And El-Tayeb discusses that imagines that Europe has no history of empire where such terms were used for global violent domination. It’s a pre-1945 convenient historical amnesia that allows Europeans to imagine they are innocent. And thus terminology is innocent.
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Replying to @dorothyk98 @AdmiralHip and
And also, history of the English language point, the term has been a problem for a long time in multiple global English empire locations. The term is also used by contemporary UK pro-Brexiters to justify xenophobia and racism and some pure white UK nonsense. If you want to go w/
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Replying to @dorothyk98 @AdmiralHip and
The majority of English speakers, they speak global English, not either UK or American English. And that term is definitely racist, problematic, and connected to the Uk’s many centuries of Violent global empire.
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Replying to @dorothyk98 @AdmiralHip and
I'm definitely not saying is hasn't been used in such ways, only that this is a secondary usage developing in the 19thC and that Levi has some good points re: modern usages and the need to think carefully if we're going beyond the reasonable soc-name change. Your point re: >
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Replying to @caitlinrgreen @dorothyk98 and
> global Englishes is in particular is a very useful one to remember, I would add, particularly as scholarship is increasingly online and global :)
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Replying to @caitlinrgreen @AdmiralHip and
History of English point 2: the racist white supremacist use is the second and quite extensive examples everywhere in the OED. So unless ppl think they are going to ignore the linguists & the OED, the idea that “ modern uses” does not include that has no evidence to back that up
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Replying to @dorothyk98 @caitlinrgreen and
My 2nd point. This discussion “modern usage” is a UK only thing which means you all want to be left off the hook for that term’s use (and the field and term started in the 18thc & earlier specifically to uphold white racial supremacy) in the UK global imperial violence.
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Replying to @dorothyk98 @caitlinrgreen and
So this means we are still pretending that what the UK global empire did to a lot of ppl and locations is not at all something the UK does not have to address & do reparations for. This is literally one small terminology change. It costs no real resources.
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Replying to @dorothyk98 @caitlinrgreen and
And yet it is so hard for UK academics to give it up even though it was used globally, violently, & even now to kill & harm ppl. The UK is not an isolated island, it has huge political, geographic & historical baggage. The name is deeply wrapped up in its violent global history.
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Replying to @dorothyk98 @caitlinrgreen and
What are you willing to give up to Address the harm, violence, devastation that the UK empire did to the world, if you cannot even change this one term?
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The public who want to keep this term are invested in British colonial nostalgia and the upholding of the “great English empire” and revisionist imperial history so the public signals pretty clearly what side this term is really on.
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