# How should a person accused of racism respond? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 12, 2021, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942 "2021-12-12T17:39:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/281 "2021-12-20T20:36:26Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > People don’t choose to be offended. Being offended is a feeling. It’s neither right nor wrong, it just is. What’s your point? If someone tells me they are offended that I don’t believe in God, they can fuck off. Whereas if someone tells me they are offended because I just said something racist, I’m going to take a big timeout and discuss the issue with them, definitely try to learn something and (if appropriate) apologize. So clearly not all claimed offense merits equal treatment by a decent person. Perhaps “right” and “wrong” are not apt descriptors for the extremes of the spectrum, but there are certainly situations where somebody who merely _claims_ to be offended cannot reasonably expect other people to accommodate their delusions. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/282 "2021-12-20T20:41:13Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > That’s absurd. They were communicating just fine with their intended audiences, to whom those words were not obscure (and who would have found much of our vocabulary incomprehensible). Nobody is claiming that anyone has any sort of obligation to guess accurately how the language might change in four hundred years, or even in a hundred and fifty. Yes it was absurd but the point was that neither 400 years ago nor today do we have an expectation that an author explains the etymology of a word to an audience. Shakepeare supposedly minted plenty of new words, I’m sure his audience didn’t require him to explain what they meant and where they came from. How about Patrick O’Brian novels. Modern writer but archaic words and jargon with plenty of offensive terms and words thrown in or good measure with contextual clues and occaisional exposition but lots is left up to the reader. Still a poor communicator? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/283 "2021-12-20T20:46:08Z")
> [@WalterBishop](#): > > She said “I appreciate the story takes place a long time ago, but I think it’s very inappropriate to use racist terms and expressions without comment”. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > You think it’s pretty confrontational, in a writers workshop, where the point is to critique each other, to point out a term that’s likely to offend? Really? You really don’t think the _way_ she said it is confrontational? Unless I misunderstand, this was spoken directly to the writer when reading his own work. It was clearly an accusation that the writer had _failed in his duty_ to comment on and contextualize a racist term in his work. If she had been _right on the facts_, I would not have any problem with a POC raising the issue in a confrontational manner. But she was not, and she did not bother the _check_ the facts first. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/284 "2021-12-20T20:46:33Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > No, and that you are determined to shove those words in my throat is when I get off this ride > > Good day sir. That all rings rather hollow when in post 258 you ascribed two postions to me that I have never held and never expressed. I asked you to retract and you didn’t. I agree that putting words in your mouth is wrong, do you extend to others the courtesy that you request for yourself? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/285 "2021-12-20T20:58:09Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Yes it was absurd but the point was that neither 400 years ago nor today do we have an expectation that an author explains the etymology of a word to an audience. Not for words that we expect people to be familiar with the current meaning and connotations of, no. > [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Shakepeare supposedly minted plenty of new words, I’m sure his audience didn’t require him to explain what they meant and where they came from. He did so in a way that allowed people to accurately figure them out from the context: because he actually was a good communicator. And this included allowing people to figure out the implications of the words as well as their literal meaning. If a Shakespeare character uses an unfamiliar word, the audience could nevertheless tell whether it was meant to be insulting. > [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > How about Patrick O’Brian novels. Modern writer but archaic words and jargon with plenty of offensive terms and words thrown in or good measure with contextual clues and occaisional exposition but lots is left up to the reader. > Still a poor communicator? Don’t know; haven’t read any Patrick O’Brian, to the best of my knowledge. Do they use the archaic words and jargon accurately? When I run into that technique in somebody’s writing, I find that often if I look the words up they’ve been thrown in there without the author having bothered to find out what they mean or how to use them. Some writers of course have done their research and are using such terms accurately; some of those even have good reason for using a lot of terms they don’t expect their audience to understand. I read a fair amount of science fiction; much of that uses invented words and phrasing. Some writers include a lot of explanation, others don’t. The reader is often left to figure out what’s going on as part of the point of the writing, just as in some types of detective stories part of the point is for the reader to try to guess whodunit. But doing that well is a skill; and part of the skill is knowing how not to unintentionally mislead the reader. Informing the author that a particular word choice may unintentionally mislead the reader is useful information, not an attack. Doing so by the example of having been so mislead may not be the ideal method, but it’s still useful information. Declaring that it’s not information at all but just objectively wrong because the author’s intent was different does not seem to me to be useful. