I’ve got a better idea than going back and forth about the details of what this sentence said or that word means. Let’s get back on topic in a different way.
I am saying that people don’t have an absolute right to dictate whether a word should be considered offensive and therefore shouldn’t be used. There must be broader agreement on that, based on some good reasons. I used “chair” as an extreme example to illustrate my case. One could insist that “chair” offends them, but nobody would agree and their demands that nobody use the word would be dismissed. Obviously there are some words that are indisputably offensive, and many more than are on the fence.
So do you agree that no person or group can unilaterally declare a word offensive without some kind of backing for the claim and agreement about it from the rest of us? That’s all I was saying, and I don’t think it’s that controversial.
And here’s the manifestation of the white fragility syndrome, on which the merest possibility of a false accusation of racism is treated as something on the level of a centuries-long bloody, brutal, monstrous, dehumanizing, actual history of racism.
The word “Thug” is not racist. It basically means “criminal”, right?
The only place I’ve seen it branded as racist is here on SDMB by the racism-obsessed liberals. An example was given of a police department that referred to blacks as “thugs”. Well, police deal with the criminal element; What if they had referred to those blacks as “criminals”? Would “criminal” then be branded as racist?
But its specific type of criminal / person who behaves poorly.
All the following are criminals. Shoplifters. Cat burgulars. Regular burgulars. Ham burgulars. Scam artists. Embezzlers. Mofia bosses. Tax evaders. Business owners that don’t follow health or safety codes. Assassins. Terrorists. Time share salesman and on and on.
These are all different than a thug.
In the “certain black people behaving badly” news in the past few years “thug” is the perfect descriptor for some of those folks IMO.
Then you don’t read very widely. While the dynamic was first noticed much earlier, there’s been quite a bit of attention on it in the last two years. Here are just a few random data points.
That’s right. I thought everyone understood this entire conversation to be about US English context. It’s completely typical for the understanding of slurs to differ between countries.
I said nothing of the kind. I did not suggest that being accused falsely of racism was as bad as the suffering of the victims of racism. Don’t be fucking ridiculous.
I believe that being racist is a really really bad thing, and therefore being falsely accused of racism is a deep insult. If you think it’s no big deal, fine.
I also note that false accusations of racism only weaken the effort to stop real racism. But if it’s all the same to you, whatever.
It’s also completely parochial to think that your own little world is all that matters in the context of language change. But even then, if we can’t take our cultural cues from two of the highest rankinggovernment officials, one of them a member of the alleged group targeted by the term, then maybe something about the premise needs to be questioned. Or is it your contention that those two men re not “widely read”?
Huh? American usage is not “all that matters,” but it’s pretty central to the specific question of the evolution of American English.
I think Obama and Kerry were invoking the term deliberately for political reasons. I did not agree with the choice, and Obama in particular certainly took some heat for it.
It’s not about you and whether you think you’re being deeply deeply insulted at being called a racist. That’s petty. That’s white fragility.
It’s not about whether you are a racist. That’s trifling.
Get your head out of yourself and look at the big picture.
You are racist. I am racist. Our society is racist. The task before us is how to keep making our society less racist so that people are less harmed by racism.
As a general matter white people in our society benefit from racism. I really don’t care whether you’re deeply deeply insulted. Stop thinking about yourself.
Or I could reject the notion entirely that it is a thing.
Or I could write my own blog post and make something else up and call it a cute name that sounds official too.
The funny thing is though, nobody “called me out about race.” I simply mentioned that false accusations of racism happen. Do you disagree? Sounds to me like I’m not the fragile one.
False accusations of racism haven’t caused a tiny fraction of the harm that racism has. False accusations of racism occur, I just don’t think they’re particularly damaging. In terms of their effect on the country I think it’s a tiny blip compared to the effects of racism.
I think it’s a miniscule part of the puzzle – so small as to be pretty much irrelevant.
I think they are enormously damaging to our ability to have a desperately needed honest and respectful conversation about race in this country. I think false accuations or the fear of them keeps many whites from talking about race at all, let alone trying to do anything about it. I think that is a huge part of why we never seem to make progress with racial problems. Most everyone is very defensive and untrusting. And there’s also the “crying wolf” problem. Many claims of racism are dismissed, even legitimate ones, because of the ones that aren’t legit.
Of course. I never said it was worse than racism itself. But I think it hurts efforts to fight racism.
I wasn’t rejecting the idea that white people can get overly defensive about race issues. Of course not.
I reject the idea that we can discuss this by throwing blog posts with made up “syndromes” at each other. And you are proving my point. You have set a trap whereby anything I say to defend myself is “defensive” and so I’m stuck in a catch-22 where by simply denying what you say, it still proves your point. It’s witch hunt logic. Sorry, no, I won’t fall in that trap.
Back to the point: I never said white people can’t be defensive. I said I wasn’t being defensive. I never even said I had been falsely accused of racism. I simply said false accusation of racism happen. Do you disagree? I’d say that from the reaction to that simple statement, I’m not the fragile one here.