see Arnesen, E. (2001). Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination. International Labor and Working-Class History, 60, 3-32. doi:10.1017/S0147547901004380 https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/6817279/mod_resou...

White ethnic groups that are predominantly Catholic being distinguished from "real" whites and being targets of White supremacists is a real historical thing (and not just with the Irish, also true of Italians, and its no small factor historically in why predominantly-white-in-traditional-racial-terms Hispanics have been largely constructed as non-White for quite some time in the US, which has turned out to be more durable than the others.)

Race is a mutable social construct that largely exists to rationalize other prejudices, and ethnic and religious prejudices are high on that list; treating race as if it were a real and fundamental thing orthogonal to other concerns is buying into race essentialism. Which is not to say Ignatiev is right, but rather to pretend that the anti-Catholicism he ignores contradicts a connection to racism and the construction of race rather than explains it is...also wrong.

> White ethnic groups that are predominantly Catholic being distinguished from "real" whites and being targets of White supremacists is a real historical thing

Anti-Catholicism is a huge part of the history of the UK, Ireland and the British Empire. As such, it has no particular connection with white supremacy – were the Penal Laws "white supremacist"? Was the Ulster Protestant League "white supremacist"? Is the Orange Order "white supremacist"?

Outside of the US, anti-Catholicism had no significant association with ideas of "race" or skin colour. Indeed, the whole "Irish weren't white" claim sounds so bizarre from a British or Irish or Australian perspective. All three countries have unpleasant histories of discrimination against Catholics, but nobody ever tried to justify it because "they weren't white". They were discriminated against because of their "popery", because they were viewed as disloyal to the state, bearers of foreign allegiance, practitioners of outdated superstition, etc.

And, much of US anti-Catholicism was directly imported from the UK. Which is why trying to view it all through a racial lens – which is a peculiarly American approach – seems so confused. It seems to come from just looking at things from a narrow US-centric perspective which ignores everything that happens in the rest of the world, and even ignores the British historical origins of much that happened in the US as well.

> Anti-Catholicism is a huge part of the history of the UK, Ireland and the British Empire. As such, it has no particular connection with white supremacy

It does in fact have a particular connection with American white supremacy and, historically, with construction of race in America. You seem to be making the irrational jump from “X originated separately from Y” to “X has no particular connection with Y”, but that’s neither logically warranted nor as at all reliable as a practical guide when looking at elements of culture.

> It does in fact have a particular connection with American white supremacy and, historically, with construction of race in America. You seem to be making the irrational jump from “X originated separately from Y” to “X has no particular connection with Y”, but that’s neither logically warranted nor as at all reliable as a practical guide when looking at elements of culture.

I wouldn't say that race and anti-Catholicism have zero connection in US history – but I do think Ignatiev fundamentally misrepresents what that connection is. People can be prejudiced against both groups A and B simultaneously, without making them the same sort of group or the same kind of prejudice; people can simultaneously have religionist and racist prejudices, without making religionism a form of racism.

And there are some deep differences between the two. Catholics who converted to Protestantism (a significant minority did) found that the vast majority of Protestant prejudice and discrimination against them disappeared, almost overnight – now, they shouldn't have to do that, and of course for most it was not a live option socially or psychologically, but for all it was at least physically possible – the impossibility was in deciding to do it, not in being unable to do it if they'd decided to. By contrast, the vast majority of African-Americans couldn't "convert to being white" – a minority of individuals of mixed ancestry could manage to "pass", but for the vast majority "convert to white" was asking the physically impossible. Ignatiev et al cite occasional historical usage of "racialised" language against Catholics, but they overstate its frequency and significance, and ignore the fact that even most people who deployed this "racialised" language would forget it the moment a Catholic expressed interest in conversion – there was nothing most African-Americans could do to get them to forget it.

The fact is, prejudiced people tend to have lots of different prejudices–that doesn't make all their prejudices the same, or make all of their numerous prejudices instances of just one of them. I mean, if someone is homophobic, is that racism? Sure, most racists may well be homophobic, but gay people can be racist too, [0] and I don't think the Ugandan politicians who have been clamouring to reintroduce capital punishment for homosexuality are motivated by racism either. [1]

But Ignatiev decided to take this one issue, race – which no one denies plays a major role in US history, and arguably a much bigger role than in the history of the rest of the English-speaking world – and turn it into the be-all-and-end-all of American history, in terms of which everything else has to be interpreted, the square hole into which everything else must be squeezed, regardless of its shape. And, this is I think the biggest particular connection between anti-Catholicism and race in US history – through pseudo-history, Ignatiev has made history, and caused very many Americans today to believe such a connection exists, no matter how ahistorical that belief may be – and believing it is true makes it true, not in the past, but in the present. I really doubt the US is going to be able to move past its "deeply unhealthy relationship to race" until people abandon views such as those of Ignatiev and LeVine, who are part of the problem not part of the solution.

[0] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/15/ugandan-mps-pr...

> I wouldn't say that race and anti-Catholicism have zero connection in US history – but I do think Ignatiev fundamentally misrepresents what that connection is.

Sure, I tried to make clear that while I think it goes to far to separate anti-Catholicism from racism (And the evolving construction of race) in America, I'm not defending Ignatiev's particular characterization in so doing.

