Right. Also "care" strikes me as the wrong word here. The question was just about what should be focused on. It's like if you asked me which student in a class should get more tutoring or help. I shouldn't be answering based on which student I care about
Almost the entire comments section is grouchy centrists complaining about progressives! You guys do it so much I think it might be driving everyone else away. Physician heal thyself
B) the complaining is overwhelmingly by centrists against progressives. I honestly can't remember seeing any progressives in this forum. By contrast any article relating to social relations will rack up many dozens of "hippy punching" posts, as I believe someone else called it.
I honestly find it curious that people enjoy so much hippy punching. It seems like a bunch of people agreeing with each other, I can't see anyone providing the progressive viewpoint (I haven't encountered the people you listed). With articles about the GOP, that isn't the case. Also, the GOP is very powerful. Progressives a secondary faction of one party.
I feel the need to come back to this for a moment.
What in the ever-living hell is your definition of a "centrist"?
I can think of perhaps three posters who are genuinely at the middle of American politics here and they're still left of center. There are another half-dozen outright conservatives, most reasonable, two not. A handful of libertarians. The remainder, a large majority of us, are *well* to the left of center.
We're just "anti-woke". If that makes us "centrists", then enjoy your purity tests and the circular firing squads that will ensue when you have only true-believers left.
If we use the principal of charity, I think it's fairly apparent that the centrists you're talking about don't actually mean any and all complaining is bad. After all, they're complaining so they obviously don't think all complaining is bad.
I think the actual complaint of the comments section is that they have a some-to-much of an overlap with the actual concrete policy goals of those they're complaining about but that those people they're complaining about are doing a bad job at bringing those policies to fruition.
Lerne leiden ohne zu Klagen means learn to suffer without complaining. So centrists are endlessly complaining about the progressives, and one of their complaints is that progressives complain too much. Seems a look in the mirror might be in order.
I don't think centrist is actually a thing. I forget where I read this, but political scientists usually find that "moderates" are just people with a mix of "center", "far left" and "far right" views. They don't actually just have a bunch of moderate views.
Progressives on the other hand are a united political faction, they are unusually unpopular, if you vote blue it's not unreasonable to think they are losing your team's elections (and perhaps be grouchy about it), and MY's post here was about another one of their missteps.
I don't buy this. Progressive is just the name that Liberals adopted when Republican's made Liberal a dirty word. Now they have made Progressive a dirty word. I am comfortable with either of those monikers. I am certainly not a SJW though, in fact I am not sure I have ever met one in the wild. I have had a number of nuanced discussions with you. I certainly don't think I came across as such...
Matt has called himself a Progressive, even recently. It seems a little unreasonable to insist that we rename ourselves every few years. In fact it feels a bit like vilification. If I had to describe "my tribe" (Progressives) as "a united political faction," I'd say we are united only in a belief that the government can and should improve American lives.
Progressives are the extremists who believe in cancel culture, for example. and will not deign to actually engage in discussion as they see that as "legitimizing" abhorrent ideas. That is what sets them apart from every other political designation.
Yeah but how many of that 12% are on twitter? I'm pretty sure the main reason that most people use "Latinx" is just to avoid being yelled at by their peers.
Progressives believe that their calling in politics is to fight for the interests of "oppressed minorities", so they have a hard time saying "no" to any group that claims that mantle. There are, of course, many times when fighting to uplift oppressed minorities is the morally and even politically right thing to do, but there are also cases where the "minority" is so small and the fight so inconsequential and politically counterproductive that the "minority" in question is better off just being ignored.
We seem to have fallen into a trap where being a tiny proportion of the population, and your concerns treated as marginal, is itself a mark of oppression, so the vast majority (which by virtue of being vast is not oppressed) must accommodate itself to the tiny minority.
Yes, and I think that problem is compounded when the tiny minority appears to have self-selected itself into being a minority. I have yet to see or meet anybody who calls themselves "non-binary" who is more gender-nonconforming than, say, Boy George, but I feel like I am constantly being asked to act like I just got here from 1955 and think a girl who cut her hair short and dyed it blue is an exotic species of gender the likes I never kenned. Also, I don't mind using "they" singular because I think that's reasonably grammatical, but I am not using anybody's personal made-up science fiction pronouns. Get off my lawn. Bloody kids.
FWIW, I'd much rather use a made up pronoun than "they". Or at the very least, just conjugate the damn verbs like it were third person singular ("they is") so I have some way to infer number if I drop in the middle of a conversation.
Non-binary is primarily a political identity, not a gender one. There are trans conservatives, but I don't think I've ever heard of a nonbinary one. That said, people can be called whatever they want to, it's not any different from just changing your name or whatever.
I just got a charitable donation request from the Texas Diaper Bank, seeking support for "people who menstruate," aka "menstruators." For that reason alone, they will not make my charity list this year. I wonder if they thought this through, and reasoned that this kind of woke language will motivate more of their target audience to donate and only turn off the small minority of disgruntled possible donors in which I reside.
But I'm guessing no. I suspect it's just kneejerk political correctness speaking here.
The last time I got a donation request couched in obscenely purpose-obscuring woke language I bitched them out on the phone and demanded to speak to the phone bank's coordinator, got them on the line and told them this was stupid, that their job is to get money to help people, not come up with a script three times as long as it needs to be and completely unintelligible to boot.
Does anyone have a good recommendation on the history of Communist China? I would like something that's non-ideological. I found "Forgotten Ally" fascinating, but that was just through WWII.
I don't have a great recommendation for an overview of the 1945-2015 period, ironically, but here are two suggestions for understanding how the CCP came to run the show in the first place: Platt's "Imperial Twilight" and Bickers' "Out of China"
It's a lot of reading (like 1500 pages total), but Frank Dikotter's trilogy on Communist China is probably the best cohesive set of English-language sources on the subject:
(1) "The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945–1957"
(2) "Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962"
(3) "The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976"
Finished A People's Tragedy yesterday. It's an absolutely incredible primer on the Russian Revolution. I think if there's a lesson for our purposes here it's that you've got to meet people where they are, but as you point out, it's remarkable how circumstances can change that in a very short period of time.
One of my main takeaway was that the majority of Russians, i.e. peasants, didn't want anything to do with any central government, the Tsar, gentry, liberals, and urban Bolsheviks could all piss off and did little for them besides take away their food, land, and young men. However, the Whites failed to adapt, and the Reds were much better at this.
Just reading that now, some great lines: "The far left’s reputation made it hard for them to form a government in the same way John Wayne Gacy’s reputation made it hard for him to get work as a birthday clown; sometimes, people really get hung up on your track record."
If you were to actually get everyone to agree with you, then by what measure will you be able to convince yourself that you’re better than everyone else? (This is a problem for all of us!)
Organizing is hard, trust me. But anyone can police language on their favorite internet platforms and believe that they’re making a positive change in the world.
I think so much of our discourse is about language because it’s an arena in which progressive activists continue to experience success. People may not like the way we use language, but American institutions have been very accommodating, particularly the non-conservative press.
Hm, I think it also works the other way. Everyone is convinced their ideas would be incredibly popular if "they" weren't standing in the way of your message. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
See my comment. When working in Latin America, people view themselves by their National identity way more than as some collective Spanish speaking people (I am leaving Brazil out).
The Spanish Speaking Americas were part of the Spanish Empire until 1809. Places like Peru and Mexico were part of it for 250 years. Is it idiotic to think that Peruvians and Mexicans have as much in common as Australians and Canadians or that Venezuelans and Equadorians have as much in common as Australians and Kiwis?
Canadian here. I don't think Australians and Canadians have that much in common, either, actually. A shared language and ties to Britain, sure, but not much more. Canadians have much more in common with Americans and the British than Australians or Kiwis.
Sure Hispanics share a language and broad culture and ties to Spain, but the differences are just as big as those between Canada and Australia, i.e. huge.
Totally agree. The biggest distortion in our politics right now is that as more minorities have joined the ranks of college educated progressive elites, white progressive think that pandering to us is the same as pandering to those groups writ large. There’s positive reinforcement because it feels good to pander to your friends. And then negative reinforcement because it’s much easier to (for example) express your sincere support for BLM than it is to try and explain to your black friend that you’re worried it might be counterproductive with working class Hispanics.
I agree with much of this, but you need some labels to categorize folks if you're running a political organization, no? I'm Indian-American and agree "Asian" is too broad. But there aren't enough Indians (or even South Asians) for ppl to be narrowly focused on us. There is at least some commonality of experience with other Asians. So long as Democrats don't make the other mistakes you accurately identified, not sure the labeling is a huge problem. As Yglesias says "Latinx" is a symptom, not problem itself.
I can see what you're saying about the lack of a pan-Asian identity. But is that dependent on the question at hand? Kamala Harris's mother had Tamil Brahmin roots. Does that mean non-Tamil Indian-Americans don't identify with Harris or take pride in her becoming VP and a possible future President? I wonder about Pakistani-Americans as well, or immigrants from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.
One complicating factor (though I generally agree with you about the lack of shared identity) is that there are a ton of Indians and Indian Americans who seem to desperately think the term "Asian" should also apply to them—regardless of any pan-asian american sentiment—because of geography. These people get angry in the comments of any content that talks about Asians to the exclusion of Indians. Anecdotally, I've seen this funny trend of making token references to indians in content clearly about east asian experiences as a result.
