I was reading the NYTimes comments section to the Eric Adams Op-Ed . . .

[OrwellwasRight]

and I noticed that in many cases the commenter were saying how the police can be brutal to people of all races, which is of course true.

But some of the commenters specifically wrote things like

We must stop police abuse - period. While it typically targets black men the most, nobody is safe. Ask the man and his son (age 10) who were threatened with arrest for merely strolling down their home street at night - in a very quiet suburban neighbourhood - without ID. Or the young fellow, a clean-cut Iraq war veteran who's part of a family-owned construction company . . . By the way, in both incidents, all the participants happened to be white.

(emphasis added)

I think that calling a white man, "a man" while calling a black man "a black man" inherently says that a black man isn't "a man," but some entity that has to be qualified as "black" before being categorized as a man. I think this is inappropriate.

Either we all deserve a racial qualifier at all times or none of us do. Using "a man" to implicitly mean "a white man" is inappropriate.

That's my two cents.

[bravenak]

1. I agree.

[MisterP]

2. and mentioning "white" denaturalizes it--that makes one aware of racial position

instead of keeping it as the implicit assumption of what everyone is (that was Beauvoir's analysis of the "second sex" phrasing)

[OrwellwasRight]

3. I am not familiar with the term "denaturalize"

so I just looked it up.

Do you mean to say that by using the term "white" we are undermining the implicit assumption that "man" means "white man"? If so, I get it and totally agree.

I apparently should have read Beauvoir.