The Inherent Racism of Language

[gare-bear]

I was doing some thinking today, and I realized that discrimination can never totally be removed from society while there are mechanisms to properly communicate racist and discriminatory thoughts.

Your cognitive processes are dictated in part by the language that you speak. As I type this out I am thinking, in English, of what I want to write and how I want to write it. If we ever want to achieve true equality we need to remove the mechanisms that allow racists to not only communicate their hatred, but the mechanisms that allow the concept to be planted in their mind as well.

To solve this problem I propose the following:

1.The immediate banning of certain hate language.
2. The removal of these words from dictionaries and encyclopedias
3. The instatement of new educational curriculum that does not acknowledge race/gender/sexual orientation in any way.
4. The revision of source texts that contain illicit hate language

I firmly believe that if these steps, and other simialr ones were taken it significantly stop dissemination of racism by those already infected with it, and it would also prevent the possibility of such concepts from ossifying in the minds of children. Eventually the banning of hate language would be unnecessary altogether, as the concept of bigotry would not be cognitively possible.

Hate language: Stop it's articulation to complete emancipation, prevent discrimination, and eventually we'll have hate's elimination!

[Rjevan]

Although you have a point about the effects of "natural everyday" discriminatory language and I agree with points 1 and 3 of the measures you propose it'd be hard to realise them under capitalism, which is (one of) the basic root(s) of the problem. Racism, as irrational and emotinal as it is, provides a rational and calculated service for the ruling class in dividing and weakening the working class, keeping wages low, etc.

I doubt the use of 2 and 4, pretending that such words never existed won't tackle the reality they express. As long as the objective conditions for racism exists people will find new words to express their hatred. The solution clearly can't be eliminating each and every new word which will inevitably arise but it has to be eliminating these objective conditions. Then people won't fall into racism anymore, even if they read discriminatory terms in dictionaries and old source texts.

That said, of course discriminatory language provides a tool for reaction and what I said above mustn't be understood as some laissez-faire "as long as we can't get rid of racism there's no good in tackling expressions of racism"-attitude. "Hate language" shouldn't be tolerated and I'll leave to argue the contrary to the crusaders for unprincipled, er sorry, meant to say "unreserved free speech" who are sure to enter this thread. ;)

[Manic Impressive]

As long as the objective conditions for racism exists people will find new words to express their hatred. The solution clearly can't be eliminating each and every new word which will inevitably arise but it has to be eliminating these objective conditions.
This :thumbup1:

Different words are bound to arise in the place of the redundant words. As society changes under workers control perhaps these words might emulate the insults that we currently use on the left. For example instead of calling someone a faggot you might call them a fascist, instead of ***** you might call them a liberal and so on. I think this is likely to happen as insults usually reflect what society does not approve of and as society changes these words lose their relevance.

[Thirsty Crow]

I was doing some thinking today, and I realized that discrimination can never totally be removed from society while there are mechanisms to properly communicate racist and discriminatory thoughts.

But if you were to actually eliminate these mechanisms you'd have to eliminate all human languages.

[pluckedflowers]

I was doing some thinking today, and I realized that discrimination can never totally be removed from society while there are mechanisms to properly communicate racist and discriminatory thoughts.

Your cognitive processes are dictated in part by the language that you speak. As I type this out I am thinking, in English, of what I want to write and how I want to write it. If we ever want to achieve true equality we need to remove the mechanisms that allow racists to not only communicate their hatred, but the mechanisms that allow the concept to be planted in their mind as well.

To solve this problem I propose the following:

1.The immediate banning of certain hate language.
2. The removal of these words from dictionaries and encyclopedias
3. The instatement of new educational curriculum that does not acknowledge race/gender/sexual orientation in any way.
4. The revision of source texts that contain illicit hate language

I firmly believe that if these steps, and other simialr ones were taken it significantly stop dissemination of racism by those already infected with it, and it would also prevent the possibility of such concepts from ossifying in the minds of children. Eventually the banning of hate language would be unnecessary altogether, as the concept of bigotry would not be cognitively possible.

Hate language: Stop it's articulation to complete emancipation, prevent discrimination, and eventually we'll have hate's elimination!

