[Ads-l] RES: "wyte" as perjorative spelling for "white"

[David Daniel]

I don't get the logic behind this being a ploy to avoid censorship. The
social media companies can just as easily track/catch "wyte" or any other
variant of white. Unless maybe they use white for a few days, then, after
that has been identified, switch to something else. But it doesn't make much
sense to me.
DAD


-----Mensagem original-----
De: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] Em nome de
dave at WILTON.NET
Enviada em: terça-feira, 9 de fevereiro de 2021 11:24
Para: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Assunto: Re: "wyte" as perjorative spelling for "white"



The place I most often see "wyte" is by one particular tweeter, a woman = of
color. While she may have adopted it in order to avoid censorship or =
backlash, she also uses it as "wyte =3D white supremacist/racist." She =
doesn't use it to refer to white people in general (except insofar as =
we're all implicated in structural racism). That narrower usage may be = an
artifact/result of avoiding censorship/backlash, but it does create a =
semantic difference.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of =
Horatius
Sent: Tuesday, February 9, 2021 5:13 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "wyte" as perjorative spelling for "white"

It's very probable that this spelling is simply used to avoid censorship =
by social medias.

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-------- Oorspronkelijk bericht -------- Aan 9 feb. 2021 14:56, Ann =
Burlingham schreef:

> On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 6:08 AM Stanton McCandlish=20 
> <smccandlish at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Re: "wyte" as perjorative spelling for "white"
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> WELL, all that drama aside, I for one am curious when this arrived=20 
>> and whether it's just another "weird Internet spelling" silliness=20 
>> like "teh interwebs"; or if it's a hip-hop culture word-play with 
>> a=20 unique meaning, like "thicc" and "phat" and "def"; or if it's=20 
>> actually a leftist-discourse neologistic usage like "woke" and=20 
>> "karen"; or more narrowly a BLM-specific usage with or without a=20 
>> narrow implication; or some mixture of these. It goes back to at=20 
>> least early 2018 in the general sense reported here. The
>> *y* in it faintly reminds me of "womyn" and some other left-wing=20 
>> jargon, but that could easily just be blind coincidence. I'm=20 
>> skeptical of the OP's idea that it has to do with avoiding 
>> positive=20 cultural associations of the word "white", or it would 
>> likely =
coincide with a spelling shift of "Black"
>> in the same material as well ("Blak"? "Blacc?") which isn't in =
evidence.
>>
>>
> In my experience I see it in writing by Black women in order to try to 
> =

> avoid Facebook or Twitter jail, as they find their posts about 
> white=20 people get tagged as "racist".
>
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