Open Thread and Link Farm, Happy Times Edition

  1. Who Was Elijah McClain? What to Know About His Death After a Police Encounter – The New York Times (And an alternate link.)
    The three police officers claimed that all their body cameras fell off (what a coincidence!). They also claimed that five foot six inch, 140 pound Elijah McClain had “incredible, crazy strength,” and all three of them had to get on top of him.
  2. Opinion | America Didn’t Give Up on Covid-19. Republicans Did. – The New York Times (And an alternate link.)
    “Covid-19 is like climate change: It isn’t the kind of menace the party wants to acknowledge. It’s not that the right is averse to fearmongering. But it doesn’t want you to fear impersonal threats that require an effective policy response…”
  3. The origin of “African American” | Arts & Culture | Yale Alumni Magazine
    The author found the term “African American” used in 1782. There’s debate over if the writer was actually African-American, as they claimed to be.
  4. What the AI Behind AlphaGo Can Teach Us About Being Human | WIRED
    A story about the first computer AI to beat a champion human Go player.
  5. The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of “jaywalking” – Vox
    Includes a gorgeous vintage anti-jaywalking editorial cartoon.
  6. The Princess Bride Letters
    In the novel The Princess Bride, there’s a missing scene, with an address to write if you’d like to get the missing scene mailed to you. I always intended to do that, and never did. But here’s the response(s) I would have received had I mailed them.
  7. It Can Happen Here | by Cass R. Sunstein | The New York Review of Books
    A discussion of a few books about life for ordinary Germans under Hitler. “Decades afterward, memoirists referred to their ‘happy times’ in the Hitler Youth, focusing not on ideology but on hiking trips, camaraderie, and summer camps.”
  8. The (First) Time Nazis Marched in Portland
    In 1936 – “As the cruiser arrived, Portlanders lined the waterfront, not to protest the already-publicized human rights atrocities underway in Germany, but to wave hankies and exchange “heil Hitler” salutes with the Emden crew…”
  9. I Am the Dad Who Installed Lava in the Rumpus Room Floor – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
  10. Addressing The Claims In JK Rowling’s Justification For Transphobia
    Lengthy and thorough.
  11. Anti-trans group admits bathroom predator myth is made up
  12. A faster response could have prevented most U.S. Covid-19 deaths – STAT
  13. West Side Story, but 12 minutes long and Cher plays every character – YouTube
    I’m honestly impressed that, at the point in her career where Cher could do virtually anything and get it on TV, she chose this.
  14. Free Speech and Marginalized People – Liberal Currents
    “. Suppression of speech is not directed most intensely at controversial speech. It’s directed at speech by people who are controversial—that is, at marginalized people who lack power, and who are therefore easily silenced and ignored.”
  15. » 30 Rock Landed on Us
    A short essay about how 30 Rock approached race.
  16. My Family Saw a Police Car Hit a Kid on Halloween. Then I Learned How NYPD Impunity Works. — ProPublica
    Although this story is less tragic, like the Elijah McClain story, it shows how freely police lie, and how little fear of consequence many police have.
  17. New research explores how conservative media misinformation may have intensified coronavirus – The Washington Post.
    The three studies are suggestive, but of course correlation is not causation.
  18. Spray Their Names Aims to Paint Murals That Honor Lives Lost and Amplify Marginalized Voices – 303 Magazine
    Both images in this link farm came from this article. The first image is a mural of Breonna Taylor painted by Detour, Hiero Veiga and Just. The second image is a mural of Elijah McClain painted by Detour and Hiero Veiga. Both photos are by Brittany Werges.

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155 Responses to Open Thread and Link Farm, Happy Times Edition

  1. Charles says:

    Ampersand,

    I think you are misreading the study. China put in place travel restrictions in late January in the real world, the 3 week early scenario is travel restrictions starting on January 7th, not February 7th. See figure 5.

    However, I think the real problem with blaming China for not putting in place draconian restrictions 3 weeks earlier is that 3 weeks earlier it was not clear what situation they were dealing with, and locking down cities in response to new disease outbreaks is not anything like standard procedure. In fact, when China locked down Wuhan in late January, there was a lot of discussion about how this was potentially counter-productive.

    On the start date, China knowing about it in December (late December) is consistent with what I’ve seen elsewhere. That means that to shut down on January 7th, they would have had to react to lock down 11 million people less than two weeks after the outbreak was first reported. That’s not a reaction it seems particularly reasonable to fault them for failing to have.

    The isolated case in France earlier than December is curious, but it is based on x-ray similarities, not detection of the virus in samples, and in any case it has no bearing on when the Chinese government was aware of COVID-19.

  2. Ampersand says:

    I think you are misreading the study. China put in place travel restrictions in late January in the real world, the 3 week early scenario is travel restrictions starting on January 7th, not February 7th. See figure 5.

    Oops, my bad! Thanks.

    That means that to shut down on January 7th, they would have had to react to lock down 11 million people less than two weeks after the outbreak was first reported. That’s not a reaction it seems particularly reasonable to fault them for failing to have.

    I agree.

  3. Jacqueline Onassis Squid says:

    Ron,

    It is a racist term. Had we been having this discussion decades ago, you’d be insisting the n-word isn’t racist. At least decent folks will have the satisfaction of knowing the right wing’s attempt to popularize your favored racist term for COVID-19 has failed now and forever.

  4. RonF says:

    It is a racist term.

    Why?

    Had we been having this discussion decades ago, you’d be insisting the n-word isn’t racist.

    As opposed to your baseless and frankly ignorant assertion, here’s what actually happened decades ago.

    When I was in 5th or 6th grade a black family moved into town. One of their children entered our school in my grade. One of my classmates, in a tone of voice devoid of any hostility or rancor that I can remember, referred to him using that word. I had never heard it before and presumed that it was simply a word used to refer to black people. Later on that day I came home and breezily announced to my mother something along the lines of “Hey Mom, there’s a [n-word] in my class!”

    My mother stopped dead in what she was doing and looked at me with a horrified expression. She went to the sink and grabbed a dish towel and a big yellow bar of Fels-Naptha laundry soap. She lathered up a corner of the dish towel with the soap, grabbed me, and forcefully scrubbed out the inside of my mouth with it. She then told me that it was a filthy, racist word and that decent people never used it.

    That was and has been it for me on that word.

    Fortunately, back in those days parents didn’t have to worry about risking arrest for such actions (and since back in her days in high school my Mom had dated the man who was our police chief when I was a kid, that probably wouldn’t have happened anyway).

  5. Petar says:

    I also do not think that ‘China virus’ is a racist term, unless every thing that has negative connotations toward anyone non-white is racist.

