'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

[Simon]

Can someone explain to me why race independent terms like master and slave should be abandoned?
Or is the history limited to a certain era and forgotten that nord african muslim masters held over a million european white christian slaves ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade

Long story short: idiots

[tggzzz]

Who is Bristol? are the people of Bristol today the ones that were involved in the slave trade?

Some of the organisations are. Start with the Merchant Venturers, who still have a lot of power and influence.

I've seen reports, but not paid much attention, to the effect that the MV were against the many proposals for new/additional plaques by Colston's statue.

Bristolians like a good riot every decade or so, and the last one was 9 years ago. FFI google "telepathic heights tesco stokes croft". The statue was a good target for letting off steam and reminding politicians that Bristolians exist.

[dave j]

Who is Bristol? are the people of Bristol today the ones that were involved in the slave trade?

It's quite obvious from the context it's referring to the citizens of the city of Bristol. They might not have been involved in the slave trade but they, at least those that make the decisions about plaques, are the the latest ones to try to hide the city's involvement with it.

[coppice]

the statues are irrelevant, take a poll of who the statue is of and i bet virtually no one will be able to tell you the name without looking, then ask them what the person did and even few will know. On the other hand racism is a thing, it is another form of bullying, it just got an "-ism" because it can be identified to be of a particular section of the population.

Many of the statues and place names being argued over right now have been the subject of debate for years. While people are debating they are not erasing the past and fostering its repetition.

[Simon]

the statues are irrelevant, take a poll of who the statue is of and i bet virtually no one will be able to tell you the name without looking, then ask them what the person did and even few will know. On the other hand racism is a thing, it is another form of bullying, it just got an "-ism" because it can be identified to be of a particular section of the population.

Many of the statues and place names being argued over right now have been the subject of debate for years. While people are debating they are not erasing the past and fostering its repetition.

while people are debating statues they are ignoring the problem, they are becoming the problem, they are consuming the media bandwidth and the actual problem is being ignored.

[coppice]

In the UK the residents of Bristol seem happy at the moment that a statue of slave trader Edward Colson has just been pulled down, and streets and schools named after him are being renamed. They want this because they want to santize their city, and pretend they have a squeaky clean history. Its a terrible idea. 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a game plan.

Don't lump all Bristolians together. It ain't gert lush, me babber.

In fact, it is no better than racism, or classism, or any of the other divide-and-conquer pigeonholing techniques.

I'm sorry. I should have been more specific. Certain groups - the white washers, and their useful idiots - want these types of change.

[coppice]

Not glorifying/celebrating ≠ sanitizing.

That's one of the excuses they use in 1984. Its sad they so many people right now are happy to side with the bad side in 1984.

Direct quote from '1984' to prove your assertion please, or I'll assert that is double-plus not a quote from Orwell.

Its years since I read the book, so digging out a specific quote would be a pain right now. However, if you have read it you should remember several things which were not sanitising to make the party look good, but something less innocuous. Of course, its the following famous line that really sums up the effects of erasure:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

[james_s]

These things always have multiple causes and influences and a lot is historic. This is why SJW jumping up and down about one silly thing in isolation is not helpful. People don't just move from one part of the country to another because they feel like a change.

People in general like a nice tidy cause-effect relationship. B happens because of A, so if we fix A then B will stop happening. In reality things are almost always far more complex and nuanced. It's very rare that any one thing exists in isolation and is caused by any one other thing. A side effect of this is that a huge amount of focus is giving to "fixing" one specific aspect akin to treating one of the symptoms of the disease and then it's pats on the back for a job well done but of course nothing really changes because nothing has been done about the root causes. As long as people blame the wrong thing(s) nothing will improve.

[tooki]

People need constant reminding of how badly things go wrong when society lets its guard down. In the UK the residents of Bristol seem happy at the moment that a statue of slave trader Edward Colson has just been pulled down, and streets and schools named after him are being renamed. They want this because they want to santize their city, and pretend they have a squeaky clean history. Its a terrible idea. 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a game plan.

