First off, you yourself have stated that you don’t think this neighbor is racist. If a person can use “nigger” without being racist, surely a person can use “white trash” without being racist?
Second, you’ve not established that hate speech rules conform precisely to forbidding speech with racist intent. Until you establish that, your final request in the quote above is irrelevant.
Daniel
Like I said early on, hate speech is whatever pisses off the power du jour.
Yes, that would be the only possible conclusion if hate speech is not racist.
Daniel
Now all Contra has to do is be the power du jour. Problem sovled! 
I just spent the last 2 hours of my life reading every post in this thread, and I gotta tell ya, I have a headache.
First of all, I have no idea what some of the racist terms quoted mean. I’ve never even heard the terms “blue gum” or “high yella.” Maybe it’s because I grew up in a virtually microscopic town in Nebraska where one, count them ONE, black family (of 5) lived. I was friends with two of the three of the black kids who went to my school. The exception was the youngest son…not because he was black, but because he was an asshat. Notice I didn’t say “black asshat.”
Not everyone where I grew up was white. There’s a college in the town that I come from and we had people of all different shades who came to go to school and live there. From black to lily white to “red” (are these sunburned people?) to “yellow” (although I’ve never seen a yellow person unless you count the people with liver cancer who had to visit the doctor that I used to work for…there’s a word for yellow people, it’s jaundiced, k?). There were people who spoke different languages, their native languages. There were migrant workers who would come to help harvest and detassle and earn a living.
There were many exchange students in my school. Two of them were from Spain, one was named Jose and the other was named Jesus. We used to call them “Hose-A” and “Hose-B.” They didn’t get their undies in a bunch about it. You know why? Because it was a JOKE. A light-hearted joke. Not a nasty racial slur or a way to single them out so they could get their asses kicked without any of the white kids feeling bad. A way of making them one of the crowd, a really, really funny joke when you were 16 and in a strange country hanging out with strange people who didn’t know a Jose from a Jesus.
I lived in that town from the time I was 7 until I was 18. Never once was there a racial attack. I never heard about racism or “tolerance for the differently colored” unless I was watching TV until I moved to the “big city.”
As far as the whole “white trash” thing goes…who the hell cares? I mean really…aren’t there more important things to worry about? Poverty, world hunger, the state of affairs of the environment, endangered species, child abuse, homeless pets? ANYTHING!!! :smack:
I don’t use racial slurs.
I don’t use the “N” word. I’ve never met an “N.” There’s no such goddamned thing as one. So people who use that word, and people who invented that word aren’t much more than 5 year olds fighting over who’s daddy could beat up someone else’s daddy. “I’m better than you because I’m white and you’re not.” Puh-lease!
“White trash” isn’t offensive to me. I’ve never met a piece of “white trash.” The word is stupid. It’s a way of someone with money and “class” trying to make themselves feel like they can look down their nose on someone who is less fortunate and less educated than they are. All while showing everyone within the sound of their voice that they are a completely classless moron who carries all of their taste in their mouth.
Several people I grew up with came from families that had lost their sprawling farms or ranches to the bank and had to move into a trailer with their moms and dads and brothers and sisters. Does that make them trailer trash or white trash? Or both? I’ll tell you what they were…they were BROKE.
In my opinion, all of those words are stupid. Keep the hate speech rule, lose the hate speech rule. I honestly don’t give a damn. If someone calls you a name that hurts your feelings, go talk to your mom or dad or friends or kids. Better yet, go talk to your grandparents or great grandparents. I bet THEY had to deal with a hell of a lot more hate speech and predjudice and injustice than you have. With any luck, Darwin was right and the assholes who use language like that will die out eventually through survival of the fittest.
Maybe I don’t understand the finer points of this argument because I’m a dumb redneck from Nebraska (red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer).
Can’t we all just get along?
Hey, all I was saying… I think. Contra’s real good at dodging around and changing the argument…
All I was saying is it’s possible for a term to be racist but not hate speech.
It’s possible for a term to have been racist at one point, be racist from the derivation of the word, but be racist no longer because the word, as used, no longer has racial overtones and meaning. It’s even possible for a word to have started as a perfectly good word and become racist over time. Or even become hate speech. Despite the derivation of the word not having one racial term in it.
White Trash: Not hate speech. Despite having racial content.
“I’m right, I know I’m right, and nothing you say will disuade me” in action. Reminds me of an exchange I had with a fellow on a baseball sim board, he was complaining that two of his players had apparent career-ending injuries within the same month and said that this would never happen in real life. When some of us, including myself, said that it indeed can happen, he asked for examples. When I brought up Steve Olin and Bob Ojeda (someone else added Tim Crews), the guy refused to accept the example. Instead he:[ul][]claimed Olin and Ojeda were never on the same team.[]said Ojeda continued to pitch.[]said Olin was a “nobody”.[]said they weren’t baseball-related.[]claimed to not know about the accident because he was in high school at the time.[]said we just like to argue.[*]accused us of having delusions of knowing everything.[/ul]
The certainly can. However, a person cannot call another person a nigger on the SDMB without a warning against hate speech. I have never claimed that ‘nigger’ was always hate speech; only that if it is here, then so is ‘white trash’.