    It is many things. A way to show where your loyalties lie. A way to antagonize people. A propaganda trick. A way to deflect attention from the terrible job the United States have done with Covid-19. A way to show disdain toward scientific consensus. A way to solicit attention.

    Anti-Chinese? Hell, yes. Racist? Not in my book.

    Of course, I also do not think that it is racist to call OJ Simpson a murderer, or that it is anti-Semitic to call Madoff a greedy leech. I’ve done both, I’ve been told it makes me a horrible person, so what do I know?

    After all, this very site has an article praising and quoting, as an anti-racist luminary, the ideologue of the Japanese Imperialistic ambitions and the genocide against Chinese during WWII. So, clearly, my understanding of the nature of racism is lacking.

  6. Görkem says:

    “Anti-Chinese? Hell, yes. Racist? Not in my book.”

    Uhhhhh?

  7. Ampersand says:

    After all, this very site has an article praising and quoting, as an anti-racist luminary, the ideologue of the Japanese Imperialistic ambitions and the genocide against Chinese during WWII. So, clearly, my understanding of the nature of racism is lacking.

    Either say it with a link to what you’re talking about, or don’t say it at all.

  8. Petar says:

    After all, this very site has an article praising and quoting, as an anti-racist luminary, the ideologue of the Japanese Imperialistic ambitions and the genocide against Chinese during WWII. So, clearly, my understanding of the nature of racism is lacking.

    Either say it with a link to what you’re talking about, or don’t say it at all.

    The article is here

    This is the guy who explained how Chinese needed discipline imposed from the outside, Koreans and Indians had betrayed the Asian ideals, and thus lost the self-government mandate, and Russians were bestial subhumans ruled by emotions and superstitions (remind you of something?). When Japanese soldiers murdered and raped Koreans and Chinese during World War II, they were doing it following his ideology.

    When his oeuvre was celebrated in Boston in the 90s, I was one of the dozens of MIT students who insisted and obtained the removal of it. Japanese have done a great job hiding their doings during WWII, with the help of the US. But people calling themselves leftists should not be helping them do so.

    And pushing Kakuzo Okakura as an anti-racist is obscene.

    “Anti-Chinese? Hell, yes. Racist? Not in my book.”

    Uhhhhh?

    Uh-Uh? Huh. Gruh-Maaah-Gah.

    Translation from UgaBugan: So, propaganda against the Chinese state is racist? OK, then.

    I guess I’m anti-Semite because I sometimes speak against some things Israel does in the occupied territories.

  9. Petar says:

    You got me reading Okakura Kakuzō at 3am. My stuff above is slightly off. The Russians are guided by “false spirituality”, not emotions. It is the Chinese, not the Koreans who have lost the Divine mandate. The devil is in the details.

    It’s amazing how much his doctrine of unbroken sovereignty has in common with the the drivel of the idiots who combine Old Norse myths and White Supremacy.

    The guy was a nationalistic asshole, who thought Japanese superior to everyone in Asia. But he disliked Japan being humiliated by Western Imperialism, so that makes him a great anti-racist. The same way that calling him an asshole makes me racist against Japanese.

    ————

    By the way, you should read what he has to say about communist ideals.

  10. Corso says:

    @97, 98, 99

    Part of the problem with figuring out dates in regard to COVID is that before the world was paying attention to COVID, the information was mainly coming from in-house Chinese sources, and they were bad. Like… Notoriously, obviously, facially, “who-you-trying-to-fool” kind of bad. When China’s case load numbers were peaking, China kicked out the foreign press, and started reporting their new case load number as functionally zero the next day, kind of bad. We can pay attention to some of the things that happened though; The Chinese Doctor who was jailed for trying to announce COVID was jailed in Mid-December, so there is no question that China absolutely knew as of Mid-December that they were dealing with a coronavirus.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51364382

    It’s strange to me that anyone might say that a country very familiar with the fallout of a coronavirus, having just dealt with SARS in 2004, MERS in 2012, and other epidemics like H5N1 (an Avian Flu strain) as recently as last year, and was actively jailing doctors who had identified the coronavirus in December, could not reasonably have known to take measures In January. They were taking measures. Just not public safety ones.

    As to October, that’s actually what I thought, but I can’t find anything concrete. Wenliang was one of several doctors to be jailed, the article I link said 8 had been warned against “spreading rumors”, and I think that’s a minimum. I don’t know if Wenliang was the first to identify the virus (I don’t think he was), and I don’t know how long he was working on his sample before the results got him in trouble (Unless I misunderstand the article, his legal troubles lasted more than a week). I really do believe that I’ve read that we knew about it earlier than mid-December, and I don’t want to completely abandon my recollection because Chinese censors have been working overtime for months on this file, but it’s also possible that I was just wrong.

    @106

    When discusing Israeli excesses in self defense, we at least have the benefit of having a word “Israeli” that is unique from the ethnic group that make up the majority of the Israeli people “Jews”. I wonder how much of the insistence that “Chinese Virus” is a racist term stems from the misunderstanding, purposeful or otherwise, on the part of some people between “Chinese” the nation, and “Chinese” the people.

  11. Corso says:

    @100

    Indeed! I appreciate his style of mashing up words in a nonsensical but somehow understandable way. Something of a more modern Lewis Carrol, except much less well known, making the name kind of an in-joke.

  12. Celeste says:

    I wonder how much of the insistence that “Chinese Virus” is a racist term stems from the misunderstanding, purposeful or otherwise, on the part of some people between “Chinese” the nation, and “Chinese” the people.

    I’d guess it has more to do with the rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans during the pandemic.

    See here and here.

    One suspects that for those who insist on using it despite repeated requests to the contrary, the rise in racist assaults is a feature, rather than a bug.

  13. Mookie says:

    More than just Americans object to the name and similar constructions on perfectly sound grounds: it’s imprecise, it elides cause and effect, it obfuscates reality including handwaving away the malpractice of other nations at adequately prepping for a series of pandemics we all knew and were warned was coming and could come from anywhere, it undoubtedly is related, stems from, and feeds the xenophobic and racist anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment as Celeste has described seen round the globe, it tracks with similarly lazy and obstructionist attempts to simplify complex public health crises by way of magical thinking, fallacy, and scapegoating, and to that end it is wildly non-constructive. There is no benign purpose behind it, it serves no one and nothing good, and playing dumb about this is futile for the small, angry, emotive minority that clings to it. States that traffic in it and other self-serving misinformation are signaling loud and clear their own incompetence while telegraphing their negligence to come during the latter stages of this and future pandemics. It is transparent in its biases and aims, which are hostile to humanitarian projects, to global diplomacy, collaboration, and shared research and resources. It is plainly anti-intellectual and incurious; it is instructive that its emphasis on culpability is as premature as the pseudo- and pop-science and conspiracy theories that serve as its accessories (again, we return to the malpractice of governments content with any easy, fleeting, and cheap answer it can catch and hang on to for a bit, sometimes clasping hundreds of contradictory ‘solutions’ at a time). But, the truth is, this cutesy bullshit is not working on much of the world. No one is triggered, no one is owned. There are too many dead and too many ill to litigate this in a serious way with navel-gazing sea-lions who wish to waste time making people prove ownership, much less intimate knowledge, of the nose on their face. In this instance, the bums lost. Condolences!