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/286 "2021-12-20T21:04:35Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > If she had been _right on the facts_ , I would not have any problem with a POC raising the issue in a confrontational manner. But she was not, and she did not bother the _check_ the facts first. She is, imho, close enough to “right on the facts”. Most modern readers, especially modern readers who are black, are likely to find the phrase offensive. People routinely extrapolate their knowledge of existing words to guess at new ones, and in this case, the reasonable guess is fairly bad. No, the reasonable guess isn’t the historically accurate usage of the word. And yes, she should have acknowledged that the word _looked_ racist. But her critique is still accurate. He would have written a stronger work, that would be better appreciated by its readers, if he’d taken her advice. Look at my post 229 in this thread for how that exchange could have gone. > [@How should a person accused of racism respond?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/229): > > I’d like to give a real example of this, from a discussion among friends on a discord server recently. There was some chatter about “cargo cult programming” A few days after that conversation, someone came in and said: I’m very behind on this channel, but I did want to say I would appreciate if we didn’t use the term “cargo cult programming” in this venue. The term is based on a reference to “cargo cults”, which is an extremely problematic and pejorative term for a complicated phenomenon tha… If the author hadn’t immediately taken offense that his word was seen as racist, if he’d taken it as constructive criticism of his work, and not as an indictment of his character, everything would have gone much more smoothly. And he’d either have changed the word, or queued it up in some way, so the reader had some clue what he intended to convey. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/287 "2021-12-20T21:04:43Z")
I think this “Shakespeare” tangent is getting kind of pointless. There is a straightforward point that good communication depends on both speaker/writer and listener. Clearly in some respects a greater burden falls on the speaker/writer to know their audience. But it is also _possible_ for communication to fail because the listener has poor listening/interpretative skills. The moot point here is whether blame falls on both parties here, and if so how much. That depends on the specific facts. But it’s unhelpful (and wrong) to suggest that if communication fails, it _must_ therefore solely be the speaker/writer at fault. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/288 "2021-12-20T21:18:56Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > She is, imho, close enough to “right on the facts”. Only under some 1984 definition of “right” and “facts”. The _right_ thing here would have been _first_ to enquire about the meaning of a word she had never encountered before, then point out the things you have quite correctly said - that historical usage of “boy” means that it _could_ be mistaken for a racist term by a less careful reader (a teen perhaps), and that the writer could preempt that and explain the historical usage to avoid inadvertently offending less careful readers. I suppose there is a sense in which she conveyed the same information. By not reading carefully - jumping to a conclusion and overreacting - she proved that less careful readers who jump to conclusions and overreact do indeed exist. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/289 "2021-12-20T21:39:14Z")
I think there’s a real risk here of taking the virtue of listening and empathizing with other people’s lived experience, and distorting it into something that looks perilously close to saying that POC are on such a hair trigger that we cannot expect them to read and analyze carefully; or that the mere possibility that a POC _might_ hypothetically be offended by misunderstanding a word is such a dire outcome that we should treat all POC in a patronizing manner _as though_ they cannot read carefully, which is hardly any better. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/290 "2021-12-20T21:43:44Z")
There is a phrase for that “the bigotry of low expectations” ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/291 "2021-12-20T21:46:08Z")
I cannot speak for any POC of course, but I know for myself the only thing worse than being marginalized and oppressed would be well-meaning people treating me in a patronizing manner rather than as an intellectual equal. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/292 "2021-12-20T22:35:12Z")
