Advocacy in the era of the offensibles

Controversy again around the Master/Slave term and scores of people tweeted furiously demanding the change.(http://antirez.com/news/122)

If the term was used to ascribe qualitative characteristics to a person (e.g. calling antirez a fascist), this post would not exist. This post is a reaction to the prescriptive approach of term rewriting in the name of a social cause. An approach which in the end vulgarizes the intention and does a disservice to the actual goal of eliminating social repression and human exploitation.

The notion that a change of term will eliminate, or even help to eliminate the actual problem is at best misguided and at worse evokes thoughts of Orwellian societies, where language prescriptivism is used as a tool of thought control. It’s an ineffectual surrogate for an actual action, primarily aimed at making people that do not experience the problem to feel good about themselves and by using the “correct” term, gaining a self-centered moral distinction.

Actions that promote social causes are rarely convenient because these social issues exist and propagate mainly because they provide convenience to someone. The exploitation happens far away, and on the other side of the globe a good appears on a shelf, ready to be picked by a wealthy (by global standards) consumer.

What would an action that actually helps solve the problem look like? Start by visiting one of the leading anti-slavery organisations and donating part of your disposable income. They need the money to build and run schools, provide legal help, run campaigns and influence governments. Their work is important as they fight the structural causes of slavery.

This is only the first step. Get informed. Understand how slavery works and make informed decisions about your spending habits and be vocal on why you made this choice. Make all involved parties aware that you choose to vote with your money against them because they are using slave labour.

Thai sea food industry is a real world example of modern-day slavery. People are brought from neighboring countries with the promise of work and they end up being sold as slaves to the fishing boat captains. The action is inconvenient, but it’s a potent one. Stop buying anything from the Thai sea food industry. Be vocal about why you do it. Contact the regional supplier/importer and make them aware that you are not buying because Thai sea-food industry is ripe with human rights violations. Tweet about it. Inform your immediate circle.

Think of the pressure a 20% clearly attributed reduction of revenue in this industry would put. This pressure is felt on multiple fronts. It deprives the boat captains from the financial incentive of their action, it forces the honest players to push for reforms and it pushes the government to actually enforce these reforms.

If I were antirez, I’d setup a bounty fund for those interested in changing the term Master/Slave. Donations would start at $10 or an amount that reflects the level of frustration people feel. The condition to do the change would be for the fund to raise $100K. Then I would donate the fund to the few leading antislavery organisations and do the change.