I am no scholar on these things; however, something doesn't seem right. In discussing electronics' master/slave and master bedroom, you make it sound like objections to those terms are part of "decentering whiteness." Thus, they are part of "whiteness." That is not sitting well with me. I don't fit the NPR/NYTimes mold you mention in The Elect. I'm more of a good ol' Midwesterner, who respect (l)iberalism and enlightenment. Very few of my type were "masters" of anyone. As a non-hyphenated American, I find the Master/Slave analogy unnecessary. Yes, I understand why "Master" has an especially bad connotation for black Americans. But, considering the ideals we were founded on, it should be equally distasteful to all of us WASPs. Every July 4th, we give a big ***** YOU! to our former masters. If you are on the side of the Enlightenment, then aren't you also against masters? That's a whole lot of white people, even on the Right!
Regarding the word "racism" and its shifting meaning. I'm not a linguist, but it seems clear that the way "racism" is used, it is inseparable from the application social stigma. If someone says, for example, "inequality is actually racism," it is not tenable to respond "ok, let's call that racism, but given the circumstances and constraints, racism is the best option."
So expanding the definition of racism, so long as the taboo maintains its power, has political implications that the citizen ought to be concerned about, even if he is powerless when he has his lexicographer hat on.
It seems a common trait of human behavior that groups, once having no power, will engage in excesses once they attain it, ergo human nature. There are few organic mechanisms within a group that would reign in the abuses which eventually arise because 'Power' is a very powerful drug. So to answer the question "how do we know when whiteness has been decentered enough?" we cannot know until it creates a backlash.
I'm surprised that you are in favor of abandoning master/slave terminology in engineering. I would be curious to hear you go into more detail on why.
Maybe I am being difficult in opposing that change. My thinking is that the terms are not, to my mind, explicitly tied to race in the US. Masters/slaves exist outside of the US context. I wouldn't advocate for the adoption of master/slave as the best words today, but changing them strikes me as unnecessary.
If it was an isolated change, I also might not mind it. But abandoning master/slave comes alongside a number of other changes that to me seem like nothing but a language game. Here are some other "problematic" terms that I've seen people change during my work as an engineer:
* whitelist/blacklist: "white" is good (allowed), "black" is bad (banned)
* master branch: "master" again, as in the master copy or the master recording
* coding bootcamp: "bootcamp" glorifies the military
And here are some other terms from a doc I've seen circulated, though I've never seen many of these proposed in the wild:
* user -> account, owner, customer, client, student, instructor, staff, person's name [I can't imagine what is wrong with this one, for the record--I guess it implies that people are using rather than giving back?]
* grandfathered in -> exempt, pre-existing
* whitespace -> empty space, blank
* blackbox testing -> closed box, mystery box
* blackbox -> opaque, obscured, generic
* whitebox testing -> glass box, clear box
* whitebox -> unlabelled, generic
* mob -> team
* dark web -> hidden web
* chief -> none given, but problematic
As always, it is worth remembering that any excesses of the second list don't mean the master/slave opponents don't still have a point. Yet they all strike me as similarly performative and vaguely unserious.
In the words of a petition started by a black engineer and now signed by thousands of others objecting to the banishment of the words "master/slave", "This is utter nonsense. The word "master" in this context has nothing to do with slavery. ...but actions like these are completely irrelevant. They are distractions, not solutions."
Do people really believe that a black software developer will be too traumatized to write code for the Serial Peripheral Interface data transmission protocol because it uses these terms to refer to two of the data line? Is this really why there aren't more blacks in tech?
"The term master bedroom is becoming ever more suspect because, well, it sounds like slavery. I frankly think that’s a little silly, but then uses of master that actually relate to slavery such as the electronics master and slave board? Yeah – those have to go."
I see this as perpetual victimhood. Black people can't have a master bedroom because of American slavery? Black people can't picture silicon masters and slaves because of American slavery? Black people can't be masters because black people were slaves? Ridiculous. That's not equality, that's soft-pedaling around learned victimhood.
Doesn't "BIPOC" and its derivations simply "other" (as a verb) people of non-European descent? The terms suggest that there is something special in European-ness, and that the antithesis to it is "people of color", or non-Europeans. BIPOC also lumps together so many different populations originating (and constantly migrating) from all over the world, which seems clunky and, frankly, uninteresting. In other words, "BIPOC" and "white" depict a sort of manichean relationship between the two that ignores historical, biological, and sociological complexities.
