IPFS News Link • Racism
The Politically Correct Definition of Racism Is Racist
• https://internationalman.com by John Hunt,MDThe historically racist term colored people has been replaced by the cool and fully acceptable term people of color. I harbor doubts that such a change in terminology will make a dent in the problem of racism.
But words are important and they do influence thought, so we need to be aware when our definitions are causing problems.
Discrimination is a term that has undergone major changes in meaning. Discriminate used to mean to choose after careful deliberation, a process that has only positive connotations. Over the decades, the meaning gradually changed to a negative: making a choice based on group affiliation such as race, ethnicity, religion, etc. Then the word discriminate mutated further. It now seems to hold a more confusing, subjective and inconsistent meaning, one that took me a while to parse. After some contemplation, I realize that discrimination has come to mean doing something that someone might want to get offended by.