User talk:DrewciferMile

June 2022
Hello, I'm Netherzone. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit to Onsen seemed less than neutral and has been removed. If you think this was a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. ''Wikipedia goes by what the sources say, not what one's personal opinion or interpretation is. I've replaced the sentence with an actual quote from the source.'' Netherzone (talk) 13:51, 7 June 2022 (UTC)


 * The point of view expressed in my edit was also neutral. It is not a personal opinion or interpretation. If the text is a direct quote from the source, then it should be within quotation marks to indicate it is so, and I will not edit it, because that would indicate that the phrasing used is in the exact words of the source and in no way edited or interpreted by the contributor who placed it on the page. If the text is not a direct quote from a source, and is instead a synopsis, then the contributor poorly worded it.
 * It is not a personal opinion to state that saying "the actions of people X contributed to people Y viewing them as inferior" blames X instead of Y for Y holding beliefs in racial hierarchy. It is a neutral action to reword such a sentence to say "Y believed X to be inferior, and used this practice as an example of their inferiority." That is more of a factual and apolitical statement than to say X caused Y in some way to view them as inferior, rather than Y coming up with such an interpretation on their own because it is not how they prefer to do things.
 * If your concern is the use of the word "White" then I also invite you to consider that racial hierarchy was already being brought into the discussion. If the text indicates explicitly already that the Japanese were considered an inferior race, it is not political or personal interpretation to ask oneself "compared to which other race or races?" The question is implied by the previous statement. If there is an inferior, then there must be a superior. Which is whom? What demographic from the West were the majority travelers and history writers creating opinions on what they saw in Japan? "West" is not a race. There is no such thing as a "Western Race."
 * If the statement on the page is to stand, it should either actually be a direct quote from the source -- who is allowed to have personal opinions on who "The West" is as a race compared to "the Japanese race" -- because as it stands now, it appears to be a paraphrase of the source that includes very poor word choice. DrewciferMile (talk) 14:13, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh I see you've already edited it with the direct quote, which does not mention an "inferior race" at all. Strange how that happens. It's almost like the text I was editing was skewed toward the original writer's unconscious political biases and not a direct quote from the source. :) DrewciferMile (talk) 14:23, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Assuming good faith towards the original writer, it could have simply been a bad translation and not bigotry or white supremacy as your edit summary implied. See: WP:AGF. Netherzone (talk) 14:48, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
 * My edit summary did not imply that the editor had a white supremacist motive with their original phrasing. My edit summary only said that the text itself reads as having a racially biased slant. I do not assume the original writer was intentionally trying to say something negative about Japanese people, nor did I ever suggest that that was my assumption. I only stated that this is how the text itself -- REGARDLESS of the original writer's politics -- reads and should be edited for those reasons. That would be your personal interpretation/opinion of my rebuttal which was made from a place of good faith to invite you to question the implied political bias in the text itself and whether the original text was inherently apolitical. It was not. Whether the politics implied are intentional on behalf of the original contributor is not a part of the conversation nor does it need to be. DrewciferMile (talk) 14:58, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
 * To clarify, because I reread one of my edit summaries, I do understand how you came upon the impression that I was making an assumption about the writer, but my meaning is more clear if you read my notes from the assumption that I am only criticizing the text that was written on the page, not the intentions of the writer. I have limited characters to make my point, so you have to assume good faith on my part.
 * When I said "Wording implied blame toward the practice" I was referring to the actual text on the page, regardless of authorial intent. That is literally what the text on the page would imply to any reasonably critical reader.
 * When I said "also implied racial hierarchy beliefs" I was still talking about the text itself, not the writer. The text implied that onsen were part of a discussion about beliefs in racial hierarchy. This does not say the writer is the one with those beliefs, but that the historical people within the text the writer wrote are being implied by the text to believe in a racial hierarchy.
 * And therefore, when I said "without identifying who the allegedly superior race was supposed to be" I am pointing out a journalistic error on the part of the original writer -- not a belief that they hold. They implied that there is a racial hierarchy belief system in which the Japanese people were considered inferior, but they did not identify who was supposed to be the superior in this racial hierarchy other than "western peoples" which is not a race.
 * Basically, we're either talking about racism or we're not. If we're talking about it, we should be careful with our phrasing to make sure it does not carry a political bias itself against people of color, and that it does not revise or 'censor' the history of the racism we are talking about. If we don't want to talk about the history of racism, then we should not be talking about race on this page at all.
 * I hope that helps. DrewciferMile (talk) 15:31, 7 June 2022 (UTC)