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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   26373 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Except I don't think "that bird has a Western, Anglo name" is what is keeping black, Asian, Latino etc. people out of birdwatching.

Yeah, this sort of thinking has always been puzzling to me--nobody studies biology without learning Latin names, nobody studies math without learning Greek letters. "Black people won't go birdwatching because all the birds are named Smith" is an utterly baffling take. That said--

Nol says she recently was visiting some salt marshes this summer and saw a common bird there that's called Wilson's Snipe, which has a long bill and engages in dramatic displays such as flying in high circles, which produces a whistling sound as air flows over specialized feathers. "And I thought, what a terrible name," she says. "I mean, Wilson was the father of modern ornithology in North America, but this bird has so many other evocative characteristics."

If "evocative" is the real goal, I suppose if they decide to start naming birds stuff like "Talonflame" or "Spearow" maybe I could get on board...?

I dunno, "Long-billed, high-circle flying, special feathers to produce whistling sound Snipe" sounds longer and more cumbersome than "Wilson's Snipe". What's the local name for it? I'm sure local people have a local name instead of Ms. Nol needing to make up an "evocative" one.

You might need to be careful about asking for local names, or making up your own, though. Chesterton from his autobiography:

My father might have reminded people of Mr. Pickwick, except that he was always bearded and never bald; he wore spectacles and had all the Pickwickian evenness of temper and pleasure in the humours of travel. He was rather quiet than otherwise, but his quietude covered a great fertility of notions; and he certainly liked taking a rise out of people. I remember, to give one example of a hundred such inventions, how he gravely instructed some grave ladies in the names of flowers; dwelling especially on the rustic names given in certain localities. "The country people call them Sailors' Pen-knives," he would say in an offhand manner, after affecting to provide them with the full scientific name, or, "They call them Bakers' Bootlaces down in Lincolnshire, I believe"; and it is a fine example of human simplicity to note how far he found he could safely go in such instructive discourse. They followed him without revulsion when he said lightly, "Merely a sprig of wild bigamy." It was only when he added that there was a local variety known as Bishop's Bigamy, that the full depravity of his character began to dawn on their minds.

Except I don't think "that bird has a Western, Anglo name" is what is keeping black, Asian, Latino etc. people out of birdwatching.

Yeah, this sort of thinking has always been puzzling to me--nobody studies biology without learning Latin names, nobody studies math without learning Greek letters. "Black people won't go birdwatching because all the birds are named Smith" is an utterly baffling take.

I think you're thinking about it backwards. The people who make this kind of criticism tend to be very open about their belief that any disparity* within any group is automatically and inevitably evidence of oppression, and it's just a matter of finding out what that oppression is. They also tend to be very open about their belief in the ability of terminology to oppress. And so when their search encounters this sort of terminology, i.e. disproportionately Western and Anglo names among birds, they conclude that that's the oppression that's responsible for the disparity. They're not trying to reason empirically about what kind of effects having so many Western and Anglo names among birds would have on birdwatchers in general and concluding that it would cause POCs to stay away from birdwatching.

* of certain kinds.

nobody studies biology without learning Latin names, nobody studies math without learning Greek letters

Give it time.

To be fair, when I started learning math + stats, I found the use of greek letters intimidating and confusing, especially rarely-used ones like ΞΎ. Of course there's nothing wrong with them besides their unfamiliarity, but I try to start with English letters in my own math writing and only reach for greek letters when I'm running out of those.

Having to take notes and understand the lesson was enough work. I hated having to figure out how to draw a xi in the middle of a lesson.

I use that flavor of stats in my work and I still can't draw the damn symbol right.

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