From my personal experience as half Korean/Indian in Seattle and the Bay Area: there's definitely little overlap between the first generation communities, and while it's not uncommon to see mixed south/southeast/east asian 2nd/3rd gen friend groups, non mixed groups seem more common.
This is part of the problem of the complete nationalization of politics. In the old Tip O'Neil days there were local organizations that focused precinct by precinct and community to community. But now everything is seen from national level where everything is necessarily somewhat broad brushed
Yeah sure, local outreach should be done in a way that's most effective. In NYC for example, politicians specifically reach out to Sikhs, Gujuratis, etc. That's good politics. I disagree with your dismissal of common experience. The Hmong refugee and Filipino programmer are going to be subject to similar stereotypes. Most Asian Americans are either immigrants or children of immigrants. There are obviously some commonalities there. Overall though, I think we're in agreement. Treating different people differently as the circumstances warrant is smart and empathetic politics. Democrats should have the $ and ability to do this.
Exactly, but why various nationalities ended up immigrating to the Us or elsewhere varies, and those circumstances mean they will have different experiences and interests.
Whether you immigrate as an illiterate peasant or as a programmer makes a huge difference.
A split between "East Asian" and "South Asian" seems like it would be the logical stepping stone for refining the "Asian" category. Those two categories are already pretty widely used in other contexts. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some political pressure to split the "Asian" category for the 2030 Census, given that category is the fastest growing minority group in the US at the moment. A big question, though, is whether or not "Southeast Asian" should also be a separate category.
On the one hand that sounds super reasonable. But at some point it's worth asking, what is the point of doing all these categorizations? If we have to go X levels deep to have any chance of reflecting a reality that people find sensible, do the cons start to outweigh the pros?
Counting and noting immigrants by their country of origin makes the most sense to me. But then racecrafting which nations belong together starts to get a little icky. By the time the immigrants children and especially grandchildren have grown up speaking English and marrying people from other groups it starts to get even more tricky and less useful.
The point of categorization is message targeting. If you know that Venezuelan Americans hate socialismlive in Florida, and are occasional voters, you can buy billboards and target FB ads at them saying that Biden and AOC are like Maduro.
Almost everybody hates Socialism, not just Venezuelans. It just that as newcomers, they don't know that "socialism" as coming from the mouths of Sanders or AOC has nothing to do with Socialism.
Why would you want to know where Venezuelans live instead of trying to figure out where voters (of any ethnicity) live who hate socialism?
Let's say we have two voters, one is Mexican American and lives in Santa Monica, the other is Mexican American and lives in NW Texas. What is more relevant, their ethnicity or where they live? I can't assume very much about the voter based on their ethnicity.
Admittedly, I think your example works better than most because immigrants from Venezuela may well be some of the most anti-socialist groups out there. But that's part of what I said above, it does make sense to categorize immigrants by nation of origin. It makes. much less sense to categorize their grandchildren, or lump them together with Argentinians and Tejanos as the "Hispanic Race"
I think the “white, urban, and college educated people running Dem campaigns” are making this same mistake across multiple dimensions. It’s insulting as well as reductive to assume that all or most people in a group have the same views on an issue. What I find especially depressing about this is that they have been doing this during my entire voting life and they never, ever learn.
Lots of terms get imposed on people. Cis is a term that the trans community has forced on people like me. I certainly didn’t have a say in the term being put on me.
Blind people will refer to everyone else as Sighted. As a cis Sighted person I feel weird and awkward using these terms to describe my identity. I would be less likely to vote for someone who talked about issues for the Cis Sighted community.
Yea When someone uses Cis on me I feel like I am being insulted. I don’t feel that way when I am called straight or even mildly insulting terms like square or normi.
True, it's hard to say something 100% accurate and also short; sometimes I post long complicated comments that include the qualifications and no-one interacts with them.
Hispanic has been kind of accepted by the community. Grocery stores use the term. Regardless of its origin it has been accepted. Cis people haven’t really accepted cis yet Sighted people have also not accepted the term but probably wont have a problem with it.
I think there is a problem with coining terms to identify what is a norm, i.e. the vast majority. This is an attempt to make the majority feel guilty for being the norm, and it backfires.
I don't think it is an attempt to make people feel guilty, but an attempt to put the minority on an even keel with the majority.
It's like "straight" or "heterosexual" - I'm old enough to remember people complaining about them and asking "why can't we just say 'normal'?" - once we got used to it after a couple of decades or so, it was just a case for many people of saying that they are straight and their friend is gay or bi or whatever.
I do think that this is one of the big "woke" or "social justice" or whatever language rows, though. Lots of people are reasonably OK with trans people or blind people or disabled people or whatever, but don't want to think about it, and calling them "cis", or "sighted", or "abled" makes them pay attention to the subject.
I don't know why people think that anyone wants them to feel guilty, but I have noticed that a lot of people say that.
Mostly, "woke" people just want to you be aware of these people and take them into account - don't pretend these people don't exist, and remember to take them into account when you are doing things (seriously, I read lots of trans activism; most of it that isn't battles with doctors and health insurance, is complaining that some random pointless form, like a coffee shop wifi access page, insists on asking for sex/gender and has only M and F as options, or a bank makes it hard to change your name or other similar annoyances that could have been dealt with by someone just saying "what about trans people?" when they set the system up)
Both the "straight" and "gentile" situations seem distinguishable from "cis" to me. No one is ever expected to self-identify out loud as being "gentile" unless there's some sort of discussion about Judaism or Jewish people going on and you're trying to clarify that someone's status relative to the subject. "Straight" had a meaning in describing someone's attitude, demeanor, etc. that pre-dated its use to refer to sexual orientation and, conveniently, the vast majority of people who fit the meaning of "straight" in that sense also fit the meaning of "straight" in the sense of sexual orientation.
There are people who use cis badly. But that doesn't make it non-useful. Like my friend who has a trans son, a trans daughter, and a cis daughter. There really isn't a better way of saying that.
I think you might be basing this off of the tone that many trans people inevitably use when talking about non-trans people. For them, there are a lot of problems with how they're treated by non-trans people. There will some level of annoyance or outrage, and you'll get the same tone, regardless of the term used. As long as being transgender is an identity that people flock to, there will be an in and out group, and it overcomplicates things if you don't have a term for the out group.
I don't mind cis, but maybe that's because prior to 2016 I spent a ton of time on progressive subreddits with a lot of trans people and it made me much more sympathetic to that language. I also don't mind "sighted" though I do not generally refer to myself as such. I suppose I would if I knew many blind people.
I get the impression that no trans people comment on Matt's substack, which is a shame. I've seen some convos here that would definitely benefit from their perspective.
Probably overstating it a little bit actually. They'd think of each other as having some things in common relative to "regular white people". But yes, it would only be a loose affiliation.
White people constructed Hispanic? If you have a link or source please share it. I'm skeptical of that claim for a couple reasons. One is I vaguely remember reading that back in the 70s most of the Latino (Mexican-American and Puerto Rican, mostly) congress wanted to find a way to join forces and lobby and represent their common interests, and Hispanic was the term they chose to use on the census and other places.
I think it's a little more complicated than you're implying. Latino is also a category that Latino people used to organize themselves, which is how you get organizations like the League of United Latin American Citizens out of the Chicano movement in the 60s. "Asian American" was coined by Yuji Ichioka in the 60s, who is an Asian American civil rights activist.
Of course these terms are not used by people in Mexico or Guatemala or Vietnam. They're words invented and used in the US. That doesn't mean they're not valid political identities.
For me the takeaway here is that these terms are invented by activists to promote their political projects. Nothing to do with what people actually think of or call themselves, much less what they essentially are.
Many activists do think of and call themselves Asian, Latino, Latinx, POC, etc. I agree with Matt's point that activists are a small and unrepresentative group, I disagree with the comments section's take that these are terms invented by and for white people and nobody identifies with them. Living in the bubble helps when people are speculating about the habits of people within that bubble!
There is an underrated trolling opportunity in switching from “Romance languages”, the term preferred by the French, to “Latina languages”, the term preferred in Italy and Spain (language being, of course, feminine).
"Langue" in French is feminine, e.g. "la langue française", still feminine when plural, i.e. "les langues".
The preferred term for Romance languages in French is "les langues romanes."
Individual languages are masculine, i.e. "le français, le suédois, le russe", etc.
In Spanish, the word idioma ("language") is masculine.
Maybe you are referring to the rule that when referring to several items, if one of them is masculine, then the masculine applies, e.g. "la table, la chaise, la nappe et le mur sont tous bleus". "9 femmes et un homme étaient présents"...?
Yes, that is the traditional rule, but today there are inclusive practices to counter that when referring to people. But changing the whole structure of the language is not possible.
