Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Masataka Ohta <[e-mail]>]

Barry Leiba wrote:

> I understand and agree that whether certain words and phrases are or
> aren't offensive is very much a cultural issue.

Of course.

> When people from the U.S.
> make such requests, they are bound to be U.S.-centric,

No, even based on US culture, they should not make US centric
requests so strongly as if it were international common sense.

But, the worse problem is that there is no such culture in US now.

> - Do you think that, in general, it might be reasonable to avoid using
> certain words and phrases because a significantly large group of
> people find them offensive or exclusionary?

"a significantly large group of people"???

There may be 1,000 or 1,000,000 such people in US.

But, considering that most other people, both blacks and whites,
in US are enjoying Thriller, the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars
and all the fantasies and FRPGs with such words of "dark lord",
"black magician" and "dark side of force", there is no such
culture in US to avoid saying black/dark with negative meaning.

As such, your "a significantly large group of people" is,
for people in US in general, just noisy minority having no
or little influence on US culture.

> Or do you think that it
> is not reasonable to ask people to do that?

People of noisy minority?

They may try to change culture, but, first, of US, not IETF.

Then, if most people in US stop saying "dark lord" or
"black magician" (note both "lord" and "magician" are
human (or demi-human such as elvish) beings), they
(people in US) may start considering to stop saying
black, dark or slave on non human and non living entities
such as "list" ("list" is a little sensitive as some list
may be a list of human beings), "flip flop" and "web".

> - How does your answer to the above question lead you into a
> recommendation about what to do with this situation in general?

See above, though, as I repeatedly said, it should be impossible.

 > - What would you want the IETF community to do with respect to the
 > Internet draft in question:

Treat it as something written by noisy minority.

						Masataka Ohta