You are both acting as of it’s dumb to be offended by words that sound racist. That’s…a weird perspective. I don’t think anyone is “on hair trigger” because they notice something i might not have noticed. I wrote more, but decided it was inappropriate to post. I think I’d best leave the thread, now. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/293 "2021-12-20T23:03:16Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > You are both acting as of it’s dumb to be offended by words that sound racist This depends on the facts. The word “niggardly” certainly sounds racist. It’s fairly obscure and it’s virtually identical aurally to the worst racial slur in the language. There’s nothing dumb about finding this word offensive - I agree it should go. (So far as I’m aware, nobody thinks “snigger” is a problem, because it’s a much more common word, and it’s usually clear from context that it’s not the slur.) On the other hand, there was a story (possibly apocryphal) about some local government education official finding the term “black hole” offensive. I can see how a poorly educated person might reach that conclusion, but I think there is broad consensus that finding “black hole” offensive is either indicative of a low level of education - or yes, dumb. And nobody thinks we should expunge it from physics textbooks or give some kind of warning before using it. ---
**Author:** ![yarblek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/71e660/32.png) [@yarblek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yarblek)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/294 "2021-12-20T23:10:11Z")
Imagine you are giving a lecture to adults on race in a global sense and the topic of Black people comes up. A (black) person, let’s call them “Karen”, vehemently objects and calls out the use of the term “Black people” as racist and insists on the correct non-racist term “African-American”. From reading this thread, it seems that the only good (but IMO ridiculously stupid and cowardly) response to Karen would be to acquiesce and use “African-American” in the place of “Black people” whether talking about Black Americans, Zulus or Papuans. My radical opinion is that nobody should acquiesce to stupid, crazy or just highly misinformed ideas or people, even if there might be a (vanishingly) small chance of them being correct. So what I would say to Karen is that “Black people” is the currently accepted term in the field (which I believe it is) so they can just politely leave and/or make a formal complaint/write to the press about it/whatever if they felt its use is intolerable. If I was feeling unusually generous or I thought they might actually have an ability to learn and think critically I might try to explain why describing all Black people as African-American is so dumb (but good luck with that). Similar, but potentially more believable cases could be described. For example, Karen objecting to “he/she”, claiming it transphobic and insisting on “they/them” (or vice versa) or Karen objecting to the use of “people with a fully female reproductive system”, “people with vaginas”, “people with uteruses” etc in any context, claiming them sexist/mysogynist, in the place of “women and girls” (or vice versa). In what ways would anyone on the SDMB deal with this situation, if the previous two aren’t to your taste? You still have a lecture to teach so you can’t just ignore it and lay your head down IMO, like was suggested earlier as a solution. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/295 "2021-12-20T23:24:24Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > it’s unhelpful (and wrong) to suggest that if communication fails, it _must_ therefore solely be the speaker/writer at fault. Has anybody in this thread said that? There appear to me to be people saying that in the case of the complaint about “sandboy” it was entirely the listener/reader who was at fault. I haven’t noticed anybody saying that it was entirely the speaker/writer who was at fault for anything other than their reaction to the misunderstanding. > [@Riemann](#): > > I think there’s a real risk here of taking the virtue of listening and empathizing with other people’s lived experience, and distorting it into something that looks perilously close to saying that POC are on such a hair trigger that we cannot expect them to read and analyze carefully; or that the mere possibility that a POC _might_ hypothetically be offended by misunderstanding a word is such a dire outcome that we should treat all POC in a patronizing manner _as though_ they cannot read carefully, which is hardly any better. > [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > There is a phrase for that “the bigotry of low expectations” I don’t see how you’re getting that at all. Do you expect all white people among the readers to look up the derivation of phrases, instead of guessing from the context what they’re supposed to say about the characters who use them? Outside of an academic context that is studying the particular work in detail, IME very few people read like that. And refusing to pay any attention to other people’s lived experience on the grounds of claiming that it’s somehow racist to consider that it might be different from one’s own is not an argument that makes any sense to me