Racism

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Mudface said:

I see what you mean, but it just seems to be a bit of a waste of time. I doubt the problem is widespread, and that anybody really has an issue with, for example, the trivial name for a nebula or galaxy having the term 'Eskimo' or 'Siamese twins' in it. It just looks like a token gesture when there are much bigger issues around which people's time and effort would be better spent on.

It doesn't actually take time and effort though, does it?

 

Like I say, if you have a good look at an organisation's culture you'll find loads of stuff with an iffy history.  Some of it will take time and effort to sort and you absolutely should do that; other stuff (like racist or otherwise offensive informal names) take no time or effort and you'd have to be a complete cock not to change them.

[SasaS]

18 minutes ago, Mudface said:

I really hate that virtue signalling from big companies- just pay your fucking taxes and stop pretending that decorating your coffee cups with a rainbow actually achieves anything.

 

Going back to the NASA story, this is also the kind of thing that leads to ridicule and dilution of the overriding message, like the aims of the BLM movement being trivialised over citing a Coco Pops packet as racist for example. It's easy for the Twitterati pricks and alt-right bloggers to develop the notion that it isn't serious, just a bunch of lefty liberal loudmouths kicking up a stink about minor issues and get things dismissed in a lot of minds.

It goes beyond that  for me, I always rejected the view that "words matter", belief that essentially, you will engineer mindsets by engineering language. First, it's totalitarian, every totalitarian regime is very busy changing nomenclature and terminology, second, it shows lack of understanding of how language works. Meanings are assigned, arbitrary. If you replace every "victim" with "survivor", as is the tendency now, you are not "empowering" victims, you are merely using a different word for a victim, transferring connotations of the word victim to the word survivor.
 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

54 minutes ago, SasaS said:

 It sounds silly to go back and change historical, traditional names, Summer in Siam song should be renamed Summer in Thailand, or the film Mission to Burma Mission to Myanmar. George Orwell's Myanmar Days? Also, Thailand sounds equally colonial to me, "land of the Thais", and in English.

Literally nobody is suggesting that. 

 

I think the problem with "Siamese twins" is the dodgy history of the terminology for disabled people, not for Thai people. 

 

Your point about tokenism may yet be correct, if this is the only thing that NASA are doing; but if this is the only thing they're doing, they should be criticised for all the stuff they're not doing, rather than the one thing they ate doing.

 

[Mudface]

19 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

It doesn't actually take time and effort though, does it?

 

Like I say, if you have a good look at an organisation's culture you'll find loads of stuff with an iffy history.  Some of it will take time and effort to sort and you absolutely should do that; other stuff (like racist or otherwise offensive informal names) take no time or effort and you'd have to be a complete cock not to change them.

i would imagine it does- you'd need someone to go through all the current terminology, flag up names to some sort of committee to determine whether they should be changed, alter all the company literature the names appear in then inform staff of what's happened and why to make sure no refers to those names again, either in print or within the company itself.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 minute ago, Mudface said:

i would imagine it does- you'd need someone to go through all the current terminology, flag up names to some sort of committee to determine whether they should be changed, alter all the company literature the names appear in then inform staff of what's happened and why to make sure no refers to those names again, either in print or within the company itself.

Or...

Put together a small group of employees to look at racism and any other unconscious prejudice in the organisation's culture (which is the kind of thing every organisation should do - if only because it encourages greater diversity, which is good for business).  Because they work there, they will be aware of some things which have probably smelled a bit fishy for years - such as dodgy informal names for things.  So, they draft a press release, which also gets emailed to all employees... and that's pretty much it.

 

Compared to other NASA projects, I wouldn't call that a massive investment of time and effort. Frankly, we've put more into discussing it here.

[SasaS]

13 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

It doesn't actually take time and effort though, does it?

 

Like I say, if you have a good look at an organisation's culture you'll find loads of stuff with an iffy history.  Some of it will take time and effort to sort and you absolutely should do that; other stuff (like racist or otherwise offensive informal names) take no time or effort and you'd have to be a complete cock not to change them.

Yes, but you are writing as if this is always straightforward. 

For example, the Siamese twins, I don't doubt that conjoined twins were seen as "freaks", but the term itself has entered other languages too, where it simply means conjoined twins, it has no offensive connotations (at least it didn't have, that I am aware of), the condition is listed in medical books as "Siamese twins", as a popular term for what must have its Latin and probably other more descriptive medical term (such as conjoined in English).