  14. Görkem says:

    “. Japanese have done a great job hiding their doings during WWII, with the help of the US.”

    Dude Japanese war crimes during WW2 are hardly obscure. The specific works of particular Japanese imperialist ideologues are, yes, I will grant you that. But then again, most people have never heard of Alfred Rosenberg or Houston Chamberlain, but that doesn’t mean that Nazi atrocities have been “hidden”.

  15. Corso says:

    @113

    You’ve obviously done the calculations and decided that all the reasons one might give to use terms like the “Wuhan Flu” are outweighed by the damage they do. That’s a perfectly reasonable outcome. And to be fair, I did a similar calculation, although, perhaps as a benefit of not being in America, I didn’t see the damage to be nearly as serious as you seem to.

    But reason isn’t a zero-sum game, the facts don’t go away once you weigh them and find them less important than the alternative, you’ve just discounted them. Someone who is still well-intentioned might not discount them the same way you do. And boiling that difference in interpretation down to racism ignores the reality of their arguments (unless their argument is actually racism, in which case… go ham), and is intellectually incurious and lazy.

    That’s not their problem. It’s yours.

  16. Ampersand says:

    Corso, how do you determine if their argument is “actually racism”?

  17. Jacqueline Onassis Squid says:

    When the most prominent and visible proponent of the term “China Flu” and “Chinese Flu” has also been trying to popularize the undeniably racist term “Kung Flu”, your defense of “Chinese Flu” is laughable. If you think that guy, like most Americans, thinks that there’s a difference between Asian and Chinese, you’re sadly mistaken.

    If you insist on using “Chinese Flu” you’re being racist. If you insist on using “Chinese Flu” even after being told and shown that it’s racist, I’m going to know that you are racist.

  18. Corso says:

    It would probably involve looking at the comment in context, which I understand might not be easy, but perhaps making an accusation of racism shouldn’t be easy.

    I think that accusations of racism are serious enough that we should probably be pretty sure that the accusation is right before making it. I think we have to generally rediscover the benefit of the doubt, and give it to people until they demonstrate that they do not deserve it. I think we need to take people at their words, if someone is saying that their comment isn’t racially motivated, and they give a plausible reason for their comment that doesn’t involve race, maybe we should default to believing them.

    This is maybe going a step further than the question, but I also believe in a good redemption arc. If someone wants to make the effort to recognize past misdeeds, I think we need to make room and highlight a path for them.

    I don’t know, am I off base?

  19. Ampersand says:

    If you insist on using “Chinese Flu” you’re being racist. If you insist on using “Chinese Flu” even after being told and shown that it’s racist, I’m going to know that you are racist.

    And…

    That’s not their problem. It’s yours.

    With respect to you both, when addressing other people participating in this blog, please try to address their arguments, rather than their character or person.

    Thanks!

  20. Ampersand says:

    Corso: I don’t think it’s a good idea to respond to “is this comment/policy racist” by saying “did the author explicitly say it was racially motivated?”

    First of all, what if a comment is racist but not “racially motivated” by the speaker? For example, maybe the speaker is just credulously repeating something racist they heard, but aren’t themselves motivated by racial animus. If Lucy says “the Jews secretly control the Blacks” because a trusted elder told them so, but actually Lucy feels no antisemitism or racism in her heart, she just trusts her elders, that doesn’t magically transform the statement into something that isn’t antisemitic and racist.

    Second of all, your standard basically works out to “absolutely nothing anyone says can ever be called racist, except for some things Klansmen say, and not even then a lot of the time.” Because practically no one will explicitly admit to being “racially motivated” in what they say or what policies they support.

    Finally, for your standards to make sense, we’d all have to be a lot more worried about the prospect of someone falsely being accused of saying something racist, then we are about racism. I don’t think that’s the balance we should be looking for.

  21. Görkem says:

    Hear hear Amp.

    I always say, if the standard for racism is when people explicitly state biologically racist beliefs, then not only is racism not an issue now, it never has been – in fact if this was what racism was, we would have to conclude racism is a theoretical construct that is not actually held by any identifiable individuals, let alone groups or societies.

  22. Jacqueline Onassis Squid says:

    Ah. You begin to understand pro-racist rationalizations, Görkem.

  23. Corso says:

    @120

    “I don’t think it’s a good idea to respond to “is this comment/policy racist” by saying “did the author explicitly say it was racially motivated?””

    That both reverses and removes requirements from what I said;

    “[I]f someone is saying that their comment isn’t racially motivated, and they give a plausible reason for their comment that doesn’t involve race, maybe we should default to believing them.”

    I get it, gone are the days when racists were proud about being racist…. Except for the few that are. More often, we’re left wondering because racists, understanding that their views are unacceptable to most people, but also wanting to interact with most people, closet their beliefs. You’re almost certainly not going to get an explicit admission of racism… But if you get a specific denial of racism, and a plausible alternate theory, I don’t think it’s healthy to assume they’re lying and default to “racism”.

    “First of all, what if a comment is racist but not “racially motivated” by the speaker? For example, maybe the speaker is just credulously repeating something racist they heard, but aren’t themselves motivated by racial animus. If Lucy says “the Jews secretly control the Blacks” because a trusted elder told them so, but actually Lucy feels no antisemitism or racism in her heart, she just trusts her elders, that doesn’t magically transform the statement into something that isn’t antisemitic and racist.”

    I think this assumes that the term “Wuhan Flu” is inherently and obviously racist, and I don’t think that’s true. I think that if someone who entered a coma in 2019 and had the mixed blessing to wake up in 2020 was asked if naming a disease after the geographical area is came from was racist, they’d almost invariably say no.

    But to your example…. I think the base response to that statement would be identical regardless on intent, and I’d hope a little bit of shock and horror would be on the docket. But any amount of conversation that followed would make it obvious that the situation wasn’t actually as sinister as it appeared. And while I understand that people’s mileage on their willingness to coach others varies, explaining to someone that Jews don’t actually secretly control Black people shouldn’t be too hard. It has the benefit of being true. Explaining to someone why calling COVID the “Wuhan Flu” is racist is a much harder ask, if for no other reason than “Previous to this, it wasn’t uncommon for viruses to be named after the place they came from” is true, and this virus did originate in Wuhan Province, China.