Decentering is a new verb which ultimately has to do with race. I just learned it today. Gee, thanks for that. This new tool in the current regime of racecraft is just another avenue to trod which will certainly bear witness to more chastening rods. I find it almost impossible to make sense of this squishy ethos when its measures are not benchmarked in terms of recognizable virtues. It seems to just be another taxonomic rabbit hole that applies arbitrary meaning to recognition of self-identification.
I must say that everyone seems to be overly colorstruck these days, but the colors themselves are no more meaningful than zodiac signs. Should we decenter Scorpios? And what about those on the cusp?
My prediction is that, similar to those days before the 2000 Census when multiracialists demanded their own mutually exclusive categories (I literally recall people asking for 'Mulatto', 'Quadroon' and the like), this volume and debate will only create space and give legitimacy to more essentialists.
If only there were a racial cryptocurrency we could short...
I am with McWhorter on this as on many other things. De-centering has had a positive cultural impact. In particular, books, commercials, shows, and movies aimed at children so abound in characters of all colors that it’s unlikely kids today will grow up thinking of white as the default skin color, the way kids of all races in the ‘80s did. As a kid, if you asked me to draw a random human, without thinking of it, I would have reached for the peach crayon. My kids, not so much.
On the other hand, I am not sure I am with these new trends that only black actors can voice black roles, or that “cultural appropriation” is bad. This is racial essentialism. Cultural appropriation is not bad. Culture is not a zero-sum pot and appropriation is the historical norm, one of the ways cultures change and syncretize. It is also a means for people in a multicultural society to understand each other.
We should acknowledge the progress we have made despite despite the setback of living for 8 years with a nativist, neo-Archie Bunker in the White House, without retreating ourselves back towards essentialism and possibly reinvigorating racist attitudes as they are diminishing.
I’ve heard Mr . McWhorter mention what’s going on at BU in 3 or 4 instances the past few weeks. As an alumnus and former part-time instructor I am immensely curious and would love to hear more!
Is there a distinct black diction? Perhaps. What about those black men and women who do not carry that diction? Are they missing something in their experience? And what are the causes of this diction? Are they all positive?
Reminds me of what happened when jamelle bouie? (Forgive me for foregoing Twitter archives) dunked on a tweet of mine a couple years ago. They were asking something near for some racism to be identified, my comment of what progresses we will affirm in that domain was retweeted with the response that, “this is an unhelpful comment disguised as a helpful one.”
At the time, this mostly clarified that a heavy strain of racio-political criticism was embracing a real politik. Assertion>engagement—engagement is tacit loss. I was taking classes in education and such a response meant there was no desire to educate, much as could be said blatantly, but desire to demand this or that would not get you anything from ignorance. My (Columbia, Barnard) classes said this didn’t work on the ignorant, disinterested, or misinterested. This was not engagement, but assertion. Let the chips fall where they may after I’ve said my piece for me and mine. I expect this moment to linger with me, and it often pops up when I’m out of sync: not celebrating winning the election by the skin of our teeth, then again on the 6th (with an old white man im just being told to believe is more progressive than Barack allowed us to project, then later getting power in 3 branches I expect will pass about 2 bills a year). Yet the power structure is less advanced for these groups, and less empowered in its actual defense, than it was in 2009. Decidedly not saying much, yet there has been literal dancing in the streets. I’m very happy to have lost a ‘natural’ fascist . Very very happy. But when some liberals to communists and anarchists of 9 years ago were continuing to call foul on neoliberalism, the racing class and rhetoric produced nothing with the consistency of the judgement it demanded for cultural and “justice” wins (I’m a racecraft adherent, so I shouldn’t be around this talk maybe). It missed prop 22 setting up these same people to be wrecked without concern for their employment. It seems this real politik just allows American forgetfulness to continue, but now in and for Black (however much that’s worth, it’s yet to evaporate manchins and the like).
One could whisper we’ve won the culture...but we already knew that when we got bills passed 60 years ago. When the govt was forced to do something or lose its right to pontificate itself a democracy to the world. Shame on those whose use of that power has given it the losses built into today. Shame we’ve lost that law and have a polity that cares so little it’s waiting for children to get the vote more than expecting those it calls adults to understand their own society. Maybe in 60 years they’ll be shaming someone else. Maybe those kids will win. Ive always thought they would, but now the wins are definitely more often sold to me, and I still can’t afford them. And most of it I don’t need to buy.
