Where does it end?

My friend's brother got fired for saying something at work, except HR would not tell him what it was he said. Instead, they gave him a pamphlet filled with "problematic" phrases and suggested alternatives; it was many pages and may or may not have even contained his particular unsanctioned phrase. Who knows.

Included in the pamphlet were phrases such as (with minimal paraphrasing) "that falls on deaf ears", which offends the deaf community, "this is a blind spot", which offends blind people, "we're coming up short on that", which offends short people, "that's a tall order", which offends tall people, and more.

I'm really hard pressed to accept that on the off chance someone gets upset about their height because someone uses distance or length to compare two concepts in a work meeting, that it should be anyone's problem other than that person.

I feel similarly about words like "dark", or "whitelist/blacklist", which have documented nonracial etymology, etc. At some point we draw the line, but we draw it to reject absurdity, not to embrace it.

I'd much prefer we spend all this time and organizational effort actually tackling racial inequality, dismantling racial infrastructure, implementing reparations, etc. instead of finding ever more ways to pat ourselves on the back for minimal effort.