:smack: Damn, I just got that. Good one!
Incidentally:
Since when has “wetback” been “endearing?”
What’s really funny to me is this: if he had just said “fucking American hypocrisy”, which is what I think he really meant, he wouldn’t have been called a racist.
No problem. Here, I’ll do it for you:
“Marty Cohn”, said quickly, sounds like “maricón”, which in certain Spanish-speaking countries, is used as an insult. Probably best translated as “faggot”.
Thank you sir. Now I can retire for the evening. 
I see. Obviously, I didn’t learn enough Spanish profanity. Probably what I get for going to one of the whiter high schools in Albuquerque.
Yep, it’s perfectly okay, that’s why I was asking which you were doing, but you didn’t really answer me the first time I asked you.
It looked like you were saying he’s not a lying piece of shit, he’s a lying sack of shit, ha ha.
But now you cleared it up.
Ah, sort of like Mr C. O. Jones and his stencilled luggage.
Personally, anyone can call me “gringo” (if Brits ever get called it in the first place) if they like, as all they’ll do is make themselves look in my eyes like a greasy spaghetti-western Mexican bandit, complete with the sombrero, gold tooth and crossed bandoliers of rifle bullets. It’s not that I believe any such people actually exist, but I can’t imagine anyone else using the expression.
(Incidentally, in a hot summer I do indeed look quite like a Mexican bandit, and have been nicknamed accordingly before now. One unusually spectacular suntan even led to me being called a “wog”, although I doubt that the snot-nosed kids calling me it were aware of the fine shade of distinction between “nigger” and “wog” in common parlance a half-century earlier.)
Was it just me, or did someone further up the thread actually resort to the “Some of my best friends…” defence? :dubious:
To me, the term gringo is more akin to the term gaijin. They are saying in essence, the person not only is pale skinned/of European stock, but they are ignorant of the culture. It’s saying that the person never will understand why “their” culture does things a certain way, (because they are that oblivious/dense) so don’t make the effort to teach them because it’s a waste of time. It implies that they are lacking in manners/respect, and knowledge of local customs. It assumes that they don’t want to learn these things as well. This is just my opinion, based on having had the term gringo thrown at me, and what else the person who used it said. It’s very much an “us against them” type of statement, and it implies that the non-white culture is actually better. (As opposed to merely different but equal.)
Adding, I meant the way CBEscapee was using the term gringo. I know it can be used without intent to offend as well.
During my 5 & 1/2 year tenure in Japan, the term gai-jin was certainly considered–at least by officialdom–as a pejorative. The PC term was gai-goku-jin. Now, very many foreigners there used the former term to refer to themselves.
Yes, they did. Several folks said Gringo was “hate speech” and should be a bannable offense. I am simply saying that it’s absurd to equate Gringo with much, much more offensive terms that have a long history of violent associations. I’m not excusing racist comments by anybody, I’m calling for people to take some perspective and quit being so damned shrill and thin-skinned.
And my point, and that of several others in this thread, is that in a vacuum the word ‘gringo’ is not hate speech. No it’s not nearly as unambigious a word as “nigger” or “kike”, and I doubt anybody would argue that.
But as I, and others, have pointed out, context is king.
The word “Mexicans”, in a vacuum, isn’t hate speech either, right? But if in a debate/discussion I said something like “Of course you wouldn’t want to do go to work/do your homework/clean your room, damn lazy Mexicans.” that would probably qualify. Likewise, when someone says, essentially “Of course you wouldn’t be honest or treat people fairly, damn hypocritical Americans.” Yes?
And in the case we were discussing, the xenophobic twist simply added spice to the broth. Wouldn’t the collective Doper community have torn apart any American Doper who said something similar?
Oh, and, by the way, since this quote fest spans two pages:
As should be obvious, saying that something rises to the level of hate speech is not saying that it’s as “onerous [as] violence, injustice, and inequality.” That is still a strawman. And by that logic, nothing should be considered hate speech, because no mere words rise to the level of violence, injustice, and inequality.
To me, none of those are hate speech. They are bigoted or racist. Without an aspect of intimidation, threat or inciting of violence, then I don’t think they qualify as hate speech. That’s why I refer to the history of certain terms, because they have historically been used in conjunction with violence and coersion.
Ah, first let me say I’m glad that we’re being civil now. Nice change o’ pace 
Second, it’s always good to define our terms, and I think we’ve hit on a difference in definition here.
I think that, at least in the context of an anonymous online message board that a threat of violence is pretty much impossible, so using that as a metric really doesn’t work. Perhaps ‘hate speech’ isn’t the right term, but I think that Dopers should be prohibited from being bigoted or racist, as it falls squarely under ‘being a jerk’ .
Your example reminds me of an incident with the former coach of the Denver Nuggets, Dan Issel. In response to a heckler (who happened to be hispanic) during a home game, he yelled back “Go drink another beer, you fucking Mexican piece of shit”. A lot of people (rightly IMO) considered this a racist comment, even though “Mexican” by itself is a neutral descriptor.
Well, at first I was expressing distain and using the insults to try to illustrate my point. Once it became clear you wanted to engage in a serious discussion, the insulting language was not serving that purpose.
In the context of a message board, I’m not sure hate speech is even possible except when accompanied by calls for or advocating hate motivated violence, as certain unmentionable boards do. I don’t think bigots or racists should be banned or prohibited from posting. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, or so I’ve heard.
In review, I noticed that Malacandra, has posted in this thread. (I missed it earlier because he’s so stealthy.) Considering an exchange I had with him in the past, he might find it odd that I’d be the one saying people should thicken their skin a bit. For his benefit, I was a bit over-sensitive about his comments before and I was wrong then and right now.
Dude, I, like, totally take my hat off to you. That’s pure class. Thanks. 
Well, I’m wading into this one pretty late in the game. I just returned from a vacation in Baja, and in my limited experience there I would have to say that gringo is in no way perjorative, at least in that region of Mexico. The fridge in the condo broke, and the 50 year oldncleaning lady I talked to told me “La gringa (something something) el officio (or something like that, followed by more something something)” followed by some pointing to a clock on the wall by which I was led to understand that the western lady who works in the office would be in at nine and would help me. The local english language paper down there is called the Gringo Gazette. Anyone intimating that the word is as loaded as “nigger”, “kike”, “wetback”, or even “cracker” or “honky” must be looking for reasons to be offended.