Feds Setting Standards for Speech for Scientists

Told they can’t use ‘whitelist’ any longer

Key scientists in America are now being delivered instructions on what they can say.

To be politically correct, of course.

Just the News explains it is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal office, that has imposed “race and gender speech codes” for scientists.

Just the News reports the guide tells workers not to say “blacklist” or “whitelist” and also insists there’s a ban on “using terms that assign a gender to inanimate objects, such as male/female connectors.”

NIST isn’t one of the larger federal bureaucracies, with a budget of $1.65 billion for 2023.

But it joins other federal agencies in putting its attention on, and taxpayer money toward, the ideological agenda of leftists today.

Its scheme instructs scientists that they must avoid identifying an individual’s gender unless necessary for comprehension, and avoid terms that are condescending.

The agenda was recommended to NIST in 2020 by Steven Lipner, of the congressionally authorized Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board.

He wrote, “Many technology and security standards contain racially insensitive language that is both offensive to many of our colleagues and is also, in many respects, ambiguous – technically and culturally.”

A spokeswoman for NIST reported the guidance was assembled to help NIST staff.

“Use of inclusive language helps to avoid potential gaps in understanding that could arise from the use of colloquial or idiomatic expressions that are rooted in particular historical events or regional dialects,” she said.

The NIST campaign also cites the American Psychological Association’s webpage on “biased language,” which rants on about many possible genders and the need to cater to them.

APA’s page says, “Transgender is used as an adjective to refer to persons whose gender identity, expression, and/or role does not conform to what is culturally associated with their sex assigned at birth. Some transgender people hold a binary gender, such as man or woman, but others have a gender outside of this binary, such as gender-fluid or nonbinary. Individuals whose gender varies from presumptions based on their sex assigned at birth may use terms other than ‘transgender’ to describe their gender, including ‘gender-nonconforming,’ ‘genderqueer,’ ‘gender-nonbinary,’ ‘gender-creative,’ ‘agender,’ or ‘two-spirit,’ to name a few.”