From Jeff Maurer's piece earlier this morning that I find appropriate for this Latinx nonsense:
"Leftists come from the tradition of acting out one's daddy issues in the public square while claiming to speak for “the people”, even though “the people” would kind of like to see them crushed by a boulder (according to liberals)"
I still cannot understand why Biden did not and does not make an issue of allowing in people seeking asylum from "socialist" regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua. And policy at the border ought to be and be explained as (the very tough job) of separating people seeking politicly asylum from "economic" migrants. I don't blame economic migrants from trying (I know of a family that got into Canada with a bogus "political" asylum claim. I'm happy for them and Canada is better off for their success, but I fear such success undermines support for asylum.) and in practice most "asylum seekers" would make productive ($$$) contributions to the US, but that's not the way our unfortunately benighted laws say they should enter. We need to be seen (domestically and in origin countries) as competently, humanely, and efficiently (no "Wall") enforcing the law. [The "efficiently" part also means, of course, we shouldn't spend resources hunting down long established migrants just because the once entered illegality.]
Politically it's tough, because Lefties get mad when he restricts arrivals, but right-wingers don't even listen or acknowledge that he's trying to do anything. I've had discussions with some of them & they literally don't believe the administration wants to do anything about migration. (They also seem strangely confident that the government CAN do something about migration! Normies really seem to think the govt has magic powers to accomplish things & a unified voice to make decisions. So weird.)
I just meant that Biden has a constituency of immigration activists who seem just as mad at him as the right wing xenophobes.
I too think we should have a competent and enforceable immigration policy BTW. But I also think it's hard to cover such a large border, especially when there's great economic disparity.
I agree, but there are a lot fewer immigration activists (and the ones that are I wish would activate in favor of immigration on grounds that it is good for (almost) everybody, especially if we were recruiting high-skill, high education immigrants) than there xenophobes. Every time we let an issue become zero sum, we lose. Elections are zero sum, but issues, not even racism, are not.
I agree because that works with my political views (anti-socialism, pro-immigration), but it is directly contradicted by Matt's above post, which says that most Hispanic voters oppose immigration from Central (and presumably South) America.
I think it implies a certain degree of condescension on the part of activists to refer to Hispanic people as 'latinx'. Latinx people are People of Color, who are allied with other People of Color and with LGBTQ+ people as well. It reduces all the differences of opinion that exist amongst Hispanic people to a small subset of opinion. It makes life easier to believe that Hispanic people are latinx people, just as it makes life easier to think other groups of people are allied in all ways.
I still, after all these years, hate People of Color. It sounds so pretentious. I will abbreviate to PoC or WoC to make it a little less odious. I was really relieved when we recently moved back to black (or Black, which seems to be a bit precious and woke, but does conform better to our grammar rules for ethnicities, like Asian).
I am blessed to not only have a decent amount of Hispanic friends from growing up in Los Angeles, the military and in Idaho, but I spend 3-4 months a year working in Latin America side by side with Mexicans, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Colombians, Brazilians, and Argentinians. I've basically spent the last three months working in Salta, Argentina.
I viscerally hate the term Latinx. Mainly because it's primarily used by a certain type of pandering progressive type. The stereotypical liberal, in which there is rarely any useful debate to be held. Even worse is when it's used by politicians or business leaders who associate with this crowd, and clearly have no close associations with the Hispanic community in the United States.
First, for the rest of my rant, I am going to use the term Hispanic, because it covers everyone except Brazilians.
Observations:
Even though I prefer the term Hispanic for the United States, in the rest of Latin American, it's not commonly used. Generally, the people are more likely to refer to themselves by their nationality first. They are Colombians or Argentinians. This national identity is much stronger than any allegiance to any group. If pressed, or when talking about people from multiple countries, Latin Americans is the term used most (which is gender neutral... thus my annoyance at coming up with another term). Latino or Latina is popular though it's more popular the further north you go and fades as you move down south.
The whole gender neutral latinx (latine') is used by the progressive college crowd, though only in that very small subset of population, and is never used by media or in the mainstream.
My favorite story is working with a Mexican engineer (recently immigrated) in the United States one time at a job site, and discussing the term Latinx. His reply "pinche gringos"
On to what I observe among Hispanic-Americans and politics in the United States.
For the longest time, it seemed to me that Hispanic representation in politics seemed to be dominated by the East Coast. Cubans, Puerto Ricans, etc... which never really translated to the issues of the mostly Mexican and Central American heritage Americans that I grew up with in Los Angeles and who I worked with in the Military.
This is slowly changing as more Americans with Mexican Heritage enter politics. I fully expect this influence to increase exponentially.
If you ask me, our countries focus on Black White issues almost seems to exclude Hispanic Americans from discussions.
Even in the media and entertainment, I am constantly annoyed at how poor representation is of Hispanic Americans. And even when it does happen, it's rarely reflects reality. It focuses on recent immigrants (there are a whole lot of 2nd and 3rd generation) Americans.
These days TV sitcoms routinely have both white or black characters (unlike Friends), but it's a lot rarer for them to have a Hispanic character, even though at least in my life... it's fairly impossible to live your life without Hispanic friends/co-workers.
My observation is that my Hispanic friends tend to range from very conservative to moderate. With the vast majority sort of in the middle. Liberal Hispanics are rarer than white liberals, and if they do exist, they are going to come from the highly educated college crowd.
The Hispanic vote is never going to be as monolithic as the black vote, but to win these voters, it seems to me that it's bread and butter issues that are going to win the day. The sort of social support programs that benefit working people, allow them to get ahead.
Finally, one of the key mistakes Democrats make when trying to attract the Hispanic vote is assuming that an openish border policy is going to be the main issue. First, Hispanic voters are American citizens, and by definition they were either born here, or followed the process and rules. Secondary, even undocumented migrants can understand supply and demand as far as wages go. They have no real economic reason to want even more undocumented migrants vying for the same jobs that they are performing. However, providing a path to citizenship and allowing family to migrate as well are key issues.
If politicians really want to win the Hispanic vote, then they need to do the same things that are going to win the white working class vote and the same things the black working class want as well. Material over identity.
"People of Color" must be one of the stupidest labels ever invented, and not just becasue it is "wrong." I would not be surprised to learn that it was invented by a RNC mole.
Not as stupid as BIPOC, a label with all the same problems as "people of color" but with the added feature of basically existing to signal Asians and Hispanics that they're less important than two other groups of people of color.
Agreed that it's an awful name. "of" constructions are just awkward. Just use an adjective! (Was the name chosen just because "colored" already had a meaning and no one was creative enough to come up with a different adjective?)
One of the knock-on effects of POC is I've seen it used in medical circles as a synonym for "darker skin". So instead of saying "if your lighter skinned, the skin may look reddish and if your skin is darker it may seem more purplish" they say something like "If you're White reddish, but if you're a POC then purplish". Interjecting a term with all kinds of political identity baggage into what should be a pretty simple medical discussion adds confusion.
Your point about Hispanic representation in politics and the media is an annoyance that I strongly share. I would add East Asian and South Asian representation in those areas as well,. Coming from an area where these are the largest non-white communities.
I have a similar background (complete with a strong connection to Argentina—and Chile). Growing up, I don't even think we were aware of each other's ethnic backrounds or really had a concept of race. The dividing line was language, e.g., it was not at all uncommon for someone's parents not to speak English (and not even just Spanish, Hindi and Chinese—California really is a melting pot!). It was just totally normal to go to a birthday party and find a mix of traditions, clothing, languges, etc. It fact, when I got older and moved to more homogeneous parts of the country, I found that homogeneity to be weird and offputting. Like, wait a minute, why are there so many Jennifers and Johnathans around here?
When these articles about how dumb the term Latinx is popped up, it occured to me that I never even thought about how to label hispanics, or whatever, that way, since you don't do that for people who you regard as individuals and recognize as your friends and family—they're just regular 'ol people. These labels serve a purpose, which is why activists and academics come up with them (RE the comment below, people of color is one of them), but it sounds to me like the people pushing for their widespread adoption are mostly white people in homogeneous parts of the country trying to assuage their own liberal guilt with political correct language. It also feels like Democrats are listening to them too much and shoe-horning a diverse group of people into an ill-fitting stereotype under the rubric of "inclusiveness".
Moving from Los Angeles to New England was at least as much of a culture shock for me than was moving from New England to Europe. Right now I am back on the West Coast, in the process of moving to the South, which seems to be yet again its own thing.
It would be great to find a way to encourage Americans to spend some time sampling different parts of the country (better, the world) though some kind of national service. I think it would help curtail the tribalism that being connected digitally while remaining physically separated foments.
A government provided reasonably well paid job for two or three years for anyone 18-25 and not in college or the military, but you have to live in a dorm and you have to go outside your home state.
And change college fees so out of state is cheaper than in state.
"It would be great to find a way to encourage Americans to spend some time sampling different parts of the country (better, the world) though some kind of national service. I think it would help curtail the tribalism that being connected digitally while remaining physically separated foments."
Rory and I had this discussion already. It was... heated.
Yes. The best Hispanic TV show I've found is actually Mayans MC. It's a take off of the Sons of Anarchy universe, but it has a huge cast that is entirely Hispanic/Mexican and even though it's about a motorcycle gang, it is not at all stereotypical. Great acting and plot that shows Hispanics as complex human beings. White and black people are just auxiliary characters.
Equating natural and grammatical gender in language leads one to ridiculous conclusions. In Mark Twain's essay "The Awful German Language," he points out that according to German grammar, turnips are female, but young women aren't.
