wedrifid comments on Open thread, July 16-22, 2013 - Less Wrong
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I've been reading a lot of red pill stuff lately (while currently remaining agnostic), and my impression is that most of the prominent "red pill" writers are in fact really nasty. They seem to revel in how offensive their beliefs are to the general public and crank it up to eleven just to cause a reaction. Roissy is an obvious example. About one third of his posts don't even have any point, they're just him ranting about how much he hates fat women. Moldbug bafflingly decides to call black people "Negroes" (while offering some weird historical justification for doing so). Regardless of the actual truth of the red pill movement's literal beliefs, I think they bring most of their misanthropic, hateful reputation on themselves.
I haven't read Athol Kay, so I don't know what his deal is.
What is baffling to me is that it is ok to call black people black people. Both terms amount to labelling a race based on the same exaggerated description of a visible difference and in general requiring latin use is higher status than common English words. Prior to specific (foreign) cultural exposure I would expect "black people" to be an offensive label and so avoid it.
The euphemism treadmill is basically arbitrary most of the time. For example, "people of color" is very PC right now, but "colored people" is considered KKK-language. It is what it is.
Also black people is a kind of strange term. Pretty much all black people are okay with it, but a lot of white people are weirdly afraid of saying it, especially in formal settings.
Black is a useful term for referring to people of African descent who aren't African-American, e.g. Caribbean-Americans.
"People of color" currently means anyone other than white people, not black people exclusively.
Really? That is even more surprising to me.
My experience is it is the prefered term of the Social Justice Crowd on Tumblr and other websites for non-white people.
Language can be pretty arbitrary. It's not as though science fiction reliably has any science in it, even fake science.