The text on the Colston statue's plaque reads "ERECTED BY CITIZENS OF BRISTOL AS A MEMORIAL OF ONE OF THE MOST VIRTUOUS AND WISE SONS OF THEIR CITY. A.D.1895". Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833, so the people who erected it in 1895 knew full well that slavery was wrong. The real sanitizing of Bristol's history was in full swing in 1895.

So change the plaque!

Honestly, a very pragmatic solution. (I’m also OK with moving the statues, such that we aren’t destroying them, but aren’t putting them in places of honor.)

[Cerebus]

Not glorifying/celebrating ≠ sanitizing.

That's one of the excuses they use in 1984. Its sad they so many people right now are happy to side with the bad side in 1984.

Direct quote from '1984' to prove your assertion please, or I'll assert that is double-plus not a quote from Orwell.

Its years since I read the book, so digging out a specific quote would be a pain right now. However, if you have read it you should remember several things which were not sanitising to make the party look good, but something less innocuous. Of course, its the following famous line that really sums up the effects of erasure:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Oh, I've read it, twice, and am probably due for another reread. I just dispute that anywhere in 1984 is something that reads as an 'excuse' for Big Brother's party proposing anything like Tooki's statement "Not glorifying/celebrating ≠ sanitizing". Refusing to continue to celebrate a historical wrong 'un is not the same as making them an unperson during your day's work at Minitrue.

"That's out of 1984" is an oft quoted line to decry something that's nothing to do with the topics of 1984, most often said by people who've never read the book. It's usually an emotional "You're bad as the people in 1984" rather than a rational, reasoned refutation of someone's position.

[james_s]

Law enforcement in USA is too rotten to be saved. It needs a total reboot.

What do you base this on and what do you propose replacing it with?

I do not interact with the police often, but the times I have interacted with them I've always been impressed by their professionalism, and I've seen them deal with situations that I would not have the restraint to deal with myself. There are a lot of rather terrible and dangerous people out there who simply refuse to play by the rules and show a complete disregard for their fellow citizens, somebody has to deal with them and I don't know how to do it better than the way we do. My limited observations have been that police in this country are not fundamentally different than police in most other countries, and generally public approval has never fallen below 50% and typically sits much higher. A large majority of the population is not anti-police.

[tooki]

Not glorifying/celebrating ≠ sanitizing.

That's one of the excuses they use in 1984. Its sad they so many people right now are happy to side with the bad side in 1984.

Direct quote from '1984' to prove your assertion please, or I'll assert that is double-plus not a quote from Orwell.

Its years since I read the book, so digging out a specific quote would be a pain right now. However, if you have read it you should remember several things which were not sanitising to make the party look good, but something less innocuous. Of course, its the following famous line that really sums up the effects of erasure:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Yeah but it’s not “the party” wanting the things removed. Again, it’s just not wanting to have statues of racist assholes shoved in their faces all the time, in particular, in public places that should be neutral. (As a quick reminder, the majority of statues of confederate “heroes” were erected in the 1950s, as clear retaliation to desegregation. It’s not as though those statues had been standing since the civil war. They were erected during a time where we already damned well knew that slavery was wrong.)

[james_s]

Yeah but it’s not “the party” wanting the things removed. Again, it’s just not wanting to have statues of racist assholes shoved in their faces all the time, in particular, in public places that should be neutral.

Who is it then? Because I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to refer to authoritarian leftist progressives as "the party" in this context. Do any of these people actually know for a fact that those people the statues memorialize were "racist assholes"? Did they know them personally? Did those people not have other virtues alongside their faults? Does a negative trait mean that a person cannot be admired or remembered for other reasons? Was their view considered negative or unacceptable by society during the time that they lived? Does that matter?

I don't like the trend of judging historical figures through the lens of the present. I can guarantee that there is something you do or some view that you hold that is perfectly acceptable today but 200 years from now some people will find abhorrent.  It seems that some people consider morals and values to be absolute and innate while in reality it seems obvious that they are largely learned from the society in which they are raised.

[tooki]

Law enforcement in USA is too rotten to be saved. It needs a total reboot.

What do you base this on and what do you propose replacing it with?

