well, I for one, am impressed. you’ve certainly been told off now.
wow. the wit. the je ne’ cest quoi. the panache.
“get bent” we gotta write that one down for the archives!
please, don’t hold back, since this is roasting of such rare delicasy I can only wait for the rest of the vernacular vitriol to vent my way.
please no wittisisms like ‘get bent’ as they are liable to be misconstrued as malopropisms or “common” speach. Don’t use the vernacular or you will be tarred as the “hoi polloi”.
keep piling on please
I remember that thread, and Monty’s posts in it. I also remember that Twisty recanted his statements and asked that the thread be closed after he’d had a chance to get his head together. My impression was that he ultimately agreed with Monty: despite what he’d been through, it was no excuse for bigotry.
Neither do I, but I’m not about to criticize someone for standingup to racism. The point is that there’s never any valid excuse for racism. Ever. Certainly, knowledge of someone background should inform your approach to dealing with someone else’s racism, and Monty could on occasion be a bit more tactful about that. But in the main, he is correct: previous trauma does not excuse current bigotry.
The fact that Monty went after the strawman doesn’t change it from being a strawman. The OP was about kuniochi’s posts in the other thread, not about how Monty would hypothetically react to a person he has never, nor likely will ever, meet.
You have, in that you’re attacking Monty over what you believe his actions would be in a hypothetical situation. The fact of the matter is, Monty hasn’t said anything that isn’t manifestly true: kuniochi’s granddad makes frequent biggoted remarks against Japanese, and is therefore a bigot.
I disagree. I think there is a very clear line: don’t be a racist.
To my way of thinking, racism is by definition the product of warped thinking. The proper response to it isn’t to ignore it and let it become more warped, like an ingrown toenail, but to take the steps necessary to straight the person out.
Speaking of logical phallacies, I think I’m about to make one, but if you let the “mild” bigotry slide, I think you are only encouraging more virulent bigotry in the future. Slippery slope? Maybe, but slippery slopes aren’t allways phallacies.
I disagree. As horrible as the Holocaust was (and there’s not much that’s more horrible in human history) the survivor is still a human being, and is subject to the same rules of social behavior as the rest of us. I wouldn’t start screaming in his face, but I would certainly not let the remark pass without comment.
Both you and Chief Crunch have pointed this out, and are of course correct. “Right” was poor word choice, as everyone of course has the right to be a bigot. I should have said, “Is it acceptable etc.” instead.
Such a psychological “fight or flight” response is entirely understandable, not to mention common, and the girl absolutely should not be called on it.
Using racist slurs, on the other hand, is not. I would probably let it slide if she confined it to describing the guy who raped her, as it might be an important part of her working through her feelings about her attacker, but I wouldn’t let blanket slurs against an entire race of people slide. I’m not saying I’d get in her face and call her a racist, but I would address the issue in as friendly and non-confrontational a manner as possible. Same as I would if she’d said such things before she was raped.
But he is a bigot. It certainly doesn’t define the whole of his being, but it is still no less true because of that.
It’s been, what fifty years? It’s not like he got out of the camp yesterday. He should get over it already. The people who tortured him are all long dead by now, or are at least in a similar state of decrepitude. What he suffered was surely awful, but if he’s still letting it define him after all this time, I don’t think I’d have much respect for him, either.
What I’m getting at here is, how long can someone play the victim? A great many POWs, Holocaust survivors, and rape victims are not racists, so why should those that are be granted special exemptions? If other people who have suffered as much or worse can avoid the trap of falling into that kind of thinking, what does it say about the survivors who didn’t avoid it? And are we doing them a disservice by letting them get away with it? It’s easy to say this, sitting here in my soft and priviledged life, but I would like to think that if something terrible happened to me and I started exhibiting racist tendencies, there’s be someone like Monty around to slap some rhetorical sense into me.
In summary, John McCain was shot down over Vietnam and held for some time (several years?) in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was subjected to brutal torture. I believe they either deliberatly broken his arms, or at least refused him medical attention for fractures incurred when his plane crashed. Among a great many other things. During his presidential campaign, he refered to his captors as “gooks.” This isn’t some doddering old man, this is a guy making a bid to be Leader of the Free World. Should that have been held against him as a presidential candidate? Should he get a free pass on his racist comments, even if he’s going to be in a postion where he is responsible for the representation of a great many Vietnamese immigrants?
Well, if nothing else, at least we agree about Skillet.
Thanks, Miller. Well said as you addressed the points I was actually making.
