Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by automatoney 873 days ago
I'm personally increasingly less interested in language-focused critiques when it comes to systemic issues. The article makes interesting points, but I think the effort it's trying to make is kind of on a euphemism treadmill. The article even says it - the issue is not with the terminology itself, but with the valuation of certain skillsets over certain other ones under our current economic system. It's also a bit pedantic - in this context it doesn't really make sense to use the dictionary to cite the "hierarchy" of what a word means. The word is being used in a specific context, and so it makes more sense to talk about it there.

I'd think I'd be more sympathetic if there were an alternative advocated for that wasn't just "don't refer to this concept". The concept itself isn't problematic - non "computery" people think about computers differently, and it is useful to discuss non-computer-expert users.

Even just thinking about other terminology - we use BIPOC for "non-white" because umbrella terms are useful. It's not that we shouldn't have a term, it's that maybe there's a better one.

1 comments

BIPOC is a term that is confusing as hell.

Who is Black and not a Person of Color?

And what do these people have in common with Laplanders?

It's a list of historically underrepresented characteristics, and membership in one group does not imply membership in all. "Tall, dark, and handsome" doesn't mean everyone tall is tan.

Black, indigenous, (and/or) people of color.

It's like saying "Tall, dark, and black."

A bit of repetition in there, no?

Probably should have just said POC in my parent comment to skip all this side discussion, but the repetition is the point. - it's used for emphasis.

From wikipedia:

"The term aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people, which is argued to be superlative and distinctive in U.S. history at the collective level."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color#BIPOC

> "Tall, dark, and handsome" doesn't mean everyone tall is tan.

Correct, but everyone who is tall, dark, and handsome is dark. The person you're replying to is asking: don't "black" and "indigenous" fall under "POC", since POC basically just means "not white"? Or at least black should fall under it.

Fair point! It depends on which binary operation you use for your monoid.