Perhaps it’s nothing more than “words can have more than one meaning.”
Ah. Ignorance fought.
Snarky as fuck and completely untrue. Race, in the general sense, corresponds to a person’s skin color. Most understand this. It’s a shame that you don’t have a handle on today’s vernacular and can’t get past this.
Is inference completely lost on you? Not one other poster besides the OP has even given credence to the concept that the woman could be racist. That in itself answers your question.
I wasn’t “going off on a tangent”; I was trying to clarify the point and have reasonable discourse. If you’re going to continue taking little potshots, then you’re going to have to go head and fuck yourself, because I’m not interested.
I guess I don’t see the harm. Now if she vociferously shouted down the accomplishments of other players, fair enough. But is she even knowledgeable about baseball to even know what makes a good player? If that’s all she says, I think it’s fairly synonymous with saying, “These guys are my favorite players.” And the choice of Ichiro as being one of the best isn’t a bad claim at all.
Sure, I would, because I am reasonable (well, not on game day, and probably not during the season). But take my mom. She loves Texas and the Houston Oilers. She thought Warren Moon was the best QB ever. Now, there are some that will give credence to that opinion, and others who will look at criteria like Superbowls, playoff wins, etc. But it doesn’t matter. She’s a homer, and she thinks Moon is the greatest. If she really knew the game well and had a column in the Chronicle, maybe that would pose a problem.
I think Vince Young is the greatest college QB of all time. But I thought that before the 2005 Rose Bowl. There are guys with better stats, more prestigious programs, etc., but I’m fairly inflexible in this opinion. Likewise, Earl Campbell was the greatest college RB. I also realize if I grew up in Ohio I might think differently. That’s called being a homer.
Well, I haven’t lived in Texas for 12 years, but it’s still my neighborhood!
I’m not usually one to argue from a dictionary. Words have a degree of subtlety of meaning that dictionaries are not capable of conveying, and by nature they lag behind actual usage. A dictionary does not, as many people think, tell us what words are supposed to mean. What they tell us is how people are actually using words. So when you claim that race, in a “general sense,” corresponds to skin color, I’d expect this fact to be reflected in contemporary dictionaries. Which, as has been noted, they do not. So I’m afraid I’m going to have to take your claims about the state of the word in the modern vernacular as, “unproven, at best.”
That, to you, is a reasonable inference?
Yeah, that does answer my question. It answers a lot of my questions. Thanks for the clarification.
My “potshot” amounted to nothing more than accurately observing that you do not fully understand what the word “race” means. If you are so thin-skinned that you can’t handle any sort of correction, I would advise you to find a different message board to frequent. From the quality of your argumentation, I do not think you will have a terribly pleasant time on this board.
Thanks for your advice, but I won’t make any note of it.
I think I stated, clearly, what you’re going to have to go ahead and do.
Really? Your ESP-Fu is strong, grasshopper.
Language? Appearance? Funny sounding names? Place of origin? Yomama likes 'em?
It was a hypothetical.
…and just for shits and giggles .
And therefore non responsive.
So, tell me again how I am a bigot if I prefer one ethnic group over another in a purely personal matter. Oh, that’s right, you never did tell me that, did you?
If you choose to be with someone because they have characteristics that you find appealing, then so be it. If those characteristics are limited to a certain race of people, then so be it. If you don’t find any particular characteristic limited only to a specific race appealing, and yet you will only be with a person of that race, well, then, you’re at the minimum a little strange. This is strictly speaking in the realm of personal relationships, which has absolutely nothing to do with baseball players.
Get it? Please, oh Christ almighty, get it. It’s really not that hard to grasp.
But everything to do with personal preference. No accounting for taste, and all that.
Tell me again what harm becomes those outside the scope of my embrace? Is Johnny Damon in jeopardy due to her preference for Ichiro?
Are you being intentionally obtuse?
Tell me what specific characteristic a Japanese baseball player has that a Dominican baseball player does not. If you can, then let that be the basis for your bias. Fine.
If you can’t, then tell me why you’d favor one over the other? What directs your taste?
Country of origin? Did I get it?
None of your business? Did I get it?
As to being obtuse, for the third time, who is harmed when a person prefers Japanese players to non-Japanese players?
Tell me, did you do your own dictionary.com search to find that, or did you just cut and paste the link from my own, earlier post that went to exactly the same page?
See, here’s the thing: when a word has more than one definition, all those definitions apply equally to the word. One can establish that they are only using a particular definition of a word for their argument, but you didn’t do that when you first brought this subject up: you stated that Japenese was not a race, and when challenged on that, you responded only with, “What?” indicating that you had no idea there was any other definition for the word race. Hence, my “potshot” at you earlier. The very cite you linked to includes the following definitions for the word:
“a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.”
“any people united by common history, language, cultural traits, etc.”
“Synonyms 1. tribe, clan, family, stock, line, breed. Race, people, nation are terms for a large body of persons who may be thought of as a unit because of common characteristics.” (It’s worth noting that the very next sentence of this paragraph was the one you quoted in your post, meaning you had to ignore the first two sentences of your own cite to get to the selection that you seem to think supports your point.)
“A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.”
“A genealogical line; a lineage.”
“A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.”
“people who are believed to belong to the same genetic stock”
Pretty much all of those could be accurately applied to the inhabitants of the nation of Japan, meaning that Japanese is, by popular definition, a “race.” So you were, objectively speaking, wrong when you said “Japanese” is not a race. Apparently, pointing this out to you constitutes some species of personal insult. Which is unfortunate, because infering from your posts to this thread, you’re going to spend a lot of time here being deeply, deeply insulted.
Presumably, you know your grandmother better than we do. Is it not possible that she likes Japanese ballplayers best for precisely this reason? Did your grandmother have any particular interest in baseball outside of these particular players? Maybe she just thought they were cuter than the other players.
AGAIN, when there is no basis for the preference other than ethnicity, society is harmed. Isn’t that were bigotry originates?
Is there a word for people who go into a six-page thread that has died out, after a long, bloody battle, and stir shit again?
And, how does this not apply to Contrapuntal’s dating scenario again?
You mean an “Arnie Palmer?”
Nah… your assumption is based upon cultural relevance. To an outsider in Australia looking in, it sounded like the lady was being polite in the first instance up until the point you projected your own issues into the transaction. The challenge for you Rigmarole, is to admit that you too, have issues on this matter. Naming a drink after a certain person is common, to be sure. But certainly not so common in this instance that this particular Australian knows what an “Arnold Palmer” is. By extension, the racism you’re acccusing your customer of is based on the premise that you BOTH understood the cultural relevance of who Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods are, and I reckon you’re joining dots which don’t need to be joined here.
Frankly, this seems to be a total *non sequitur *to me. Harm to society is the origin of bigotry? Hardly.
Nevertheless, if my Italian grandmother insists that Italian tomato sauce is better than any other tomato sauce because it is Italian, is she a bigot? Has she harmed society?