I do not interact with the police often, but the times I have interacted with them I've always been impressed by their professionalism, and I've seen them deal with situations that I would not have the restraint to deal with myself. There are a lot of rather terrible and dangerous people out there who simply refuse to play by the rules and show a complete disregard for their fellow citizens, somebody has to deal with them and I don't know how to do it better than the way we do. My limited observations have been that police in this country are not fundamentally different than police in most other countries, and generally public approval has never fallen below 50% and typically sits much higher. A large majority of the population is not anti-police.

Really? You don’t know why I say this?! Have you not been paying attention to the protests happening around the country and now world?!

Really?!?

Anyhow, I outlined why in some earlier remarks. But the upshot is that the police have turned into an old boys’ club accountable to nobody. The police unions protect even the worst cops, preventing any kind of meaningful oversight. And the good cops who try to hold the bad cops accountable end up getting let go. (Like the cop who was fired for NOT shooting an unarmed civilian with a mental problem, for “putting his fellow officers at risk” even though he’d already successfully de-escalated the situation.)

Anyway, my proposal, if I could have it any way I wanted, would be to create all-new police using only “virgin” employees who’ve never worked in law enforcement before. The risk of the old guard bringing in the same rotten culture is just too large. I’d be OK with ex-military, since they’ve been taught how to de-escalate, to not view citizens as the enemy, etc.

(Wanna be horrified? Google “police warrior training”. THAT is why I feel the police now are beyond redemption.)

It’s true that the police deal with some really hard situations. But the overwhelming majority of the interactions they deal with are things the police shouldn’t be handling at all, like mental health, stuff like parking violations, and countless other things that could be handled by other civil servants. (This is what the “defund the police” movements are pushing for: take that money from the police and use it to provide services by people properly trained to provide those services. Leave the police for the real criminals.)

[tooki]

Yeah but it’s not “the party” wanting the things removed. Again, it’s just not wanting to have statues of racist assholes shoved in their faces all the time, in particular, in public places that should be neutral.

Who is it then? Because I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to refer to authoritarian leftist progressives as "the party" in this context. Do any of these people actually know for a fact that those people the statues memorialize were "racist assholes"? Did they know them personally? Did those people not have other virtues alongside their faults? Does a negative trait mean that a person cannot be admired or remembered for other reasons? Was their view considered negative or unacceptable by society during the time that they lived? Does that matter?

I don't like the trend of judging historical figures through the lens of the present. I can guarantee that there is something you do or some view that you hold that is perfectly acceptable today but 200 years from now some people will find abhorrent.  It seems that some people consider morals and values to be absolute and innate while in reality it seems obvious that they are largely learned from the society in which they are raised.

It’s not the government demanding the statues be taken down, it’s the people.

Yes, they were racist assholes. They fought a fucking war against their own country for the right to keep slaves. It doesn’t get much more clear than that. (Remember, the US had already decided that slavery was bad.)

I do agree with you to a point about judging through a different lens. But does today’s lens not give us the right to say “no, we aren’t going to glorify this guy any more”??

[coppice]

Yeah but it’s not “the party” wanting the things removed. Again, it’s just not wanting to have statues of racist assholes shoved in their faces all the time, in particular, in public places that should be neutral.

Who is it then? Because I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to refer to authoritarian leftist progressives as "the party" in this context. Do any of these people actually know for a fact that those people the statues memorialize were "racist assholes"? Did they know them personally? Did those people not have other virtues alongside their faults? Does a negative trait mean that a person cannot be admired or remembered for other reasons? Was their view considered negative or unacceptable by society during the time that they lived? Does that matter?

I don't like the trend of judging historical figures through the lens of the present. I can guarantee that there is something you do or some view that you hold that is perfectly acceptable today but 200 years from now some people will find abhorrent.  It seems that some people consider morals and values to be absolute and innate while in reality it seems obvious that they are largely learned from the society in which they are raised.

It’s not the government demanding the statues be taken down, it’s the people.

Yes, they were racist assholes. They fought a fucking war against their own country for the right to keep slaves. It doesn’t get much more clear than that. (Remember, the US had already decided that slavery was bad.)