I think that German and Russian prove that their complicated marking system can --- at the very least --- be significantly simplified.
In German, if the feminine article is the same in nominative and accusative, and the neuter article is the same in nominative and accusative, and the plural article is the same in nominative and accusative, then surely the masculine article could be the same in nominative and accusative! However it's not. And if most of those articles can be the same in nominative and accusative, then maybe this can be pushed further...
In Russian, apparently it's not a problem that "his", "its", "hers", and "theirs" never change with the case (or the gender of the thing being refereed to), so I'm pretty sure that it would work fine if "my", "your", and "our" were constant too. But they're not. Seriously, has anyone ever said "её as a possessive is so confusing because I can't tell the case from the word!" I think it's much more common to think "thank god that её doesn't conjugate!"
"especially from the first 2 when you consider the case articles."
Do you mean the first and third? Russian doesn't have articles.
"For German I'm not sure if a lot of sentence structure will work without the cases"
If you wanted to get rid of grammatical gender, just assign all words a single, existing gender (e.g. in Russian or German, you could just declare that everything is neuter), and the grammar will still work. After all, it works for existing sentences that only use one gender.
Random question that I don’t want to bother googling - does gendered language convey any information? Does el boligrafo impart some inflation vs la boligrafo? What value does it add?
My understanding is that it’s just like any other distinction among words - it’s one more thing for the speaker to remember to pronounce correctly, and one more thing for the hearer to use to identify the word when spoken in noisy background conditions.
Most multisyllable words, some of those syllables can be thought of this way!
One surprising thing I learned - in English, we tend to pronounce a vowel longer if the next consonant is voiced and shorter if the next consonant is unvoiced. “Leave” has a longer vowel than “leaf”, and “lewd” has a longer vowel than “lute”. If you try using a long vowel with an unvoiced consonant, we often hear it as a foreign speaker who gets the voicing wrong but still distinguishes the word by the vowel length.
It's like in the English sentence "Those two dogs are beagles." All five words communicate the idea of plurality, and it would sound very wrong to a native English speaker if you got any one of them wrong.
It occasionally can. It can make a pronoun unambiguous that otherwise would be. But you'll have to take my word for it. It's too hard to think up an example. :) And occasionally it can (when gender does not agree with the usual -a -o ending) mark the word as of Greek word adopted into Latin. El idioma, el clima, el programa.
The only one I can think of is that it can make pronouns (including object pronouns) more useful sometimes - the way in English it's easier to follow a story with a "she" and a "he" rather than two "he"s. But that seems like a rather limited application.
Isn't this just part of this never-ending far left belief that if we are just purer or more left on the economy or culture, we will have a tsunami of young voters and non-voters turn out?
It is like the Great Pumpkin of Charlie Brown...next time I am sure it will happen.
Since I think the belief is sincere, even if irrational (my favorite is when progressives explain about offsetting losing "normie" voters by boosting LGBTQ turnout), Linus is the better fit.
“But it turns out people are kind of selfish, and the predominant view among Hispanics is that we should talk more about racism against Hispanic people and less about racism against Black people.”
But the chart shows more Hispanics believe we should talk about racism against Asian people than Hispanic people. Doesn’t seem very selfish to me!
True, if anything it seems more like a specific problem with African Americans. Of course this is potentially even more uncomfortable than if it were a generalised selfishness,
It seems more like an accurate perception that discussion of racial issues is often framed in black-white terms when these days it is better understood as a four way system.
Race, as a social issue, is closer to 4 way than to 200 way. There are of course a lot of ways that people self-identify, and a lot of different types of ancestry, ethnicity, culture, etc., but I think the average American currently sees most people as one of four groups (even though there's a lot of cases, like Middle Eastern, South Asian, mixed-race, and indigenous peoples of the Americas that don't get seen or categorized). Perhaps some day it'll start being seen more like a 200 way issue, and people will have the accurate perception that we need to start talking less about Black, Hispanic, and East Asian, and talking a lot more about all the others, but given how people are actually currently treated in racial terms, the four way talking is relatively accurate.
"Perhaps some day" - by that time though you'll have so many people of mixed background that I assume most of these identities will go away in importance the way the non-WASP "white ethnics" did. Large 1st-generation immigrants groups will always have a noticeable identity though.
The biggest problem is that the Democratic Party is run by affluent progressives who cling to their own privilege. California is a cautionary tale. The rent is too high, the power bill is too high, the roads are too congested, there is mass poverty yet zoning laws and green policies are largely sacrosanct.
This is not what working stiffs want, but it’s what policies favored by affluent liberals produce.
Anyway, as for your "roads are too congested" bit... it's completely absurd that you think we can build enough roads to accommodate all the traffic you want with your sprawling hellscape of endless exurbs and golf courses, despite the lessons of the last 100 years. It is a *physical* impossibility. Los Angeles is filled with 12-lane highways that look like parking lots for 6 hours a day and are empty the other 18.
I get that you love your 300k mile Civic. Congrats, I was somewhat fond of my "no AC, no power locks and windows, 250k" Saturn as well.
I'm fonder of my Leaf, my home office, and my freaking bike.
Anti-growth and anti-housing/pro-sprawl policies there make the problem *worse*, masked by good energy efficiency initiatives, affluence allowing rapid adoption of new energy technologies like rooftop PV, EVs, and heat pumps, and a generally amenable climate in most of the major population centers.
Rent too high, roads too congested and poverty too high....One could argue that these are all because the state is a great place to live and are symptoms of good governance. Personally, I think it's a mixed bag but it it _does_ seem an exceptionally weak argument for incompetence.
"it turns out people are kind of selfish, and the predominant view among Hispanics is that we should talk more about racism against Hispanic people and less about racism against Black people."
It seems unfair to characterise Hispanics as "selfish" given that the graph clearly shows them expressing slighly more support for talking about racism against Asians than support for talking about racism against Hispanics.
"like the defund-the-police conversation, it reeks of fighting the last war, arguing about tactical missteps during the 2020 campaign that don’t have that much to do with present-day problems for Joe Biden and congressional Democrats"
This sounds like an excuse for symbolically downplaying the issue, rather than an actual reason. I see little reason to think this is going to be less of an issue in the next campaign than the last. And to the extent that we think of this as reflecting a failure to engage with what voters actually think, rather than as something that is itself driving votes, this seems like as much as an issue now as it did in 2020.
Maybe they simply think the emphasis on anti-black racism is overdone and exaggerated, as many people do?
Wouldn't be shocked if that survey was taken at the height of when high-profile stories about attacks on Asian people were going on.
Right. Also "care" strikes me as the wrong word here. The question was just about what should be focused on. It's like if you asked me which student in a class should get more tutoring or help. I shouldn't be answering based on which student I care about
Almost the entire comments section is grouchy centrists complaining about progressives! You guys do it so much I think it might be driving everyone else away. Physician heal thyself
A) you're the one telling people not to complain.
B) the complaining is overwhelmingly by centrists against progressives. I honestly can't remember seeing any progressives in this forum. By contrast any article relating to social relations will rack up many dozens of "hippy punching" posts, as I believe someone else called it.
I honestly find it curious that people enjoy so much hippy punching. It seems like a bunch of people agreeing with each other, I can't see anyone providing the progressive viewpoint (I haven't encountered the people you listed). With articles about the GOP, that isn't the case. Also, the GOP is very powerful. Progressives a secondary faction of one party.
I feel the need to come back to this for a moment.
What in the ever-living hell is your definition of a "centrist"?
I can think of perhaps three posters who are genuinely at the middle of American politics here and they're still left of center. There are another half-dozen outright conservatives, most reasonable, two not. A handful of libertarians. The remainder, a large majority of us, are *well* to the left of center.
We're just "anti-woke". If that makes us "centrists", then enjoy your purity tests and the circular firing squads that will ensue when you have only true-believers left.
If we use the principal of charity, I think it's fairly apparent that the centrists you're talking about don't actually mean any and all complaining is bad. After all, they're complaining so they obviously don't think all complaining is bad.
I think the actual complaint of the comments section is that they have a some-to-much of an overlap with the actual concrete policy goals of those they're complaining about but that those people they're complaining about are doing a bad job at bringing those policies to fruition.
Lerne leiden ohne zu Klagen means learn to suffer without complaining. So centrists are endlessly complaining about the progressives, and one of their complaints is that progressives complain too much. Seems a look in the mirror might be in order.
I don't think centrist is actually a thing. I forget where I read this, but political scientists usually find that "moderates" are just people with a mix of "center", "far left" and "far right" views. They don't actually just have a bunch of moderate views.
Progressives on the other hand are a united political faction, they are unusually unpopular, if you vote blue it's not unreasonable to think they are losing your team's elections (and perhaps be grouchy about it), and MY's post here was about another one of their missteps.
So what do you want to see here?
I don't buy this. Progressive is just the name that Liberals adopted when Republican's made Liberal a dirty word. Now they have made Progressive a dirty word. I am comfortable with either of those monikers. I am certainly not a SJW though, in fact I am not sure I have ever met one in the wild. I have had a number of nuanced discussions with you. I certainly don't think I came across as such...