 

And it's called Siamese twins because the Siamese Twins circus act were the first widely publicized occurrence, and they were called that because they were from Siam. It's basically a brand name which became a general term for conjoined twins. It's how language works. The word "Siamese" in collocation with the word "twin" changed its meaning to "conjoined".
 

[TheHowieLama]

24 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Or...

Put together a small group of employees to look at racism

What if they don't agree? Or god forbid, maybe some are a bit racisty themselves?

[Bjornebye]

Has Dawn Butler fucked herself up here? 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

53 minutes ago, SasaS said:

Yes, but you are writing as if this is always straightforward. 

For example, the Siamese twins, I don't doubt that conjoined twins were seen as "freaks", but the term itself has entered other languages too, where it simply means conjoined twins, it has no offensive connotations (at least it didn't have, that I am aware of), the condition is listed in medical books as "Siamese twins", as a popular term for what must have its Latin and probably other more descriptive medical term (such as conjoined in English).

 

And it's called Siamese twins because the Siamese Twins circus act were the first widely publicized occurrence, and they were called that because they were from Siam. It's basically a brand name which became a general term for conjoined twins. It's how language works. The word "Siamese" in collocation with the word "twin" changed its meaning to "conjoined".
 

I'm not. I'm writing as if it's straightforward for NASA - which it is.

 

And if you want to compare "Siamese twins" to branding, a good analogy would be the golliwog on Robinson's jam - there's no harmful intent in its use, but once you know a bit about the history and the potentially harmful effects of its continued use, you'd be a prick to continue using it.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

35 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Has Dawn Butler fucked herself up here? 

No.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

54 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

What if they don't agree? Or god forbid, maybe some are a bit racisty themselves?

What would you do in any organisation if you put together a group to work on a project and they disagree or if some of them aren't up to the job?

 

You manage it.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

I have a few Persian rugs which I have started just calling rugs, trying to help.

GET THE PERSIANS RUGGED!

[Numero Veinticinco]

[SasaS]

21 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

I'm not. I'm writing as if it's straightforward for NASA - which it is.

 

And if you want to compare "Siamese twins" to branding, a good analogy would be the golliwog on Robinson's jam - there's no harmful intent in its use, but once you know a bit about the history and the potentially harmful effects of its continued use, you'd be a prick to continue using it.

What is the harmful intent in the use of the term "Siamese twins"? Quoting from Wikipedia: "Due to the brothers' fame and the rarity of the condition, the term "Siamese twins" came to be used as a synonym for conjoined twins."

[Bjornebye]

 

 

[Bjornebye]

41 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

No.

I mean I'm calling anyone trending that hashtag a racist cunt but she does appear have acted a bit of a tit no? 

[Numero Veinticinco]

2 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

I mean I'm calling anyone trending that hashtag a racist cunt but she does appear have acted a bit of a tit no? 

I’ve missed this, what’s happened? 

[Bjornebye]

15 minutes ago, Nummer Neunzehn said:

I’ve missed this, what’s happened? 

Stopped in a car by the met police. Claiming it's because she is black. People accusing her of doctoring the footage or something and being rude to the police. The same people being shitty about her haven't said zip about a rapist tory mp of course. 

[Duff Man]

She hasn't doctored the footage, and some solidarity from the leader of her party would be nice.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

35 minutes ago, SasaS said:

What is the harmful intent in the use of the term "Siamese twins"? Quoting from Wikipedia: "Due to the brothers' fame and the rarity of the condition, the term "Siamese twins" came to be used as a synonym for conjoined twins."

I specifically said there's no harmful intent.

The harmful effect is the reference to 19th Century freak shows, mentioned above.

[Bjornebye]

 

 

 

[Numero Veinticinco]

5 minutes ago, Duff Man said:

She hasn't doctored the footage, and some solidarity from the leader of her party would be nice.

‘Fucking Starmer’. I know that’s the first thing I think of when anything happens at any point in time. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

Just now, Bjornebye said:

 

 

 

The cunt reads this forum. 100%. 

[Duff Man]

Beaten by Boris. Jesus Christ.

[Numero Veinticinco]

Just now, Duff Man said:

Beaten by Boris. Jesus Christ.

Yep. So he reached out and offered actual support at the time. He shouldn’t have bothered. He should have tweeted ‘thoughts and prayers’ type response. I mean, looking like you’re interested is the new ‘doing something in real life’. So he should just do that. That’s what really changes things. That’s the sort of leadership I’m interested in. Corbs would have tweeted the second it happened. Now that’s leadership. Beat Boris by tweeting quicker. That’s the policy Labour should be focusing on.