I do agree with you to a point about judging through a different lens. But does today’s lens not give us the right to say “no, we aren’t going to glorify this guy any more”??

The people? Just how many people? What percentage of the population are these people? Could they win their goals through the ballot box?

[tom66]

I think it's also worth noting that most of these statues aren't ancient artifacts left behind by people loyal to these men.  They were often put up hundreds of years after they died, some as recent as 1940, in response to the Civil Rights Movement.  One particularly prolific group responsible for putting these statues up is "The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC)" who have links to the KKK.

As far as I am concerned there is no doubt that these statues are put up as anything other than a racist endeavour, to say, "this time was good; let's try to remember it."

I *don't* support the changing of legitimate, well-used technical terms like master and slave.  Newer projects might consider neutral terms such as primary and secondary, but I think of all our problems, language is far from the most serious and we risk insincerity in trying to paper over the cracks in society with memes like these.

[Nominal Animal]

I don't think either of us think our own seasonably variable skins colours have anything to do with 'race', it's just passing musings on the subject of identity and how we think about it.

Agreed; on my part, I was musing on why skin color alone, say seeing only someones hands or neck, isn't enough to trigger the sense of "different" for me.  Facial features, quite possibly do.  And I explicitly didn't claim to be free from prejudices/preconceptions; I have plenty of those.  So do you, and so does everyone else.  If it causes any kind of conflict, then we work on it.  It if doesn't, we never find out we had them.

Still, and I want to repeat this once again, just eliminating the words or terms that appear to cause emotional pain by proxy to some, will not achieve anything.

This is not the same thing as dismissing the issue: it is the opposite.  I am saying that if there is a source of conflict, we need to talk about it, and find the root cause, and work on that; and not just paper over the issue with the simplest answer that first comes to mind, because that causes more harm than good, with history as proof.

[james_s]

It’s not the government demanding the statues be taken down, it’s the people.

Yes, they were racist assholes. They fought a fucking war against their own country for the right to keep slaves. It doesn’t get much more clear than that. (Remember, the US had already decided that slavery was bad.)

I do agree with you to a point about judging through a different lens. But does today’s lens not give us the right to say “no, we aren’t going to glorify this guy any more”??

In a "government of the people, for the people, by the people" what is the differentiation between "the government" and "the people"? Which people exactly are we talking about? All of the people? A specific group of people?

There are a lot more historical figures being judged than confederate leaders. We don't have to glorify them but I don't want to pretend they never existed either and I don't agree with destroying art, especially historical art. If people don't want it on public land then it should be moved into a museum or something, not toppled. And it should be decided by a vote, not by mob justice.

[vodka]

Law enforcement in USA is too rotten to be saved. It needs a total reboot.

What do you base this on and what do you propose replacing it with?

I do not interact with the police often, but the times I have interacted with them I've always been impressed by their professionalism, and I've seen them deal with situations that I would not have the restraint to deal with myself. There are a lot of rather terrible and dangerous people out there who simply refuse to play by the rules and show a complete disregard for their fellow citizens, somebody has to deal with them and I don't know how to do it better than the way we do. My limited observations have been that police in this country are not fundamentally different than police in most other countries, and generally public approval has never fallen below 50% and typically sits much higher. A large majority of the population is not anti-police.

There are many example  of  "soft policy" with the criminals,in example Barcelona.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1269672622360416256
https://twitter.com/i/status/1260311600466182144
https://twitter.com/i/status/1260543358059130882
https://twitter.com/i/status/1243625785908486145

[tooki]

The people?

Yes, as in, not the government.

Just how many people? What percentage of the population are these people?

Enough people.

Could they win their goals through the ballot box?

Statistically speaking, no. Statistically, the will of the American people, even on things where there is overwhelming consensus, has essentially zero measurable impact on public policy:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/is-america-an-oligarchy

When we are lucky and the ruling elite want the same thing the public at large wants, great. But where we disagree, the public loses every time.

It’s not the government demanding the statues be taken down, it’s the people.

