Scott Alexander on the Hyperstitious Truth Cascade, and Giving Up 70% of the Way Through It

I'm more like a 99%er...

Behold: All lives matter.

Also: everybody forgets--and this is really baffling--that 'black' was made unPC ca. 1990. In the late '80s, the PC left declared 'African-American' to be the only acceptable term. The paleo-PCs didn't control the media...or anything, really, outside of universities. But this idea did seep out and take over in the media. It was so bad and long-lasting that even I--yes, even I--eventually decided (a la Alexander) that I should give up the fight, and--briefly--I used 'African-American,' too. But I was such a dead-ender that fashion--I mean...morality!--changed pretty soon thereafter, and so I went back to 'black.' Of course not it's 'Black,' capital 'b', so as to give a handy way of orthodoxy-signaling. Especially as opposed to 'white,' lower-case 'w.' 

Also, of course, as I often pointed out at the time, 'African-American' isn't right for most of their preferred uses. For one thing, most American blacks have never been to Africa. I'm more German-American than they are African-American. Also, this particular bit of PC nonsense gave people no way to relevantly refer to, e.g., blacks from France or the UK...or anywhere other than the USA. I even heard people refer to African blacks who had lived their entire lives in Africa--and who would probably never even visit any other continent--as "African-Americans." Finally, of course, Elon Musk is obviously an African-American...but that's not consistent with the intended PC meaning of the term.

Anyway. 

Not sure I agree with Alexander about the overall point, but it certainly seems plausible.