    Second of all, your standard basically works out to “absolutely nothing anyone says can ever be called racist, except for some things Klansmen say, and not even then a lot of the time.” Because practically no one will explicitly admit to being “racially motivated” in what they say or what policies they support.

    That’s not the intention, I think I covered this with my first paragraph response, but to expand a little, what I said was;

    “[I]f someone is saying that their comment isn’t racially motivated, and they give a plausible reason for their comment that doesn’t involve race, maybe we should default to believing them.”

    Defaulting to the belief that the person you’re talking to is being honest doesn’t preclude subsequently deciding that they were in fact lying to you. It’s just a base outlook that assumes that most people are in fact good people, you’re probably talking to a good person, and you should treat that person well until they’ve given you a reason to not.

    Finally, for your standards to make sense, we’d all have to be a lot more worried about the prospect of someone falsely being accused of saying something racist, then we are about racism. I don’t think that’s the balance we should be looking for.

    This does seem like a genuine difference of opinion. I think that take is kind of callous. An accusation of racism does damage. Obviously not as much as a lifetime of experiencing racism. But it is a kind of damage. And while if we had to choose between caring about racism and caring about the damage a false accusation of racism would do, it makes sense to err on the side of caring about racism. I just don’t see why they’re mutually exclusive.

    It seems like we’re getting to a point where we’re invested in seeing racism under every rock for some reason, at the cost of actually understanding the world we live in and the people we live in it with. It’s not good for social cohesion. I don’t understand it. I’m open to explanations, because I really don’t, and I’d like to.

  24. Corso says:

    I just responded to that, and tried to make an edit to correct a typo, it gave me an error message and now the comment seems to be gone. I really hope it’s not lost, that was a lot of words.

    Edit: Ignore this, it’s appearing now. It might have been a browser thing.

    Further edit (added by Amp): No, it wasn’t a browser thing – you were right, and your posting about it enabled me to fix it.

    I’m leaving this up (both this comment by you, and my response to it) b/c that way others will see it and know what to do if it occurs to them.

  25. Ampersand says:

    For some mysterious WordPress reason, it decided your comment was spam and put it in the spam trap. This happens infrequently; when it does, you should do exactly what you did here – post a comment letting me know about it – and I’ll go find it in the spam trap and restore it.

  26. Petar says:

    Japanese have done a great job hiding their doings during WWII, with the help of the US.”

    Dude Japanese war crimes during WW2 are hardly obscure. The specific works of particular Japanese imperialist ideologues are, yes, I will grant you that. But then again, most people have never heard of Alfred Rosenberg or Houston Chamberlain, but that doesn’t mean that Nazi atrocities have been “hidden”.

    Absolutely not my experience in the United States. Most Americans know practically nothing about the number of Chinese civilians who died at the hands of Japanese during World War II, nothing about the medical experiments and the inhuman atrocities that went with them. Americans did a better job sheltering Japanese war criminals than they did with German ones, if only because the USSR did not give a damn.

    Japanese are taught nothing about the war crimes. As in nothing, zip, nada, zero, fuck all. Many get very touchy if anyone suggest the Rape of Nanjin (Nanking, Nanjing) ever happened.

    Just from your comment above, I’d bet you’re neither American, not Japanese, nor Chinese, nor Korean.

  27. Jacqueline Onassis Squid says:

    So you guys think “Kung Flu” is a perfectly acceptable, not racist name for the disease?

  28. Petar says:

    I do not think that either Chinese Flu or Kung Flu is acceptable.

    I think that in most cases Kung Flu is used with racist motivations, because it is sub-optimal for any other purpose.

    On the other hand, I think that those who use Chinese Virus instead of Covid-19 are primarily trying to shift blame for the extent of the US epidemic from the Trump administration to Chinese officials.

    And for what it is worth, the Chinese response was effective. Plenty of officials tried to cover their asses, there was incredulity in the face of a novel virus, individuals were trampled under authoritarian boots, but at the end, China did well for itself. Doing well for others were never their objective, and no one in their right mind would expect it.

    This said, New Zealand, South Korea, Germany, and many other countries showed that totalitarian measures were not necessary to the response, and that despite the problems with China’s reaction, one could deal with the pandemic.

    But that’s not playing to some people’s narrative, so they use ‘Chinese virus’, which marks them as people with an agenda… but not necessarily racist.

    As opposed to some, I do not use motivation to decide how bad a deed is, but only to decide what the perpetrator is likely to do next. I would not punish first degree murder the same way as manslaughter, but only because ensuring the perpetrators do not kill again takes different methods.

  29. Charles says:

    Corso,

    The Chinese Doctor who was jailed for trying to announce COVID was jailed in Mid-December, so there is no question that China absolutely knew as of Mid-December that they were dealing with a coronavirus.

    The article you link to says that Dr. Li posted about the outbreak on Dec 30, and was arrested (but not jailed) 4 days later. January 3 is not mid-December. Mid-December is when the first COVID-19 case was admitted to the hospital (Dec 12), but the disease wasn’t identififed as a new disease until Dec 27. The same day Dr. Li posted about the disease to colleagues, the existance of the disease was reported to an international disease tracking organization through official channels. The next day the Wuhan CDC publicly announced through official media the existance of the disease and guidance to wear masks and avoid crowds. There’s plenty of evidence that China engaged in significant suppression of information in January, but back-dating that to December just seems like a mistake.

  30. Görkem says:

    “Japanese are taught nothing about the war crimes. As in nothing, zip, nada, zero, fuck all.”

    I worked in a Japanese school for three years and can directly attest that this is not true. There are noisy denialist groups in Japan, but Japanese war crimes are a part of the Japanese history curriculum in all public schools. Whether pupils absorb what is taught there is a trickier question, but it isn’t hidden.

    re: the average American, they might not know the details of Nanjing or Parit Sulong, but on the other hand, they don’t know the details of Rumbula or Babi Yar either. But they’re aware that Japan did some nasty shit. I think the biggest gap in the American popular imagining re: Japan is that there is more emphasis put on violence against Americans than non-Americans (e.g. everybody knows about Pearl Harbour, Nanjing is obscure despite being objectively a much bigger deal both morally and in terms of scale). But that doesn’t mean people aren’t aware that Pearl Harbour isn’t the worst thing the Japanese Empire did, it’s just their sense of Japanese atrocities in China is vague.

  31. Petar says:

    I have read the official 2000 edition of a High School history book that covers WWII, 2017 edition of the Junior High School history book, and I actually have a 2015 High School book in English, although this one seems to be in limited use, only for some highly prestigious schools.

