When Star Trek Voyager came out, a I kept hearing reporters refering to Tuvok as “the first African American Vulcan”. This irritates me to this day. Tuvok is from Vulcan. All his ancestors are from Vulcan. He is nether African nor American.
And the alternatives are even more meaningless. Asian-American Pacific Islander or whatever it is these days. A sloppy combining of something like three billion people and most of a hemisphere with very little in common.
He was the first Vulcan played by an African American actor though. (perhaps. I don’t know that for sure).
But that’s exactly what we’re talking about.
Someone, somewhere decided that “Illegal aliens” is dehumanizing, and then it was essentially pushed onto everyone else, as if everyone else was wrong for using the generally accepted term.
Surely you don’t see how that might put a bad taste in someone’s mouth? Here you are, using the term that’s commonly used, and someone else comes along, tells you you’re wrong, and demands you use some other term you’ve never heard of. It’s the direct or indirect implication that you’ve done something wrong that rubs a lot of people the wrong way about it.
That’s the issue- it’s not about people not wanting to call people what they want to be called, it’s totally (or was pre-Trump) about people not wanting to be told they’re wrong when they’re doing things in good faith.
I’ll use an example from my own life. (as preceded by @Odesio’s comments) I grew up in a suburb of Houston (Alief) with a very large Asian population. The word the Asian people used to describe themselves at the time was “Oriental”, so that’s what we used. Fast forward a couple of decades and moving to the Dallas area (not nearly so many Asians around), and I used the term “Oriental” in good faith to describe someone who is Asian, and was corrected for it. Honestly, it kind of irritated me initially- who was this (white) asshole telling me that I’m wrong- that’s what the Oriental guys called themselves!
Granted, I reassessed the situation and realized that times had changed, but most people don’t actually reassess anything- they just feel pissed and act out of emotion. (think about how many idiots post 1 star reviews of products because Amazon delivered it beat up or something) .
Someone, somewhere decided to use “Illegal aliens” because it is dehumanizing, pushed it onto everyone else, and refuse to consider any neutral term because dehumanization is their goal.
Exactly this, blatantly so. It’s a weird turn of phrase that makes no sense at all except as an attempt to dehumanize them as much as possible. As I said, we don’t even call serial killers “illegal”, only their acts.
Maybe, but it started as a troll from 4chan or whatever. It never was for decades and decades, then people got taken in ny the trolls. Now did many white supremacists actually use it as a WS symbol? Or were they just signing OK?
Who was trolling who? And he claims he was just cracking his knuckles. Not to mention a mexican american is unlikely to be a white supremacist.
There is actually a difference. I dont like that term, but in theory an "illegal alien” entered the USA illegally, while a “undocumented immigrant” entered legally on a visa, but the visa expired.
I kinda liked it. I mean “Indian” is old and wrong. “Native American”?
Hear that Nick?
According to Fuentes, he is of Mexican descent via his paternal ancestors
Sure, and there are black and gay MAGAs, But that’s not the way to bet.
Nationally, about 8 in 10 Black voters supported Harris.
Vice President Kamala Harris led President-elect Donald Trump 86% to 12% among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, according to the NBC News Exit …
I guess the one drop rule applies to Mestizos?
Ya know, their European ancestry allowing them to claim their Whiteness.
what are you babbling about?
What if I flatly say “no it’s not, you’re wrong”? Because if you are wrong, then the people complaining that you’re jumping down their throats are voicing a legitimate grievance.
Relevant information for Enrique, too.
Are people with European ancestry White?
Can Mexicans of European ancestry be White supremacists?
To paraphrase one of their leaders, “Facts I don’t care about your feelings.”
And only because they don’t seem to give a single fuck about anyone else’s.
Anyone can be a white supremacist. There’s no entry test.
I’m reminded of an old thread, Can the swastika be redeemed? about whether it would ever be possible to de-appropriate an ancient symbol back from the Nazis. Some posters basically said no, saying that intent doesn’t matter the Swastika now is inherently a hate symbol for all time, regardless of one’s intentions.
Oh sure.
But let’s go back to the dude in the truck. From the cites I read, he had no white supremacist background or social media posts. His one sin was supposedly making the OK sign, which is of very doubtful white supremacist meaning- not that it cant be. Next he claims he wasnt even making the OK sign, just cracking his knuckles.
And of course it depends- if you have some ancient Sanskrit items, that predate Hitler- certainly not racist. If you have a red armband with that symbol- very very likely nazi. In general, it shouldn’t be used today.
Understanding and empathy are reserved for people higher on the intersectional pyramid of privilege, it seems.
Yes, these language games are also frequently dishonest. Activists urge people to use their new terms on the pretext that they are more polite, while actually aiming to change attitudes through language (whether that’s effective is a different debate). When challenged, they use the excuse that ‘language evolves’ to cover their directed, non-evolutionary changes.
I saw a conspiracyish explanation for this recently: that the US limiting immigration from Europe and the Anglosphere is a favour to their allies, since if they choose they could easily braindrain all the talented young people away, with extremely ill effects on the other countries’ economies. Really, I think they just want to have uniform rules.
Most Americans do not want them there, as shown by Trump winning the popular vote, and by successive governments not changing the law to allow them to immigrate legally. That’s why you made it so hard.