For people, use adjectives over nouns
When possible or important for clarity, don’t be afraid to use the full phrase that describes the truth like Ta-Nehisi Coates does with his phrase “Those who call themselves White”. Another example of increasing the precision of our map.
Some might call this pedantic, but I think this sort of precision provides value to our understanding of each other, and in turn helps us better manage each other as well. It’s not a bad thing to use short phrases necessarily, but we should be wary that when we shorten we run the risk of communicating less nuance and letting that less nuanced perspective seep into our thinking.
Another reason to prefer adjectives: Naming a phenomenon should imply some inference, and we don’t want to imply negative inferences (i.e. stereotypes).
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One of the important first steps is that of For people, use adjectives over nouns. Instead of “Whites and Blacks”, most of us understand the subtle but important difference in saying “White people and Black people”. This is an example of us understanding that reducing the power of race in describing people is worthwhile.