at all. > [@Riemann](#): > > The word “niggardly” certainly sounds racist. It’s fairly obscure and it’s virtually identical aurally to the worst racial slur in the language. There’s nothing dumb about finding this word offensive - I agree it should go. (So far as I’m aware, nobody thinks “snigger” is a problem, because it’s a much more common word, and it’s usually clear from context that it’s not the slur.) > > On the other hand, there was a story (possibly apocryphal) about some local government official finding the term “black hole” offensive. I can see how a poorly educated person might reach that conclusion, but I think there is broad consensus that finding “black hole” offensive is either indicative of a low level of education - or yes, dumb. And in the context given for the use of “happy as a sandboy”, there’s nothing to indicate that it couldn’t be a slur, and some reason to think that it might be. Which reasons have been given in this thread. – for that matter, is the character who uses the phrase supposed to be an asshole? Because since the actual meaning of the phrase seems to be ‘low class workers are childish and are happy to be drunks’, it seems pretty assholish to me. Or maybe the character is supposed to be somebody who doesn’t pay any attention to the meaning or implication of their words? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/296 "2021-12-20T23:30:49Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > You are both acting as of it’s dumb to be offended by words that sound racist. I’m mulling over where “sandboy” fits in the spectrum between “niggardly” and “black hole” - and I don’t think it’s really _anywhere_ on that spectrum. The problem here is what you pointed out - historic use of the word “boy” by racists to assert a power dynamic. But nobody has ever suggested that this connotation is so dire that we need to expunge all use of the word “boy” from the language. So there’s nothing inherently offensive about just _hearing_ the word “boy”. So far as I’m aware, “sand” does not have any particular connotation at all. If the word in question were the hypothetical nonexistent word “cottonboy”, that would not be true. But so far as I can tell, “sandboy” does not inherently _sound_ any more racist than “schoolboy”. What you really mean is that you _know_ schoolboy is innocuous; whereas from a position of ignorance a _reasonable possibility exists_ that sandboy might have offensive connotations. I think we can say _both_ these things: (1) A careful writer could give context to the word “sandboy” when using it. (2) A careful reader would not jump to conclusions about it having racist connotations. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/297 "2021-12-20T23:38:56Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > (1) A careful writer could give context to the word “sandboy” when using it. > > (2) A careful reader would not jump to conclusions about it having racist connotations. Agreed. Although it sounds as though Walter is writing primarily for the rather select audience of readers who share his fascination with Victorian culture, so perhaps his first mistake was choosing to present this story to a general audience. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/298 "2021-12-20T23:47:33Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > And in the context given for the use of “happy as a sandboy”, there’s nothing to indicate that it couldn’t be a slur, and some reason to think that it might be. Which reasons have been given in this thread. And you seem to be continuing this irrelevant argument about what assumption someone could jump to without the facts, as though jumping to _some_ ill-informed assumption about a new word is the only possible course of action for a reader. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/299 "2021-12-20T23:53:08Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > So far as I’m aware, “sand” does not have any particular connotation at all. If the word in question were the hypothetical nonexistent word “cottonboy”, that would not be true. But so far as I can tell, “sandboy” does not inherently _sound_ any more racist than “schoolboy”. That’s already been contradicted in this thread. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > modern readers are likely to be familiar both with “-boy” as a racist pejorative term, and with “sand-” as a racist pejorative term referring to folks from the Middle East, I just googled “sand” as a racist pejorative term. I got hits. @Riemann: A lot of the point here is IMO in that ‘so far as I’m aware’. You appear to think that “Jane” should have looked up the derivation of “sandboy”; but you don’t appear to have thought it necessary to look up possible connotations of “sand”. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2021, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942/300 "2021-12-20T23:57:10Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Do you expect all white people among the readers to look up the derivation of phrases, I don’t expect _anyone_ to look up the derivation or etymology of words or phrases but If I wrote anything for which people expressed an interest I’d tell them and do them the courtesy of assuming they’ll understand what they are told. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-should-a-person-accused-of-racism-respond/955942.md?page=16)