Matt has called himself a Progressive, even recently. It seems a little unreasonable to insist that we rename ourselves every few years. In fact it feels a bit like vilification. If I had to describe "my tribe" (Progressives) as "a united political faction," I'd say we are united only in a belief that the government can and should improve American lives.
I disagree.
Progressives are the extremists who believe in cancel culture, for example. and will not deign to actually engage in discussion as they see that as "legitimizing" abhorrent ideas. That is what sets them apart from every other political designation.
And that is what makes them "not my tribe".
Yeah but how many of that 12% are on twitter? I'm pretty sure the main reason that most people use "Latinx" is just to avoid being yelled at by their peers.
Progressives believe that their calling in politics is to fight for the interests of "oppressed minorities", so they have a hard time saying "no" to any group that claims that mantle. There are, of course, many times when fighting to uplift oppressed minorities is the morally and even politically right thing to do, but there are also cases where the "minority" is so small and the fight so inconsequential and politically counterproductive that the "minority" in question is better off just being ignored.
We seem to have fallen into a trap where being a tiny proportion of the population, and your concerns treated as marginal, is itself a mark of oppression, so the vast majority (which by virtue of being vast is not oppressed) must accommodate itself to the tiny minority.
Yes, and I think that problem is compounded when the tiny minority appears to have self-selected itself into being a minority. I have yet to see or meet anybody who calls themselves "non-binary" who is more gender-nonconforming than, say, Boy George, but I feel like I am constantly being asked to act like I just got here from 1955 and think a girl who cut her hair short and dyed it blue is an exotic species of gender the likes I never kenned. Also, I don't mind using "they" singular because I think that's reasonably grammatical, but I am not using anybody's personal made-up science fiction pronouns. Get off my lawn. Bloody kids.
FWIW, I'd much rather use a made up pronoun than "they". Or at the very least, just conjugate the damn verbs like it were third person singular ("they is") so I have some way to infer number if I drop in the middle of a conversation.
Non-binary is primarily a political identity, not a gender one. There are trans conservatives, but I don't think I've ever heard of a nonbinary one. That said, people can be called whatever they want to, it's not any different from just changing your name or whatever.
As I like to point out, this issue for left was ironically anticipated by Ayn Rand of all people: "The smallest minority on earth is the individual.”
I just got a charitable donation request from the Texas Diaper Bank, seeking support for "people who menstruate," aka "menstruators." For that reason alone, they will not make my charity list this year. I wonder if they thought this through, and reasoned that this kind of woke language will motivate more of their target audience to donate and only turn off the small minority of disgruntled possible donors in which I reside.
But I'm guessing no. I suspect it's just kneejerk political correctness speaking here.
Tell them that.
The last time I got a donation request couched in obscenely purpose-obscuring woke language I bitched them out on the phone and demanded to speak to the phone bank's coordinator, got them on the line and told them this was stupid, that their job is to get money to help people, not come up with a script three times as long as it needs to be and completely unintelligible to boot.
They promised to change the script, beyond that damned if I know.
Excellent suggestion. I just did so. Thank you!
Does anyone have a good recommendation on the history of Communist China? I would like something that's non-ideological. I found "Forgotten Ally" fascinating, but that was just through WWII.
I don't have a great recommendation for an overview of the 1945-2015 period, ironically, but here are two suggestions for understanding how the CCP came to run the show in the first place: Platt's "Imperial Twilight" and Bickers' "Out of China"
It's a lot of reading (like 1500 pages total), but Frank Dikotter's trilogy on Communist China is probably the best cohesive set of English-language sources on the subject:
(1) "The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945–1957"
(2) "Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962"
(3) "The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976"
Finished A People's Tragedy yesterday. It's an absolutely incredible primer on the Russian Revolution. I think if there's a lesson for our purposes here it's that you've got to meet people where they are, but as you point out, it's remarkable how circumstances can change that in a very short period of time.
One of my main takeaway was that the majority of Russians, i.e. peasants, didn't want anything to do with any central government, the Tsar, gentry, liberals, and urban Bolsheviks could all piss off and did little for them besides take away their food, land, and young men. However, the Whites failed to adapt, and the Reds were much better at this.
That also sounds like the far left in the 1970s. They discovered that the American working class hated their guts.
Jeff Maurer wrote about exactly this today: https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/let-me-tell-you-why-i-suck
I think it's a fair bet that anyone who reads this Substack also listens to Revolutions (what with MY being a reasonably prominent fan).
Not me, never heard of it.
You should give it a try!
They're good, I just finished the Mexican revolution. So is Mike Duncan's "The History of Rome" podcast.
Just reading that now, some great lines: "The far left’s reputation made it hard for them to form a government in the same way John Wayne Gacy’s reputation made it hard for him to get work as a birthday clown; sometimes, people really get hung up on your track record."
If you were to actually get everyone to agree with you, then by what measure will you be able to convince yourself that you’re better than everyone else? (This is a problem for all of us!)
Organizing is hard, trust me. But anyone can police language on their favorite internet platforms and believe that they’re making a positive change in the world.
I think so much of our discourse is about language because it’s an arena in which progressive activists continue to experience success. People may not like the way we use language, but American institutions have been very accommodating, particularly the non-conservative press.
Hm, I think it also works the other way. Everyone is convinced their ideas would be incredibly popular if "they" weren't standing in the way of your message. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
See my comment. When working in Latin America, people view themselves by their National identity way more than as some collective Spanish speaking people (I am leaving Brazil out).
It's not as stupid. Spanish-speaking America has a common history and language. But it's still pretty stupid.
Does it? That is precisely the point, there is not an "it" that has a "common history"
More shared than "Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, Kazakhs and Jordanians"? Definitely. So shared to be described as a "common history"? Definitely not.
The Spanish Speaking Americas were part of the Spanish Empire until 1809. Places like Peru and Mexico were part of it for 250 years. Is it idiotic to think that Peruvians and Mexicans have as much in common as Australians and Canadians or that Venezuelans and Equadorians have as much in common as Australians and Kiwis?
Canadian here. I don't think Australians and Canadians have that much in common, either, actually. A shared language and ties to Britain, sure, but not much more. Canadians have much more in common with Americans and the British than Australians or Kiwis.
Sure Hispanics share a language and broad culture and ties to Spain, but the differences are just as big as those between Canada and Australia, i.e. huge.
Totally agree. The biggest distortion in our politics right now is that as more minorities have joined the ranks of college educated progressive elites, white progressive think that pandering to us is the same as pandering to those groups writ large. There’s positive reinforcement because it feels good to pander to your friends. And then negative reinforcement because it’s much easier to (for example) express your sincere support for BLM than it is to try and explain to your black friend that you’re worried it might be counterproductive with working class Hispanics.
I agree with much of this, but you need some labels to categorize folks if you're running a political organization, no? I'm Indian-American and agree "Asian" is too broad. But there aren't enough Indians (or even South Asians) for ppl to be narrowly focused on us. There is at least some commonality of experience with other Asians. So long as Democrats don't make the other mistakes you accurately identified, not sure the labeling is a huge problem. As Yglesias says "Latinx" is a symptom, not problem itself.
I can see what you're saying about the lack of a pan-Asian identity. But is that dependent on the question at hand? Kamala Harris's mother had Tamil Brahmin roots. Does that mean non-Tamil Indian-Americans don't identify with Harris or take pride in her becoming VP and a possible future President? I wonder about Pakistani-Americans as well, or immigrants from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.
One complicating factor (though I generally agree with you about the lack of shared identity) is that there are a ton of Indians and Indian Americans who seem to desperately think the term "Asian" should also apply to them—regardless of any pan-asian american sentiment—because of geography. These people get angry in the comments of any content that talks about Asians to the exclusion of Indians. Anecdotally, I've seen this funny trend of making token references to indians in content clearly about east asian experiences as a result.
From my personal experience as half Korean/Indian in Seattle and the Bay Area: there's definitely little overlap between the first generation communities, and while it's not uncommon to see mixed south/southeast/east asian 2nd/3rd gen friend groups, non mixed groups seem more common.
This is part of the problem of the complete nationalization of politics. In the old Tip O'Neil days there were local organizations that focused precinct by precinct and community to community. But now everything is seen from national level where everything is necessarily somewhat broad brushed
Yeah sure, local outreach should be done in a way that's most effective. In NYC for example, politicians specifically reach out to Sikhs, Gujuratis, etc. That's good politics. I disagree with your dismissal of common experience. The Hmong refugee and Filipino programmer are going to be subject to similar stereotypes. Most Asian Americans are either immigrants or children of immigrants. There are obviously some commonalities there. Overall though, I think we're in agreement. Treating different people differently as the circumstances warrant is smart and empathetic politics. Democrats should have the $ and ability to do this.
Exactly, but why various nationalities ended up immigrating to the Us or elsewhere varies, and those circumstances mean they will have different experiences and interests.
Whether you immigrate as an illiterate peasant or as a programmer makes a huge difference.
"The Hmong refugee and Filipino programmer are going to be subject to similar stereotypes. "
Really? I doubt it. Maybe among poorly educated, low information people in communities with little diversity, but...generally?
