"Racist” is a harsh and pejorative judgment. I guess.The BBC vs The New York Times. pic.twitter.com/HweR4KrMF7
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) August 27, 2023
“Racially motivated” is a brilliant use of the passive voice, laying off any responsibility on the motivation, not the person. Of course, only persons can have motivations, but it’s the motivation that was bad, not the person. No judgement. The essence of “objective journalism.”
When AI takes over, how will we know the difference?
A friend who works in the mental health field recently explained in a group discussion (we were having a conversation where suicide came up), that they no longer talk about someone as being a suicide, but instead say they died by suicide. I have seen the same change of language around such conditions as autism, someone isn't autistic, they have autism. There is also a shift in the professional field to not call people alcoholics but to say they have an alcohol abuse disorder. It's a subtle shift of language to recognize the humanity of a person and not to just define them by their condition. In a parallel way the NYT wants to separate the racism from the person. But of course there is a vast gulf between autism, suicide etc. and racism. In the former, the person has limited or no agency over that fact that they are autistic. In the latter, the person has 100% agency with regard to being racist. But of course racism is almost entirely by whites in America, so short of being an open member of the KKK and using the n-word, the press rarely calls someone racist. So instead we get these passive voice recitations that put distance between the person and their racism. There is also an element of classism too, be white and wealthy and it is practically impossible to be called racist. You can see parallel language when it comes to crime. Be poor and a minority on trial for a crime, and you will be lucky to get an "accused" before the recitation of the offense. The moment the jury delivers the verdict you will be instantly labeled a thief, a rapist or a murderer. Be wealthy and white, even after conviction you won't be so labeled, but instead will be someone convicted of the crime. You aren't a thief, you have just been convicted of theft. I was recently reading a story of some wealthy that had murdered. The article carefully never called them a murderer however, they were instead someone convicted of murder. Our cultural racism and classism (I would argue they are intertwined in ways, by putting down someone by race you are lifting yourself up) are so ingrained that we are often blind them and the consequences. It also allows us to ignore that our contemporaries are really just terrible people. The ivy league educated conservative majority of the supreme court is working hard to empower racists and homophobes and to allow them to actively discriminate. The polite and elite press actively shy away from stating the simple obvious truth of the statement that they are empowering bigots. They would never call any of the justices bigots, it would call into question too many assumptions about elite educations, the social circles in which these kinds of people move, the movers, shakers and leaders of our country, and too many underlying assumptions about ourselves.
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