    In those, there is total one line mentioning Nanjing, in the Junior High School book. There is no mention of the actual number of civilian casualties, insane medical experiments, forced prostitution, depopulation programs, etc. None at all.

    In contrast, in the 21st century books, there are paragraphs and paragraphs attempting to justify Pearl Harbor. There is one chapter about the fate of the half million Japanese soldiers who surrendered to the Soviets and Mongolians.

    I do not know what books you have been teaching from. I do not know how much is retained by Japanese students. But the contrast, when it comes to WWII, between how much Germans know and how they feel, and what Japanese say is absolutely astounding. I have been on multiple business trips in Japan, I have lived in Germany, and I have watched plenty of historical movies from both nations. German may minimize the role of Wehrmacht troops in atrocities. Japanese utterly fail to mention atrocities.

    But hey, do not take my word for it. Do a Google search. There are a few districts which refused to use the official 21st century textbooks…. when they came out. I’ll assume you taught in one of those. In the rest of Japan, if they are teaching from the official textbooks, the situation is different.

    I am looking at a few articles about this, but they are mostly in Chinese. There is a beauty about a sitting minister boasting how they edited some specific war crimes from all approved textbooks in 2007. I am trying to find it in Japanese or English…

    Here we go.

    I hope it is not pay walled for some. If so, I apologize. I’d get it in Japanese, but my Google Fu is weak. Whoops, was that racist? I assure you when I speak of martial arts, there’s no disrespect.

  32. Jacqueline Onassis Squid says:

    The average American knows nothing about Japan’s actions in WWII aside from 2 major incidents that involved the USA. I never learned anything about Japan’s involvement in WWII other than Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima & Nagasaki in school. They barely mentioned WWII at all in history or social studies from 2nd through 11th grades in a public school system widely acknowledged as one of the very top public schools systems in all of the United States.

    I learned about the atrocities they committed in China and Korea a long, long time later since this isn’t something you’re likely to see discussed in the media.

  33. Jacqueline Onassis Squid says:

    Since America’s number one proponent of “Kung Flu” is the same person who is America’s number one proponent of “China Flu” it’s safe to assume that the latter is also racist. Especially since that person has a documented history of racist speech and action stretching back at least 5 decades. You have to bend over backwards to find enough plausible deniability to be able to barely credibly claim otherwise.

  34. Görkem says:

    @Petar: This is a common misunderstanding re: the Japanese education system. There are no “official” books. I don’t know what book you got or what makes you call it “official”, but there is no such thing. The Japanese Ministry of Education does not mandate certain books. Textbooks in history (and mathematics, and physics, and geography, and every other subject) are produced by private profit-seeking companies who seek to get schools and/or teachers to use their products. Some are more popular than others, so I usually assume that when people talk about the “official” books they are talking about the most popular ones.

    What usually happens is some western commentator gets their hands on a book (or more likely, an English translation of a book) that de-emphasises or flat-out omits Japanese wartime atrocities and starts claiming that this is the “official” book, endorsed or written by the Japanese government, that Japan is deliberately raising a generation of Imperialists, etc etc. It is a pretty old story, to be honest. You used to hear it a lot more in the 80s when Japan was viewed through the same lens China is now.

    So I cannot speak to the book you read, but they are not “official”.

    Having said that I do agree that Japan does not do as good a job as Germany did at confronting its wartime atrocities. But I think that is judging Japan by a very high standard. German is the outstanding world champion in terms of coming to terms with its history of atrocities. Japan does it better than a lot of other countries. For some reason people in the west want to believe in the myth of an unrepentant Japan, and admittedly there are plenty of denialists in Japan who are noisy and visible, so the phenomenon of Japanese denialism doesn’t need to be invented from whole cloth – it just needs to be exaggerated from a fairly fringe narrative to an “official” one.

    @Jacqueline: Perhaps I have been overestimating the American education system, every American I have ever spoken to is at a minimum aware that Japan did nasty shit in China, but maybe I have been unconsciously filtering. Having said that, would you like to see more mentions of Japanese atrocities in China in American history classes?

  35. Petar says:

    the phenomenon of Japanese denialism doesn’t need to be invented from whole cloth – it just needs to be exaggerated from a fairly fringe narrative to an “official” one.

    Fringe? Görkem, I am trying very hard not to question where you get your information.

    This is a common misunderstanding re: the Japanese education system. There are no “official” books. I don’t know what book you got or what makes you call it “official”, but there is no such thing. The Japanese Ministry of Education does not mandate certain books.

    In Japan, textbooks have to be approved by the government in order to be used as the primary text by a school. A school does not have to update its school materials, but it cannot use unapproved ones as the main text without jeopardizing its students eligibility upon graduation. While you can include material that is not considered part of the official requirements in the main textbook, it must be clearly marked as such. Material actually conflicting with the official guidelines precludes approval. Unapproved materials can only be used if an approved textbook is also used. Only very few schools, usually ones with enviable reputation add supplemental textbooks.

    In 2007, a former education minister, at the time a member of the Shūgiin (House of Representatives) who has literally stated that the Rape of Nanjing is complete fabrication, led a campaign of the creatively named Liberal Democratic Party to remove any mention of some war crimes from textbooks before they can be approved. As the Liberal Democratic Party is, despite its name, is a very conservative party, and has been is power almost constantly since its creation, the campaign was successful.

    The book I have is approved. Any book published after 2007 that mentions a pretty extensive subset of Japanese atrocities in WWII cannot possibly have been approved. There may be schools which are using textbooks that are a dozen years old, or that may be supplementing their approved textbooks with ones that mention proscribed facts like forced prostitution, which Japanese government officials have been both denying and actually justifying as late as this decade. You may have been teaching in one of those schools, and thus seen schoolbooks which mention it. I want a cookie for this last sentence.

    Here’s a direct quote.

    “In the circumstances in which bullets are flying like rain and wind, the soldiers are running around at the risk of losing their lives … if you want them to have a rest in such a situation, a comfort women system is necessary. Anyone can understand that.”
    Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka and co-founder of the right wing Japan Restoration Party.

    “Comfort Women” is what the Japanese called the hundreds of thousands of women who were supposed to be trained as nurses, or were offered factory jobs, or were volunteered at bayonet point… before being incarcerated in knock shops.

    The term has been constantly revised. About two years ago, even that was considered too dishonorable, so the oldest English language newspaper updated its guidelines to remove any mention of coercion associated with ‘comfort women’… along with relabeling forced labour by prisoners or war as “wartime labour’.

    But why the hell do I even bother? Clearly I am mistaken, because my experience with the Japanese is limited to self-defense force personnel (in the 80s) MIT students (in the 90s) and computer professionals (in the 21st century)

    Oh, and what I have read must be fake news, or at best exaggerations.