Actually, no one has established that anything is hate speech, save the items listed by TVeblen. They all happen to be racist. I would be interested in seeing an argument proposing that ‘nigger’ is hate speech, but not racist.
This is really becoming tiresome. When it suits you to hold me to a strict literal interpretation of my words you do so; when you find yourself attributing claims to me I never made, you read between the lines and invent interpretations out of whole cloth. Stop it. You are embarassing yourself.
While I am sure it is true that some people can call others ‘white trash’ and mean it affectionately, as it has been asserted is true for ‘nigger’, it is also true that many others use the term perjoratively. They single out their fellow humans by color and refer to them as trash. They set themselves above the objects of their scorn. These people are racists. You mount an apology for them. You are a racist apologist. Perhaps you should read your own instruction concerning how words can shift meaning when attached to other words.
Bullshit. My point has always been that A) If ‘nigger’ is hate speech then so is ‘white trash’; or B) If the rule is to be capriciously applied we have no need for it. The rest of this “trainwreck” has been you folks floundering around trying to find an equivalent term. Bloodsucker? Capo? Dutch fuckin uncle? Pitiful.
To quote the widely respected debater and SDMB poster** Left Hand of ** Dorkness–“Nu huh.”
Thank god we can hate poverty stricken white people with rotten teeth who live in shacks and piss outside. They’ve enjoyed their advantages long enough.
If only I had offered a potential guideline like five bajillion times in this thread by which something may be determined to be “hate speech.” If only.
Daniel
Let’s try it nice and slow and simple.
If nigger is hate speech, why is white trash hate speech?
As I understand it, hate speech has a close resemblance to the traditional term, ‘fighting words’. Nigger is a fighting word. White trash is, as I know it, not. It’s certainly not nice, mind you. Neither is sheeny. But I don’t think you could call sheeny hate speech.
It would help if you clearly stated your meaning instead of accusing me of seeing a meaning that isn’t there.
So you say. Sorry, but “it is because I say it is” doesn’t wash.
No need. I agree that “nigger” has lost its racist context with some people but not with the majority.
A point which you hold so steadfastly that it’s impossible for you to entertain the notion that a word can be racist by itself but not when coupled with other words. That’s where the song and dance comes in.
You sure are!
I sense another round of Contra’s “I’m not listening! I’m not listening!”
Found something interesting at the University of North Carolina School of Law:
You have offered a potential guidline. I fail to see how that *establishes * anything, with all due respect.
White trash, as I know it, is. I work on construction sites. I live in a lower class, mixed race neighborhood. When people say white trash, it ain’t friendly.
Uh, I was referring to ‘racist’ as it modifies ‘apologist.’
See the following quotes by
and
*What is hate speech?
The variation of Internet hate speech that we examine here can be defined as extremely offensive personal insults and characterizations that are directed against an individual’s or group’s race, religion, ethnic origin, gender, or sexual preference, and **which may incite ** violence, **hatred, or discrimination.***Check. Or rather, checkmate. Thanks for the cite.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. There’s a French expression I learned awhile ago that I think applies now: you’re buttfucking a fly, pardon my French.
You said, and I shall quote, “I would be interested in seeing an argument proposing that ‘nigger’ is hate speech, but not racist.” I responded by pointing out that I’ve offered such an argument like five bajillion times by now. Leave that poor insectoid sphincter alone, man!
Uh…you ARE aware that my blanket denial of your point was just making fun of your own ipsedixitism, right? You keep just insisting that things are true, as if that insistence constitutes a valid point; I was hoping that by offering an equally blanket insistence that they were not true, you’d grok the silliness of arguing like that.
Daniel
Checkmate? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think that you’re fooling us by leaving out the relevant part of the quote, that our scroll bar doesn’t work?
A gentle reminder:
“Speech on the Internet–and elsewhere–may be offensive, vulgar, crude, and unwanted without cultivating hatred and violence. In some cases, a website may have been created to take comic jabs at a person or entire group (see All Men Must Die). A website that unintentionally incites violence or hatred would not fall into our category of hate speech.”
Check. Or, rather, checkmate.
Daniel
Of course it may be.
The part I quoted is a definition. The part you quoted is an example. Of a website. Since my question deals with the** definition** of hate speech, your reference to what may be true in some cases is the irrelevant one.
I like that expression! How is it written in French?
I apologize for not reading your arguments more carefully. I did not realize that your comment was in response to that part of my post. Give me some time to go back and read them again from that perspective.
Okay. Is it your claim that “white trash” incites violence, hate or discrimination against someone for their race? And do you claim that white trash is directed against someone’s race?
Neither of those claims wash. It is often directed against someone’s social class, which is why I avoid it; but it is not directed against their race, though it mentions their race. (Again, the overwhelming majority of people who use the phrase share the race of the target of the phrase, and do not hate the white race).
Daniel
Yes
Clearly this is the point of contention. To me, they do [wash], as I have witnessed it. And, respectfully, I cannot fathom how you would know that “the overwhelming majority of people who use the phrase share the race of the target of the phrase, and do not hate the white race).”