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Comment by rscho | Hacker News Reader

Well... non-PC jokes are a liability risk for the institution at large. Dead students are not. We have an identical phenomenon in hospitals: there are huge campaigns against sexism and the like, while there are multiple young professionals committing suicide from burn-out every year and noone does as much as bat an eyelash.

Contrary to victims of discrimination, dead people can't easily organize into coordinated legal action.

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Said another way: Attention economy. There's no rhyme or reason for why any one particular outrage bubbles to the top and becomes today's cause célèbre.

You would think that allegedly driving a PoC student to suicide would count for something in the PC twitter sphere…

Are Asians PoC? I thought they were not and that was literally the only reason the oft repeated phrase “black and other PoC” didn’t literally translate into “not white”.

Only when it is politically convenient

They can't be PoC because their higher than average success contradicts the narrative of victims.

I have never heard the suggestion that Asian people aren't considered "PoC".

Some woke people will argue that they are “white adjacent” when convenient (e.g., the Harvard admissions scandal) but also that they are people of color when convenient (e.g., the Atlanta spa killings).

They are racial chimeras. Changing between majority and minority based on the speakers preferences.

According to Twitter we're "multiracial whites".

BIPoC is also often used as a dogwhistle to exclude Asians and Latinos when convenient.

Are Latinos not indigenous to the Americas? (genuinely asking)

My understanding is that the term "Latino" includes both people indigenous to Latin America and people whose ancestors were colonists from Spain. The latter group is generally the larger/more well-known one -- that's why "Latino", a Spanish word, is used to describe them.

They’ve recently started using the term “BIPOC” to clarify that Asians are excluded, and when they want to include Asians they’ll say “BIPOC and AAPI”.

No, by any good faith source that I have read, BIPOC does not at all exclude Asians. "The acronym BIPOC refers to black, indigenous, and other people of color and aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people."

Incidentally, one of the co-founders of the "BIPOC Project" is an Asian-American woman.

* https://www.thebipocproject.org/

* https://dbpedia.org/page/Person_of_color

* https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-bipoc-5025158

From the BIPOC project website: “We use the term BIPOC to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black (African Americans) people have”

If it included Asians they would just keep using POC.

European activists have started using BIPOC as well. They don’t seem to realize that indigenous means white in Europe.

Isn't BAME the euro equivalent?

That’s the UK term. Other European countries are more focussed on the US so they use all the US terms.

So many different terms and abbreviations, for what is just humans..

The most important thing about humans is which ones I'm allowed to attack.

I get the distinct impression that the Twitter sphere isn’t genuinely concerned about people of color, or else they would express concern over, say, inner city violence. Instead they work hard to brand any such concern as “far-right”.

It's mostly just wingnuts & entitled folks trying to make a name for themselves.

Probably, but IMO they have too much power and their behavior is destructive.

The "PC twitter sphere" as you describe them are only interested in one thing: doing what is easy and public for burnishing their own stature, and nothing else. No real problems will be solved by them, because they prefer having the public think they are solving them, rather than putting in the actual work and disciplined thinking to do it.

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