I recommend that you have it dry cleaned.
was this a serious post? If it wasn’t, ok… that was funny. If it wasn’t, do I have to pretend to care, even in the pit?
Hell, this PC crap is out of hand. Paki is shorthand writing for Pakistani. That’s it. Let the asshats who find it offensive work on their senses of humor.
I trust you’re okay with Jap, right?
Sandwiched in between the bits of horrible PC oppression was a note that you’ve got Pakistan wrong. Al Qaeda has tried to murder Zardari, the president of Pakistan. They assassinated his wife. They also tried to kill his predecessor, and they’ve killed other people in the government. Why do you think the government of Pakistan is protecting bin Laden and his friends? It doesn’t make any sense. There are groups within its intelligence agency and probably the military who are sympathetic to Al Qaeda and I’m sure some of them knew bin Laden was there. That’s the problem. Not Pakistan.
Why should Paki or Jap be any more offensive than Yank or Canuck? There is nothing inherently insulting in shortening a word. Though I see wikipedia declares that Yankee “may sometimes be considered offensive or disapproving”, that’s mainly because people are stupid. If I use “Yank” in a disparaging way then replacing it with the word “American” would not make it less disparaging.
For that matter why should Nigger, Spic, Jew, Homo, Fag, etc be any more offensive than Yank or Canuck? A slur is still a slur and it’s hard to redeem such words once their used as such (it’s impossible if the slur isn’t targeted at your group).
Fighting this is like trying to push water uphill. Once people have decided a word is offensive, there’s no argument that will convince them otherwise.
“Black people/African Americans are so lazy”
There, now no one can say “Black” or “African Americans” anymore.
Not this specious reasoning again.
It’s illogical: there is nothing inherently insulting in any bunch of syllables. “Nigger” isn’t inherently insulting either. Why is “nigger” actually offensive? Because of its history. Same as those other words, whether they’re shortened or not.
We had this discussion over “Jap”, which in Ireland and the UK isn’t seen as offensive. Its offensiveness in the US won.
“Paki” has a long and infamous history in a part of the English-speaking world that is significant to many Pakistanis, as well as Indians, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalese and many others to whom it was used as a slur, often accompanied by violence. Just because you don’t find it offensive doesn’t mean you should bandy it around on an international messageboard.
I hope you will extend the same courtesy to those of us who have a visceral reaction to its use, thanks to its abuse by racists, nazis and fascists.
- Those words are not recognized as slurs.
- You are not even using those words as slurs yourself; you are merely airing racist beliefs.
- I doubt you have the necessary cultural influence to change society’s perception of the words “Black/African American” into racial slurs.
Bingo; words aren’t inherently anything. The word ‘dog’ isn’t inherently dog-like either; in fact, I hear those wacky French call it a “chien.”
At least the Arabs had the good sense to call it a proper name like “kalb”