> My time is valuable. Through my dollars earned I contribute to positive social change wherever possible. What's your contribution besides berating me?
Dunno. But that antirez guy up there agrees with the original criticism, and I think I may have seen the name before, somewhere. But maybe my memory is faulty...
Since you're complaining about the time such discussions waste, I'm wondering what you see as the end-game here? What do you believe to me more likely: those complaining now to throw up their hands and never mention it again, or the resistance against change slowly eroding until the terms disappear?
Because it's kinda tautological to use the discussion itself as the main argument for your side of a discussion. If that's the #1 argument against the change, actually making the change would solve it with absolute certainty.
And if you accept that there's a problem with "white officers getting away with killing unarmed black civilian", you shouldn't discount the power of words and symbols. Stuff like this may seem insignificantly small, but those problems are ultimately rooted in culture, and culture is nothing but ideas, which are nothing but words.
> you shouldn't discount the power of words and symbols
Words are not static entities. Language evolves in unpredictable ways. Master/slave became jargon based on a truly despicable thing, unfortunately, but the original meaning is an irrelevant detail in our technical context.
One can attack the idea of "context", but I think it is not very effective, or even honest. It is a leap of logic to imply that a single expression used in very specific moments is somehow related to atrocities happening right now. The words (and symbols and culture and ideas) argument is a killer abstraction and anything can be said with it.
I am black and I live in an extremely racist society. The habit of discussing this kind of thing can have a negative impact on what really matters. Even empathetic people could become tired.
Dunno. But that antirez guy up there agrees with the original criticism, and I think I may have seen the name before, somewhere. But maybe my memory is faulty...
Since you're complaining about the time such discussions waste, I'm wondering what you see as the end-game here? What do you believe to me more likely: those complaining now to throw up their hands and never mention it again, or the resistance against change slowly eroding until the terms disappear?
Because it's kinda tautological to use the discussion itself as the main argument for your side of a discussion. If that's the #1 argument against the change, actually making the change would solve it with absolute certainty.
And if you accept that there's a problem with "white officers getting away with killing unarmed black civilian", you shouldn't discount the power of words and symbols. Stuff like this may seem insignificantly small, but those problems are ultimately rooted in culture, and culture is nothing but ideas, which are nothing but words.