Capital letters are now 'officially racist'

Ronni said:
This is such a sad commentary on the state of our humanity that anyone would be ridiculed for attempting to bring much needed attention to the plight of Indigenous people, whether in Canada or anywhere else.
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I don't ridicule anyone for bringing much needed attention to the plight of Indigenous people. However, Dr. Manyguns' suggestion that a basic underpinning of the written English language be overhauled in that attempt is ill-conceived and extremely unlikely to come to fruition.
 
StarSong said:
I don't ridicule anyone for bringing much needed attention to the plight of Indigenous people.
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ditto.
Removing language rules has nothing to do with anything! Being against such nonsense does not imply one does not care about the issue.

Those who try to make others feel guilty for thinking this method is ridiculous should be ignored .
 

Shalimar said:
I believe you may have misunderstood the gist of my post. No one is suggesting anything of the kind. This pertains to the mindset of Canadian aboriginals and certain unacceptable aspects of Canadian culture. I fail to see why anyone would need to mock such a sad state of affairs,
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I have not, or even intended to cause offence to anyone with my posting, Shalimar, I was merely defending the beautiful English language, that many eminent people over centuries have toiled to perfect. If people don't like the language then they can choose to use another.

I will repeat, just in case you misunderstood me, I am not a racist, I have had the honour of knowing lots of people from many cultures and nationalities, and consider them my friends.
 
What exactly do indigenous Americans want (other than the capital letters thing)? I may be mistaken, but they seem to want a return to an environment similar to what existed 100s of years ago and to be able to thrive artificially in the high-tech world that exists today.

On Native American reservations, women are murdered at a rate ten times the national average. Violent crime rates overall are 2.5 times the national average while some individual reservations reach 20 times the national average.

Is it because they feel victimized that they're so violent? Perhaps they need to get their own house in order before demanding silly crap like eliminating capital letters.
 
StarSong said:
https://www.mtroyal.ca/AboutMountRo...as-indigenous-eventing-support-resistance.htm
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Thank you StarSong. i highly recommend anyone incensed by Dr. Manyguns request read the article before further commenting in the vein of the reporters in the clip OP Posted.

A key phrase occurs in first sentence "this is a beginning effort at describing the use of lower case on the website of the office of indigenization and decolonization." That phrasing suggests to me that it is a response to criticism of that 'office' at the University where she also teaches using lower case except for at the beginning of the word Indigenous. Another key in quote explaining what 'eventing' means re Indigenous Culture in Canada. (Well there's my new thing learned for today, had not heard of that before.)

This is crucial info: She does not implore everyone to stop using capitals as they were taught to or as they see fit. She is VP of the office of indigenization and decolonization, she was explaining why they are doing things a certain way, not asking or telling anyone else how they should.

But god forbid any marginalized person respond to criticism, right? i don't know if the reporters didn't bother to read this article, could not understand the nuances of what she was saying, pr just didn't care what she actually stated but just seized on an opportunity to control the narrative once again. Sometimes i can't tell with American "reporters" (more like propagandists) of the same ilk, either--

For myself, i only intentionally capitalize the personal pronoun "I", otherwise following the prescribed capitalization and punctuation rules. Sometimes autocorrect will do it especially at start of new sentence and i'm too intent on the content of what i'm saying tonotice that capital I. i started this in my teens, in part because it seemed inconsistent--we don't capitalize other pronouns except at the beginning of a sentence, why should 'i' be different? And my admiration of e.e.cummings' poetry may have been an additional factor. It became a lifelong habit. In HS, work settings, community college and University i followed all the grammar and punctuation rules in anything written for any kind of 'authority'. i know how to play the game and choose my battles carefully.
 
feywon said:
And my admiration of e.e.cummings' poetry may have been an additional factor.
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For the record, Mr. Cummings didn't use lower case letters for his name. That was his publisher's doing. I've read this numerous times.

The Encylopedia Brittannica explains:
"Cummings’s name is often styled “e.e. cummings” in the mistaken belief that the poet legally changed his name to lowercase letters only. Cummings used capital letters only irregularly in his verse and did not object when publishers began lowercasing his name, but he himself capitalized his name in his signature and in the title pages of original editions of his books."
https://www.britannica.com/biography/E-E-Cummings
 
First, punctuation became uncool ..... periods, commas and everything that brought clarity to a sentence.
Now lets not use capital letters either. ?? (And auto-correct is an enemy we have to battle against daily too)

Soon, they'll want us to just be writing in gibberish .....
 
Irwin said:
What exactly do indigenous Americans want (other than the capital letters thing)? I may be mistaken, but they seem to want a return to an environment similar to what existed 100s of years ago and to be able to thrive artificially in the high-tech world that exists today.

On Native American reservations, women are murdered at a rate ten times the national average. Violent crime rates overall are 2.5 times the national average while some individual reservations reach 20 times the national average.

Is it because they feel victimized that they're so violent? Perhaps they need to get their own house in order before demanding silly crap like eliminating capital letters.
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Suggest you read Dr. Manyguns' actual statement posted by Starsong before you comment. Not an American but a Canadian indigenous person and she didn't say what those reporters said she said, even if they bothered to actually read it themselves.