How are we going to talk about and criticize, for example, the massive racial disparities in the US justice system, after we've instated a "new educational curriculum that does not acknowledge race/gender/sexual orientation in any way"?

[RED DAVE]

The purpose of Newspeak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak) was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-prin.html

RED DAVE

[Meridian]

Alter conditions and language-needs are altered with it. 'Manually' changing our language to something else without altering conditions would lead to one thing only; impracticality.

[tachosomoza]

Any attempts to control and regulate human expression are bound to fail. We aren't fascist totalitarians, comrade. Get rid of the conditions and the negative expressions will be swept to the dustbin.

[agnixie]

How are we going to talk about and criticize, for example, the massive racial disparities in the US justice system, after we've instated a "new educational curriculum that does not acknowledge race/gender/sexual orientation in any way"?

Make it only about default-humans, duh... er I mean straight white (wasp even) men >.>

[Tenka]

I don't think OP is serious (any more serious than a recent spate of other new topic-starters, I mean...). I do despise gendered words, however; and gendered pronouns, but the latter would be impractical to eliminate prior to complete sexual equality.

[Jazzratt]

I don't think OP is serious (any more serious than a recent spate of other new topic-starters, I mean...). I do despise gendered words, however; and gendered pronouns, but the latter would be impractical to eliminate prior to complete sexual equality. When you talk about not being able to eliminate gendered pronouns without full sexual equality I assume you mean removing them totall rather than using neutral pronouns like a number of languages from places that are by no means exemplars of sexual equality.

[Welshy]

I don't think OP is serious (any more serious than a recent spate of other new topic-starters, I mean...). I do despise gendered words, however; and gendered pronouns, but the latter would be impractical to eliminate prior to complete sexual equality.

Actually gendered pronouns would probably be the easiest to get rid of, though getting rid of words would be rather difficult in the first place, since there are quite a few language that lack gendered pronouns all together. According to the world atlas of languages online (WALS), in a survey of 378 languages 254 languages lack gender distinction in their pronouns. http://wals.info/feature/44A

[Tenka]

When you talk about not being able to eliminate gendered pronouns without full sexual equality I assume you mean removing them totall rather than using neutral pronouns like a number of languages from places that are by no means exemplars of sexual equality.

Yes; I mean for those of us stuck using the English language in discussions of sexual inequality and such, the elimination of gendered pronouns might make it more difficult for some, and certainly wouldn't help anything, but I still consider gender distinction in language to reinforce certain stereotypes related to sex in society (even if having no bearing on overt sexism). With true sexual equality, I'd hope we'd not need different pronouns (or nouns, even) for referring to people based on which particular arrangement of organs and/or chromosomes they possess.

[gare-bear]

I don't think OP is serious (any more serious than a recent spate of other new topic-starters, I mean...). I do despise gendered words, however; and gendered pronouns, but the latter would be impractical to eliminate prior to complete sexual equality.


I'm quite serious, actually. The concept of removing gendered pronouns never even occurred to me, but it would naturally with the idea of cognitive and linguistic equality.

I'd like to clarify and explain that this is something I think is only capable of happening during the dictatorship of the proletariat. By the time we reach that stage most of the underlying causes of racism would be in the process of elimination. If you think that a sentiment as ancient (and animalistic) as racism will simply just vanish from people's minds even when we are working towards true equality you are simply naive. It needs to be trampled under foot permanently. If we are to truly achieve the abolition of the family as called for by Marx then there can be no lingering feelings of hatred. As long as there is genetic diversity among our population I firmly feel that the cognitive mechanisms that allow racism to occur must be eliminated. To say differently would be reactionary and counter-revolutionary; by facilitating racist thought and expression you are yourself totally culpable for the fascism that they spew.

[Tim Finnegan]

How are we going to talk about and criticize, for example, the massive racial disparities in the US justice system, after we've instated a "new educational curriculum that does not acknowledge race/gender/sexual orientation in any way"?

Make it only about default-humans, duh... er I mean straight white (wasp even) men >.>
Yeah, I really do think these sort of self-inflicted "blindnesses" should be avoided like the plague. They have their roots in liberal attempts to retreat from issues and so soothe their own guilt, rather than to address them head on. Declining to acknowledge sexuality, race, and gender is a privilege available exclusively to straight white men, and universalising their experience is not a solution to the problem, but, in fact, a large part of the problem itself.

