VOX: The sneaky language today's politicians use to get away with racism and sexism

[Sgent]

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/1/10889138/coded-language-thug-bossy

In 2015, a CNN segment over a word turned into an awkward, dramatic confrontation. When host Erin Burnett asked why the word "thug" isn't an acceptable way to describe predominantly black protesters and rioters in Baltimore, City Councilman Carl Stokes responded, "Come on. So calling them thugs? Just call them ni**ers."

Burnett, who is white, didn't seem to understand the history that made the word offensive to black Americans. Stokes, who is black, reacted to Burnett's comments with a blunt description of how many black people interpret "thug" when it's lodged against them.

How could a word be interpreted so differently by two groups of people? It's because of a phenomenon known as coded language, a subtle way members of the public, media, and politicians talk about race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion in the US. And with the Black Lives Matter movement and Donald Trump's rise in the Republican primaries, coded language is at the forefront of public dialogue.

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What follows is a list of 12 examples of coded language, derived from my conversation with Haney-López, my personal experience, and peers who have encountered this type of language.

[Igel]

1. Grice would have something to say about this.

And it ain't pretty.

You assume the premise, based mostly on ill-will and suspicion.

You ignore a lot of data.

And voila, you've just substantiated the premise, which was, after all the goal. And we all know that motivated reasoning is the sine qua non of critical thinking.

McWhorter did a better job, tied himself up in knots, and finally had to admit defeat when he finally said, outright, that the current usage of a wide set of native speakers must be classified as "archaic." Why? Because it was necessary for it to be archaic, even if it is current usage in a population that outnumbers the entire Af-Am community in the Northern Hemisphere.

The problem is that nobody wants to admit to speaking a dialect of English.

Not my white redneck kids with their y'alls and they-wuzes. Not my Af-Am kids with their "he angry". Not the middle-classers who speak close to mainstream English. They all speak the One True English. Everybody they know that speaks good English speaks like them. And they really don't get out of their little cliques.

And if you admit that you speak a dialect, they act like it's something to be ashamed of. The idjits.

So if there's a social variation in a group's denotation of a word, it can't be because of social variation that's simply perceived to the point of becoming dialectal. No, there can be Only One. So denials of uniformity must be affirmations of dog-whistle speech. And if most of the time a word means what they say it means, it's a clever conspiracy by 200 million people at our secret meetings. Not lexical specialization. Because to assert that something that's been happening for the last 5000 years (that we know of) in every community is still happening without explicit guidance is just silly talk.

It's like the Red Scare. We see what we need to see everywhere, regardless. If I out 10 other white racists will I be given a pass by the Un-American Activities Committee, or is that subject to inflation?

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Urban and Inner city can be difficult

since especially urban is also used by specialists. These days for example, we speak of the urban core of San Diego, This urban core is not just the "inner city."

The rest are extremely obvious to my trained ear, but I read urban core so often in write ups from city and county it is not even funny. They mean also areas like the revitalized downtown.

That said, without core, you betcha that is exactly what they mean.

Middle class was one I became very aware as I observed the Occupy San Diego folk and the class and race divide that you could see.

[davidn3600]

3. OK. But the word "thug" was even used by Obama

And the black mayor of Baltimore also used the word.

We all need to have a updated list on words people associate to racism because no one seems to be able to keep up with it. You say an adjective you've said all your life and suddenly, one day, the PC police come and tell you that word is suddenly racist now.