Language is the mirror of what we think and feel. It cannot be distincted.
I can’t influence what others will learn. But the brain learns mainly from humans, how they behave, how they speak, how they use words, not from words themselves.It is both. First, it is in the heads. Second, what is on paper reflects what is in the heads. Third, what is on paper influences what is going into the heads. A mind, which is indifferent about color, good and bad, will learn that white means positive and black means negative.
Even if I write balkc and wtihe wrong, the brain connects that whit what has been learned. I can’t influence that, that happens all in the brain of the reader.
Another example: A sheet of paper is neutral, even if it is white. It’s normally not connected with meanings like “good” or “bad”. If you put black lines on it, that forms letters doesn’t change that. The letters form words. Even then this is just a piece of paper with some text on it... Or is it now something that is good or bad? I don’t know. I just know, that the text needs to be read, to decide that.
So we can say: The process of discrimination starts in the head of who writes the text and ends in the head who reads it. It has nothing to do what words are used, nor in which color they are written.
Another example: think to a chess-board. Does a chess-board discriminate, because there are black fields on it?
black white black white black white black white
white black white black white black white black
black white black white black white black white
white black white black white black white black
black white black white black white black white
white black white black white black white black
black white black white black white black white
white black white black white black white black
When you read that: Is this now more positive or more negative?
sorry when it looks like I make fun, but It is just an example to show how brains works: now when you look at this field of words the meaning should be different. Only when you look at the single words this meaning change.And I don’t say “just learn that black and white are not discriminatory by themselves”. It doesn’t work like so. The brain cannot forget what has been learned.
We cannot forget. We can only rewrite. We cannot rewrite the paths in the brain in a day. That takes time. It takes some effort. It hurts. We need to be relaxed and we need to want it. And it’s a process, that is useless, when others will not follow.
But it is just too simple, to mean that the solution is to forbid or change the words that hurt. It’s just too simple to kick the statues of the dictator from their sockets and believe now everything is okay. I could add many more examples in history where a society needed to rewrite their “brain paths“ instead of silencing over “it” (because it hurts too much to change it), and instead they remove the things (and words) that reminds them to “it”. Whatever this “it” was.
What I say is: don’t concentrate on words. The effort that goes into this thread doesn’t change anything.
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