Sorry, I was unclear; that part had nothing to do with your thread. I was talking about tomndebb just generally being a mod whose decisions are getting worse and worse. He is, I find, the mod least capable of being objective, which is sad, because in general I used to like his posts.
Anyhoo*, to answer your other question and also echo puzzlegal, with your use of “Jew-bro” you’re labeling people, not a thing. A “Jewfro” is a well-known term (frankly not one I’m a fan of, myself, but no one appointed me the taste arbiter of commonly used self-deprecatory terms**).
Very tempted to write “anyjew,” but refrained.
** Though if anyone wants to, please go ahead! I have some hours free on the weekends so I could probably handle the job.
I’m not offended by “Jew-bro” except in that it’s a lot less funny than “He-bro.” Not “Heb-bro,” which is basically impossible to say.
However, the full quote does come off as deliberately dismissive and insulting, though I think you really just meant the “Jew-bro” comment to be a throwaway substitute for “idiot whities” and not deliberately insulting to Jews specifically.
Tom’s warning was still dumb because he fixated on the word itself as some kind of horrendous racial slur.
It was much, much more about the frat boy aspect than the Jewish aspect. I included the Jewish part to emphasize that it was a non-Black frat, in contrast to the Black rappers mentioned in the first part of the sentence. So the Jewishness wasn’t contributive to the idiocy, that was all bro.
Jew here, and other than thinking “He-bro” is funnier, I see nothing offensive whatsoever about “Jew-Bro” in this context. (I think the whole statement, including the idea that frat-boys tend to be Jewish, to be kinda stupid–my brother was in a frat ~15/20 years ago and he had trouble finding one that would accept him since he was Jewish. My nephew applied to a few Frats this year and while the situation was better, he got the same “Well…we’re not sure you share our…values” type stuff my brother got from at least a few Frats)
This is just another case of “Tom-I don’t moderate hate-speech, except when I do-ndebb”'s moderating just making a confused situation even worse in GD.
I don’t see how “Thugs” and the ongoing “Blacks aren’t to blame for being dumb and violent because…SCIENCE!” isn’t hate-speech, but saying “boobies” in a bra thread or using a completely innocuous term like Jew-Bro is.
Guys–I don’t care either way: enforce hate-speech rules or don’t, but please, just fucking pick one of the two options. I hate this “Hate speech is just fine sometimes but other times, it’s wrong…WRONG! Which one is it today? Depends on which mod and how his coin flip goes.” method of moderation. (For what it’s worth, except for Tomndebb, the other GD mods seem to be…if not on the same page, at least in the same book. Tom’s modding isn’t even in the same library, to strain a metaphor. It’s like the other GD mods are all doing one thing and Tomndebb is doing whatever the hell he feels like, regardless.)
GD Mods–how about having a conference in e-mail or something, hash out some guidelines or something and let us know what’s acceptable and what’s not. Not “bright-line rules” which I know we’ll never get here, but at least some vague “this sort of thing is generally ok, but this sort of thing generally isn’t” statement would help.
Some starting questions:
Hate-Speech: Yea or Nay? You all have to be on the same page–either all of you need to say “Screw ‘hate speech’ rules–this is GD, anything not illegal or directly insulting to another poster is ok to discuss, stupid and hateful or not” OR “Some ideas are obviously hate speech and we’re shutting them down because what’s there to discuss about them anyway?”
If the answer to 1 is “anything not illegal goes”, say so and we’re good. If not, you need to come up with a consistent general rule. Currently you have people who, in essence, are saying black people are unevolved humans, a bit above gorillas and getting away with it since…SCIENCE! apparently, and other people being warned for less-than-nothing (case in point, here). Just pick some standard.
No one is, in essence, saying that. And if they did, they’d probably be banned, not just mod noted. I notice that every time you refer to that poster you grossly exaggerate what he says. Why do you need to do that if what he says is so bad? Why not just quote his exact words?
And, you may recall a poster was banned after referring to black youths as “sub-human” (or something very similar to that).
It’s an obvious (once you’ve come up with it or heard it) bit of nice wit. Perhaps “Jewfro” would’ve been modded back in the day.
I didn’t go to a college with any frats or whatever, but if the circumstances were clear and light I could see calling some guy from a Hillel a Jewbro.
Or–and in fact I’ll probably use this–next time I meet a particular friend who I know cares about being Jew-recognized like me (some of us are funny that way), who when I meet I usually give a “nu, boychick?” with a handshake, I’ll give a “Yo, Jewbro!”
The analogy with our resident “racial scientists” doesn’t really work here. There’s a difference between saying “Blacks, on average, score lower on IQ tests and the evidence points toward a genetic cause” and “Niggers, on average, score lower on IQ tests…”
This particular infraction is more like the latter, not the former. I think one can generally assume that, in American English, using “Jew” as an adjective to describe a person is not a good idea. “My daughter is dating a Jewish boy” isn’t quite the same as “My daughter is dating a Jew boy.”
My initial thought was that “Jew” is a perfectly acceptable word, “Jew-bro” is an acceptable compound noun, like carseat or windowsill. I’d forgotten that term. (Actually, I’ve never heard anyone use it.)
It’s fairly simple. “Jew-bro” was derogatory. The word “bro” in this context is derogatory, and you added “Jew” to it. So now it’s a derogatory term that refers to the ethnicity of certain people.
That makes it an ethnic slur. A weak one, sure. But still a slur. Hence the mod note rather than a warning or automatic 3 day suspension.
I’m actually really surprised that our biggest anti-racist doesn’t see the issue here. Why should we disallow scientific racism but not even Note when you say something racially offensive?
I know you didn’t mean any malice. But people got offended, so the thing go reported, and their offense was considered justified by what I said in the first paragraph. So show your anti-racism by apologizing and moving on.
Don’t act like racists, who want to continue saying whatever the hell they want, not showing any care about who they offend.
Jew is not acceptable as an adjective, as it was used here. (e.g. you can’t say Jew doctor or Jew waitress.) And the word “bro” in reference to fraternity members refers to a certain negative stereotype.
Whether due to religion or ethnicity, using “Jew” in the manner you did sounds pejorative, despite your intentions, at least to me. For example – some cops behaving badly… if someone says “those damn Jew-cops shouldn’t be doing X”, that sounds like a slur to me. The Jewishness (religion or ethnicity) of the cops, and of the frat guys, is irrelevant to their actions. By bringing it up in a way that sounds the same as using “Jew” as a pejorative adjective, it sounds like a slur to me.
I agree with the mod note.
This isn’t a huge deal, MrDibble – I think you’re wrong here, but I don’t think this is a sign that you don’t like Jews. I just think you slipped up with a word choice that sounds like a slur. Everyone slips up sometimes, and often it’s just due to differences in language and culture. That’s probably the explanation here.
Like I said, I brought up their ethnicity to contrast it with the Blackness of the rappers. And even you really think it only “sounds like” a slur. Because it’s not one. What’s next, mod-noting people for using “niggardly”?
