As part of my software expert witness slavery I was visiting a big law firm’s office here in Boston. In the cafeteria/break room they had a sign up from “YW Boston” urging employees to “Stand Against Racism.” The tagline for YW Boston is “Eliminating Racism, Empowering Women.” What was this organization? It turns out that it is the old “YWCA“, but without the now-discredited “Christian” stuff.
I don’t want to show the photos that I snapped because they contain full employee names. But the “Stand Against Racism” poster urged people to say “I will learn about the concept of anti-blackness and challenge it when it shows up.” (nothing says “pro-blackness” like moving to the whitest region of the U.S.) Also “I will apply a racial equity lens to all aspects of my company” and “I will donate to organizations that promote racial equity”.
Life at the firm is obviously more interesting when the topic is not software. One woman wrote “I will speak up when I hear racist remarks!” (don’t think hatred of Java counts). One formerly timid soul pledged “I will be color brave by discussing racism in the hiring committee” (I didn’t see a single black employee during my two days at this office, though they did offer black coffee).
A person with a traditionally female first name wrote “No matter our differences, visible or not, I treat everyone with respect.” I wonder if she would respect a co-worker in a MAGA hat and NRA T-shirt?
Lawyers take a more flexible view of illegal immigration than did Congressman Sonny Bono (“when something is illegal, it’s illegal”): “I will support orgs that advocate for immigrants and DACA.”
When you’re billing $900 per hour, talk is neither cheap nor unwelcome: “I will remain open and actively engage in conversations on racism.”
The next generation is going to be awesome: “I will educate my children about acceptance.” Next to this was “This!” and a bold arrow. (We cannot reliably educate American children regarding arithmetic and grammar, but we are confident in our ability to teach them the more complex topic of acceptance?)
Circling back to the headline topic… does changing “YWCA” to “YW” make the organization more likely to succeed in the long term? If so, can we make big money as brand/image consultants who go around advising organizations that describe themselves as “Christian” to get with the times and drop the word?
Thanks to the age of the internet, FB and 24 / 7 news commentary, we have entered a new frontier where virtually someone doesn’t like can be made into a “raciest” comment and the media will pickup on it to fill that 24 / 7 news slot.
BTW, isn’t “YWCA” raciest too? Shouldn’t “Christian” be removed from it?
Philg: “I wonder if she would respect a co-worker in a MAGA hat and NRA T-shirt?”
Of course not! They are racists. Similarly, if you do not wish to respect anybody else, all you have to do is find some reason to call them a racist.
Anonymous: That is a great idea, but I prefer to attack people for their cisgender-normative prejudices! I wanted to do it the other night in Manhattan. The table next to me was a “gender reveal” party and they all whooped when the yet-to-arrive baby was announced to be “a girl”, presumably based on discredited chromosome-based tests. I wanted to scold them and tell them to read https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/theybies-gender-creative-parenting.html and wait until the child is at least 30 or 40 years old before talking about their gender (Mike A’s brilliant idea).
> As part of my software expert witness slavery
So how is the state of the software industry almost 4yrs after “Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International”? Has sanity returned?
Mr. Galt: The big change is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act , which has resulted in the invalidation of a lot of patents by an administrative law panel within the patent office. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_partes_review for example.
Last season of Silicon Valley has a great episode about outing of Christians in technology. (Last season in unexpectedly good, btw)
BTW, did you notice how “equality” is promptly being replaced by the newspeak “equity”? In my workplace “equality” is almost entirely eliminated from the corporate documents.
“discredited chromosome-based tests”
LOL. DNA-ialism.
Y = ageist
W = sexist/gender assuming
C = theocratic
A = association, maybe ok?
Shouldn’t it become “PA” for “People’s Association” which not so coincidentally has strong communist overtones?
So what does YW Boston stand for? Or is it no longer an acronym for anything? If it still is, shouldn’t it be YWA Boston?
The main story is that you appear to be upset about remarks critical of racism. However, you don’t specify the reason those remarks triggered you.
Vince: Congratulations for finding the hidden meaning behind “Taking the Christian out of YWCA”. However, it is too painful for me to discuss what triggered me when I viewed the YW-non-Christians’ “Stand Against Racism” poster (at an employer where nobody can get paid unless sitting down and where nobody is black). Unfortunately, the law firm did not provide a trigger warning for sensitive souls such as myself who were considering walking into the cafeteria.
Steve is right. The names YWCA and YMCA are hopelessly discriminatory. Even “association” indicates a preference to associate with some people rather than others. Not inclusive.
Shouldn’t it become “PA” for “People’s Association”
Though ‘people’ would cruelly exclude the entity at Google identifying as a house. Also, ‘association’ is exclusionary nearly by definition. The name should thus just be a meaningful pause, perhaps accompanied by some sort of grimace.
Shouldn’t it become “PA” for “People’s Association” which not so coincidentally has strong communist overtones?
“People’s” is specieist and exclusionary. What if I want to bring my dog (I mean emotional support animal) there?
The CEO is ex-NOW, the rebranding was cooked up by as firm Landor. In the UK it’s become Platform 51, where 51 is the percentage of human who are female.
The YMCA already was called just the Y in the 1970s.