I hate to break it to ya, but most ppl in America are non-college educated, low info ppl who live in communities w/ little diversity ;)
But then they would not be in a position to act according to those stereotypes very often, would they?
A split between "East Asian" and "South Asian" seems like it would be the logical stepping stone for refining the "Asian" category. Those two categories are already pretty widely used in other contexts. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some political pressure to split the "Asian" category for the 2030 Census, given that category is the fastest growing minority group in the US at the moment. A big question, though, is whether or not "Southeast Asian" should also be a separate category.
On the one hand that sounds super reasonable. But at some point it's worth asking, what is the point of doing all these categorizations? If we have to go X levels deep to have any chance of reflecting a reality that people find sensible, do the cons start to outweigh the pros?
Counting and noting immigrants by their country of origin makes the most sense to me. But then racecrafting which nations belong together starts to get a little icky. By the time the immigrants children and especially grandchildren have grown up speaking English and marrying people from other groups it starts to get even more tricky and less useful.
The point of categorization is message targeting. If you know that Venezuelan Americans hate socialismlive in Florida, and are occasional voters, you can buy billboards and target FB ads at them saying that Biden and AOC are like Maduro.
Almost everybody hates Socialism, not just Venezuelans. It just that as newcomers, they don't know that "socialism" as coming from the mouths of Sanders or AOC has nothing to do with Socialism.
Why would you want to know where Venezuelans live instead of trying to figure out where voters (of any ethnicity) live who hate socialism?
Let's say we have two voters, one is Mexican American and lives in Santa Monica, the other is Mexican American and lives in NW Texas. What is more relevant, their ethnicity or where they live? I can't assume very much about the voter based on their ethnicity.
Admittedly, I think your example works better than most because immigrants from Venezuela may well be some of the most anti-socialist groups out there. But that's part of what I said above, it does make sense to categorize immigrants by nation of origin. It makes. much less sense to categorize their grandchildren, or lump them together with Argentinians and Tejanos as the "Hispanic Race"
Other minority groups are politically swingy and cluster in high leverage areas, eg Muslims in Minnesota,Puerto Ricans in FL, Mexicans in Arizona.
I think the “white, urban, and college educated people running Dem campaigns” are making this same mistake across multiple dimensions. It’s insulting as well as reductive to assume that all or most people in a group have the same views on an issue. What I find especially depressing about this is that they have been doing this during my entire voting life and they never, ever learn.
Lots of terms get imposed on people. Cis is a term that the trans community has forced on people like me. I certainly didn’t have a say in the term being put on me.
Blind people will refer to everyone else as Sighted. As a cis Sighted person I feel weird and awkward using these terms to describe my identity. I would be less likely to vote for someone who talked about issues for the Cis Sighted community.
Yea When someone uses Cis on me I feel like I am being insulted. I don’t feel that way when I am called straight or even mildly insulting terms like square or normi.
You goddamn sighted cis people are always complaining!! \s
We lgb people imposed straight on a lot of people. Jewish people imposed gentile.
Sometimes if you have a category, you need a word for not-that-category.
There isn't a category of people from Europe, Africa and the Americas that Asian is created in contrast to.
Asian and Hispanic exist for the same purpose as "Cape coloured" during apartheid.
There is a white and a black category and you need a convenient term for everyone else. Honestly, "brown" would work a lot of the time.
Many Hispanics are NOT brown, they are white and identify as such.
True, it's hard to say something 100% accurate and also short; sometimes I post long complicated comments that include the qualifications and no-one interacts with them.
Hispanic has been kind of accepted by the community. Grocery stores use the term. Regardless of its origin it has been accepted. Cis people haven’t really accepted cis yet Sighted people have also not accepted the term but probably wont have a problem with it.
I think there is a problem with coining terms to identify what is a norm, i.e. the vast majority. This is an attempt to make the majority feel guilty for being the norm, and it backfires.
I don't think it is an attempt to make people feel guilty, but an attempt to put the minority on an even keel with the majority.
It's like "straight" or "heterosexual" - I'm old enough to remember people complaining about them and asking "why can't we just say 'normal'?" - once we got used to it after a couple of decades or so, it was just a case for many people of saying that they are straight and their friend is gay or bi or whatever.
I do think that this is one of the big "woke" or "social justice" or whatever language rows, though. Lots of people are reasonably OK with trans people or blind people or disabled people or whatever, but don't want to think about it, and calling them "cis", or "sighted", or "abled" makes them pay attention to the subject.
I don't know why people think that anyone wants them to feel guilty, but I have noticed that a lot of people say that.
Mostly, "woke" people just want to you be aware of these people and take them into account - don't pretend these people don't exist, and remember to take them into account when you are doing things (seriously, I read lots of trans activism; most of it that isn't battles with doctors and health insurance, is complaining that some random pointless form, like a coffee shop wifi access page, insists on asking for sex/gender and has only M and F as options, or a bank makes it hard to change your name or other similar annoyances that could have been dealt with by someone just saying "what about trans people?" when they set the system up)
Both the "straight" and "gentile" situations seem distinguishable from "cis" to me. No one is ever expected to self-identify out loud as being "gentile" unless there's some sort of discussion about Judaism or Jewish people going on and you're trying to clarify that someone's status relative to the subject. "Straight" had a meaning in describing someone's attitude, demeanor, etc. that pre-dated its use to refer to sexual orientation and, conveniently, the vast majority of people who fit the meaning of "straight" in that sense also fit the meaning of "straight" in the sense of sexual orientation.
There are people who use cis badly. But that doesn't make it non-useful. Like my friend who has a trans son, a trans daughter, and a cis daughter. There really isn't a better way of saying that.
I will be honest I feel like cis is a bit of an insult. I would prefer something insulting like basic, normi or square
Why is cis an insult? It sounds like a random syllable to me.
I think you might be basing this off of the tone that many trans people inevitably use when talking about non-trans people. For them, there are a lot of problems with how they're treated by non-trans people. There will some level of annoyance or outrage, and you'll get the same tone, regardless of the term used. As long as being transgender is an identity that people flock to, there will be an in and out group, and it overcomplicates things if you don't have a term for the out group.
It does get used a lot in the tone that women say "men" when complaining about us. But it does seem to be the most neutral term available.
Well you can Europeans that. And the sighted don’t appreciate the discrimination.
I don't mind cis, but maybe that's because prior to 2016 I spent a ton of time on progressive subreddits with a lot of trans people and it made me much more sympathetic to that language. I also don't mind "sighted" though I do not generally refer to myself as such. I suppose I would if I knew many blind people.
I get the impression that no trans people comment on Matt's substack, which is a shame. I've seen some convos here that would definitely benefit from their perspective.
Probably overstating it a little bit actually. They'd think of each other as having some things in common relative to "regular white people". But yes, it would only be a loose affiliation.
White people constructed Hispanic? If you have a link or source please share it. I'm skeptical of that claim for a couple reasons. One is I vaguely remember reading that back in the 70s most of the Latino (Mexican-American and Puerto Rican, mostly) congress wanted to find a way to join forces and lobby and represent their common interests, and Hispanic was the term they chose to use on the census and other places.
The Latino Latina community may not have liked the term Hispanic but the have accepted it. Grocery stores use the term to get business.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/353000/no-preferred-racial-term-among-black-hispanic-adults.aspx
Hispanic is more widely used than Latino according to polling, although most Hispanic Americans don't really care which term gets used.
I think it's a little more complicated than you're implying. Latino is also a category that Latino people used to organize themselves, which is how you get organizations like the League of United Latin American Citizens out of the Chicano movement in the 60s. "Asian American" was coined by Yuji Ichioka in the 60s, who is an Asian American civil rights activist.
Of course these terms are not used by people in Mexico or Guatemala or Vietnam. They're words invented and used in the US. That doesn't mean they're not valid political identities.
For me the takeaway here is that these terms are invented by activists to promote their political projects. Nothing to do with what people actually think of or call themselves, much less what they essentially are.
Many activists do think of and call themselves Asian, Latino, Latinx, POC, etc. I agree with Matt's point that activists are a small and unrepresentative group, I disagree with the comments section's take that these are terms invented by and for white people and nobody identifies with them. Living in the bubble helps when people are speculating about the habits of people within that bubble!
There is an underrated trolling opportunity in switching from “Romance languages”, the term preferred by the French, to “Latina languages”, the term preferred in Italy and Spain (language being, of course, feminine).
If it is more than one language it becomes male
??
"Langue" in French is feminine, e.g. "la langue française", still feminine when plural, i.e. "les langues".
The preferred term for Romance languages in French is "les langues romanes."
Individual languages are masculine, i.e. "le français, le suédois, le russe", etc.
In Spanish, the word idioma ("language") is masculine.
Maybe you are referring to the rule that when referring to several items, if one of them is masculine, then the masculine applies, e.g. "la table, la chaise, la nappe et le mur sont tous bleus". "9 femmes et un homme étaient présents"...?
Yes, that is the traditional rule, but today there are inclusive practices to counter that when referring to people. But changing the whole structure of the language is not possible.
Yes, sorry — very elementary mistake on my side. Even in my native Spanish you have los idiomas and las lenguas.
And el lenguaje
oh yes lol -- los lenguajes y las lenguas
No. "Las lenguas de Asia ..." La lengua. Las lenguas. El idoma. Los idiomas.