Yes, they were racist assholes. They fought a fucking war against their own country for the right to keep slaves. It doesn’t get much more clear than that. (Remember, the US had already decided that slavery was bad.)

I do agree with you to a point about judging through a different lens. But does today’s lens not give us the right to say “no, we aren’t going to glorify this guy any more”??

In a "government of the people, for the people, by the people" what is the differentiation between "the government" and "the people"? Which people exactly are we talking about? All of the people? A specific group of people?

There are a lot more historical figures being judged than confederate leaders. We don't have to glorify them but I don't want to pretend they never existed either and I don't agree with destroying art, especially historical art. If people don't want it on public land then it should be moved into a museum or something, not toppled. And it should be decided by a vote, not by mob justice.

I was responding to your claim that it was like in 1984 where the Party kept doing things to subjugate the people. In that book, the government clearly is not of, for, or by the people.

As I already said, I’m absolutely in favor of retaining the statues and moving them to museums or whatever. As I also said, however, they’re mostly not nearly as “historical” as people think, having been erected as retaliation for the civil rights movement.

[tooki]

Law enforcement in USA is too rotten to be saved. It needs a total reboot.

What do you base this on and what do you propose replacing it with?

I do not interact with the police often, but the times I have interacted with them I've always been impressed by their professionalism, and I've seen them deal with situations that I would not have the restraint to deal with myself. There are a lot of rather terrible and dangerous people out there who simply refuse to play by the rules and show a complete disregard for their fellow citizens, somebody has to deal with them and I don't know how to do it better than the way we do. My limited observations have been that police in this country are not fundamentally different than police in most other countries, and generally public approval has never fallen below 50% and typically sits much higher. A large majority of the population is not anti-police.

There are many example  of  "soft policy" with the criminals,in example Barcelona.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1269672622360416256
https://twitter.com/i/status/1260311600466182144
https://twitter.com/i/status/1260543358059130882
https://twitter.com/i/status/1243625785908486145

Nobody is saying to be soft on criminals. But it is possible to police without brutalizing the civilian populace.

[james_s]

There are many example  of  "soft policy" with the criminals,in example Barcelona.

I don't speak the language and am not very knowledgeable about the region so it's a bit hard for me to tell what's going on there. I'm wondering though how they would deal with the sort of violent, often armed criminals that are common in the USA. Or the repeat offenders, just a few months ago officials were fretting over what to do with a guy in Seattle who has been arrested >70 times for assaulting people and other crimes, they let him out yet again at one point and it was a matter of days before he attacked some random stranger. I'd love it if we didn't need the police but I've come to realize there are a significant number of people who are just determined to be problematic, they offend over and over and over and I have a hard time feeling sympathetic. I feel like my rights as a law-abiding citizen who minds my own business and doesn't go around harassing/attacking/victimizing my fellow citizens ought to be protected over those of a chronic offender who just refuses to be helped. I simply lack the patience to deal with people who refuse to get with the program no matter how many chances and how much help they are given.

[james_s]

Nobody is saying to be soft on criminals. But it is possible to police without brutalizing the civilian populace.

Of course it's possible, and the vast majority of the tens of thousands of police officers do not brutalize the civilian populace. I do not personally know anyone who has ever been brutalized by the police. I know plenty of people who have been brutalized by crooks though, a friend of mine was mugged just a couple of years ago when he lived in Chicago, a couple of guys armed with a handgun stopped him on the street, took his wallet and phone and one of the guys punched him and they ran off. That's not an isolated incident.

Police that brutalize civilians need to be dealt with, but I do not agree that the whole system is beyond saving. In a population of 330 million with several tens of thousands of police a few hundred incidents a year nationwide is near the noise floor.

[Simon]

I do agree with you to a point about judging through a different lens. But does today’s lens not give us the right to say “no, we aren’t going to glorify this guy any more”??

Through today's lenses several cherished and very funny episodes of TV are being removed. Rather than let them stand as a testament of our past they are being erased by taking them off the air.

a character who is clearly dullalli being a bit racist is not saying that what he says is right, it is an example of the crazily unacceptable things that even in the 70's were unacceptable that a dullalli old man might say.