“This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor commenting on the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge,” the user wrote alongside a clip of Scott speaking. “It’s going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.”
The post was immediately fact checked and even came with an advisory.
“Brandon Scott was elected as Mayor of Baltimore in 2020 with > 70% of the vote,” the advisory reads. “He did not come in to office through any DEI practices, appointments, etc.” This isn’t the first instance of a racist swapping out the N-word with “DEI”—but it certainly is one of the most brazen.
Wait, you’re telling me that “banning” a word will not stop the behaviour it was caused by?
think you might have grabbed a slightly tilted takeaway from this…
He’s not wrong though; you have to battle ideas not words. Education is the solution.
Too bad the electorate keeps putting in idiot racists who want to sabotage the education system.
Indeed, they recognize that education is the antithesis of their ideals.
Maybe that is because nuance is not part of the US dictionary. Always have to choose a side.
But the “idea” here is that the n-word is hurtful and there’s absolutely never a proper use for it.
The idea that the racists have is that anyone not white is inferior, that’s a whole different argument than just using a word that only has the purpose of hurting people.
I disagree, I think words having powerful, negative meaning like that is a symptom of a deeper problem, not a root problem in and of itself. We shouldn’t be tackling the problem of people using words, we should be tackling the problem of why do they want to use those words in the first place?
It’s not the root problem, but that’s what I mentioned as a separate issue.
As another one put it ¿Por que no los dos?
The word has no place in society, but also the reasons one chooses to use it is problematic. It’s not so much “banned” but it’s a “fuck around and find out” word. There are repercussions for the words you choose to use, just like if a presidential candidate started tossing “fuck” around a lot. That word isn’t banned, but you know that would kill their campaign completely.
You’re not wrong, but people who hold a conservative ideology tend to react very poorly when you tell them that their emotional fear/disgust response to the existence of minorities is the problem.
Por que no los dos?
The n-word is atrocious and we’re better off without it - even if people use stand-ins in its place that word had far too much baggage. We should also be battling ideas and teaching people to be less shitty.
What bothers me here is that one of you got downvoted into oblivion, the other got upvoted just as much, and from where I’m standing, it seems like both of you are on the same side.
my read was that by putting “banning” in quotes, there was a subtext to the comment.
no one is “banning” words - the milieu is that we don’t use certain words for certain (in this case obvious and terrible) reasons.
by pushing the focus to the “banning” and not the obvious dog whistle, this comment seems to be shifting the convo away from people being racist shits to a discussion on language.
hence this entire comment chain.
i just want people to get the takeaway that jesus fuck people are racist, not “liberals can’t ban words, see?”
Maybe I’m being overly generous here, to me the user just sounded frustrated with the boundaries of civil discourse masking but not solving a problem. I assumed the problem was self-evident/they weren’t denying it.
To me that feels like a call for more action, not less. It’s all too easy to pretend something isn’t happening when the verbiage around it becomes more palatable (exactly what dog whistles are for).
But again, maybe I’m being too generous.