I'm probably to the left of many people, but I do think this is a bit of a ridiculous over-correction

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/14/1148470571/usc-office-removes-field-from-curriculum-racist

[quote]An office within the University of Southern California's School of Social Work says it is removing the term "field" from its curriculum because it may have racist connotations related to slavery.

The newly renamed Office of Practicum Education, formerly known as the Office of Field Education, within the university's Suzanne-Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, is making the change in order to be more inclusive, according to a memo sent out to faculty and students this week and obtained by NPR.

"This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language," the memo reads. "Language can be powerful, and phrases such as 'going into the field' or 'field work' may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign ...."[/quote]

So if a Black entrepreneur chooses to commercially grow acres and acres of tulips (even employing many others in this endeavor), what should they call that big open spot of land where those tulips grow?

Some words were initially created as pejorative terms. Field was not. Field is just minding is own business. Sometimes a word really is just a word.

And that only speaks to that one definition of the word, as English is a ghastly mutt where many words have multiple, often unrelated, non-slang definitions.

While it did not bother me when a company like GitHub changed the name of the default branch of a code repository from "master" to "main" (main is after all a shorter word), it really did not change the world at all and did feel a bit like armchair virtue signalling, warm fuzzy feelings without the substance of more useful action.

Are we really becoming this fragile? If the right wing does try to launch another civil war, or a foreign superpower did invade, will we just yield to them on day one because we're so weak and overly sensitive?

I do think this kind of over-correction does in fact give the right wing actual ammunition to sway swing voters to the right in elections that matter. When will we wise up and stop focusing on trivialities and handing elections to the right wing? You can't do more substantive actions if you constantly lose elections over merely symbolic trivialities that really should not move anyone over the age of, say, seven.

Sure, the impetus behind the policy at USC is a good one, but it's really a useless measure that doesn't change anything. It's not even low-hanging fruit, it is fruit that has dropped to the ground weeks ago and is already rotting. It feels like a bright shiny new toaster distracting us from things that have actual consequences (and allowing who knows to take advantage of our distraction).