Today "racism" is used as a synonym for "bigotry". Would you agree it was bigotry? Or do you only have a problem with people using words wrong, and not bigotry itself?
Whynot use the correct word for it, which is prejudice? Racism is prejudice against a race. You can be prejudiced to any group of people, doesnt mean that you are biggoted.
> Whynot use the correct word for it, which is prejudice?
Again you seem more concerned with grammar than, y'know, condemning racism, prejudice, or bigotry. They're all equally bad and closely related concepts. "A rose by another name" and so on.
Your own comment has 3 typos and several grammatical errors ("prejudiced to" is wrong, for example). Irony.
Finally, modern usages of "racism" encapsulate all of these meanings. Languages change over time.
> You can be prejudiced to any group of people, doesnt mean that you are biggoted
They are not being pedantic here, they are establishing a meaningful difference in words to help distinguish a shared phenomena. I think the original comment was unnecessary and certainly bigoted, but I would need more to say racism. The "grammar" guy clarified twice the semantic difference they personally observed (note they did not labor on syntax like you wish to suggest).
All that said, I make this comment as I believe the other commenter's worry is on display im this comment here...
> Again you seem more concerned with grammar than, y'know, condemning racism, prejudice, or bigotry. They're all equally bad and closely related concepts
These are _not_ all equally bad. Prejudice is foundational to understanding, there is no escape from this. In this understanding, we should treat particular postures of prejudice more serious than collapsing any "bad prejudice" under the same label.
> I have these arguments with people I love who are right in spirit and still dig in the moment the word “racism” lands, because to them it names a thing they’re sure they aren’t
Like I said, it's because of how emotionally charged the word is. People think if they label unfairly discriminatory or prejudiced behavior as something other than racism, it's somehow not as bad as racist behavior.
> Everyone in this sub-thread could easily agree it was out of line (and no one directly says otherwise).
I don't think everyone agreed it was out of line. There were only 2 comments calling zoobab's original comment racism. One of them spawned this thread about which words to use, rather than agreement with the condemnation.
> I think the original comment was unnecessary and certainly bigoted, but I would need more to say racism
Do you think racism is worse than bigotry? Why? I understand that the first word has a more emotional charge in our times. But as far as "bad things to do" go they're equal in gravity. Racism is just a subset of bigotry.
> These are _not_ all equally bad
Why not?
> Prejudice is foundational to understanding
That's one definition of the word - "judging without knowing the facts".
But there's another definition - "an irrational hostile attitude, fear, or hatred towards a particular group, race, or religion" - which was the one we are operating with in this thread.
My mistake. English is not my first language. In my native language, the word racism is used for discrimination or prejudice against anything foreign (nation, race, language, ...).
But either way, I find the reduction of the argument to the semantics of the word racism to be deflection. Wouldn't you agree the original comment was made in poor taste? Why did it need to include a reference to Indian and imply that all things Indian made are cheap or low quality?
We applied this kind of mindset to the Japanese in the 60s and 70s, and look where that got us. I witness it happening again in the 00s and 10s applied to Korean electronics (LG and Samsung mostly) while we were content with minor improvements over the status quo and innovating far too slowly.
Yes, this incident has an almost farcical amount of stupid attached to it, but the fact that it happened to an Indian company is in my eyes only coincidental. There are plenty of Silicon Valley startups and tech companies that are equally cavalier about aspects of security and apply the mentality of "we'll fix it in post" to anything but shipping features.
Dutch. The word is "racisme", and the entry for it in our dictionary[0] states:
> Racism is a form of discrimination in which a person is judged on the basis of his or her ethnic origin, skin color, nationality or religion. It is a form of prejudice and inequality that prevents people from gaining equal opportunities.
While I'm happy to admit that perhaps my use of the word in English is incorrect and its meaning there is more narrow, in Dutch it covers nationality or religion as well. Islamophobia is considered racist ("racistisch") in Dutch, for example.
"There are plenty of Silicon Valley startups and tech companies that are equally cavalier about aspects of security and apply the mentality of "we'll fix it in post" to anything but shipping features."
Today "racism" is used as a synonym for "bigotry". Would you agree it was bigotry? Or do you only have a problem with people using words wrong, and not bigotry itself?
Whynot use the correct word for it, which is prejudice? Racism is prejudice against a race. You can be prejudiced to any group of people, doesnt mean that you are biggoted.
> Whynot use the correct word for it, which is prejudice?
Again you seem more concerned with grammar than, y'know, condemning racism, prejudice, or bigotry. They're all equally bad and closely related concepts. "A rose by another name" and so on.
