The title is unreasonably generous. The apology is entirely self serving and meaningless.
He doesn’t apologize for throwing water for the man - only for posting it on social media.
He tries to frame a narrative that the victim deserved it
He doesn’t offer any sort of reparations or even an insignificant donation to a group that works with unhoused people generally.
It’s clearly only to ensure his business is not affected, reduce the threat of prosecution (being considered by law enforcement, presumably for assault), and to encourage leniency from the judge if it gets that far.
We live in a society that teaches us to value others based on their ability to work. So naturally people think homeless are humans with less value then themselves.
Once you’ve been taught you’re better then others really it’s really all downhill from there.
It becomes easy to do something like this once we start vilifying others and thinking that they “deserve it”.
In this case according to the man that threw water, the homeless person had a history of sexual harassment and being violent towards the attendees.
We see this all the time in politics. We’re so used to attacking the other side verbally that when one side says something offensive to the other side, physical fights can break out.
If he truly had a history of being violent the guy wouldn’t have thrown water on someone twice his size so I’m calling bullshit on that part. That’s a recipe for getting your ass beat.
The (good, imho) reason is that “homeless” can quickly become a defining label when used to describe an individual, when what we are after is really just a description of someone’s current circumstance.
It’s honestly the exact same thing, almost the exact same word and it means the exact same thing. It isn’t gonna help anything. These labels just help the keyboard activists feel like they did something
I work with a nonprofit that works closely with children in this circumstance, and yes, it does make a huge difference to the individuals involved.
Having it be understood and acknowledged that this is something we are going through, and not who we are gives a healthy framing for families to lift themselves up…and not be “homeless people.”
I think the only reason this happens is because people associate negativity with a group of people for long enough to tie the negativity to the phrase or word itself. Homeless used to be the sensative replacement for Hobo. After enough time, this new name will just be another tag people can use hatefully.
edit: I must admit, though, I can’t see “someone experiencing homelessness” making a very impactful slur.
I see absolutely no difference whatsoever between the two terms. Even stigma wise. Being homeless isn’t a good thing, stop trying to make it sound nice unless you want people to think it’s nice and ignore it
Every few years some people decide you can’t use certain words because they have become negative terms to some group. So they invent a new term for the same thing and as the years go by and more people use the new term, it gets the same negative association that the old one had. Then the cycle begins anew.
Sometimes it’s good - a lot of slurs that were ok for anyone to say when I was a kid are now socially unacceptable and that’s great. But sometimes the SJWs take it too far and I think this is one of those times. I don’t understand the reason for the push to call them “unhoused” but I’m willing to be educated.
Once you hit middle age and have seen this happen a few times you’ll usually just roll your eyes and carry on.
Also, homeless is far from a slur in my opinion, and a similar term is used in many language. Using unhoused doesn’t change anything, the people you talk about still don’t have a place to live, but now you can feel better about yourself by using a different word.
Very interesting, thanks for linking it! And they even have a name for the phenomenon I described.
“Intentional shifts in terminology might seem like a game of Whac-A-Mole – an ultimately unsuccessful effort to outrun a concept’s ugly implications. The Harvard professor Steven Pinker dubbed it the “euphemism treadmill”.”
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