Did I say she was poor? Did I say she was ghetto? No, I never said any of that. I never claimed that the Freeper comments were accurate. That’s not how insults work.
Her wealth proves nothing with respect to the meaning of the insult “ghetto trash”.
There were people, in this very thread, who stated that it is acceptable to make fun of Bristol, presumably as a slut/whore/stupid for getting pregnant because she preaches abstinence only education. That’s simply not factual; attacking someone using derogatory and frankly, gender specific words is sexist. You may have read my statement incorrectly, but I said nothing about Letterman calling Bristol a whore, that doesn’t mean that SD posters in previous threads, anti-Palin bloggers, and plenty of others haven’t.
Letterman may be the only person who has been called out for his behavior on public television, but that doesn’t mean he’s the lone perpetrator. And yeah, I do think it’s wrong the way that Bristol has been repeatedly ridiculed and brought out as a joke (although I thought Letterman’s joke referred to Palin’s other daughter) because she happened to get pregnant while her mother was running for VP. (And, FYI, just because someone is legally an adult doesn’t mean that it is true mentally. 17/18 is a teetering age to be, depending on how one is raised. I’m not saying there’s no difference between 17 and 11, but this “she’s an adult, so it’s okay” stuff is bull fucking shit.
No, you brought up your boss, who remembers when all the poor kids were called “ghetto trash”. Since Malia is not poor, and is probably not being mistaken for an Irish Jew or even a Hispanic, that leaves one possible group whose members are often tagged with the term “ghetto”.
Seriously, though, stop it. You’ve done a very good job of trolling, but you’re still trolling. Nobody seriously believes that the Freepers are doing anything other than venting about the negro First Daughter.
Oh bullshit. Why did you pass up the most obvious use of the term- poor? Who cares how much money her family actually has? They said it because she looks, in that photo, like she just woke up and grabbed the first shitty clothing she could find. She looks like her outfit cost about $3. She looks like she didn’t care about her appearance. In other words, she looks poor. She looks like ghetto trash or perhaps, I dunno, a typical street whore. It’s about what she’s wearing, not what color her skin is. That’s obvious, seeing as how the whole thing revolved around the Tshirt in the first place.
If I said “Wow, she looks retarded”, would respond with “Well since she’s not retarded, you must be racist, since she’s black.”? No, because that wouldn’t make sense. ‘Retarded’ isn’t a racial word, similar to how ‘ghetto’ isn’t, as evidenced by the comments of all the minorities within my little bubble here in the office.
You’re making shit up just to get one more salvo against your beloved target, the Freepers. They’re fun to kick, so hey, why not call them racist? Sure, they didn’t say anything racist at all, but hey, maybe if I just claim it often enough, people will read into it and call them racist too!
From your point of view, any insult slung at the First Family is now racist, simply because of their skin color. If I call Obama an America-hating Marxist pig, that’s racist. If I call one of the women a whore, that’s racist. If I say they’re dressed like trash, that’s racist. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
Okay: you’re the only one who knows how insults work, :rolleyes: and also the only one who doesn’t know how stereotypes work. No, they do not need to be factually accurate. They do have to relate to the way a group of people is seen by some other portion of society. That’s the issue here. Malia does not evince any “ghetto” characteristics. The reason she’s being called “ghetto trash” and related terms is that she’s black, and yes, although “ghetto” is sometimes used in contexts not directly related to race, it’s also strongly associated with black people. You might be shocked to learn that many white people think of black people as more likely to be low class and impoverished, as well as uneducated and other things.
If you don’t believe me, make up a stereotype of your own and see how somebody responds to it. For example, consider saying derisively, “French people are stupid and love flashy clothes. They’re great at sports, though!”
By your own logic, this isn’t true, but because it’s scornful, everybody should get it, right? … Except they won’t, because nobody will recognize the stereotype.
Did you ask the actual relevant question? "Do these insults
[quote them]
of Malia Obama strike you as racially motivated?"
