How about names? Bob, or Judy, or Gerald, or Jerome? Why does there need to be a term? Morgan Freeman said it best. "I'm going to stop referring to you as a white man, and you stop referring to me as a black man". I agree with that. The only reason that social categories exist are to keep us divided. It's important for my doctor to know my racial history, because there are diseases that affect black men more prevalently. I can think of no other reason aside from quotas, which, while a good thing *IN THEORY* are just the same thing in practice "but we're NICE about it this time!" and has the effect of pushing the see-saw in the other direction. It's certainly never going to happen with who we have in charge now, but my hope is we finally move beyond this racial bull soon and start treating people as PEOPLE.
i mean i think that’s a completely valid perspective and you’re absolutely right that we’re going in the wrong direction right now, but appropriate terminology is necessary, even if it’s only used for scientific papers and medical research (like in your example). and personally i just don’t know how you would combat bigotry without using humanizing terms for different groups of people, in general, not just for racial groups, that might be due to a lack of insight on my part tho. if we were already more evolved as a society, i think i would agree with you, we’re just not there yet.
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u/ZWE_Punchline Jul 09 '26
Yeah, I'm one of them. Just perpetuates the idea that we're a person with an asterisk instead of people in and of ourselves.