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I am gutted by this event. In today’s White House briefing, a “journalist”
| Non sequitur | 05/03/25 |
| Non sequitur | 05/03/25 |
| Mainlining the $ecret Truth of the Univer$e | 05/03/25 |
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Date: May 3rd, 2025 1:13 AM Author: Non sequitur I am gutted by this event. In today’s White House briefing, a “journalist” was the first to be called on and started her question to the press secretary by saying, “I can attest to the deportations in Florida, My Uber drivers finally speak English again. So thank you for that.” Please allow me a few comments.
First, let’s call it what it is—the celebration of forced removal. A public endorsement of linguistic superiority. A punchline that dehumanizes immigrants. And finally, a false equivalency that English equals safety, intelligence, legitimacy.
“Let me attest…”. Deportation isn’t a mechanism for improving someone’s ride share experience. It’s a traumatic, life-changing event. Treating it like she’s leaving a yelp review for a hotel stay is a dangerous and uninformed trivialization of human rights.
“My Uber drivers finally speak english again.” As if English is the only valid language. An assumption that service workers owe you the comfort of your own language. That not speaking English is a problem to be fixed. It all rolls up to an obscene privilege and an immoral dehumanization of immigrants.
I can guarantee you that the Uber drivers she’s speaking of are multilingual and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that she only speaks English. What a deficiency on her part.
Her remarks don’t just display individual bias—they are systematic. Who gets to belong, who’s a real “American,” whose voices are heard.
As my mom would have said, “This makes me spittin’ mad.”
Expect more posts from me on linguistic supremacy and the dangers that emerge from such toxic and exclusionary comments |
Date: May 3rd, 2025 9:57 AM Author: Non sequitur (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5719923&forum_id=2...id.#48901007) |
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Date: May 3rd, 2025 9:59 AM Author: Mainlining the $ecret Truth of the Univer$e (You = Privy to The Great Becumming™ & Yet You Recognize Nothing) The New York Times Opinion | Guest Essay By Evan39, Former Night Manager, $afeway LLP May 3, 2025
My Uber Driver Spoke Perfect English. I Still Wept. It started with a comment in the White House press briefing:
“My Uber drivers finally speak English again.”
The room laughed. Some nodded. I stared at the screen in the breakroom and felt a familiar dread — the one I get before ethics trainings or HR “Pulse Surveys.” The one I got when I told a Dominican Uber driver I was “okay with a little silence,” and he responded: “I speak six languages, Evan.”
There was a time when I, too, believed language was neutral. When I thought a clear sentence couldn’t hurt you. Now I know: it’s never the words. It’s the receipt.
I once filed a complaint because a coworker described his Korean food as “authentic.” I didn’t mean to ruin his birthday lunch. But we had just completed Module 6 of “Cultural Fluency and You™” and I was told not to let microaggressions slide.
He later told me I “weaponized empathy.” I said, “There’s a dropdown for that in ADP.”
Every Uber trip now feels like a test I didn’t study for.
If I speak too slowly, it’s condescending.
If I ask what country they’re from, it’s ethnocentric.
If I say nothing, it’s emotional cowardice.
So now I just fake a call. Every time. Even on 3-minute rides.
When I read the quote from that journalist, I didn’t laugh. I emailed it to Tabitha, our 42-year-old obese Black HR enforcer who once called me “Problematic™ adjacent.”
She replied:
“We don’t comment on jokes until Legal says we can.”
What do you say to someone who thinks a deportation is a UX improvement?
What do you say to someone who thinks language is only valuable when it’s legible on a CVS receipt?
What do you say to someone who still rates drivers with anything less than 5 stars?
You say nothing. Because anything less than perfect syntax now feels like complicity. Because your Lyft driver might be writing a memoir. Because we all speak Uber now—we just don’t know what dialect.
About the Author Evan39 is the author of Fluent in Guilt: Language, Class, and the Semiotics of Yelp and Everything Is Fine (Until Your Driver Corrects Your Grammar).
He once failed a Spanish placement test so badly he was auto-enrolled in Cultural Listening Lab I-A.
Read more at www.nytimes.com/grammar-as-a-weapon |