Since feelings play a big part in this, and it was suggested that
rationality cannot be applied to feelings:
You can of course reason about feelings, analyze where they come from,
etc. It is also highly dangerous to just follow your feelings, that is
what very young children do. Which is also the reason why no one should
simply follow the feelings of another person, including in the case that
the other person states feeling not welcome or included.
Feelings can also be influenced by rational thought. A classical example
for this is for instance: You need to go to a pharmacy and are trying to
get a parking space, but find none. Right in front of the pharmacy
someone has parked his SUV without any consideration for other people,
so that it blocks two parking spaces. You finally find a far away spot
to park int, get to the pharmacy - just to see the SUV owner speed away.
Now you are doubly mad at him, and you enter the pharmacy and complain
about this to a sales person. To which teh sales person replies: "You
mean the man that just drove away ? He picked up some important
medication his kid urgently needs.". At which point, unless you are a
psychopath, any anger towards the SUV driver will most likely subside,
since you view the situation from a different angle.
This applies also to the example of "blacklist", or more generally
"black<something>": If I point out to you that, while there exist
contexts where black has a positive connotation, there is a very large
number of cases where this is not the case, and in general black, i.e.
the absence of light (in the physics sense) is generally speaking not a
positive thing for a species that is not night active and has no way to
orient itself in total darkness, as well as the fact that these meanings
of "black" do not refer to you as a "black person", because they existed
a long time before ther term "black person", I would expect you to a)
either find a flaw in my reasoning and formulate that in a clear and
concise manner, so we can discuss this further, or b) say "Alright,
true, so there is actually no reason for me to be upset or feel
offended. Cool.", or c) Conclude that identyfying with or calling
yourself "black" is actually not a good choice (any more), and work
towards finding a practical, better / more suitable term.
(There is of course the (for me theoretical) option d), where you demand
that all negative usages and associations with the word "black" be
removed from language/society/the human psyche. Not really doable,
unless you simply force people to pretend things to be that way, and/or
use reeducation camps and brainwashing - but no one can stop you to be
as radical in your thinking/demands/actions as you like - unless you
make someone feel uncomfortable by doing so, of course...)
I know all the people that voted +1 for this change mean well, and it is
evidently not this one change in particular I find problematic, it is
the question whether taking this step makes sense in the bigger picture,
and I have imho given ample reason why it does not. So we can take that
step, but, for the reasons given, it will achieve nothing in the end -
this is simply a demand that cannot be fulfilled, and therefore a thirst
that cannot be quenched...
mg
- Blacklist: On the Rationality of Feelings MG
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