Amen to that! The hypocracy too, don’t forget.
Try http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bigot and look at the Websters’ Revised Unabridged Dictionary source about halfway down.
I wish I could remember exactly what Alexander Pope had to say about what it actually meant to be free - IIRC he defined it as meaning that one was free to speak ones thoughts. He’d have wept or laughed out loud at all this pc bullshit, all this enormous effort to control what one can or cannot say and when. He, I am sure, would have recognised that 21st century society, in it’s way, was tyrannised as surely as any other before it; albeit in the most feeble and pathetic manner conceivable.
And, yet, Reuben’s first posting in this thread is, essentially, his attempt at controlling what I say. How’s that for hypocrisy!
I took exception with what you were saying; I was certainly not trying to control it. Big difference. When I spoke of control, I wasn’t really talking to you (who were, in turn, merely taking exception to something someone else had said), but referring in a general way to the pc lobby’s surprisingly effective attempts to control what can or cannot be said / seen / heard / taught / etc.
There’s an old quotation that every schoolboy used to know, of which I am minded now :
“I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
Even yours, Monty!
So, Reuben, you’re saying that you were wrong above? I, after all, never said, “Yo, coworker, how about not using that incredibly ignorant racist term.” What I did was suggest that the other coworker merely constantly remind him that he’s a bigot if he’s using the incredibly ignorant racist term.
Reubens et-al. No Irony included in my post, simply the statement that bigotry seems to be defined in the online dictionary as a belief that your position (views, faith…) is superior to all other opposing positions and that all other positions are inherently wrong. Thus a bigot to be called such needs to act bigoted towards all other positions.
Ergo
Calling an ex POW, bigoted if they are racist towards their captor race is incorrect.
Calling the same ex POW, bigoted towards their captor race is correct.
Calling a white supremacist bigoted is correct, since they consider their race greater than all others.
Calling me bigoted towards scientology is correct, because I believe scientology is a load of old cod’s wallop.
Does this make since?
Cheers, Bippy
[Muttley] Darsherdly, shufferring, fruggleing, spell checker [/Muttley]
No, I don’t think I was actually wrong anywhere. I still think it is wrong to apply modern sensibilities to people of another time and in such a different situation from ours. By such logic you, Monty, may end up being damned by your own descendants for once having visited a zoo (cruelty to animals!) or for not being a vegetarian, or wearing leather, or driving a car, or something similar. It’s not on. You are as much a product of your time as they were of theirs.
It is also wrong, to my mind, to apply such judgement in the most direct, confrontational, disrespectful way possible; one that makes no allowance for supremely mitigating circumstances or for the possibility that other opinions may carry equal weight to your own.
I don’t think Monty or anyone else is talking about labeling things in the past according to today’s rules. Such ideas are naive and insulting to the people in the past. The problem is with people in the present who are still exhibiting prejudices of the past, such people should IMHO be asked to review their prejudices and avoid offending the innocent.
A Jew or Homosexual who says all Germans in the early 1940’s were evil bastards, is maybe over generalizing, but not acting unreasonably.
A Jew or Homosexual (even if they lived through the Holocaust ) who says all Germans are evil bastards, is being bigoted, and an attempt should be made to make that person relent from such racism.
Now I believe the attempt should be made, because such people are often community leaders, politicians, or simply quoted by the press, and such bigotry is a source for antagonism between groups.
Btw, Reuben: I am vegetarian.
Evil bastards? You don’t have to be an evil bastard to be complicit in genocide. All you have to do is turn a blind eye, turn in your neighbors, help build the gas chambers and crematoria. While there were brave Germans like Hans and Sophie Scholl and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who resisted the Nazis, the German people as a whole willfully collaborated in the murder of innocent Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, clergy, and all the victims of the German concentration camps.
I wouldn’t say that about younger Germans today because their nation has learned from the mistakes of the past, but I definitely would say that that their grandparents have a lot to answer for. The old people in German nursing homes are the same people who fingered their Jewish neighbors, who staffed the police and the army and the SS, who did horrible things 60 years ago.
In this case, generalization is not wrong.
gobear I think you just agreed with me pretty much completely, but I would include ‘blind eye turners’ as ‘evil bastards’ (maybe an understandable evil, but still an evil act). And I assume by ‘I wouldn’t say that about younger Germans today because their nation has learned from the mistakes of the past’ I guess you agree that saying ‘all Germans are evil bastards’ is wrong, and by inferrence biggoted towards Germans (or at least ‘younger Germans today’).