Besides, there's absolutely nothing wrong with diversity of identity in and of itself. The idea that equality demands identicality is a clumsy reversal of the observation that inequality in today's society is very often structured in terms of non-identicality, about as useful as declaring that, because capitalism generates inequality of income, it can be resolved by paying everyone the same wage. If a state of social equality implies the presumed equality of all people at an essential level, then it shouldn't matter what personal identities they built on top of that basic equality, and any attempts to skirt the fact of those identities seems, to me, to suggest a lack of confidence in the viability of a state of social equality being achieved in the first place.
Remember at the beginning of the year during the Egyptian protests, when the Christians and Muslims did not shy away from their differences in search of some generic common ground, but openly celebrated the diversity of their cultural identities with mutual support? That, I would argue, is an illustration of true tolerance.



If you think that a sentiment as ancient (and animalistic) as racism...
Racism is basically like five, maybe six hundred years old. Before the onset of European colonialism, there's no concept of a monolithic biological race, but of various ethno-linguistic groups with various degrees of comparability. A Gael was obviously more like a Saxon than either were like a Turk, but there was no understanding that either were part of some grand monolith that the Turk was excluded from, but in which the Greek was included. (Noting that the exact delineation of the "white race" is pretty much anyone's guess. The line can run anywhere from the River Danube to the Deccan Plateau, depending on who's talking.) It's an idealogical product of colonialism, and outside of the colonial regions, not even one that has ever been integrated all that fully with the older system of "intra-white" ethnic and national divisions.
If there is any "ancient sentiment" that leads to group conflict, it's a loose sort of tribalism, but one that represents a complex intersection of a great many social identities, and perhaps most importantly a shared experience of social, political, and economic life. This is mystified by its collisions with more artificial racial and national identities, so it's not always readily visible, but, put simply, there's more to it than the assumption that differing melanin levels have a biological tendency to cause conflict.

[PeterGibbons]

This is a troll and a very poor one, courtesy of 4chon's /new/ board, please stop replying to it.

Thank you.

[eyeheartlenin]

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-prin.html

RED DAVE

I agree with Red Dave.

The proposals made in the initial post amount to a generalized assault on Western culture, and they certainly violate freedom of speech and free thought. It is as if the first post were written by a right-winger trying to validate popular prejudices against the left.

Leftists should defend the rights guaranteed under bourgeois rule and seek to extend them, not try to extinguish them. There is profound opposition among ordinary people to top-down dictates about acceptable language, enforced by threats and punishment, and for leftists to embrace thought control in the way suggested in the original post (or in any other way) would only make socialists even more marginalized than we already are, as if that were possible. Bad idea!

[tfb]

This is a troll and a very poor one, courtesy of 4chon's /new/ board, please stop replying to it.

Thank you.

People HAD stopped replying to it.......... then you came along. :sneaky:

[Devrim]

Yes; I mean for those of us stuck using the English language in discussions of sexual inequality and such, the elimination of gendered pronouns might make it more difficult for some, and certainly wouldn't help anything, but I still consider gender distinction in language to reinforce certain stereotypes related to sex in society (even if having no bearing on overt sexism). With true sexual equality, I'd hope we'd not need different pronouns (or nouns, even) for referring to people based on which particular arrangement of organs and/or chromosomes they possess.

The Turkish language has no gendered pronouns. As far as I have noticed, Turkey doesn't have greater levels of sexual equality that other countries which do.

Devrim

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

racist words doubleplusungood unrefs dictionary immediately forever.

With hate,

Miniluv. :cool:

Though I agree with your point, the mere existence of language means that there is always the POSSIBILITY of racism, the real problem lies in the attitudes that created these words, phrases and their meanings.

Banning words is not desirable as it doesn't change peoples' attitudes (i.e. dealing with the root problem) and it's a very over the top measure, and is typical of State tyranny-style rule.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Sorry, that above post only really dealt with posts 1 and 2.

It's also important that point 3 never happens, as racism, race-based exploitation is part of history, and in order to learn from history we must study history, teach history and so on. Surely point 3 would necessitate never teaching about slavery in the US, or British colonial-era imperialism in the West Indies, India etc., ever again? I can't abide by that. It's a bad idea.

