Quote:
Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger
The idea that the vocabulary we are “allowed” to use is based on skin colour is perhaps the dumbest idea I’ve ever read. And to present yourself as woke for believing something so insanely stupid is beyond comprehension.
|
The reality is that a person's racial, ethnic, gender etc. group affects how uncomfortable their use of certain vocabulary will make others feel. That's not an unusual social phenomenon. It's totally ordinary.
Think of it less as “you're
not allowed to use that word because of your skin colour” and more as “because of the racial group you're in and the history of that word, you using it is more likely to really hurt some people's feelings, so if you want them to not feel hurt you should avoid using it”. It hopefully doesn't seem insanely stupid and beyond comprehension when you think of it like that.
Edit: I feel I should add that it's not even just that using the word can hurt someone's feelings, but that it can, even unintentionally, contribute to the continued marginalization and associated harms done to people the word is used to identify, so if you don't want to risk that, don't use it.