Tea at Trianon: Race and Gender Speech Codes

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Race and Gender Speech Codes

From American Greatness:

As reported by Just The News, the guidance documents issued by NIST orders its federal employees to not use words such as “blacklist” or “whitelist,” allegedly due to these words carrying racial connotations. The document also forbids employees from “using terms that assign a gender to inanimate objects, such as male/female connectors.”

Other directives from the document include orders to “avoid terms such as master/slave that perpetuate negative stereotypes or unequal power relationships,” and “avoid descriptive terms that are condescending or reductive in favor of language that the groups being described would prefer.”

The guidance was largely implemented on the advice of Steven Lipner, chair of the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board. Lipner sent a letter to NIST back in 2020 specifically demanding that the agency ban the use of the words “blacklist” and “whitelist,” as well as banning the use of the words “slave” and “master.”

“Many technology and security standards contain racially insensitive language that is both offensive to many of our colleagues and is also, in many respects, ambiguous – technically and culturally,” Lipner said in his letter. “Examples of such language include using the terms blacklist and whitelist instead of block-list and allow-list and using the terms master and slave.” (Read more.)