Unfortunately, violence and aggression grab the attention more readily than normality and calm - it’s not good, but it’s the way things often seem to play out - the bad boys often spoil it for everyone.
Paki said by an asshole bigot is a slur. Paki said by a pakistani to refer to a native of Pakistan is not a slur. Homo said by an asshole bigot is a slur. Homo said by a homosexual to refer to a homosexual is not a slur. I see no reason why rules applied to the one should not be applied to the other.
It might, if modern filters can’t get around this interesting variation on the Scunthorpe problem.
Applying those rules can be tricker in a text based medium. But we do use context to determine if a comment is intended to be insulting and we use that when we’re deciding how to moderate posts.
I’ll just refer you to my previous answer - being ignorant of a given term’s pejorative use allows the user to the play the ignorance card (which is fine and legitimate) - but once informed to the contrary, the ‘well it’s not where I come from’ defence carries little weight.
Marley, I expressed myself that way because calling South Asians “Pakis” is comparable to calling black people “niggers” or Hispanics “Spics”.
People have long used such tactics to demonstrate how offensive such terms are. For example, Native American activists used to regularly parade around carrying signs at sporting events holding aloft signs emblazoned “The New York Niggers, The Cleveland Kikes, the San Francisco Faggots, the Sacramento Spics, and The Washington Redskins” to demonstrate just how offensive they found the term Redskin and how offended they were by the use of Indian nicknames for sports teams.
I should note I never heard any blacks or Hispanics complain about this tactic.
So no, I don’t think it was in bad taste and don’t see how it was out-of-line.
Moreover, I see other people using similar tactics on similar threads, such as discussions of the term “tranny”.
As to your other points, as several African-American academics and writers have pointed out, African-Americans having been referring to each other as niggers for centuries and it is only recently that some have shortened it to “nigga”. Furthermore millions of whites and others(usually hip-hop fans) regularly use the term “nigger” Jon-pejoratively.
As others have noted “homo” “queer” and “tranny” are all regularly used in non-pejorative ways.
As for Spic, yes, at a country club I worked at I heard many older whites who regularly used the term without the slightest suggestion they understood it was a racial slur.
You also say you didn’t give Truthseeker2 any moderator instructions because he’d already been issued several.
I’m confused because I don’t see him receiving any in that thread.
Now, obviously you’ve made your decision but once again I’ll point out that the logically consistent response to a poster in a post making nasty comments about Asian culture referring to a “Jap” would be to take him at his word when he claims he that he was using the term as shorthand for Japanese.
Similarly, if a poster were to complain about how “in your face” gay activists are and then comlain about seeing some “Homo” prancing around in high heels, who then claimed he meant the term “homo” to merely be short for homosexual not as a slur, you’d take him at his word and give him a pass.
I think you’d agree those would not be the proper response.
bldysabba - Whilst also missing the point that outside the US, the initials KKK have no sinister meaning whatsoever - but now we [the wider world] know that they do, then whenever they are used, our education in matters global allow us to see them as a term of reference.
An no one’s demanding that it’s “taken off the table” - merely that you’re cognisant of it so that it’s not used in the pejorative context.
I understand that that was your argument. The problem is that it’s not really true. In some contexts “Paki” is offensive and in others it’s a reference (possibly ill-informed) to the name of the country or the people who live there. In this thread we’ve already had a Pakistani poster disagree with you that the word is not always offensive.
Which I might do if I felt it resolved the situation.
All you have demonstrated is that Paki is not how people from Pakistan are formally known. That would have been a great victory for you if it had any bearing on what I was arguing. Unfortunately, tearing down strawmen doesn’t count for much around here. To clarify, I was responding to -
Notice from my list how, even though ‘Paki’ is not the formal dimunitive form for addressing citizens of Pakistan, it can be considered as being functionally equivalent to ‘Aussie’ or ‘Brit’, and very similar in form and manner of devising to a number of the other demonyms on the list? Notice how a Pakistani in the thread earlier has mentioned that most of his countrymen do not think of the term as a slur but use it to refer to themselves? Notice how I mentioned that many people in his neighbouring country use it in the same way, with no inherent offence associated with the term? Put all these things together please.
I am only commenting on Farmer Jane’s unsupported assertion that the term, in and of itself, is obviously a slur.
Sorry, now it just looks like you’re back-peddalling.
You’re obviously not reading what’s being written, so there’s little point in continuing with you.
I honestly don’t know which side of the argument this supports, but recall that George W. Bush used the term ‘Paki’, clearly not intending offense:
Except that in this case it is not the bad boys who’re ‘spoiling it’ for anyone. It is the white knights who think they’re rushing to the rescue of the terminally offended. It’s easy to police these things by focusing on not allowing Paki to be used as a racist slur. Why ask for a blanket ban?
Heh. Considering that you called my reposting an earlier response to you as ‘back-pedalling’, we’re definitely agreed on the quoted sentence. Verbatim.
Now I’m aware that your style is merely tangential asides and misdirection, I’m glad we got that sorted out.
Now on to more fruitful matters.
No (now you’ve re-edited your reply), my point is that you don’t actually read what’s being written or stick to the point being made, nor debate effectively, which is just tiresome and unproductive.
Good luck.
Do you at least acknowledge that I was only commenting on the assertion that one should know just by looking at it that “Paki” is a slur?
What about “Pak-man”?
Of course - yes - and I’ve never argued to the contrary. You make a very sound and reasonable point. My point (not to you) is that once having been informed that a given term, in this case ‘Paki’, has widespread (and I’m aware, having lived there, that Americans can be prone to seeing things only in their experience of living in the US, the outside world sometimes being anathema to them) pejorative contextual meaning, then it is foolhardy in the extreme to argue for its continued use. Rather in the same way that we don’t use ‘nigger’, ‘wop’, ‘dago’ etc any more, for very much the same reasons.
Again, members, here, who don’t live in the US (e.g. UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan etc.) will be aware that ‘PAK’ is merely the abbreviation of Pakistan, and is used throughout the cricketing world on on-screen scoreboards, as a matter of course, and without offence.