zlacker

>>crbela+(OP)
> Imagine having to explain to a well-meaning visitor from another planet why using the phrase "people of color" is considered particularly enlightened, but saying "colored people" gets you fired. [...] There are no underlying principles.

To understand much of our language, Gnorts would have to already be aware that our words and symbols gain meaning from how they're used, and you couldn't, for instance, determine that a swastika is offensive (in the west) by its shape alone.

In this case, the term "colored people" gained racist connotations from its history of being used for discrimination and segregation - and avoiding it for that reason is the primary principle at play. There's also the secondary/less universal principle of preferring "person-first language".

>>Ukv+rD
Having the principle of "words become bad because bad people use them" is stupid because you cede power to bad people. But really, its not a principle at all, its just a dumb cultural signaling, ie. "I'm not like those uneducated hicks".

>>asdasd+Oi1
Is that how you justify a swastika tattoo? You can also rob the bad people of the power to hide behind the words and symbols: if only bad people use them, we know the users are bad. It's definitely signaling, I don't see why it has to be "cultural".

>>dowage+Rt1
I don't think a swastika tattoo would be problematic if the person doesn't impute Nazi symbolism to theirs. Even in the West, swastikas and associated symbology is used pretty heavily in neo-pagan circles, and while some of those folk are racist, most aren't.

But OPs point is broader: if you allow the bad people to just appropriate the symbol as their own, they're going to gradually take over everything. Never mind swastikas; we're at the point where making an okay sign can be misconstrued as a white nationalist gesture, and people self-censor themselves accordingly.

There's also the reverse problem here, where, if you tie such things so strongly to symbols in popular opinion, then loud condemnation of such symbols is used to "prove" that one is not a bad person. For a major ongoing example of this look at Russia with its cult of "we defeated the Nazis therefore we're definitely the good guys".

At the end of the day, it's really just a lazy shortcut. The bad people are bad because of their ideas and actions, not because of their symbols. If we always look at the ideas and actions, the symbols are irrelevant, and we don't have to surrender them to the bad guys' claims.

>>int_19+s12
That doesn't really fly. The Nazis are so bad that unless you're south Asian a swastika is assumed to be a pro Nazi sign. Does it sort of suck? Yeah but it is the way it is. Plenty of slurs don't have any inherent negative meaning and are slurs because of how they tend to be used. Occasionally some minority groups partially reclaim them like with Queer but mostly polite people stop using them