Comment by wrs
6 days ago
There is a particular way people should conduct themselves. For example, they shouldn’t murder other people, damage public property, or systematically discriminate against other people based on gender or “race”. We aren’t “quiet” about the first two.
The trouble is that many of the issues now under the "woke" umbrella are not nearly as simple/obvious as the examples you've chosen.
To raise just one example: for most people, terms like "whitelist" and "blacklist" held no racist connotations. When they uttered those words, they felt no animus towards another person or race. If they were asked to speculate why those words exist or how they originated, there's a good chance they'd point out that "light" and "dark" have longstanding associations often evoking religious imagery of good vs evil. And indeed, if you investigate the history of these words, they don't seem to have a problematic racial history (which can't be said for all words).
But due to the potential for racial connotations, replacing these words was part of a widespread campaign. Resisting the removal of these words would result in someone being labeled a racist/bigot etc.
Personally, I've chosen to remove those words from my vocabulary because they offend some people in neutral settings and it's not a big deal to say "allowlist/denylist". But I'm not taking it upon myself to scold other people for not doing the same thing. On the other hand, if someone started using the n word, I wouldn't be quiet about it.
My general point was that acting as if all "woke" issues rise to the level of murder, property rights or racial discrimination is exactly the problem. People stop taking the "you must live this particular way" people seriously when the issues up for discussion are complex and not obvious.
Yes, I agree, when it gets to the level of "that made someone vaguely uncomfortable" rather than "that ruined someone's entire life", it no longer qualifies. So, how do you effectively fight the latter without ending up fighting about the former? "Working quietly" doesn't seem like a good answer. This is an unsolved problem that PG seemingly isn't much interested in solving; he's more interested in how people talk about it.