So, after reading this threadI’d like to know which racial slurs are acceptable if one is a liberal and which ones are acceptable if one is a conservative.
Linkto specific post.
Certainly, if the poster in question was a conservative, the poster would have been issued a warning at least.
The moderators seriously need to reconsider their response.
Unless, of course, the mods think that only conservatives can be racists.
Slee
I would like to see evidence for your assertion that a conservative poster would be warned for calling someone an oreo. (Which, frankly is a really rude thing to say. Of all the prepackaged cookies on the shelf at the store, oreos are one of the most disgusting types.)
Also, things that don’t persuade me towards your point of view include disingenuously asking for a breakdown of allowable insults by political leanings.
It took almost three hours from me posting that ruling, to someone starting an ATMB thread about.
You people are slipping.
Actually, you people are the ones slipping. That’s a bad ruling. It’s clearly derogatory. In another current ATMB thread talking about the offensiveness of “injun”, Coibri gave a poster a warning and defends his decision with this:
And then he posts several dictionary entries showing that the word is “derogatory”. Okay, well here’s what I get for “oreo”: (emphasis mine)
3 definitions from here:
So, I guess we’re left with the space between “derogatory/insulting/rude/demeaning” and “hate speech”. And I am not surprised that these boards find room to allow it. The reason is that the term is almost always (always?) used to insult a black person who espouses what are seen as conservative principles. And thus, "Well, it is an insult, but its insulting people who deserve to be insulted, so we’ll let it slide.
You guys really should reconsider this. Or art least you and Colibri should get on the same page.
The board has been quite clear and consistent over the years on their policy of giving slack to long term posters with few or no warnings or notes. Have you considered the possibility that the reason one poster was warned and another was not is not because of the relative offensiveness of their language but because of their posting history?
magellan, you’re comparing a ruling about an insult in GQ, to a ruling about an insult in the Pit. Do I really need to explain why the comparison is inapt?
Personally, I just shrugged it off, as I found it funny more than anything else.
How offensive can a word used on Fresh Prince really be?
No. But if someone insulted another poster by referring to him a nigger or kike in either forum, would it matter? Wouldn’t there be a Warning in either case?
My view is that oreo is a disgusting word, every bit as bad as nigger. They both 1) are always applied to blacks only and 2) seek to demean the person by stripping him of his own identity as a man, or woman.
Good point. Certainly no more offensive than a word used in Tom Sawyer. Or used everyday in the black community.
By that criteria, so does the word ‘black’, particularly when used as a noun and not an adjective.
Yes, there almost certainly would be a warning in either case. But we’re not talking about the word “nigger,” we’re talking about the word “oreo.” And I don’t agree that the terms are equally insulting. They’re both racially based insults, but not all racially based insults are the same. I don’t think there are any racial insults that are even in the same league as “nigger.”
Not to break up a pity party, but this isn’t going to be a productive way to have this conversation. I don’t think you could back up this assertion if you tried, and I don’t think making a series of comparisons about other slurs and other mod responses is going to be productive. Let’s see if we can deal with the facts instead of making up another liberal vs. conservative bias debate:
As far as I can tell, we’ve never warned anybody for trotting out this term. (I checked our warning documentation and about three years of uses of the word “oreo.”) It also hasn’t happened very often. (There is some discussion of the word, without namecalling, here.) That being said, BobLibDem, you’ve used this one a couple of times for conservative black guys. What the hell? Racist or not, it’s dumb.
Colibri did warn Pablo O’Malley for his comment about “Injuns,” but that was after Pablo O’Malley got a handful of other mod notes, including this one for another (weird) racial comment. I can understand why people would prefer to see a warning here, but a single usage in the Pit might’ve been treated differently for reasons other than politics.
That’s how it was used here, but no, that’s not what it always means and I don’t think it’s even what it usually means. You’ll notice conservatism is not mentioned in any of the definitions you just posted.
That thread also points out some words used by other non-black communities. It’s a widespread ethnic thing, mostly used in-community. It’s hardly a racist epithet used by the white man to keep the black man down. Maybe not the wisest word to use, but it’s hardly horrific.
So because it’s in the Pit, it’s okay to use racial slurs to insult people?
So then since “house nigger” isn’t typically a “racial epithet used by the white man to keep the black man down” you think one should be able to use it regarding black posters one doesn’t like?
You’d have done better asking about ‘Uncle Tom’.
Huh?
I’m not playing a game, I’m simply asking a question based on your logic.
Since the term “house nigger” and “house negro” aren’t “racial epithets used by the white man to keep the black man down” then presumably you think they are acceptable racial slurs to use regarding black people you don’t like in the Pit.
If you think that they’re examples of “hate speech” while “oreos” aren’t then please explain your reasoning.
Thanks
I think he was trying to help your argument. Obviously, “house nigger” would *not *be alright, because “nigger” itself is not alright.
Huh,
Bosstone argued that it was acceptable to call black people “oreos” because " It’s hardly a racist epithet used by the white man to keep the black man down."
Based on that logic, it’s perfectly acceptable to call black people one doesn’t like or who are seen as hurting the cause of black people “house niggers” because it isn’t a racist epithet used by the white man to keep the black man down."
In fact, it was a term regularly used by black lis H. Rap Brown, Huey Newton and Malcolm X.
In fact, I’ve never heard any white person use the term “house nigger” while I’ve heard white people use the term oreo.
Have you heard any white people use the term?
Similarly, by his logic, it would be perfectly acceptable to, in the pit, refer to black posters as “house negroes”.
I assume you’d have felt that it would be perfectly acceptable to use such terms for blacks.
If not, please explain why “oreo” is okay but “house negro” and “house nigger” isn’t?
Thanks