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Sampiro, might not the name be a reference to the British gold coin? And perhaps to the poster’s family’s origins?
I’m just not seeing that as an ethnic slur.
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Sure it can. Probably is. But if he can say that the only people who don’t follow his logic are racists, I can certainly call guinea into question.
Yes you do or you wouldn’t have mentioned it (unless you’re just dying for people to know you’ve read Hamlet). And no, it’s not. I honestly believe he crossed a serious line and his puny whining unpology (posted after I posted this incidentally) doesn’t cut it. Unable to win with a low heart he decided to play a spades, and call bullshit, illegal move.
Why does this infuriate me so much other than the obvious? It’s because there IS very real, totally legitimate racism out there. The same reason it infuriates me when people are called homophobes (I started a pit thread when GLAAD called Gene Shalit one) or sexist or anti-semitic or other such labels without adequate reason, because it castrates the words and the charges, and when the charge is valid it means next to fucking nothing.
Don’t worry that by missing Jim Crow you missed your chance to fight prejudice- it’s not like the Third Reich, it’s still out there. Still time to get your licks in, you don’t have to buy a medal at a junk shop and say you earned it. Hatred and irrational prejudice is alive and well, you don’t have to make it up, just look a little and you can find the real thing, or wait a while and it’ll probably find you.
But self imposed victimization makes me sick. It’s also a reason I’m against hate crime laws (because I’m gay I’m special? A violent attack on me is intrinsically worse than a violent attack on my straight brother? Or am I so helpless that I need extra terms applied to my assailant?), but that’s another thread.
His unpology was posted after I started this thread, incidentally- there was a technical burp that ate it for a while. And in said unpology he acknowledges there’s some chance that we who disagree aren’t racist, we could just be ignorant and uneducated. Racist v. Ignorant & Uneducated… hmmm… which one to choose… I can’t have both applied to me?