Timeline for Why is it considered racist to say "White Lives Matter"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 10, 2020 at 8:59 | comment | added | MikeB | @Warbo It's pretty hard to discuss politics without a common understanding of the language it is being discussed with. | |
| Aug 8, 2020 at 5:46 | comment | added | Caius Jard | Perhaps prefacing the answer with "In this context" is all that is required - though some would probably assert that that is prescriptive, and others descriptive.. | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 15:42 | comment | added | Warbo | @MikeBrockington This is politics.stackexchange.com so political context is the focus, perhaps you're looking for ell.stackexchange.com ? | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 10:29 | comment | added | Teleka | @MikeBrockington Spoken language isn't structured the same way as written language, especially when coded into easy to say slogans. "Black Lives Matter" itself isn't literally a prescriptive statement. Saying "black lives matter" can be parsed as "black lives should matter", or as "unarmed black men shouldn't be killed while in police custody" or any other number of prescriptive statements. It's a prescriptive statement in the same way a vegan saying "meat is murder" can be parsed as "animals shouldn't be butchered for human consumption". | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 10:08 | comment | added | MikeB | @Teleka Again - your answer says "is a prescriptive statement". That is a reference to the SYNTAX of the English language. Context does not affect syntax to any meaningful extent, and certainly not in this case. The rest of your answer is generally fine, though a little simplistic. | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 8:57 | comment | added | Teleka | @MikeBrockington Words change their meaning depending on context. Certain words can even be their own antonyms, like cleave or sanction. The point is that white lives matter can't be interpreted in the same context as black lives matter unless you have a understanding of reality that is wildly outside the norm. Saying white lives (should) matter makes no sense unless you believe that white people are facing special persecution. | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 8:36 | comment | added | Caleth | @MikeBrockington English isn't a logic language. Words have meaning because of how people use them | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 8:34 | comment | added | MikeB | @Caleth I totally understand about context, but that is not what this answer states. I don't disagree with this answer as a whole only that it is attributing opinion to English syntax, in direct contravention of all logic. The whole point of your example is that while the two halves have the same syntax, 'Time' and 'Fruit' are radically different objects. 'Black' and 'White' have no such distinction, in language. | |
| Aug 7, 2020 at 8:19 | comment | added | Caleth | @MikeBrockington There is a difference in meaning because of the wider context. For a more extreme example of difference in meaning: "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like an apple." | |
| Aug 6, 2020 at 15:39 | comment | added | MikeB | @Kai But it starts off by stating as fact that there is a difference. | |
| Aug 6, 2020 at 15:22 | comment | added | Kai | @MikeBrockington the point of the question was asking what makes two syntactically identical statements different. The difference is context, and this answer provides that context, as do others. | |
| Aug 6, 2020 at 15:03 | comment | added | MikeB | Sorry, but the whole point of the question is that "Black lives matter" and "White lives matter" are grammatically and syntactically identical, so I don't see how you can label one as 'prescriptive' and the other as 'descriptive'. | |
| Aug 5, 2020 at 1:59 | history | answered | Teleka | CC BY-SA 4.0 |