[Osmf-talk] Balancing the presence of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team at the OSM Foundation in 2017

[Joseph Reeves]

Hi Christoph,

I intentionally used the phrase "soft racism".

In my real world example in my previous email, I wouldn't get through the
day as a non-racist if I carefully explained that I was mentioning race in
the name of clarification:

"Hey, has the Romanian delivery driver, and I only mention their place of
birth because I want to clarify that other delivery drivers are available,
delivered my parcel yet?". In such an example the Romanian bit is still
unnecessary, as it has nothing to do with the delivery of my parcel. I
should point out that I do know people that talk like that, and I have
called them racist before, in real life.

Again, the fact that the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is registered in
the US has nothing to do with their role in the OSM ecosystem. If you
remain concerned that you need to clarify between different humanitarian
groups operating in the OSM realm, you should just refer to them by their
common names, otherwise people like me (who may be overly sensitive) may
worry about *soft* racism. Of course, you can still say that *Humanitarian
OpenStreetMap Team US inc.* is the correct and full name, and you want to
keep calling it that, but I would worry that such typing is going to get
boring after a while, not least for yourself.

Cheers, Joseph

On 30 November 2017 at 14:05, Christoph Hormann <chris_hormann at gmx.de>
wrote:

> On Thursday 30 November 2017, Joseph Reeves wrote:
> >
> > It's a long practised technique that if you want to be critical of
> > HOT you refer to them as "HOT US inc". This is, in my opinion, just
> > soft racism.
>
> You might want to reconsider your use of the word 'racism' here.  Even
> if there was an anti-US attitude behind referring to the US based HOT
> organization by its official name calling it racism (which is by
> definition discrimination based on ethnicity) would be inappropriate.
>
> In my eyes the fact that people feel the need to clarify what they are
> referring to by referring to "HOT US inc" is a direct result of HOT
> (the organization with that name) frequently monopolizing the concept
> of humanitarian mapping in OSM and equating it with 'HOT' in
> communication.  This has no causal relationship with anti-US attitudes.
>
> --
> Christoph Hormann
> http://www.imagico.de/
>
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>
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