Not all those murders on Reservations are at the hands of other indigenous people and you neglect to mention the number of indigenous women who go missing. Often kidnapped by people passing thru -- most rez's are open to general public, and predators know that even if someone spotted them grabbing a girl/woman and got their license plate #, Tribal Police have no authority outside their own borders. If they can just make it off the rez, and few non-indigenous LEO's will follow up out here--sometimes their bodies are found months or years later far from where they were taken. Just as most PD's are more lax in searching for Black and Brown children (and mainstream media gives less coverage when they are missing), missing indigenous women (many still children really--early teens) are not a priority.
 
Oris Borloff said:
Can someone point me in the direction of what this woman actually said or proposed? All I can find is the short video clip and other right wing media yacking about that clip and parroting with nothing of substance. So what's in the clip is a talking head saying she said it was hierarchies and that's it besides their opinionated outrage.
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Wanted to thank you for requesting it as well as StarSong for finding and posting, that saved me searching. It amazes me how many people are simply accepting what those reporters said instead of going to the source and making up their own minds.

This is why America in the state it is, because people won't factcheck for themselves despite how easy the internet makes it.
 
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timoc said:
I have not, or even intended to cause offence to anyone with my posting, Shalimar, I was merely defending the beautiful English language, that many eminent people over centuries have toiled to perfect. If people don't like the language then they can choose to use another.
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I too appreciate the glories of well written English with perfect spelling and punctuation but you could be flogging a dead horse. The smart phone and the internet are taking all of the above in a different direction. Text today is a combination of words, single letter abbreviations and hieroglyphs that we call emojis. It's not a unreasonable to seek new variations to punctuation to highlight something like racism.

I don't think it will take root but it is not wrong to have a go.
 
Warrigal said:
I too appreciate the glories of well written English with perfect spelling and punctuation but you could be flogging a dead horse. The smart phone and the internet are taking all of the above in a different direction. Text today is a combination of words, single letter abbreviations and hieroglyphs that we call emojis. It's not a unreasonable to seek new variations to punctuation to highlight something like racism.
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So true.
 
@timoc said: "If people don't like the language then they can choose to use another."

Not exclusively, not if they want to get educated and earn a decent living in the Colonizers' world, or fight for their rights in the Colonizers' courts.

BTW i wouldn't label anyone on this thread 'racist' just on the basis of their willingness to accept the reporters' views and not look at original article--i might hang some other labels on them if they consistently let headlines and talking heads telling them what to think/feel about what some third party said, that they haven't actually read/heard themselves from the source.
 
It is often the culture and behavior which people object to, not the color of their skin.

Take two examples:
If the 1st man moved in next door, I'd almost certainly leave. Racist, right ?
If the 2nd man move in next door , I'd be one of the 1st to welcome him to the neighborhood.
Yet both of them are Latino. Be careful what you label as racist.R.jpgR.jpg
 
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StarSong said:
For the record, Mr. Cummings didn't use lower case letters for his name. That was his publisher's doing. I've read this numerous times.

The Encylopedia Brittannica explains:
"Cummings’s name is often styled “e.e. cummings” in the mistaken belief that the poet legally changed his name to lowercase letters only. Cummings used capital letters only irregularly in his verse and did not object when publishers began lowercasing his name, but he himself capitalized his name in his signature and in the title pages of original editions of his books."
https://www.britannica.com/biography/E-E-Cummings
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i learned that a few years down the road, but decided to, in personal communications stand by the more consistent with rules about other pronouns, for the letter i. Autocorrect actually has contributed to it, because i got tired of having to correct the 'Capital I' at beginning of sentences, so now when it's at start of sentence i just type it lowercase and usually let it be if it gets corrected.
 
For the record, folks:

News reports these days are rarely the 'full story', often just the reporters 'interpretation' and reactions heavily influenced by their biases. The last couple of years with advent of social media i've learned not to get a head of steam up about things just on the basis of headlines or slanted news reports.--i take a look for the speech, statement or article they are 'roasting/mocking' and then make up my own mind before criticizing OR defending especially in heated terms.

Editorial note: Just as i treat any gun as if it is loaded, i treat all news reports as slanted unless/until i see the original whatever they're talking about,
 
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StarSong said:
I don't ridicule anyone for bringing much needed attention to the plight of Indigenous people. However, Dr. Manyguns' suggestion that a basic underpinning of the written English language be overhauled in that attempt is ill-conceived and extremely unlikely to come to fruition.
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But she didn't--reading the article you posted--- it seems she was explaining why the website of the Campus Office she is VP of would be doing capitalization differently, a new form of passive resistance as it were.
 
senior chef said:
It is often the culture and behavior which people object to, not the color of their skin.

Take two examples:
If the 1st man moved in next door, I'd almost certainly leave. Racist, right ?
If the 2nd man move in next door , I'd be one of the 1st to welcome him to the neighborhood.
Yet both of them are Latino. Be careful what you label as racist.View attachment 182174View attachment 182175
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I dunno, Chef. Which one is most likely to bring in my wheelie bin or to mow my front lawn without me asking? Hard to tell just by looking at the face.
 
Warrigal said:
I too appreciate the glories of well written English with perfect spelling and punctuation but you could be flogging a dead horse. The smart phone and the internet are taking all of the above in a different direction. Text today is a combination of words, single letter abbreviations and hieroglyphs that we call emojis. It's not a unreasonable to seek new variations to punctuation to highlight something like racism.

I don't think it will take root but it is not wrong to have a go.
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I don't own a mobile phone so I never learned the texting lingo, that is why I have to google messages sent to me in text.
I do agree, that the English language is being changed all the time in this digital age, but I'm too long in the tooth to learn it now. :)
 

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