    Clearly, I have not met the real Japanese.

  36. a says:

    With regard to the “Wuhan” or “Chinese” virus, I’d welcome an opinion on this.

    I personally never heard of any problem with naming things with an associated geographical place before this issue (but I’m not always in the social-trends loop). In particular viruses like Lyme disease. But moving on:

    Are there problems with other areas?

    Polish sausage, Canadian bacon, Hamburger, Frankfurter, Wiener, Swiss cheese, Chicago pizza

    Neanderthals, Denisovans, Omos

    Geneva Convention, Treaty of Bern, Treaty of Paris, Treaty of Versailles

    Bad stuff?
    Siberian winters, New York lawyers, New York minute, Texan justice, Houston we’ve got a problem

  37. Görkem says:

    “Görkem, I am trying very hard not to question where you get your information.”

    I worked in Japan as a teacher for several years. So I get it from direct experience with the Japanese education system. It’s also where I get the view this is fringe. Denialist groups are allowed to operate and they have a habit of inserting themselves into places where they are very visible, but they do not represent the point of view of the majority of Japanese people. Of course if you want to find Japanese people who hold denialist views, it is not at all hard. I don’t want to create a countermyth and say nobody holds these views. There definitely are such groups and they do have membership that is substantial, but it isn’t close to a majority. This is what I mean by fringe. I guess it is not fringe in the way that, say, belief in a flat earth is fringe. It’s fringe in the way the belief that Barack Obama was the antichrist was fringe.

    But I can see we are not going to have a meeting of minds here. As I say, there is a very powerful need in the west to believe that Japanese is, if not still a fascist and imperialist society, it is at least a fascist and imperialist apologist society. It’s very tempting to speculate about where such a need comes from, but this conversation with you probably isn’t a productive place to do so.

  38. Petar says:

    It’s fringe in the way the belief that Barack Obama was the antichrist was fringe.

    In the posts above, I gave you quotes from a former Education minister, from a member of the House of Representatives, from the Mayor of Osaka (arguably, Japan’s economic hub) and from the editorial policy of a major newspaper. In addition, it is a fact that in the last 13 years, the very mention of specific war crimes have been grounds for textbooks NOT being approved.

    Until you provide quotes from similarly influential people, and from similarly visible government or corporate policies, stating that Obama is the Anti-Christ, I do not intend to engage with you anymore.

    You have repeatedly made factually false claims. This last one is trivially easy to assess.

    ————–

    By the way, Ampersand, exactly what is the tipping point after which it becomes acceptable to call a contributor of this site names to his face? How much patience would the moderators have for someone who is working comparably hard on minimizing, for example, the extent of Holocaust Denialism?

  39. Görkem says:

    ” do not intend to engage with you anymore.”

    Wow, now my life sucks. But if you wanna call me names to my face without getting pinged by Amp, please feel free to do so via my private email.

  40. Ampersand says:

    By the way, Ampersand, exactly what is the tipping point after which it becomes acceptable to call a contributor of this site names to his face? How much patience would the moderators have for someone who is working comparably hard on minimizing, for example, the extent of Holocaust Denialism?

    1) Basically never acceptable to me. I don’t always have the spoons/energy to object or moderate, but I always prefer not to see it.

    2) I’d find it weird if someone denied the extend of holocaust denialism, but I think I’d have patience with that. To me, there’s a significant difference between denying the state of holocaust denialism, vs denying the holocaust.

    BTW, suppose Gorkem had said, instead of “fringe in the way the belief that Barack Obama was the antichrist was fringe,” they’d said instead “fringe in the way the belief that Barack Obama was born in Kenya was fringe”? Is that a better example of a fringe belief that has nevertheless been held by some prominent people?

  41. Petar says:

    BTW, suppose Gorkem had said, instead of “fringe in the way the belief that Barack Obama was the antichrist was fringe,” they’d said instead “fringe in the way the belief that Barack Obama was born in Kenya was fringe”? Is that a better example of a fringe belief that has nevertheless been held by some prominent people?

    Nearly half, that is 42% of self-declared Republicans profess to believe that Obama was born in Kenya. The list of well known Republicans who have parroted it includes a president, a former speaker of the House, a vice-presidential candidate, senators, electors, influential pundits, etc.

    I am 100% in agreement that Japanese Fascist and Imperialist apologists are about as fringe as Americans who claim that Obama was born in Kenya.

    That is, not fringe at all. False doesn’t mean fringe, at least not to my knowledge.

  42. Nancy Lebovitz says:

    In regards to racism and intent, what do you make of this?

    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-05/usc-business-professor-controversy-chinese-word-english-slur

    A *very* common Chinese word sounds like the n-word. A professor got into trouble for teaching it.

  43. nobody.really says:

    A *very* common Chinese word sounds like the n-word. A professor got into trouble for teaching it.

    As Julian Bond, then chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, remarked, “Seems to me [people have] been niggardly in [their] judgment on the issue….”

  44. Ampersand says:

    Nancy – The LA Times won’t let me read that link because I’m not a subscriber or something, but I’ve heard about the story elsewhere. Unless there’s something in the context that completely changes things, I think it’s incredibly stupid to punish this professor at all.

  45. Corso says:

    @142

    “Seems to me [people have] been niggardly in [their] judgment on the issue….”

    That’s a good example, for context, the term in question is;

    “那个,which in Mandarin is commonly pronounced nèi ge (NAY-guh)” (“那个”, the link says, translates to “that”.)

    I think this demonstrates the difference between intended/taken offense. There is almost no possibility, for instance, that a native Mandarin speaker would say “那个” intending for it to be taken as a racial slur. The conversation earlier was what the treatment should be for saying something racist, even if it weren’t racially motivated (Amp @120), and I responded with “I think this assumes that the term “Wuhan Flu” is inherently and obviously racist, and I don’t think that’s true. I think that if someone who entered a coma in 2019 and had the mixed blessing to wake up in 2020 was asked if naming a disease after the geographical area [it] came from was racist, they’d almost invariably say no.”

    I think the fundamental disconnect in understanding between the two sides of this argument is that there are people who believe that intent matters most, and there are people who believe that offence matters most.

    That is, I think the people(A) who think that intent matters most experience people(B) calling them racist for using a term that they(A) do not intend to be taken as racist, and indeed argue against the racial connotations of the term because they do not believe those racial connotations exist. And because they(A) believe that intent matters, and the people they are interacting with are calling their language racist, the implicit takeaway from that interaction is that they(B) are saying that they(A) intend racism, which is offensive to them(A). If that’s a misconception on their(A) part, it isn’t helped by comments like Jacqueline (@117) saying explicitly “If you insist on using “Chinese Flu” you’re being racist.”

