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Wow, okay, that's not the response I expected to come back to. I'm trying to understand how you interpreted my comment that way. To be clear, there were no intentional dog-whistles in my post. I thought I was saying something strongly positive, about a phenomenon which I've observed and have great admiration for. However, your response and the thread that followed, reveals some things I clearly didn't consider. There is surely a lot of anti-semitism out there, and that my comment was mistaken for it, I think shows how pervasive it must be. And it's important, as has been said, to call it out wherever it appears. And I guess that means looking for even tiny hints of double meanings. Which, logically, includes meanings that someone may not be cognizant of when speaking with one meaning in mind. I honestly thought I was being "cute" with the deli thing. I'm astonished and saddened to see a well-intentioned comment identified as just the opposite. I didn't mean to play into any negative stereotypes about money -- I didn't say anything about being obsessed with money, and if I got near it at all, I was talking about being recognized for _doing good things_ (with money), and how this cultural pattern does that. I think that's pretty clearly positive! (The whole point of the article, after all, was that more people with money should be committed to doing good things with it. Money's a pretty unavoidable aspect here.) But clearly my comment exists in a world where a lot of terrible things also exist, and I guess I can see how it could be mistaken for a vague hint towards one of those terrible things. Especially on the internet, where tone and nuance are notoriously tricky. So I'm honestly looking for input. Is there a better way to say what I was trying to say? Regardless, I'm sorry that you saw something negative in what I said. I'm even more sorry that anti-semitism is so insidious that you had reason to look for negative interpretations in the first place. That sucks. |