Agreed.
Where do we draw the line? Brit? Aussie? Black? Every term is offensive to someone.
Why don;t we concentrate on the ones that really are meant and use that way, instead of allowing Political Correctness to run amok.
No, and no one’s ever suggested we take a blanket ban - can we please stick to the specifics and not go off in tangential misdirection and false dichotomies?
We are doing precisely that - it’ll just take the US a little time to catch-up (as the rest of the world did with ‘nigger’).
Like I said I might be wrong. I only came to the conclusion after asking my wife, who was raised in England. She said it was offensive, but more like calling someone a “Spic”, and not nearly the same level as what “nigger” is used to mean.
To be honest with myself, the only name/word that I really find offensive to my own sensibilities is “nigger”. There is a history there that is pure institutional racism to an embarrassing scale for mankind. All the others might represent some varying derogatory degree depending on the person speaking, including those who simply delight in shortening names but nothing on the scale of the N word. My early years, as one of many immigrants in Canada were full of European name contractions and the only word in that regard that my mother discouraged was “DP”.
What puzzles me, is that to the best of my knowledge (and please correct me if you can) that the two peoples who might obviously have slurs for each other, the Palistinians and the Israelis, don’t.
No, what what they usually do is simply deny each others existence as a nation.
Palestinians almost never refer to “the Israelis” or even “the Zionists”(unless there’s a camera crew nearby) but instead refer to “the Jews” while the Israelis often simply refer to “the Arabs” rather than the Palestinians.
By that logic, no racial slurs exist. They’re often uttered inside sentences.
That wasn’t meant to be a fully formed argument - just an observation that the intent of the quoted phrase looked to be at least as much a problem as the inclusion of any specific word. Please dont try too hard to misunderstand me…
Sure, but that was just an example. I’ve heard the word used in a thousand different ways. The constant tends to be the word.
Because the word “jap” IS used that way. And you bloody well know it. Once again, context and history play a part, no matter how much you insist otherwise.
OK - that’s not in dispute.
As I said, until I joined this thread, I had only ever encountered the word in its UK context (violently racist), but it turns out that’s not global - maybe not even the majority usage of the term, and a significant portion of the community of people who use the term innocently are the people of Pakistan. Hence, a blanket ban cannot be appropriate.
Well, as was pointed out earlier, a significant portion of the people who use the term “nigger” (man, I hate even typing these words!) are black people. That doesn’t make it OK for anyone else to use the term, though. It means something different from different people and, unfortunately, intention is not a factor. It’s a strict liability word.
But more importantly - the term doesn’t mean “from Pakistan”. With all due respect to those in Pakistan, it’s not just about them. The word has grown beyond them. Indian people do not appreciate it, and there are lot of them - and I assure you the term is applied equally to Indians, as it is to others.
Nobody argued that it did. Seriously. Nobody is arguing that people who use the term with racist intent should get away with doing so.
Yes it does. It absolutely does, to a lot of people. (At least, in the same sort of sense as ‘Brit’ means from Britain - the only important difference is that ‘Brit’ is fairly uniformly non-offensive)
You know, I think the best thing would be for you to argue this directly with AK84. You’re proposing deletion of what he considers a perfectly innocuous part of his vocabulary, on account of the misbehaviour of idiots in another country.
Wait a minute…
We both agree that the term ‘paki’ is unacceptable in the UK - so let’s set that aside please.
Are you suggesting that no white people anywhere in the world should now be able to use this term, even if they have always previously done so in accord with the same innocuous descriptive intent as native Pakistanis use it?
Let’s say Australians, for example - if they’ve only ever used the term ‘Paki’ as a descriptive abbreviation, maybe even because they learned it from native Pakistanis - they must stop using it that way, because they’re white, and some (mainly) white people in Britain tainted the word with their racist usage?
Is that what you’re saying? It sounds like it is, but I really hope it isn’t, because that itself would be a horribly racist view.
OK, I’ll be clear:
Nobody, anywhere, should ever call me a Paki.
That’s very clear, but not very useful.
On the other hand, people in India refer to “the Japs” all the time, and the term has no such context or history there.
I’ve got a pocketful of UAV’s and I’m going to the arcade…
Well, I’d say that most on this particular board, if they’re of Japanese descent, or are from Japan, would feel otherwise. And as such, perhaps you should take that into account.
Just as some here have said, they don’t like being referred to as “Pakis”. Common courtesy.
The Ummah was real, but they haven’t really existed since 1999 and I have no idea what relevance Q-Tip and his friends have to this discussion.
I had to re-read most of that thread to see what the hell you were on about; as I read I remembered it was the thread where you misquoted me in order to “win” a point. Please quote where I called you sexist.
Jews are not a nationality. Israelis are a nationality. When you can show me Jewland on a map, then I’ll agree that Jews are a nationality.
You want to know why Muslims aren’t a “race”? Because you can choose to be Muslim.