Guest Post by John Stossel
Have you noticed how our language is changing?
At a congressional hearing on “Birthing While Black,” nearly every politician used the words “birthing people” instead of “women” or “mothers.” Asked why, Shalanda Young, President Joe Biden’s budget director, said, “Our language needs to be more inclusive.”
Activists have also changed “equality” to “equity” and “affirmative action” to “diversity.”
The Associated Press no longer uses “mistress.” It tells reporters to use “companion, friend or lover.”
Worse, certain speech is now labeled “violence.”
Calling a transgender woman a man is “an act of violence,” says transgender actress Laverne Cox.
Last week, the American Booksellers Association apologized for promoting a book on gender dysphoria after activists called it “anti-trans.” The book is hardly “anti-trans.” The Economist and the Times of London called it one of the best books of the year. But the Booksellers Association actually groveled, calling promoting the book “violent.”
Tim Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute says it’s dangerous to call words violence.
“The only way human beings can deal with one another is through language, discussion, debate,” he says in my new video. “If we say that that’s violence, then the only way for us to relate to one another is through power.”
I push back. “You’re white. Why should anybody listen to you about this?”
“Because what I say has, or doesn’t have, merit on its own,” he replies. “A big problem with the social justice movement is the idea that people’s mindset is controlled by their skin color. That may be called ‘anti-racism’ today, but it’s just plain old-fashioned racism.”
Linguist John McWhorter, author of the forthcoming book “Woke Racism,” adds, “It can be really hard for us to talk to each other, because we don’t know what the words we’re using mean.”
“The idea is, wherever there are white and black disparities, we’re supposed to call that phenomenon ‘racism,'” says McWhorter. “It never fully holds together.”
“Latinx” is another new term created by activists.
And yet, says Sandefur, “‘Latino’ originated as a reaction led by Hispanic people! They chose the word Latino or Latina. And now here’s a largely white, middle-class movement of social justice activists telling other people, ‘No, no, you can’t make distinctions in gender that way.'”
“Largely white?” I ask.
“The social justice movement in general is a largely white, upper-middle-class, college-educated movement,” he replies. “You hardly find anybody in the Hispanic community who prefers the term ‘Latinx.'”
He’s right. Only 4% of Hispanics prefer the term.
It’s hard to keep up with what’s OK and what’s forbidden.
Students at the University of Illinois-Chicago recently became upset because law professor Jason Kilborn included the N word, with only the first letter shown, in an exam on employment discrimination. He’d used the same word in exams for 10 years.
But this year, one student said she “had to seek counsel immediately after the exam to calm myself.”
McWhorter says those students are lying. Why?
“Claiming that kind of victimhood gives them a sense of belonging, of togetherness, a sense that they’re contributing to a struggle that their ancestors dealt with in a more concrete way.”
The students demanded the professor be punished. He was. The law school suspended him in the name of “social justice.”
“Social justice seeks to redistribute wealth and power between groups to suit what some political authority thinks is the right outcome,” says Sandefur.
I push back. “Social justice just means it’s time to pay attention to the minorities who never got justice.”
“No,” he responds. “Social justice (says), ‘We’re going to reorganize how people live their lives, silence some groups that have been heard more often.'”
It’s as if America is moving toward “1984,” George Orwell’s novel, in which government controls people’s thoughts by creating a new language, Newspeak.
The only way to stop it, says McWhorter, is to push back.
“Enlightened America needs to develop a backbone and start getting used to being called racist on Twitter. Just withstand it. Keep their voices out there. Make us understand what true justice is.”
John Stossel is author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.” For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Perhaps the antichrist will be born of a man, as in, male identifying.
How is “birthing person” a better noun than “mother?” I’m beginning to think this “woke language” movement isn’t an ideological movement as much as it is a sickness of the mind and soul.
It’s a sickness alright. In certain communities the proper terminology might be ” breeder sow.”
For Auntie, dear old Mom will always be the right name for the dearest person on Earth.