    Meanwhile, I also think that the people who think that offence matters most see people using language that they attribute harm to, and attempt to deal with that harm, disregarding the intent, or even the explanation, because the intent or explanation do not mitigate the offense.

    I tried to be fair there, if someone wants to offer an alternative to that because they feel I’m being uncharitable, I’m open to it.

    The problem I have with that line of thinking is that if, for instance, someone says something like “那个”, then the fact that “那个” means “that” in Mandarin doesn’t matter. What matters most, according to this line of thinking, is offense, and a black person hearing “那个” and having no grasp of Mandarin could, fairly easily, think that they’re being called a slur.

    I think that stepping away from the politicization of “Wuhan Flu” it might be easier to point out that “那个” is obviously not racist. At that point, is the right thing to do to explain to the Mandarin speaker that they cannot say “那个” anymore, because even though it’s not intended to offend, linguistically it’s still offensive? And if not, what does that say about other phrases where offense is taken, but not meant?

  46. Petar says:

    If you know enough languages, absolutely everything is offensive.

    In our Engineering Department, there was a Bulgarian called Atanas Arsov, and an American called Gus Pitch. Atanas is pronounced very much as Attaboy, with ‘boy’ replaced by ‘Ass’. The arse in last name does not help. Gus Pitch is pronounced practically the same as Гъз Пич in Bulgarian, and can be taken in three different ways, neither of them flattering (ass dude, loser with pretensions, vagina on the butt)

    We had dozens in Bulgarians in the plant, as we were using Bulgarian technology. The company never managed to stamp out people messing with the two of them.

    “Hey Gus!” is incredibly offensive in Bulgarian, and Gus was made aware of that pretty damn quick. “Hey Pitch!” is somewhat less offensive, but extremely colloquial, always impolite, and definitively unacceptable in any professional setting.

    “Att’an’ass!” was not a way Atanas liked to be greeted. Nor did he like that every time he turned in a project, some would cheer his name.

    They ended up as Nasko and G-man… but I wondered how much those held when no management was present.

    ————-

    And this is not even going into languages where the only polite way to describe a Black man sounds close or identical to the N-word, and variations on the word Black are only used to liken a person to an object or abomination, depending on the suffix.

  47. Görkem says:

    @Amp: The professor is not really being punished. He still has his job, he is not even undergoing any formal disciplinary process, he is just handing over teaching duties for one course temporarily to another professor while this issue is being resolved.

  48. Ampersand says:

    Gorkem:

    @Amp: The professor is not really being punished. He still has his job, he is not even undergoing any formal disciplinary process, he is just handing over teaching duties for one course temporarily to another professor while this issue is being resolved.

    That’s better than I feared! Thanks for the info.

    But I still think it’s more fuss and stress for the Professor than can be justified, since this case seems fairly clear-cut. (Unless there’s something about it I’m not aware of.)

  49. Nancy Lebovitz says:

    Görkem, I’d say that just having the controversy and the angry students is a cost even if there isn’t any formal punishment.

  50. Ampersand says:

    “I think that if someone who entered a coma in 2019 and had the mixed blessing to wake up in 2020 was asked if naming a disease after the geographical area [it] came from was racist, they’d almost invariably say no.”

    First of all, I already pointed out that concerns about naming diseases after places, existed before 2019.

    But – specifics of your example aside – yes, if you assume that we lack all of the context, then that changes things. But ignoring all context isn’t actually a more accurate way to judge issues; on the contrary, by refusing to consider some relevant issues, it becomes less useful and less accurate.

    In the real world, there are people who are clearly using terms like “Wuhan flu” and “China flu” (etc) to encourage racism. And there are people who are happy to go along with that, either because they are themselves racist, or because they’re indifferent to racism, or because they have partisan loyalties.

    My housemate works in a retail shop. He’s Asian, and recently had a customer refuse to let him ring up her purchases because (she said) she didn’t want to get sick (meaning she didn’t want to be near an Asian person or touch things an Asian person had touched). This kind of racism is actively going on; why wouldn’t anyone be willing to do something small and easy to avoid adding to it?

    Do you believe that because a naming convention existed once, it’s wrong for it to ever be changed? Do you insist on calling the current iteration of Windows “Windows 15” instead of “Windows 10,” since in the past Windows named its versions after the release year? Why isn’t “we don’t want to increase the current racism problem caused by people holding COVID-19 against Asians” a good enough reason? Why is saying the fucking word “Covid” so incredibly painful and difficult? Is the “V” made of razors, so people have to say “China” to avoid having the razors slice up the roof of their mouths?

    I think the fundimental disconnect in understanding between the two sides of this argument is that there are people who believe that intent matters most, and there are people who believe that offence matters most.

    I think this is sort of accurate. But – as I’m sure you realize – the reality is more complex. Take me, for example; I’ve come down on opposite sides of the question on the two examples we’ve discussed here. I think it’s ridiculous to refuse to switch to saying “Covid-19” and I think it’s ridiculous to call for punishing a Chinese professor for saying a Chinese word that sounds like the n-word. So which category do I fit into?

  51. Görkem says:

    I am sure it is a bother for this professor and he would have preferred it didn’t happen. But all I am saying is, even if the decision to take action was an error, the consequences of the error are pretty minor. I don’t think it really deserves the amount of media attention it is getting, frankly.

    I think the whole thing would have been solved if the professor had just said in introducing his point that the Chinese phrase he is about to say might sound like a racial slur, but it is in fact just a homonym. I doubt anybody would have complained had he done so, so he could still have taught just as effectively and nobody would have felt the need to complain. Hopefully that will be exactly the outcome moving forward.

  52. Ampersand says:

    I don’t think it really deserves the amount of media attention it is getting, frankly.

    I think you’re almost certainly right about that!

  53. Corso says:

    @150

    “First of all, I already pointed out that concerns about naming diseases after places, existed before 2019.”

    Sorry, can you point out where? I missed it.

    “But – specifics of your example aside – yes, if you assume that we lack all of the context, then that changes things. But ignoring all context isn’t actually a more accurate way to judge issues; on the contrary, by refusing to consider some relevant issues, it becomes less useful and less accurate.”

    I agree, completely. But I don’t see how this all ties together. You seem to be saying, and forgive me and please correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be saying that we can tell that the term is racist because racists are using it. And their using it is causing damage. That last part is true, and I make no bones about it. But that doesn’t make the term inherently racist, it doesn’t make every use of that term racist, and actually looking at context makes that obvious.

    Take your housemate, for example;

    “My housemate works in a retail shop. He’s Asian, and recently had a customer refuse to let him ring up her purchases because (she said) she didn’t want to get sick (meaning she didn’t want to be near an Asian person or touch things an Asian person had touched). This kind of racism is actively going on; why wouldn’t anyone be willing to do something small and easy to avoid adding to it?”