La langue, le langage in French.
But you use "langue" for languages, i.e. French, English, Spanish, etc.
Le langage is language in general.
From Jeff Maurer's piece earlier this morning that I find appropriate for this Latinx nonsense:
"Leftists come from the tradition of acting out one's daddy issues in the public square while claiming to speak for “the people”, even though “the people” would kind of like to see them crushed by a boulder (according to liberals)"
Was a great post… I love it when my Substack subscriptions land on complementary topics on the same day :)
Nice. Jeff and Matt scooped him by 3 hours, I haven’t made it that far in my inbox yet (you know, a job and all that!)
Yes! The best part is I found Jeff through his guest post on Slow Boring. Full circle.
I still cannot understand why Biden did not and does not make an issue of allowing in people seeking asylum from "socialist" regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua. And policy at the border ought to be and be explained as (the very tough job) of separating people seeking politicly asylum from "economic" migrants. I don't blame economic migrants from trying (I know of a family that got into Canada with a bogus "political" asylum claim. I'm happy for them and Canada is better off for their success, but I fear such success undermines support for asylum.) and in practice most "asylum seekers" would make productive ($$$) contributions to the US, but that's not the way our unfortunately benighted laws say they should enter. We need to be seen (domestically and in origin countries) as competently, humanely, and efficiently (no "Wall") enforcing the law. [The "efficiently" part also means, of course, we shouldn't spend resources hunting down long established migrants just because the once entered illegality.]
Maduro isn't massacring people like Syria, but there are real obstacles to political speech and action. Good enough for government work.
Politically it's tough, because Lefties get mad when he restricts arrivals, but right-wingers don't even listen or acknowledge that he's trying to do anything. I've had discussions with some of them & they literally don't believe the administration wants to do anything about migration. (They also seem strangely confident that the government CAN do something about migration! Normies really seem to think the govt has magic powers to accomplish things & a unified voice to make decisions. So weird.)
My argument is with the "Lefties." I think its the perceived lack of competence at the border that turns non-xenophobes off.
I just meant that Biden has a constituency of immigration activists who seem just as mad at him as the right wing xenophobes.
I too think we should have a competent and enforceable immigration policy BTW. But I also think it's hard to cover such a large border, especially when there's great economic disparity.
I agree, but there are a lot fewer immigration activists (and the ones that are I wish would activate in favor of immigration on grounds that it is good for (almost) everybody, especially if we were recruiting high-skill, high education immigrants) than there xenophobes. Every time we let an issue become zero sum, we lose. Elections are zero sum, but issues, not even racism, are not.
I agree because that works with my political views (anti-socialism, pro-immigration), but it is directly contradicted by Matt's above post, which says that most Hispanic voters oppose immigration from Central (and presumably South) America.
I don't think the oppose it the way Tom Cotton opposes it, just that the are not pro immigration."
I think it implies a certain degree of condescension on the part of activists to refer to Hispanic people as 'latinx'. Latinx people are People of Color, who are allied with other People of Color and with LGBTQ+ people as well. It reduces all the differences of opinion that exist amongst Hispanic people to a small subset of opinion. It makes life easier to believe that Hispanic people are latinx people, just as it makes life easier to think other groups of people are allied in all ways.
“Latinx people are People of Color”
Even the white ones?
Where, oh where, is Cornell West when you need him?
That was my exaggeration of activist beliefs.
I still, after all these years, hate People of Color. It sounds so pretentious. I will abbreviate to PoC or WoC to make it a little less odious. I was really relieved when we recently moved back to black (or Black, which seems to be a bit precious and woke, but does conform better to our grammar rules for ethnicities, like Asian).
I am blessed to not only have a decent amount of Hispanic friends from growing up in Los Angeles, the military and in Idaho, but I spend 3-4 months a year working in Latin America side by side with Mexicans, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Colombians, Brazilians, and Argentinians. I've basically spent the last three months working in Salta, Argentina.
I viscerally hate the term Latinx. Mainly because it's primarily used by a certain type of pandering progressive type. The stereotypical liberal, in which there is rarely any useful debate to be held. Even worse is when it's used by politicians or business leaders who associate with this crowd, and clearly have no close associations with the Hispanic community in the United States.
First, for the rest of my rant, I am going to use the term Hispanic, because it covers everyone except Brazilians.
Observations:
Even though I prefer the term Hispanic for the United States, in the rest of Latin American, it's not commonly used. Generally, the people are more likely to refer to themselves by their nationality first. They are Colombians or Argentinians. This national identity is much stronger than any allegiance to any group. If pressed, or when talking about people from multiple countries, Latin Americans is the term used most (which is gender neutral... thus my annoyance at coming up with another term). Latino or Latina is popular though it's more popular the further north you go and fades as you move down south.
The whole gender neutral latinx (latine') is used by the progressive college crowd, though only in that very small subset of population, and is never used by media or in the mainstream.
My favorite story is working with a Mexican engineer (recently immigrated) in the United States one time at a job site, and discussing the term Latinx. His reply "pinche gringos"
On to what I observe among Hispanic-Americans and politics in the United States.
For the longest time, it seemed to me that Hispanic representation in politics seemed to be dominated by the East Coast. Cubans, Puerto Ricans, etc... which never really translated to the issues of the mostly Mexican and Central American heritage Americans that I grew up with in Los Angeles and who I worked with in the Military.
This is slowly changing as more Americans with Mexican Heritage enter politics. I fully expect this influence to increase exponentially.
If you ask me, our countries focus on Black White issues almost seems to exclude Hispanic Americans from discussions.
Even in the media and entertainment, I am constantly annoyed at how poor representation is of Hispanic Americans. And even when it does happen, it's rarely reflects reality. It focuses on recent immigrants (there are a whole lot of 2nd and 3rd generation) Americans.
These days TV sitcoms routinely have both white or black characters (unlike Friends), but it's a lot rarer for them to have a Hispanic character, even though at least in my life... it's fairly impossible to live your life without Hispanic friends/co-workers.
My observation is that my Hispanic friends tend to range from very conservative to moderate. With the vast majority sort of in the middle. Liberal Hispanics are rarer than white liberals, and if they do exist, they are going to come from the highly educated college crowd.
The Hispanic vote is never going to be as monolithic as the black vote, but to win these voters, it seems to me that it's bread and butter issues that are going to win the day. The sort of social support programs that benefit working people, allow them to get ahead.
Finally, one of the key mistakes Democrats make when trying to attract the Hispanic vote is assuming that an openish border policy is going to be the main issue. First, Hispanic voters are American citizens, and by definition they were either born here, or followed the process and rules. Secondary, even undocumented migrants can understand supply and demand as far as wages go. They have no real economic reason to want even more undocumented migrants vying for the same jobs that they are performing. However, providing a path to citizenship and allowing family to migrate as well are key issues.
If politicians really want to win the Hispanic vote, then they need to do the same things that are going to win the white working class vote and the same things the black working class want as well. Material over identity.
"People of Color" must be one of the stupidest labels ever invented, and not just becasue it is "wrong." I would not be surprised to learn that it was invented by a RNC mole.
Not as stupid as BIPOC, a label with all the same problems as "people of color" but with the added feature of basically existing to signal Asians and Hispanics that they're less important than two other groups of people of color.
If you like, you can add AAPI. AAPIBIPOC.
Agreed that it's an awful name. "of" constructions are just awkward. Just use an adjective! (Was the name chosen just because "colored" already had a meaning and no one was creative enough to come up with a different adjective?)
One of the knock-on effects of POC is I've seen it used in medical circles as a synonym for "darker skin". So instead of saying "if your lighter skinned, the skin may look reddish and if your skin is darker it may seem more purplish" they say something like "If you're White reddish, but if you're a POC then purplish". Interjecting a term with all kinds of political identity baggage into what should be a pretty simple medical discussion adds confusion.
The only thing that "people of color" have in common is that they are not "white" which says something about the world view of the people who use it.
Yes. It's white identity politics that is the fly in the ointment.
Your point about Hispanic representation in politics and the media is an annoyance that I strongly share. I would add East Asian and South Asian representation in those areas as well,. Coming from an area where these are the largest non-white communities.
You have a very good point. I grew up with many Indian, Korean and many Filipino friends.
I have a similar background (complete with a strong connection to Argentina—and Chile). Growing up, I don't even think we were aware of each other's ethnic backrounds or really had a concept of race. The dividing line was language, e.g., it was not at all uncommon for someone's parents not to speak English (and not even just Spanish, Hindi and Chinese—California really is a melting pot!). It was just totally normal to go to a birthday party and find a mix of traditions, clothing, languges, etc. It fact, when I got older and moved to more homogeneous parts of the country, I found that homogeneity to be weird and offputting. Like, wait a minute, why are there so many Jennifers and Johnathans around here?
When these articles about how dumb the term Latinx is popped up, it occured to me that I never even thought about how to label hispanics, or whatever, that way, since you don't do that for people who you regard as individuals and recognize as your friends and family—they're just regular 'ol people. These labels serve a purpose, which is why activists and academics come up with them (RE the comment below, people of color is one of them), but it sounds to me like the people pushing for their widespread adoption are mostly white people in homogeneous parts of the country trying to assuage their own liberal guilt with political correct language. It also feels like Democrats are listening to them too much and shoe-horning a diverse group of people into an ill-fitting stereotype under the rubric of "inclusiveness".
