krtisfranks wrote:
>
> Are you referring to White people as an American major tribe? If so, I
can
> accept this definition; if not, then I still have no idea about what you
> are talking or how it relates to this word in particular.
>

The latter. Read my previous message carefully. My sentiment is not only
about kapli but also about all gismu for race/tribe/cultural names. I
asked you not to waste the limited gismu space for millions of tribes.
Your defense is therefore useless, but I still have some comments on the
contents of your defense.


> In the former case, I defend the creation of this word on two fronts
(for
> now). The first is that the socio-cultural hierarchic designations and
> system established by Europeans and promulgated by them via colonialism,
> which then was inherited and further developed in its own particular
> manner by people in the U.S. (along with the rest of the Americas,
Africa,
> several Asian areas including India and parts of China (I believe), the
> Oceanic islands, and more), is a major Weltanschauung that has affected
> the histoury of the world and many peoples. Central to this system and
> perspective is the designation of the White person. If you do not
believe
> that White people (either people who call themselves White and are
treated
> by their own society as such or people who are called White from outside
> of their own society) and the ideal and status of the White Person is
not
> important with respect to world events of the last several centuries,
then
> I am not sure how to convince you; the matter is immediately evident to
> anyone who wishes to read a histoury book, at the least.


White and Black are based on neither biological races nor cultural tribes,
but a classification of remna by darkness of pilka. "White" is not
even a broader term of Caucasoid: some Caucasian people are sometimes not
regarded as White because of darker skin (see for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race ). The concept of "Black" also
intersects plural races by scientific classification. Even if "White
people" is internationally important concept, we don't need gismu for
White people or Black people, just like we don't need gismu for
"curly-haired people" or "straight-haired people." If we need a word for
White people, we could create lujvo. If we need a word for Caucasoid, we
could create fu'ivla.

> The second is
> that I am in no way limiting anyone to a U.S.-centric
> (non-culturally-neutral) perspective nor reorienting the language in
that
> direction. Again, the concept of Whiteness is remarkably international
and
> established throughout the entirety of the most recent past
> half-millennium. Moreover, I am in fact widening the semantic range of
> discussible concepts and things. Perhaps one does want to talk about
White
> culture; before this word, how were they to do so in Lojban?
Additionally,
> tutle expands the range of racial discussion beyond an Ameuro-centric
> focus; I in fact advocate for the treatment of words such as xispo,
> lusto, and rindo as races, and I can see other words being helpful
> (perhaps "Asian", "Aboriginal Australian", "Congoan",
> "Scandinavian"/"Norse", etc. deserve 'race' words)- lujvo, tanru
> constructs, or indeed new gismu can and should be created for such
> expression. I happened to perhaps focus on American categories because
> those are what are important to me, the divisions with which I am most
> familiar, things that I know are recognized in my culture, and
therefore,
> the concepts that I am most comfortable with treating (not least of all
> because I know that they are worthy of treatment (and should not be
> ignored) and because I am more aware of how they might cause offense); I
> do not want to handle racial divisions in the Middle East, Africa, or
Asia
> for example because I do not even know what they are, what is important,
> how to do so without causing great offense, etc. But someone else can
and
> should. I do reiterate here though: Whiteness is important to these
> regions too, so I addressed it on some level.
>

I don't talk about the importance of the concept of "White people."
Besides, White or Black is not names for race/tribe/culture as discussed
above. As I wrote previously, I would downvote all gismu for races, tribes
or culture, as well as gismu for categorization of
skin-colors/hair-curliness etc. Please create lujvo or fu'ivla if those
words are important for you.


> But, fine, maybe we need a brivla for it- but why a gismu? Well, I think
> that this particular designation is fundamental and important enough (to
> many people and peoples) to deserve a gismu. It is frequent enough to
> need and warrant a concise and brief way to talk about it. It is basic
as
> a concept in many cultures (not just U.S. ones); it is a vantage point
> that is viewed by and from many people and peoples; it has the
possibility
> for being used in more complex linguistic constructs, such as tanru and
> lujvo, so it should support this functionality while making it optimally
> easy. Other words that I think of as races or which can be used almost
> immediately in linguistic constructs that refer to racial matters
> (aforementioned) are gismu; it would not only be difficult to have this
> concept be associated with a brivla that is not a gismu, it would in
fact
> be wholly weird and out of place for it to so. I also increased this
> appeal by establishing a parallelness with the word for Black, which is
> often taken to be a dual to the concept of White (indeed, especially in
> U.S. culture); furthermore, I generated functionality with the
> introduction of tutle; these words are all gismu. This word has a nice
> etymology and aesthetic. The gismu space is finite, but still somewhat
> large; we should make /some/ use of it in sufficiently deserving ways,
and
> I believe that this is a good example thereof.
>

Importance is not enough reason for creating gismu. Each name for
race/tribe/culture is important for people who concern it, but there are
many names for them, while we have only a limited space for gismu.
Besides, again, White and Black is not names for race/tribe/culture as
discussed above.


> If you do not like this word, you can either ignore it or introduce a
> synonymous non-gismu brivla that is satisfactory to you in order to
> alleviate your concerns.