I am no scholar on these things; however, something doesn't seem right. In discussing electronics' master/slave and master bedroom, you make it sound like objections to those terms are part of "decentering whiteness." Thus, they are part of "whiteness." That is not sitting well with me. I don't fit the NPR/NYTimes mold you mention in The Elect. I'm more of a good ol' Midwesterner, who respect (l)iberalism and enlightenment. Very few of my type were "masters" of anyone. As a non-hyphenated American, I find the Master/Slave analogy unnecessary. Yes, I understand why "Master" has an especially bad connotation for black Americans. But, considering the ideals we were founded on, it should be equally distasteful to all of us WASPs. Every July 4th, we give a big ***** YOU! to our former masters. If you are on the side of the Enlightenment, then aren't you also against masters? That's a whole lot of white people, even on the Right!
Regarding the word "racism" and its shifting meaning. I'm not a linguist, but it seems clear that the way "racism" is used, it is inseparable from the application social stigma. If someone says, for example, "inequality is actually racism," it is not tenable to respond "ok, let's call that racism, but given the circumstances and constraints, racism is the best option."
So expanding the definition of racism, so long as the taboo maintains its power, has political implications that the citizen ought to be concerned about, even if he is powerless when he has his lexicographer hat on.
It seems a common trait of human behavior that groups, once having no power, will engage in excesses once they attain it, ergo human nature. There are few organic mechanisms within a group that would reign in the abuses which eventually arise because 'Power' is a very powerful drug. So to answer the question "how do we know when whiteness has been decentered enough?" we cannot know until it creates a backlash.
I'm surprised that you are in favor of abandoning master/slave terminology in engineering. I would be curious to hear you go into more detail on why.
Maybe I am being difficult in opposing that change. My thinking is that the terms are not, to my mind, explicitly tied to race in the US. Masters/slaves exist outside of the US context. I wouldn't advocate for the adoption of master/slave as the best words today, but changing them strikes me as unnecessary.
If it was an isolated change, I also might not mind it. But abandoning master/slave comes alongside a number of other changes that to me seem like nothing but a language game. Here are some other "problematic" terms that I've seen people change during my work as an engineer:
* whitelist/blacklist: "white" is good (allowed), "black" is bad (banned)
* master branch: "master" again, as in the master copy or the master recording
* coding bootcamp: "bootcamp" glorifies the military
And here are some other terms from a doc I've seen circulated, though I've never seen many of these proposed in the wild:
* scrum master -> scrum lead
* master account -> central payer account
* man-in-the-middle -> menace-in-the-middle / attacker-in-the-middle
* nuke -> delete/remove
* whitehat hacker -> ethical hacker
* blackhat hacker -> unethical hacker
* sanity check -> reasonableness check
* housekeeping task -> maintenance task [I guess housekeeping is stereotypically gendered?]
* user -> account, owner, customer, client, student, instructor, staff, person's name [I can't imagine what is wrong with this one, for the record--I guess it implies that people are using rather than giving back?]
* grandfathered in -> exempt, pre-existing
* whitespace -> empty space, blank
* blackbox testing -> closed box, mystery box
* blackbox -> opaque, obscured, generic
* whitebox testing -> glass box, clear box
* whitebox -> unlabelled, generic
* mob -> team
* dark web -> hidden web
* chief -> none given, but problematic
As always, it is worth remembering that any excesses of the second list don't mean the master/slave opponents don't still have a point. Yet they all strike me as similarly performative and vaguely unserious.
In the words of a petition started by a black engineer and now signed by thousands of others objecting to the banishment of the words "master/slave", "This is utter nonsense. The word "master" in this context has nothing to do with slavery. ...but actions like these are completely irrelevant. They are distractions, not solutions."
Do people really believe that a black software developer will be too traumatized to write code for the Serial Peripheral Interface data transmission protocol because it uses these terms to refer to two of the data line? Is this really why there aren't more blacks in tech?
"The term master bedroom is becoming ever more suspect because, well, it sounds like slavery. I frankly think that’s a little silly, but then uses of master that actually relate to slavery such as the electronics master and slave board? Yeah – those have to go."
I see this as perpetual victimhood. Black people can't have a master bedroom because of American slavery? Black people can't picture silicon masters and slaves because of American slavery? Black people can't be masters because black people were slaves? Ridiculous. That's not equality, that's soft-pedaling around learned victimhood.
Doesn't "BIPOC" and its derivations simply "other" (as a verb) people of non-European descent? The terms suggest that there is something special in European-ness, and that the antithesis to it is "people of color", or non-Europeans. BIPOC also lumps together so many different populations originating (and constantly migrating) from all over the world, which seems clunky and, frankly, uninteresting. In other words, "BIPOC" and "white" depict a sort of manichean relationship between the two that ignores historical, biological, and sociological complexities.
> I suspect that the San Francisco school board stripping the names of...George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Revere...
The notorious Dianne Feinstein also made the list. Along with Abraham Lincoln.