I had the same experience living in Los Angeles and then joining the military and moving to the East Coast.
Moving from Los Angeles to New England was at least as much of a culture shock for me than was moving from New England to Europe. Right now I am back on the West Coast, in the process of moving to the South, which seems to be yet again its own thing.
It would be great to find a way to encourage Americans to spend some time sampling different parts of the country (better, the world) though some kind of national service. I think it would help curtail the tribalism that being connected digitally while remaining physically separated foments.
A government provided reasonably well paid job for two or three years for anyone 18-25 and not in college or the military, but you have to live in a dorm and you have to go outside your home state.
And change college fees so out of state is cheaper than in state.
"It would be great to find a way to encourage Americans to spend some time sampling different parts of the country (better, the world) though some kind of national service. I think it would help curtail the tribalism that being connected digitally while remaining physically separated foments."
Rory and I had this discussion already. It was... heated.
Rory: :-P
The TV show point is something I hadn't thought of, but is also likely a symptom of underrepresentation in elite spaces.
Yes. The best Hispanic TV show I've found is actually Mayans MC. It's a take off of the Sons of Anarchy universe, but it has a huge cast that is entirely Hispanic/Mexican and even though it's about a motorcycle gang, it is not at all stereotypical. Great acting and plot that shows Hispanics as complex human beings. White and black people are just auxiliary characters.
Equating natural and grammatical gender in language leads one to ridiculous conclusions. In Mark Twain's essay "The Awful German Language," he points out that according to German grammar, turnips are female, but young women aren't.
Why wouldn’t sentence structure work in terms of conveying information?
I went to the store.
To the store I went.
Went to the store did I.
It sounds weird because we’re not used to it but it conveys information just as well.
"If you have neither case nor sentence structure, you end up with ambiguous syntax."
I see you have encountered Mandarin...
I think that German and Russian prove that their complicated marking system can --- at the very least --- be significantly simplified.
In German, if the feminine article is the same in nominative and accusative, and the neuter article is the same in nominative and accusative, and the plural article is the same in nominative and accusative, then surely the masculine article could be the same in nominative and accusative! However it's not. And if most of those articles can be the same in nominative and accusative, then maybe this can be pushed further...
In Russian, apparently it's not a problem that "his", "its", "hers", and "theirs" never change with the case (or the gender of the thing being refereed to), so I'm pretty sure that it would work fine if "my", "your", and "our" were constant too. But they're not. Seriously, has anyone ever said "её as a possessive is so confusing because I can't tell the case from the word!" I think it's much more common to think "thank god that её doesn't conjugate!"
"especially from the first 2 when you consider the case articles."
Do you mean the first and third? Russian doesn't have articles.
"For German I'm not sure if a lot of sentence structure will work without the cases"
If you wanted to get rid of grammatical gender, just assign all words a single, existing gender (e.g. in Russian or German, you could just declare that everything is neuter), and the grammar will still work. After all, it works for existing sentences that only use one gender.
Random question that I don’t want to bother googling - does gendered language convey any information? Does el boligrafo impart some inflation vs la boligrafo? What value does it add?
No information whatsoever, it is just random; that’s why la leche is female in Spanish and o Leire is male in Portuguese
O leite
And then there is of course le pénis and le vagin…
My understanding is that it’s just like any other distinction among words - it’s one more thing for the speaker to remember to pronounce correctly, and one more thing for the hearer to use to identify the word when spoken in noisy background conditions.
Like a linguistic check digit - fascinating!
Most multisyllable words, some of those syllables can be thought of this way!
One surprising thing I learned - in English, we tend to pronounce a vowel longer if the next consonant is voiced and shorter if the next consonant is unvoiced. “Leave” has a longer vowel than “leaf”, and “lewd” has a longer vowel than “lute”. If you try using a long vowel with an unvoiced consonant, we often hear it as a foreign speaker who gets the voicing wrong but still distinguishes the word by the vowel length.
Exactly. It's redundant, but redundancy isn't intrinsically a bad thing. (That said, I'm guessing that it's not providing much benefit in most cases.)
It's like in the English sentence "Those two dogs are beagles." All five words communicate the idea of plurality, and it would sound very wrong to a native English speaker if you got any one of them wrong.
It occasionally can. It can make a pronoun unambiguous that otherwise would be. But you'll have to take my word for it. It's too hard to think up an example. :) And occasionally it can (when gender does not agree with the usual -a -o ending) mark the word as of Greek word adopted into Latin. El idioma, el clima, el programa.
The only one I can think of is that it can make pronouns (including object pronouns) more useful sometimes - the way in English it's easier to follow a story with a "she" and a "he" rather than two "he"s. But that seems like a rather limited application.
Isn't this just part of this never-ending far left belief that if we are just purer or more left on the economy or culture, we will have a tsunami of young voters and non-voters turn out?
It is like the Great Pumpkin of Charlie Brown...next time I am sure it will happen.
Or the football Lucy holds.
Since I think the belief is sincere, even if irrational (my favorite is when progressives explain about offsetting losing "normie" voters by boosting LGBTQ turnout), Linus is the better fit.
Linus
“But it turns out people are kind of selfish, and the predominant view among Hispanics is that we should talk more about racism against Hispanic people and less about racism against Black people.”
But the chart shows more Hispanics believe we should talk about racism against Asian people than Hispanic people. Doesn’t seem very selfish to me!
True, if anything it seems more like a specific problem with African Americans. Of course this is potentially even more uncomfortable than if it were a generalised selfishness,
It seems more like an accurate perception that discussion of racial issues is often framed in black-white terms when these days it is better understood as a four way system.
Is it 4 way, or is it 200 way?
Race, as a social issue, is closer to 4 way than to 200 way. There are of course a lot of ways that people self-identify, and a lot of different types of ancestry, ethnicity, culture, etc., but I think the average American currently sees most people as one of four groups (even though there's a lot of cases, like Middle Eastern, South Asian, mixed-race, and indigenous peoples of the Americas that don't get seen or categorized). Perhaps some day it'll start being seen more like a 200 way issue, and people will have the accurate perception that we need to start talking less about Black, Hispanic, and East Asian, and talking a lot more about all the others, but given how people are actually currently treated in racial terms, the four way talking is relatively accurate.
"Perhaps some day" - by that time though you'll have so many people of mixed background that I assume most of these identities will go away in importance the way the non-WASP "white ethnics" did. Large 1st-generation immigrants groups will always have a noticeable identity though.
I think this is mostly true for Whites and Blacks. I think this is much less true for Hispanics and Asians.
The biggest problem is that the Democratic Party is run by affluent progressives who cling to their own privilege. California is a cautionary tale. The rent is too high, the power bill is too high, the roads are too congested, there is mass poverty yet zoning laws and green policies are largely sacrosanct.
This is not what working stiffs want, but it’s what policies favored by affluent liberals produce.
The rent is due monthly, the bill for climate change will come due after I’m dead, if ever
Not after we are, old man. :p
Anyway, as for your "roads are too congested" bit... it's completely absurd that you think we can build enough roads to accommodate all the traffic you want with your sprawling hellscape of endless exurbs and golf courses, despite the lessons of the last 100 years. It is a *physical* impossibility. Los Angeles is filled with 12-lane highways that look like parking lots for 6 hours a day and are empty the other 18.
I get that you love your 300k mile Civic. Congrats, I was somewhat fond of my "no AC, no power locks and windows, 250k" Saturn as well.
I'm fonder of my Leaf, my home office, and my freaking bike.
Anti-growth and anti-housing/pro-sprawl policies there make the problem *worse*, masked by good energy efficiency initiatives, affluence allowing rapid adoption of new energy technologies like rooftop PV, EVs, and heat pumps, and a generally amenable climate in most of the major population centers.
As a policy direction, not a good plan.
The horse has long since been beaten into paste and, then dried up and blown away in the dust, but here I am whipping the spot it was standing on:
Look up the history of any Latin American Liberal Party, most especially Venezuela's.
Rent too high, roads too congested and poverty too high....One could argue that these are all because the state is a great place to live and are symptoms of good governance. Personally, I think it's a mixed bag but it it _does_ seem an exceptionally weak argument for incompetence.
"it turns out people are kind of selfish, and the predominant view among Hispanics is that we should talk more about racism against Hispanic people and less about racism against Black people."
It seems unfair to characterise Hispanics as "selfish" given that the graph clearly shows them expressing slighly more support for talking about racism against Asians than support for talking about racism against Hispanics.
"like the defund-the-police conversation, it reeks of fighting the last war, arguing about tactical missteps during the 2020 campaign that don’t have that much to do with present-day problems for Joe Biden and congressional Democrats"
This sounds like an excuse for symbolically downplaying the issue, rather than an actual reason. I see little reason to think this is going to be less of an issue in the next campaign than the last. And to the extent that we think of this as reflecting a failure to engage with what voters actually think, rather than as something that is itself driving votes, this seems like as much as an issue now as it did in 2020.