Back in the eighties, in a conversation with a “progressive” of the time, I called “BS” on her use of the term “Holocaust” to describe…<\/p>\n
…welfare reform.<\/p>\n
It was a pattern thirty years ago.\u00a0 Today, given the newliy-broad use of the term “white supremacy”, it’s\u00a0<\/a>turned into utter depenDence: berg<\/a><\/p>\n The term was popularized by academic race theory, where it seems to have largely replaced previous terms of art like \u201cinstitutional racism\u201d or \u201csystemic racism.\u201d Now it is migrating out of the ivory tower and into everyday discourse, puzzling the millions of Americans who are used to an older, narrower meaning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s all in the marketing:<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see why writers and academics find the term appealing. \u201cInstitutional racism\u201d conjures up images of beige-carpeted offices and rows of desks; \u201csystemic racism\u201d sounds like some sort of plumbing problem. \u201cWhite supremacy,\u201d on the other hand, packs a visceral punch that commands the reader\u2019s attention. Because they\u2019re describing something that needs attention, it\u2019s useful to have a phrase that does the job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, there’s the little matter of crying wolf:<\/p>\n Nonetheless, using \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d this way is a mistake. It leads to confusion in the national conversation, because opposing sides are using a critical term in very different ways. It hampers our ability to discuss the phenomenon that the anti-racists actually want to discuss. And ultimately, if we continue to use it this way, it will lose the very emotional resonance that made it an appealing substitute for more clinical terms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The whole thing is worth a read.<\/p>\n And some concerted pushback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in the eighties, in a conversation with a “progressive” of the time, I called “BS” on her use of the term “Holocaust” to describe… …welfare reform. It was a pattern thirty years ago.\u00a0 Today, given the newliy-broad use of the term “white supremacy”, it’s\u00a0turned into utter depenDence: berg The term was popularized by academic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-battle-for-the-language","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64912,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64905\/revisions\/64912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}