I actually don't need a word for White or Black people, because I prefer
tanru for them if necessary, reflecting their vagueness of categorization.
I cannot ignore wasting of gismu space for categorization of
skin-colors/hair-curliness etc. or races/tribes/cultures, because I want
the space to be used for more valuable concepts. I will therefore continue
downvoting gismu for those.

Comment #8: Re: It's only my sentiment

gleki (Mon Dec 29 18:45:20 2014)

gusnikantu wrote: > I will therefore continue > downvoting gismu for those. have u downvoted xispo?

Comment #9: Re: It's only my sentiment guskant (Mon Dec 29 19:04:51 2014) gleki wrote: > gusnikantu wrote: > > I will therefore continue > > downvoting gismu for those. > > have u downvoted xispo? Yes, I did it, though I did not touch most of official gismu because one downvote is too powerless against 100000 upvotes.

Comment #10: Re: It's only my sentiment

Curtis W Franks (Tue Apr 11 20:34:18 2017)

gusnikantu wrote: > Importance is not enough reason for creating gismu. Each name for > race/tribe/culture is important for people who concern it, but there are > many names for them, while we have only a limited space for gismu. > Besides, again, White and Black is not names for race/tribe/culture as > discussed above. No, it is not enough. Importance gets a concept a word. Function would then get it a brivla. But I provided other reasons as well; in particular, utility and fundamentality should motivate the selection of a gismu in favor of this word. I would also add that this concept is important to those who are not White as well. This idea is one of the fundamental driving forces in the vast majority of human history for the last five centuries, at least. This is of global inportance. It is not an other categorization by a minor tribe; it is a cornerstone of modern society for some of the most powerful and largest nations on the planet and played a profound role in every inhabited continent on Earth. I would not call it a tribal distinction or its own society; I would describe it more as a prominent feature of consideration within a society, which carries with it immense social, cultural, financial, and other implications. Ethnicity is something of a culture which lives in and around other culture. Moreover, this word has - built into its structure - the ability to reference the surrounding culture/society system. This further widens its scope of utility. Whiteness does not mean exactly the same thing in New York City as it does in Birmingham, Alabama - let alone in some part of Bolivia. There is plenty of overlap and historical connection, which is important too (and why I think that this cna be unified into a single concept), but the differences are accounted for by way of the terbri. > > If you do not like this word, you can either ignore it or introduce a > > synonymous non-gismu brivla that is satisfactory to you in order to > > alleviate your concerns. > > > I actually don't need a word for White or Black people, because I prefer > tanru for them if necessary, reflecting their vagueness of categorization. What sort of tanru would you use? Some might be good. But I am not sure that you can capture all of the details in a reasonable and brief manner. I think that the important implication - that this is part of one's identity and is inherent to them based on their present and past cultural/societal setting, and that it is a means of asserting all sorts of societal privileges and protections, as well as a means of grouping certain people in a way which has cultural inplications individually and more widely for generations to come - is likely lost in those tanru and therefore would be difficult to regain via lujvo. zi'evla seems like the only reasonable option to me. > I cannot ignore wasting of gismu space for categorization of > skin-colors/hair-curliness etc. or races/tribes/cultures, because I want > the space to be used for more valuable concepts. I will therefore continue > downvoting gismu for those. It is not about skin color really, though. It is about ethnicity - a cultural identity and the resulting treatment in a society. Aesthetics are just a basis for assessing this trait/identity feature. If redheads underwent similar treatment (as they might have), then I would be willing to adopt a word for them too. But if they did not, then they can be described simply via mention of hair color. It is not possible to be culturally neutral whilst considering culture and other abstract human constructs. But they must be linguistically supported somehow. Perhaps all such cultural words should be made into zi'evla. I am not sure that that really helps, but it could be done. However, since that is not the case, then it seems perfectly reasonable - nay, necessary - to introduce a word for this concept and to have it be a gismu. We should accept its provisional introduction for now, and then we can discuss tranaferring all such gismu to zi'evla space. Anything less would be asymmetric and unjustifiable. There is no reason for "merko", "ketco", "glico", or any of the others to exist as gismu while this word does not. They all deserve words and they all deserve to be in the same category of word. (Aside: Moreover, I would actually argue that a decent number of these words, including this one, should be gismu). ___ Removing the word from the language does not make any of the problems inherent to racism better, by the way. It is important to be able to talk about these things; a name is control. (The intersection of these claims with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis could be interesting). We have a lexical gap in Lojban and that gap is a significant obstacle to translation efforts and mere discussion.

Comment #11: Re: It's only my sentiment gleki (Wed Apr 12 04:12:03 2017) i ro djica tu'a lo #uilkinse cu fliba Comment #12: Re: It's only my sentiment gleki (Wed Apr 12 06:05:30 2017) Seriously 1. Some courts approved apes of having a subset of human rights. Which means they are almost-nation and thus they must be moved out of gicmu space according of this proposed cultural neutrality policy. Other animals look somewhat salient to me too. Therefore, I propose moving cats and dogs into fu'ivla space. 2. How can this word be bad? Someone can google this word and be annoyed even if such word is downvoted. Being pc imo is the only justification of not creating such words. But such people can be annoyed even if they find such words in fu'ivla/lujvo space. So just a warning in "jargon" field like "non-universal Western culture" might be enough. 3. can't see whether being a gicmu or non-gicmu makes any difference. how many people have complained of besto by far?