    That’s truly awful. I’m sorry he went through that. I’m not sure how that relates though, and I’m trying. Because I think it’s likely, perhaps not certain, but likely, if we called it something other than the “Wuhan Flu” to start, that probably still would have happened. The kind of ignorance that it takes to associate people of Asian descent with a virus that originated halfway across the world probably wasn’t caused by a virus name.

    In short, If I thought that doing away with the term would meaningfully deter racism, I’d be there beside you, but I think we’re looking at the symptom as opposed to the disease, and the penicillin we’re taking is also killing all our gut bacteria. (It’s a stretched metaphor, but I like it.)

    “Do you believe that because a naming convention existed once, it’s wrong for it to ever be changed?”

    No, no. But I also wouldn’t assume that someone using the old naming convention, particularly before the new naming convention exists, has nefarious ulterior motives.

    “Do you insist on calling the current iteration of Windows “Windows 15” instead of “Windows 10,” since in the past Windows named its versions after the release year?”

    Also no, but COVID-19 wasn’t named until long after “Wuhan Flu” was already being used.

    “Why isn’t “we don’t want to increase the current racism problem caused by people holding COVID-19 against Asians” a good enough reason?”

    Because I’m not sure that’s true. I’m not convinced that calling this virus “The Wuhan Flu” actually fostered racism, so much as it was a tool wielded by people who were already racist. I’m not convinced that designating it a racist term changed the outcome of people’s experience.

    “Why is saying the fucking word “Covid” so incredibly painful and difficult? Is the “V” made of razors, so people have to say “China” to avoid having the razors slice up the roof of their mouths?”

    I explained this earlier. Like I said, I use COVID, I don’t hear anything else in common parlance. I think a small part of me is annoyed by that, because I understand that it’s the result of a Chinese propaganda campaign, but that part of me isn’t big enough to make a fuss of it. But if someone, with that indomitable American Rebel spirit was annoyed enough that they didn’t want to let the bad guys (who China absolutely was in this scenario) win, I don’t think that’s deep seeded in racism.

    “Take me, for example; I’ve come down on opposite sides of the question on the two examples we’ve discussed here. I think it’s ridiculous to refuse to switch to saying “Covid-19” and I think it’s ridiculous to call for punishing a Chinese professor for saying a Chinese word that sounds like the n-word. So which category do I fit into?”

    If I might be so bold? I believe you care more about harm, and it’s not even close, but you don’t think that anyone was actually harmed by the Chinese word that sounded like a slur, so even though they appear to be opposing situations, you’ve actually been consistent, and intent never mattered. I also think that if QANON picked it up and started calling black people “Thats” as a tongue in cheek racist reference, then you might have to revisit the harm of “那个”, and I’m actually not sure where that’d eventually go.

  54. Ampersand says:

    “First of all, I already pointed out that concerns about naming diseases after places, existed before 2019.”

    Sorry, can you point out where? I missed it.

    There’s been more than one instance, but see, for example, comment #76 on this thread.

    Because I’m not sure that’s true. I’m not convinced that calling this virus “The Wuhan Flu” actually fostered racism, so much as it was a tool wielded by people who were already racist.

    Are you certain it’s not true?

    No one can know for sure. But I’d be surprised if terms like “Wuhan Virus” didn’t encourage and foster racism (and it definitely seems that racism against Asian Americans is on the rise). Historically, people do react to the names we give diseases. Remember when thousands of perfectly healthy pigs were slaughtered because the popular name for a disease was “swine flu”?

    What makes you think that what we name things has zero effect? I can’t prove you’re wrong, but it’s certainly counterintuitive.

    I think a small part of me is annoyed by that, because I understand that it’s the result of a Chinese propaganda campaign

    As far as I can tell, there has never been a point when “Wuhan Virus” or any similar term has been the most widely-used term for Covid. There was no “Chinese propaganda campaign” that changed the most-used term from “Wuhan Virus” to “coronavirus” or whatever, because there wasn’t ever a point where “Wuhan Virus” (etc) was the most popular term.

    Since concerns about naming diseases after places have been around for years – see this 2015 WHO “best practices” document, for example – it’s not reasonable to suppose that terms like “Wuhan Virus” wouldn’t have been objected to without CCP propaganda. And it sounds like you’re attributing people’s choices and opinions to the CCP, which is as unfair as if I implied your views on this are “a result of” the Trump administration’s “Chinese virus” propaganda campaign. Yes, that campaign existed; but it doesn’t mean it created the idea or that people only think that because of the campaign.

    I agree that at this point, using terms like “China virus” is a form of “virtue signalling”; people are using the term to show that they’re brave, that they don’t give in to the libtards and/or China. But they’re also signalling that they don’t care if the term might encourage racism against Asian-Americans. Whether or not they personally have antipathy towards asian-Americans, they’re demonstrating their indifference to the possibility of encouraging anti-Asian racism.

    If I might be so bold? I believe you care more about harm, and it’s not even close, but you don’t think that anyone was actually harmed by the Chinese word that sounded like a slur, so even though they appear to be opposing situations, you’ve actually been consistent, and intent never mattered.

    Since I literally asked you for your opinion on this, you may be so bold. :-p

    Intent does matter to me; it’s just not the only thing that matters. What I sometimes say is “intent matters, but it’s not magic.” (I’d much prefer someone to step on my foot accidentally rather than on purpose, but that doesn’t mean the accidental step doesn’t hurt.)

    And assuming that students said they were harmed (using the word “harm” broadly, not just to refer to physical injury) by the use of that word in their Chinese class, I’m inclined to take their words for it.

    But there’s a third factor which goes into my thinking, which is: How easy is it to avoid the situation? How big an ask is it?

    I don’t think there’s any easy, reasonable way for a class on spoken Chinese to avoid saying a common Chinese word. In fact, by NOT using the word, a class would be leaving its students unprepared for what they’d probably eventually hear if they traveled to China. So in that case, there’s no reasonable way to avoid the word. It would be a big ask.

    In contrast, avoiding saying “Wuhan Virus” is really fucking easy. There is basically no cost for it.

  55. a says:

    In contrast, avoiding saying “Wuhan Virus” is really fucking easy. There is basically no cost for it.

    I assume that the right wants to point out that China was problematic with regard to the virus (by the way Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan who fled to the US offered some pretty solid evidence a couple of days ago that the novel corona virus escaped from a laboratory near Wuhan).

    This is just like the left wants to make ther point about men being “potential rapists”, and the cost not to say that would also be zero, or BLM wanting to make their point about “pigs in a blanket”, and the cost not to say that would also be zero.

    Everyone WANTS to say what they want to say, apparently.

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