Your own comment has 3 typos and several grammatical errors ("prejudiced to" is wrong, for example). Irony.
Finally, modern usages of "racism" encapsulate all of these meanings. Languages change over time.
> You can be prejudiced to any group of people, doesnt mean that you are biggoted
Yes, that's literally what it means.
They are not being pedantic here, they are establishing a meaningful difference in words to help distinguish a shared phenomena. I think the original comment was unnecessary and certainly bigoted, but I would need more to say racism. The "grammar" guy clarified twice the semantic difference they personally observed (note they did not labor on syntax like you wish to suggest).
All that said, I make this comment as I believe the other commenter's worry is on display im this comment here...
> Again you seem more concerned with grammar than, y'know, condemning racism, prejudice, or bigotry. They're all equally bad and closely related concepts
These are _not_ all equally bad. Prejudice is foundational to understanding, there is no escape from this. In this understanding, we should treat particular postures of prejudice more serious than collapsing any "bad prejudice" under the same label.
I didn't flag your reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50198992 and I thought you made some good points.
> I have these arguments with people I love who are right in spirit and still dig in the moment the word “racism” lands, because to them it names a thing they’re sure they aren’t
Like I said, it's because of how emotionally charged the word is. People think if they label unfairly discriminatory or prejudiced behavior as something other than racism, it's somehow not as bad as racist behavior.
They are wrong.
I spent some time crafting that response. Unfortunate for me. Thank you for the follow up, I do agree with this.
Forgot one more thing.
> Everyone in this sub-thread could easily agree it was out of line (and no one directly says otherwise).
I don't think everyone agreed it was out of line. There were only 2 comments calling zoobab's original comment racism. One of them spawned this thread about which words to use, rather than agreement with the condemnation.
The other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50196949 that called it racist still looks gray and downvoted to me.
That's why I fight about stuff like this. It's all too easy to brush it under the "not racism, totally cool" carpet otherwise.
> I think the original comment was unnecessary and certainly bigoted, but I would need more to say racism
Do you think racism is worse than bigotry? Why? I understand that the first word has a more emotional charge in our times. But as far as "bad things to do" go they're equal in gravity. Racism is just a subset of bigotry.
> These are _not_ all equally bad
Why not?
> Prejudice is foundational to understanding
That's one definition of the word - "judging without knowing the facts".
But there's another definition - "an irrational hostile attitude, fear, or hatred towards a particular group, race, or religion" - which was the one we are operating with in this thread.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prejudice#English
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[flagged]
You have little and big endians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness
I had a bunch of openwrt routers based on the ADM5120 SoC, some of them were of different endianness, totally wth:
https://linux-mips.org/wiki/Adm5120
My mistake. English is not my first language. In my native language, the word racism is used for discrimination or prejudice against anything foreign (nation, race, language, ...).
But either way, I find the reduction of the argument to the semantics of the word racism to be deflection. Wouldn't you agree the original comment was made in poor taste? Why did it need to include a reference to Indian and imply that all things Indian made are cheap or low quality?
We applied this kind of mindset to the Japanese in the 60s and 70s, and look where that got us. I witness it happening again in the 00s and 10s applied to Korean electronics (LG and Samsung mostly) while we were content with minor improvements over the status quo and innovating far too slowly.
Yes, this incident has an almost farcical amount of stupid attached to it, but the fact that it happened to an Indian company is in my eyes only coincidental. There are plenty of Silicon Valley startups and tech companies that are equally cavalier about aspects of security and apply the mentality of "we'll fix it in post" to anything but shipping features.
>In my native language, the word racism is used for discrimination or prejudice against anything foreign (nation, race, language, ...).
Curious which language is that, and if "racism" is an accurate translation to English. What you describe sounds more like xenophobia.
Dutch. The word is "racisme", and the entry for it in our dictionary[0] states:
> Racism is a form of discrimination in which a person is judged on the basis of his or her ethnic origin, skin color, nationality or religion. It is a form of prejudice and inequality that prevents people from gaining equal opportunities.
While I'm happy to admit that perhaps my use of the word in English is incorrect and its meaning there is more narrow, in Dutch it covers nationality or religion as well. Islamophobia is considered racist ("racistisch") in Dutch, for example.
[0]: https://www.nationaalwoordenboek.nl/woord/racisme.html
"There are plenty of Silicon Valley startups and tech companies that are equally cavalier about aspects of security and apply the mentality of "we'll fix it in post" to anything but shipping features."
Most companies handle security very badly.