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November 19, 2004
The new Newspeak: Making wicked thoughts unthinkable
Ace of Spades makes an important point
about the slow, stealthy redefining of words like "diversity," which
has now come to mean "abundant presence of certain so-called 'minorities'; which ones specifically are to be determined by your betters."
One can't help but notice that this bears virtually no resemblance to
the dictionary definition of diversity.
Nor, come to think of it, does the accepted (read: deviate and you're a
racist) definition of "minority" bear much resemblance to its
dictionary definition. Women, for example, are not actually a minority. They're
virtually the only natural subdivision of people that are not a minority; there are more adult females than adult males. Jews are
a minority, yet one never sees hiring quotas for Jews. I suppose you
could say that "minority," used in certain contexts, means "group
believed to need favors for political or cultural reasons." Fine; then
why not say "favored group"? Why take an existing word and Newspeak it?
Why not call "diversity" "favored-group presence" instead of sucking
the marrow out of a perfectly useful, necessary, ancient English word?
Is the reality of what these words mean thought to be so ugly that the public would recoil in horror if the truth were spoken?
Come on. I think we're all used to the idea of racial quotas,
"affirmative action" and such. I think we can all tolerate the truth at
this point. Can we have some of our words back now?
Posted by EtherPundit at November 19, 2004 03:21 PM Category: Language , Politics