The words [Equity-language] guides recommend or reject are sometimes exactly the same, justified in nearly identical language.
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Although the guides refer to language “evolving,” these changes are a revolution from above. They haven’t emerged organically from the shifting linguistic habits of large numbers of people.
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Prison does not become a less brutal place by calling someone locked up in one a person experiencing the criminal-justice system.
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The whole tendency of equity language is to blur the contours of hard, often unpleasant facts. This aversion to reality is its main appeal. Once you acquire the vocabulary, it’s actually easier to say people with limited financial resources than the poor.
I don’t disagree that language needs to evolve and change. But I don’t know that swapping the words does anything to change the unconscious bias. I think a racist is still racist regardless of the language they use being explicitly about race, using coded words like “urban” or some other euphemism, etc. On the other hand I think someone’s white grandmother that donates to orgs like the ACLU or NAACP says something like “we need to do more to assist colored kids get into college, have more opportunity…” is using antiquated language, but working in the right direction of positive social change.