this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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In the last few decades we've noticed that we've been treating each other like shit. We've used race, skin colour, ethnicity, weight, etc to insult others and reduce their social standing.
We're trying to fix that. As such, calling out those specific differences is frowned on, even if we aren't using them negatively.
Is this inconvenient? Yes. It's pretty easy to point out the only black/fat/disabled person in a work place. But we're really trying to avoid any conversations that could turn into insults or attacks.
So we now have an unwritten social rule that we avoid using those identifiers when talking about individuals.
You're making a good point, but I think it's also equally pretty weird to just dismiss a facet of someone's humanity. It feels a little bit to me like the whole "I just pretend everyone is white"-approach.
I think there's too much nuance to make a hard rule on it. I've worked with someone who's go-to way to describe people was always ethnicity/perceived nationality-based to a weird extent, never with anything negative, but it was still jarring. Like he would say "the Bosnian guy who works with Steve" instead of "the guy who works with Steve ".
I would also find it strange if someone treated someone's race like it was a bad word. Like, I think it would be fairly natural to say "what's the name of the black guy who works in the shop?", and much less natural to say "whats the name of the person in the shop who often wears black pants, and said they were a fan of that new TV show, and they said they were from Oklahoma, and ..."
I agree that it's awkward and it creates problems in some scenarios. I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing, but it's an understandable (over) correction for some pretty heinous behaviour.
At work? I think it's preferable to limit our interactions to work related stuff.
Outside of work, I'm ambivalent. We associate physical features, names, and accents with cultures. But those don't always line up to significant differences in someone's personality.
You clearly don't live in the US if there is only 1 fat person in the workplace.
The baseline just changes
They're all fat. But imagine if you're the fat guy at an American workplace. That must mean you're undescribably fat.