Decentering is a new verb which ultimately has to do with race. I just learned it today. Gee, thanks for that. This new tool in the current regime of racecraft is just another avenue to trod which will certainly bear witness to more chastening rods. I find it almost impossible to make sense of this squishy ethos when its measures are not benchmarked in terms of recognizable virtues. It seems to just be another taxonomic rabbit hole that applies arbitrary meaning to recognition of self-identification.
I must say that everyone seems to be overly colorstruck these days, but the colors themselves are no more meaningful than zodiac signs. Should we decenter Scorpios? And what about those on the cusp?
My prediction is that, similar to those days before the 2000 Census when multiracialists demanded their own mutually exclusive categories (I literally recall people asking for 'Mulatto', 'Quadroon' and the like), this volume and debate will only create space and give legitimacy to more essentialists.
If only there were a racial cryptocurrency we could short...
I am with McWhorter on this as on many other things. De-centering has had a positive cultural impact. In particular, books, commercials, shows, and movies aimed at children so abound in characters of all colors that it’s unlikely kids today will grow up thinking of white as the default skin color, the way kids of all races in the ‘80s did. As a kid, if you asked me to draw a random human, without thinking of it, I would have reached for the peach crayon. My kids, not so much.
On the other hand, I am not sure I am with these new trends that only black actors can voice black roles, or that “cultural appropriation” is bad. This is racial essentialism. Cultural appropriation is not bad. Culture is not a zero-sum pot and appropriation is the historical norm, one of the ways cultures change and syncretize. It is also a means for people in a multicultural society to understand each other.
We should acknowledge the progress we have made despite despite the setback of living for 8 years with a nativist, neo-Archie Bunker in the White House, without retreating ourselves back towards essentialism and possibly reinvigorating racist attitudes as they are diminishing.
Hope John McWhorter doesn't lose his excellent "Lexicon Valley" podcast on Slate because of his views.
Has Slate written anything on his disagreements with Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, et al.?
I’ve heard Mr . McWhorter mention what’s going on at BU in 3 or 4 instances the past few weeks. As an alumnus and former part-time instructor I am immensely curious and would love to hear more!
Is there a distinct black diction? Perhaps. What about those black men and women who do not carry that diction? Are they missing something in their experience? And what are the causes of this diction? Are they all positive?
Reminds me of what happened when jamelle bouie? (Forgive me for foregoing Twitter archives) dunked on a tweet of mine a couple years ago. They were asking something near for some racism to be identified, my comment of what progresses we will affirm in that domain was retweeted with the response that, “this is an unhelpful comment disguised as a helpful one.”
At the time, this mostly clarified that a heavy strain of racio-political criticism was embracing a real politik. Assertion>engagement—engagement is tacit loss. I was taking classes in education and such a response meant there was no desire to educate, much as could be said blatantly, but desire to demand this or that would not get you anything from ignorance. My (Columbia, Barnard) classes said this didn’t work on the ignorant, disinterested, or misinterested. This was not engagement, but assertion. Let the chips fall where they may after I’ve said my piece for me and mine. I expect this moment to linger with me, and it often pops up when I’m out of sync: not celebrating winning the election by the skin of our teeth, then again on the 6th (with an old white man im just being told to believe is more progressive than Barack allowed us to project, then later getting power in 3 branches I expect will pass about 2 bills a year). Yet the power structure is less advanced for these groups, and less empowered in its actual defense, than it was in 2009. Decidedly not saying much, yet there has been literal dancing in the streets. I’m very happy to have lost a ‘natural’ fascist . Very very happy. But when some liberals to communists and anarchists of 9 years ago were continuing to call foul on neoliberalism, the racing class and rhetoric produced nothing with the consistency of the judgement it demanded for cultural and “justice” wins (I’m a racecraft adherent, so I shouldn’t be around this talk maybe). It missed prop 22 setting up these same people to be wrecked without concern for their employment. It seems this real politik just allows American forgetfulness to continue, but now in and for Black (however much that’s worth, it’s yet to evaporate manchins and the like).
One could whisper we’ve won the culture...but we already knew that when we got bills passed 60 years ago. When the govt was forced to do something or lose its right to pontificate itself a democracy to the world. Shame on those whose use of that power has given it the losses built into today. Shame we’ve lost that law and have a polity that cares so little it’s waiting for children to get the vote more than expecting those it calls adults to understand their own society. Maybe in 60 years they’ll be shaming someone else. Maybe those kids will win. Ive always thought they would, but now the wins are definitely more often sold to me, and I still can’t afford them. And most of it I don’t need to buy.