This is something.
Therefore, we must do this.
or as a black friend of mine is fond of saying about such signaling acts, “the powers that be will go to great lengths to be seen to be doing something while maintaining the status quo”
Visibility = Number of people impacted * level of impact
Getting a high level of impact is hard. A company word list stacks the other side of the equation. That visibility gives people a feeling of impact and something to point out, to convince themselves they're doing good in the world, while at the same time they're funding the politician that is gerrymandering to reduce the voting impact of black people, for example.
So I guess you just have to hope problems like inequality resolve themselves. Fingers crossed eh!
In my experience, the "Don't help poor people" and "Don't be racist when supporting people" are not the same group.
It does not sound crazy to me.
My point is that there is already a "forbidden-word" list that everyone can easily agree with - which include things such as racial/discriminatory slurs. Then why is it such a stretch to understand that some words actually do hurt people? (I mean I know why - it involves conscious mental work, and human brain is optimised for shortcuts.)
One might be dissatisfied with some words in "the list", but what I see here is the rejection of the very idea that such lists have value. People who are affected by those words should ultimately be the deciders on the usage of those words, not people who have privilege.
While it may feel like it's "only something", it's still better than what was before - namely, nothing.
Tarball? “abusive relationship”? “war room”?
This is way beyond the obvious racial discrimination and micro agressions.
What are my kids going to deal with when they get into Uni?
I don't have any opinion on whether it made it meaningful to add race there, that way
yes, agreed
The NY Times put a moratorium on anti-Asian aggression by Black Americans during the early days of COVID.
Yet they made an exception for a White on Asian, but all that did was mask the actual problem in society.
Growing up as an immigrant, the racism in non-White American circles is also very real but never spoken of.
Immigrants are typically a minority, so if they were discriminating or being aggressive towards the majority then it'd be considered "punching up".
A better analogy would be the smaller kid finding yet another, even smaller kid to beat down.
Then avoiding any mention of the smaller bully, because they were being bullied by someone larger. Nothing positive or nuanced about this position.