> The fact is, prejudiced people tend to have lots of different prejudices–that doesn't make all their prejudices the same, or make all of their numerous prejudices instances of just one of them. I mean, if someone is homophobic, is that racism?

I dunno, I think generally multiple bigotries shared by the same person are society constructing different labels for the persons "not like me-ism", so in that sense, yes they are all the same thing having different labels assigned to different manifestations of a unified whole. But, on the other hand, when you are talking about social impacts, it makes sense to look at them differently because the different aspects can have different dynamics as societal forces, whether or not they individually are part of a unified system.

But the relation between anti-Catholicism and racism isn't that they are the same social force, but that they are social forces where each colors the manifestation of the other. This is, AFAIK, not as true of, say, homophobia and racism in the same way (they interact intersectionally, but that's a different thing).

> I dunno, I think generally multiple bigotries shared by the same person are society constructing different labels for the persons "not like me-ism", so in that sense, yes they are all the same thing having different labels assigned to different manifestations of a unified whole

I think that ignores that societies treat some "not like me" groups much better than others, and even have their reasons for doing so (whether right or wrong or a bit of both). British hostility to Catholicism wasn't just "not like me-ism" – they didn't show anywhere near as much "not like me-ism" towards Huguenot refugees, or the Dutch or the Germans – on the contrary, they imported monarchs from the Netherlands (William of Orange) and Germany (George I). Protestant England treated foreign Protestants better than English Catholics, because the religious similarity was seen as more important that the linguistic/cultural/ethnic differences. It is hard for people today – in a society where most people (even religious people) don't take religion that seriously – to understand how seriously people took religious disputes back then. Also, domestic Catholics were seen as a political threat to the reigning regime (many of them were Jacobites, or at least had sympathies in that direction), most foreign Protestants were not.

> But the relation between anti-Catholicism and racism isn't that they are the same social force, but that they are social forces where each colors the manifestation of the other.

Contemporary American culture foregrounds issues of race and backgrounds issues of religion – hence, if one immigrant group (e.g. Germans or Norwegians) was accepted into American society more easily than another (e.g. Irish Catholics) – people are quick to accept the proposed explanation that was because one group was "more white", the alternative explanation of "more Protestant" won't even occur to many people. I think that says more about 21st century US culture than 19th century US history. But isn't that cultural tendency to focus on "racial" explanations for things to the exclusion of non-"racial" explanations, part of that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race" which another commenter mentioned upthread?

If you listen to the video of what Scott Adams says, he's quite explicit about it. It doesn't seem like a plausible misspeak. He didn't merely say "It's okay to be white" in an ambiguous context (plausibly not related to the 4chan propaganda campaign.) He said that because some poll claims whatever% of black people disagree with the phrase, that black people are a hate group, that white people should stay away from them, and that he would no longer advocate for black interests. If you don't trust my paraphrasing, fair enough, but you can watch the video yourself and I think you'll find that my paraphrasing is fairly accurate.

Suppose for the sake of argument the poll is legitimate, and suppose he wasn't aware that the phrase is a 4chan propaganda slogan.. I think he still grievously erred when he decided to judge all black people by the opinions of only a portion of black people, as though black were a political affiliation that people can enter or leave at will. But it's not a political affiliation, it's an ethnic group. You legitimately can't claim that an entire ethnic group is a "hate group" because whatever% of them believe hateful things, even if that statistic is true. It's not as though the remaining% can disassociate themselves from the ethnic group, it isn't a voluntary association. I think his failure to distinguish an ethnic classification (involuntary association) from an ideological classification (voluntary association) is where he really went off the rails with no plausible deniability.

I interpret this whole affair as: he's rich, wants to retire, and decided now is as good a time as any to finally speak his mind. He lost his inhibitions.

Previously, Scot Adams "identified as a black person because he wanted to be on the winning team".

And then he decided that 'its OK to be white' was perfectly fine and re-identified as white, and that black people hate white people, and called them a hate group that should be stayed as far away as possible.

The only good out of that whole situation is that Scott Adams is a trashy racist, and anybody who likes him is also a trashy racist.

The real insidious racists are the ones who know how to use diplomacy, and affect organizations with "culture fit" (aka: not white enough), and other types of hard-to-identify racism.

Reddit is a cesspool.

If I had time and money to waste, I'd do reddit a spiteful favor and write a WokeBot that calls out every instance of non-equity language. Maybe it even auto-submits hate speech reports for significant transgressions.

> eg: until recently, I would have just curiously nodded along to the phrase "It's ok to be _____" but learned that it's actually a dark dog whistle thanks to Scott Adams.

It was a troll campaign created on 4chan to trick leftists into reflexively saying "it's not okay to be ____". Anything darker ascribed to it came later, from people who didn't understand the purpose.

Aren't "hard of hearing" and "hearing impaired" intended to cover a range of deafness or hearing-related problems though?

"Hearing challenged" definitely sounds a bit daft though for sure.

Yeah that's what I thought, like "blind" and "visually impaired" are not the same thing to me, the second refers to many different visual issues

Even the most progressive of tiktok circles refer to it as "The deaf community" so I have no idea why you think it was renamed.

Context matters here I think. Historically "the deaf community" was used to refer to people who used sign language to communicate and did not include people who didn't. It is possible to be deaf, and not part of the deaf community in this context if one is not a signer.

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