SamuraiJack
Nov 5th, 2008, 04:20 AM
If anyone has read 1984, one of the themes in the novel was how the government reduced the number of words in the vocabulary so that people couldn't express their thoughts, and therefore couldn't dissent.
It seems to me that part of the reason for the lack of progress in racial discourse is due to the limited number of words you can use to describe different racial concepts. This is a huge reason why we spend so much time bickering on this board, and why it's next to impossible to get a point across to someone who doesn't get it.
For example, what does "Asian" mean? It can be cultural, geographic, or racial.
This is the reason we can't unite, because people take it to mean different things. This is why brown people are included sometimes, and why Russians are excluded, why people in the pacific sometimes consider themselves "Pacific Islanders", and so on.
What does "racism" mean? I've heard French people decry anti-French dialog as racist, while I take it to mean discrimination based on "racial" physical characteristics.
How do you describe different types of racism, where only one sex of a particular race is "accepted", while the other is not?
That's why I'm frustrated at leaders and scholars for failing to bring more terms into our vocabulary, or at least making them popular enough for people to use them. It would be nice to describe a racial concept with one or two words so we can build upon these ideas to form new ones.
Does anyone know if any work is being done in this area?
It seems to me that part of the reason for the lack of progress in racial discourse is due to the limited number of words you can use to describe different racial concepts. This is a huge reason why we spend so much time bickering on this board, and why it's next to impossible to get a point across to someone who doesn't get it.
For example, what does "Asian" mean? It can be cultural, geographic, or racial.
This is the reason we can't unite, because people take it to mean different things. This is why brown people are included sometimes, and why Russians are excluded, why people in the pacific sometimes consider themselves "Pacific Islanders", and so on.
What does "racism" mean? I've heard French people decry anti-French dialog as racist, while I take it to mean discrimination based on "racial" physical characteristics.
How do you describe different types of racism, where only one sex of a particular race is "accepted", while the other is not?
That's why I'm frustrated at leaders and scholars for failing to bring more terms into our vocabulary, or at least making them popular enough for people to use them. It would be nice to describe a racial concept with one or two words so we can build upon these ideas to form new ones.
Does anyone know if any work is being done in this area?