My mind is reeling.
I’m sure. Now ask him if he thinks calling Malia Obama “ghetto trash” and a “thug” and so on are racially motivated.
Oh, my favorite argument in the world! “I am a hopeless naif who does not understand language as spoken by other people, and therefore can accuse you of bigotry for understanding what other people are talking about! Now I will hop on my pet unicorn Bubbles and ride back to my world where racism does not exist because I cannot see it!”
Take your thumb out of your mouth and wake up, Chessic Sense. You are showing off some mighty powers of stupidification if you don’t think it’s racist to call a black woman “mammy.” Appaling naivete aside, you’re making a very distorted argument by focusing on the word “ghetto” at the exclusion of the other insults that were thrown this girl’s way. (Why did you ignore words like “thug” and “street whore,” by the way?) “Ghetto” by itself doesn’t have to be racist, although it’s always made me uncomfortable. (Good luck finding a white area of the U.S. described as a ghetto. As spoken by white people, which I have heard plenty of times, it’s usually reserved for poor, minority-dominated areas, and is used to compare how much nicer the homes and stores are in the white peoples’ neighborhood.)
In this context, however, “ghetto” isn’t being used in isolation, it’s being used in combination with other insults of a poor and urban theme. A theme that is also used in many stereotypes of black people. According to you, this is a magical coincidence. The rest of us have more sense, which is why we’re “racists.” Right?
That’s because you presumably took my comment out of context.
In the context of the thread at the Free Republic, “ghetto” was code for “nigger.” I didn’t mean that the term is always or even usually used that way.
On second thought, I don’t actually mean that “ghetto”=“nigger.” (I oversimplified, because I thought the following was well known. I was wrong, and I apologize.) Really what I mean is that the term, as used, was racially charged. It isn’t always racially charged, but it sure as shit can be. Here’s some random links to show what I mean. (The third link is my favorite, as it leads to the question “why would the author need to say that it no longer just means ‘black’, unless at some time it did?”)
This is very similar to how the word “urban” was used for a while as a euphemism for “black,” or at least “black culture.”
Is that better?
Also, to understand why the person who used the term “mammy” and “pappy” was using racially charged language, I’ll refer you to the movies “Gone with the Wind” and “The Jazz Singer.” On further investigating, wikipedia has everything!
[quote=“Marley23, post:245, topic:503011”]
-
Malia does not evince any “ghetto” characteristics.
-
Did you ask the actual relevant question? "Do these insults
- To them, she is. Her clothing is the issue, along with the guy beside her. She looks like a bum.
- Not only did I ask it, I tried to convince him of it. He read the article, as did my Korean boss.
- That’s a joke.
- See 2. I did. He said no.
- I’d never heard ‘mammy’ before, but I agree with you that that one was racist, whatever that person was trying to say. I skipped over thug and street whore, because you can’t possibly think they’re Black stereotypes, do you? I mean, we’re talking about Bristol Palin right here in this thread, and whether it’s ok to call her a whore. No one claimed it was racist in that case.
- Well that’s all I’m really trying to prove, isn’t it? Remember, I started this by criticising the article writer, not the Freepers. He titled the article with ‘racist slurs’ and buried the actual racist comments, and led with 3 or 4 that aren’t even racist, merely insulting. I never made mention of Palin, nor Malia’s sexual practices, nor anything about the family. I’ve merely been critical of poor, inflamatory journalism.
All your coworkers, your Korean boss, your resident black guy …
Please tell us next about all the anonymous emailers who agree with you too.
Okay… we’re getting there…
Darn it, so close!
Anyway I guess they don’t have bums or whores in Pittsburgh. Must be nice. I think she looks pretty much like you would expect an 11-year-old to look on a trip overseas.
The person was trying to say he thinks the Obamas are embarrassing because, as they are black people, they are stupid, lazy and ignorant.
