Snap, Crackle, and PoC
A reader with the high and exalted yet incognito name of Alia writes and asks:
“Why is “colored” so awfully wrong while “of color” is totally right? From the perspective of a foreigner, it is illogical and simply mad.”
From the perspective of a native, likewise. It does not look mad, it is mad.
This madness is deliberate.
If the Enemy had a rule or a standard he used, then obedience to the standard might be confused with obedience to the Enemy. You might have independently come to the conclusion that people used the world “colored” a term of disparagement, and so, out of kindheartedness, you decided not to use it.
That is not good enough.
The Enemy demands loyalty solely to himself. The word cannot be bad because it is bad. Good and bad do not exist, no more than any other form of reality. The word has to be bad because he says so and only for that reason, and only for so long as he says so.
So if, on Monday “colored person” is bad and “persons of color” is good, and on Wednesday, “person of color” is bad and “colored person” is good, and you obey the Monday rule on Monday and the Wednesday rule on Wednesday, then your loyalty is solely and only for the Enemy who says what is bad or good based on nothing but his raw will and say-so.
Hypocrisy is not a bug. It is a feature. Hypocrisy is not a mistake, an error, an oversight. It is the point.
Hypocrisy is their Holy Grail, promising them victory over logic in a sort of mockery of how Christ promises victory over death.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
