A rule with a reasonably bright line (i.e., a rule by which the overwhelming majority of cases may be judged as acceptable or unacceptable);
A comprehensive list of forbidden terms (which I think would be disastrous)
A statement that hate speech is like obscenity, and you’ll know it when you see it; or
No rule against hate speech.
I’m in favor of 1 or 3, and I think the rule about terms that are associated with a pattern of violence in which the terms have seen use is a “reasonably bright line” rule. I think 3 would be fine, since despite protestations to the contrary, the overwhelming majority of board members know perfectly well what words to avoid. I think 4 would work, but would lessen the calibre of the board. And I think 2 would be an open invitation to jerks to skirt the border of the rules, similar to the results of the “no personal insults” rule in Great Debates (which leads to people saying things like, “Only a lunatic would support HSUS,” and getting away with it since they didn’t directly call the thread’s human society supporters lunatics).
There could be rule in #1 that says, “Any insult that incorporates the target’s race, religion, sex, sexual preference, age, or disability status is prohibited.” I think that rule would be overbroad: we should be able to insult Fred Phelps for his hateful religion, we should be able to insult eaters-of-the-pubic-hairs-of-strangers for their sexual preference, we should be able to call people puerile, and so forth. But such a rule would not be disastrous.
If we go with such a rule, I’d rather see it go all the way, and prohibit insults entirely. There’s nothing special about someone’s religion that ought to make it more protected from being insulted than their desire to eat pubic hairs or their refusal to take showers or their belief that aliens are controlling Tom Cruise.
But at least such a rule would also have a reasonably bright line, which is, I think, the main thing.
I tell you what folks, ye defenders of the filth. Let’s try a little social experiment. The next time you see a person of color misbehaving in public, call that person black trash, or red trash, or yellow trash as is appropriate. After you get out of the hospital, do a little linguistic search for me. Find another phrase in English that is equvalent to “white trash,” i.e., it has a specific literal meaning, said meaning is dehumanizing, degarding and racist, said meaning was the original meaning, but now which means something else altogether. Happy Hunting!
Rarely. Was this supposed to make me happy? Does it satisfy this requirement?
*it has a specific literal meaning *
“Gyp” is a word that was made up. It has no specific literal meaning other than the one assigned to it. Now, if people used to call gypsies “ratshit Romanies,” but now the term meant something esle entirely, you might have a point.
And according to Lefty et. al., “gypped” is still racist.
I won’t do this experiment, because I do not see its relevance to the rule I proposed. Besides, I don’t call people white trash, a phrase that I find offensive but not bannably so; why would I use a phrase that I consider bannably offensive?
Well, at least they haven’t thrown you in the paddywagon, LHD. (I find the phrase offensive, myself. Which is why I remember my mother using it about ‘the blacks’. She’s a fine, upstanding person, but every so often, she just says one or two little things that make me gape, and realize that we have come a long way.)
You’re off the hook on this one. I am refering to the folks who claim that white trash isn’t about race, refers to people who are not white, and merely describes “trashy” behavior.
We live in a society where even the faintest ignorant wrong-headed glimmer of a hint of racism against black folk is accepted as truth, cite , where if you say “red trash” or “black trash” then no other than a racist meaning is admitted, where ipso facto any possible insult must be assumed if it even hints of racism, but “white trash,” although it’s literal definition is racist to the core, gets a pass. Not only a pass, but it** cannot ** and must not be construed as racist. Welcome to Whirly World folks, check your skepticism at the door!
I simply do not believe that in a society as color conscious as ours, “white” is the only one that carries no weight.
Actually, I’ve been waiting for you to come up with an example of hate speech that would be exempt from a warning under the “don’t be a jerk” rule. May I assume you have abandoned the search?
I appreciate being off the hook; but at the same time, I believe people who say they don’t intend a racial insult through the use of the word. I’ve only heard white people use it about other white people, and I’ve not heard it used by a white person who hates white people, and I’ve usually heard it used in a twisty sense (calling Britney Spears “White trash” to indicate that she’s not all that). The reason I don’t use it is because I think it’s classist, not because it’s racist.
Actually, that cite shows that the faintest ignorant wrong-headed glimmer of a hint of racism against black folk is widely mocked and held in contempt: everyone in that thread (at least up to the point that I stopped reading it) agreed that Blizzard’s move was at best a corporate move to avoid trouble, and at worst a wrong-headed move of political correct hysteria.
Amazingly, I disagree :). It seems to me that “white trash” may be unique among American epithets, as an epithet that:
Is used solely against a member of a racial group
to which the majority of users of the term belong
as a way of insulting the person’s perceived social class,
often in a joking way that includes the speaker.
The closest equivalents I can think of are if one black person calls another an Uncle Tom, or one American Indian calls another an apple (“red on the outside, white on the inside.”) However, these terms are rarely if ever used in a friendly/joking way that includes the speaker.
It may be instructive that dropzone and e-sabbath are making me grin with their racially-derived words :). Perhaps because I’ve never been, or been afraid of being, the target of violence because of my British-Isles heritage, words like “paddywagon” and “welsh” carry no suckerpunches for me.
But a move nonetheless, and hence my point. In America, a man has been fired for saying “niggardly.” “Crowbar” has been questioned as a racist word. It may seem trivial to you that a company altered it’s product on such scant evidence. It may seem significant to you that thirty or so Dopers found it silly. Not to me.
that might be because we’re playing nice, just using ones that have entered general circulation and lost their ethnic meanings. I don’t know about e-sabbath but I can play MUCH nastier, if you’d like.
Apples and O’s my dear friend, Apples and O’s. That hate speech is racist my premise. Whether I have proved it anyone is an open question. Some are in agreement with me. I suspect I would never be able to “prove” it to you, even if others accepted it. That bar is quite high.
However, you have asserted something that is a matter of fact, to wit, that there exists an example of hate speech of such a description that the “jerk” rule is insufficient to address it. It requires no proof, merely an example. You have had four days. How much more time do you need?
Oh, that again. What, you still don’t get it? I never said that it wasn’t sufficient to address hate speech but rather a more specific rule was needed to avoid those who would spout hate speech and claim ignorance when informed it violated the “don’t be a jerk” rule.
[Foghorn Leghorn]
Any of this getting through to you?
[/Foghorn Leghorn]
I kinda like your reasoning, but unless 1&3 are decided by a committee of mods/admins (I don’t really know yet how these things are decided at SDMB), one mod’s decision that a certain phrase/usage is or isn’t ‘hate speech’ is just her/his opinion. The ‘I know hate speech when I hear it’, usually applies when you feel that speech is directed at you, not someone else.
I don’t like 2 at all. After all, even if (or especially since) the Pit is meant for ranting, I don’t think we need any handholding.
My favorite is #4. You can tell an awful lot about a person by the insults she uses.