Point 4 is very Orwellian, actually. I can't believe you actually advocate that. Well on the way to having a 3 course dinner with Big Bro' there.:thumbdown:

[Apoi_Viitor]

Alter conditions and language-needs are altered with it. 'Manually' changing our language to something else without altering conditions would lead to one thing only; impracticality.

Why?

[Game Girl]

I recently went onto Stormfront. In one thread, one WN asked why people like us think the way we do. He was genuine and really confused. So I decided to answer him. I was respectful in my post, because I don't want to lower myself to their standards..This is what I said;


There is no denying that there is evil in all races. This is a very sad fact of life. But there are also good people in every race. They are the people who count. They are the ones who represent their people well.

I've gotten to know people from many races. Once you get to know them, you realise that they are not so different from yourself. I didn't befriend these people because of their race. I befriended them because of what we have in common. They are people I can have great conversations with. Not once has race every entered our discussions. We're mostly talking about music, movies, video games and celebrities we want, but can never have. You know, NORMAL stuff.

On a random note; Me and my female friends are in an agreement that Johnny Depp is the sexiest man alive.

Anyway. I don't believe there is anything wrong with taking pride in who you are. But I believe it IS wrong to use that pride as a weapon, like most of you do.

I just don't understand this obsession with racial purity. I mean, at the end of the day we're still human, right? So what if someone is made from different races. Does that make them any less of a human being?

You say it's "natural" for whites to feel happier with their own race. How do you know this? Have you spoken to every white person? I seriously doubt it. I, personally, feel comfortable and happy with anyone who is nice. They could be white, black, asian or whatever. If they are nice people, then I want to be around them.

Sadly, not every human being is a nice person. The world is full of bad people of every race and faith. People who will always use their own bad experiences in life as an excuse to ruin the lives of others. People who will hurt others for reasons so pointless and insignificant. People who use their personal beliefs to unintentionally hurt others because they believe they are "helping them". It's a cruel and sad fact of life. But it's the good people who make up the majority.

Hatred, anger and violence revert us back into nothing but raging animals, the thing we used to be. Kindness, serenity and peace is what makes us human. Thats what makes us different from the other animals. If the world would let go of it's hatred, would it not be a better place?

I haven't been "brainwashed" like you claim. It's just how I see things. We may have the same eyes, but we don't always see the same thing.

All I want in life is to live peacefully with my family, my friends and the man I love. I can't spend my life worrying about whats going on in the world. But sadly, I can't stop worrying. You've labelled me as a race traitor because I found love in a man of a different race. You've labelled me as less than human. It's not so different from labelling me as a target. Do you honestly think thats right?

[sulla]

I was doing some thinking today, and I realized that discrimination can never totally be removed from society while there are mechanisms to properly communicate racist and discriminatory thoughts.

Your cognitive processes are dictated in part by the language that you speak. As I type this out I am thinking, in English, of what I want to write and how I want to write it. If we ever want to achieve true equality we need to remove the mechanisms that allow racists to not only communicate their hatred, but the mechanisms that allow the concept to be planted in their mind as well.

To solve this problem I propose the following:

1.The immediate banning of certain hate language.
2. The removal of these words from dictionaries and encyclopedias
3. The instatement of new educational curriculum that does not acknowledge race/gender/sexual orientation in any way.
4. The revision of source texts that contain illicit hate language

I firmly believe that if these steps, and other simialr ones were taken it significantly stop dissemination of racism by those already infected with it, and it would also prevent the possibility of such concepts from ossifying in the minds of children. Eventually the banning of hate language would be unnecessary altogether, as the concept of bigotry would not be cognitively possible.

Hate language: Stop it's articulation to complete emancipation, prevent discrimination, and eventually we'll have hate's elimination!

1984! You have read the book by Orwell right? What you purpose is disturbing and distasteful to me.

I didn't realise that my fellow lefties where so controling and sanctimonious! You can't get rid of racism this way. You need to change the environment it comes from.

Using totalitarian ends to make the world a better place? You know what if someone tries to ban me for using a word I will use it, just because they told me not too! Who the hell are you to get to decide what gets banned and doesn't?