For one thing it is longer to say, so they can waste a little more time. Once the cigarette break was done away with something had to take its place. “momma of my baby” just plain wears them out.
On a side note:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akgy7a/we-all-quit-how-americas-workers-are-taking-back-their-power
It’s every abnormal psychology course’s outrageous pathologies turned into a street circus … every day, everywhere …
Looking at the retard holding that flag. It is obvious these people play with themselves. Who the hell would want to be with that troll. They are a miserable lot,and only wish to make everybody else like them. Screw them and their language change. My advice to them is “Blow me” I am so sick of these clowns and their mental illness.
So solly. “Blow me” is out.
“Orally satisfy my genderless crotch”, is the correct verbiage.
I wonder who funds this crap?
Oh, right.
Somehow, they seem to be behind (or in front of) every disgusting aspect of humanity … always turning a profit from human weakness and suffering and degradation at every turn …
I saw this today while out making deliveries: an obese, buzz-cut butch dyke kissing another pale fat girl (at least she was girly) in a parking lot. It’s especially amusing to me how these so-called lesbians always seem to just find a manly female to fulfill the male role they so desire, because I suppose they can’t find a man who wants to take on their disgusting selves and a bitch gotta get her rocks off too.
But I’d be real OK if they just kept that sorta shit in private, you know? It makes me way sicker than CONVID ever could.
So, what happens when I’ve had enough Woke insanity, and tell the loony freaks to fuck right off?
This is what a government with no legitimacy look and acts like. Exactly like this.
Why aren’t armed patriots doing something about it? Cowardice maybe???
I would like to know – Why is – ‘Person of Color’ – good, and – ‘Colored Person’ – bad.
What the hell is the difference?
Engineered race wars matter. I think that is the difference.
Same difference as “nigga”, and, that other word that we can not even write( or think)
Celebrate Black Culture!
Trick question. They’re both actually niggers.
In South Africa, ‘coloured’ is an acceptable term for a mixed race individual. The woke movement is largely confined to American ‘universities’ where the education standards have declined to the point of irrelevance. The rest of the world drives forward regardless. In UK these ‘woke’ people are a tiny minority (although they make a lot of noise) and generally ignored.
CarMax is ran by FUCKING JEWS, is that woke enough?
Through a hole in the sheet?
The gloves are coming off. Pedosident Joe’s incarnation is near complete.
he seemed remarkably lucid and focused, one might say aggressive, while asking that partially rhetorical question.
I don’t respond to stossel
You just did.
‘mental masturbation’ (my term since at least the late-’60s) has, indeed, become not only a ‘team sport’ — but a national pastime …
I remember it from philosophy classes — sociology classes — even some psychology classes — and especially when I was in law school.
I used to get medical treatments from a medical school clinic – and seeing the young, JAP-types of SJWs walking around with their ‘white silence is violence’ bullshit made me laugh at some of them. It was fun watching those twits get all twisted into a knot when someone actually challenged them … something that should have been done when they were much, much younger.
A different route this same sort of mentality has taken is in the whole face-diapering crowd … I’m still seeing urban White folks making their 3-year old children wear a face diaper outdoors and, especially, in grocery stores, etc. It’s fucking child abuse … and those parents should be given a solid kick in the behind for a start … and their children will have to bear the price of these self-glorified neurotics.
I’m good with being racist.
And sexist.
And fatist.
And ageist.
And transphobic, xenophobic, islamophobic, and everything else.
I’m not bigoted or discriminatory.
I hate everybody equally.
That’s mighty White of you (Or Asian as it happens.)
A man is a man, a woman is a woman and a ho is a ho.
If you own the language you own the present. If you own the present you own the past. If you own the past and the present you own the future… until people throw off language for communication and revert to violence. This is actually happening in many places today, not due to the woke horseshit, which makes things worse, but because language as a whole has been used to trap people in place for so long. Often we participate in our entrapment but we resent it all the same.