Pay attention, will you? Nobody called Bristol Palin a “street whore,” “ghetto trash,” “street trash,” or a “thug.” Nobody said you could see someone dressed like her in any ghetto in America, either. And you can see in the article those terms were used repeatedly. Read the posts.There’s some nice speech-that’s-not-supposed-to-be-an-approximation-of-how-the-author-thinks-black-people-talk under another photo, too.
So you aimed to prove that some of the insults in the article, when removed from context, were not necessarily racial? To what purpose? When someone on the site quoted some lyrics from the Jeffersons theme song and said the guy next to Malia looks like a rapper, was that racially charged, do you think? Show your work.
Monkey isn’t always a racial slur even when directed at people, but certainly you would acknowledge sometimes it is, at the very least it can be? Think of ghetto the same way. Ghetto in this context was code for “poor black.” Any other interpetation is naive or disingenuous.
- I don’t think she looks bad either. But that’s not my point. They did.
- I’ll take your word for it.
- Yes, that’s what I aimed to prove, at least at the start. Then I got dragged into defending ‘ghetto’ as not a black slur. It’s merely a slur, as evidenced by my colleagues. The purpose was to show that the article author was disingenuous. The article read as if someone said
“Did you hear about that klansman that was making racial slurs against the black girl?”
“No, what did he say that was so racist?”
“Well, he said she was a whore.”
“Ok…that’s not really…well, what else?”
“ghetto trash”
“Um…that doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
“And also a thug!”
“What the hell? Those aren’t racially related at all”
“Ah! But then he said dolphin pancake of flying butter red the!” (like the mammy comment, as interpretted by me).
Thus you can see why I said they weren’t racist comments. It doesn’t matter that it was a klansman insulting a black girl. If you say there are racial slurs, you have to actually show me racial slurs. Something like “Bunch of niggers” or “stupid black pieces of shit” or “Go pick some cotton!” Note how the last one only refers to black people, not just about any poor minority.
For the record, this is the first I’m seeing of the actual comments, and I’ll agree, they’re mostly racist. But those weren’t quoted in the article. Now that I see the other photos, the monkey comment makes more sense as well.
No there weren’t. There were people saying it’s acceptable to make fun of her as a hypocrite.
I did ?! Man, I didn’t know we even had one of those 
Damn. Too bad she didn’t put on her Armani.
You didn’t. You do now. Jay voos Aleut!
The author was evidently trying to walk the line by shocking people into reading them without saying anything that would earn complaints for being flat-out hateful. It’s not how I would have done it, but then again, I don’t think what people say on a blog or message board or in a tweet is newsworthy in all but the rarest of cases.
The “mammy” post aside - and I note here that we can see only one page out of four or five - few of the words are race-specific. (You would not hear “street” applied to a white girl that often, to name one exception. To these people, being black makes Malia “street” even though her background isn’t street at all. Same with “ghetto.”) Taken in aggregate it’s clear they’re picking on the girl for being black, not just for a bad choice in shirts.
Chessic Sense quoted Carlin earlier; allow me to as well:
“There are no bad words; there are only bad intentions.”
Of course the word “ghetto” isn’t racist in and of itself. It becomes a racist when used in a racist context. Anybody who has read that Freep thread and hasn’t been able to pick out the racist context is a fucking idiot.
Or Chessic Sense, but then, what’s the difference.
Chessic’s black friend said that ‘ghetto’ isn’t racist, so the conversation is over, guys.
First, I never quoted Carlin. Second, I’m glad you’ve finally come around to see that ghetto isn’t a racist word. Third, who said anything about the Freep thread? We’re talking about Chris Perry’s article in the Vancouver Sun, the one that started with 4 nonracist slurs and then stated “these are a small selection of the racially charged comments…”
Wait, you mean that when people at the GOP convention wore alligator hats that were eating black men, they were being racist? I thought they just really liked man eating gators. And that their victims just HAPPENED to be black.
Next you’ll be telling me that the South Park flag is racist just because the guy being lynched happens to be black. Geez. Way to be colorblind.