So what is your actual position on epithets that carry insulting, demeaning, and other negative connotations?
And what exactly do you mean by “political correctness”?
I am of the opinion that they are best ignored unless they cross over to the level of actual violence-threats, harrassment, invasion of privacy, etc. I don’t go around using them; yet if I hear others do so, it doesn’t blast my underwear off.
By “political correctness”, I refer to speech-codes aimed at censoring, even punishing, such language.
So you agree with us, then, that certain words are highly disrespectful and should not be used.
When someone uses a racial slur as a slur, they should be punished. Not by the law, but by social disapproval- just as if one used foul language around children. This is how polite society should work, and it’s indeed how it does, in general.
No, my criteria for “unacceptable” speech pretty much consists of violent threats, perjury, and “Fire!” in a crowded public building. Everything else flies, “disrespectful” or not. Yes, even the insults specifically against my own ethnic background.
The general turning of society toward thinking like the above paragraph, backfires in many ways. It sets people on edge, balkanizes society, makes those who hated a group only resent them even more, and encourages a rather childlike deference to authority in people in general. “Oooh, you said the Bad Word! You’re a RACIST! I’m TELLING ON YOU!”
Me, I’d rather that people be free to speak their minds. If I find it offensive, I walk away and deal. That’s life. Everywhere else in the world but in the US and Western Europe, that is.
Out of curiosity, what is the worst slur that applies to your identity? How often have you experienced it being used in a demeaning manner against you?
If you are in a situation in which slurs are being used tobdemeaning effect, what do you do?
Do you recognize that demeaning language has often been used in tandem with social discrimination, official discrimination, threats and violence in order to keep targeted groups on socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged situations?
Do you recognize that demeaning language can by itself create conditions that encourage such disadvantageous results? In other words, that humans are social beings and the use of demeaning language in context can actually have tangible negative effects?
Do you make any distinction between a “speech code” enforced by an authoritative body and simple social discouragement of the use of abusive language?
Except that this is completely untrue. Out society has become progressively better, more peaceful, more equitable, more pleasant, etc., as such uses of language have become socially unacceptable.
Yeah, in the rest if the world where sectarian tensions, violence, rioting, and murder are much more common than in North America and Western Europe.
Where do you live?
I don’t think that’s how it is. In the past, many racial slurs were commonly used in public, and if a minority would complain or challenge the speaker, he/she risked bodily injury. The reason that has changed is because using those racial slurs became socially unacceptable. That is much better, in my opinion.
If someone says something hateful, it’s reasonable for them to face disapproval. You can feel free to walk away, but others might prefer to face the speaker and say “you shouldn’t say that, it’s hateful”, or something to that effect. And, unlike in the past, hateful language isn’t met with approval by much of society.
wog, “bloody Argie”, sudaca, etc., and quite regularly…
Depends on whether the situation warrants fighting over it or not. One thing that I don’t do is to try to get the words banned, or to get people fined, jailed, fired, destroyed socially, etc., for using them.
Do you recognize that demeaning language has often been used in tandem with social discrimination, official discrimination, threats and violence in order to keep targeted groups on socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged situations?
Yes- however, I am also careful to avoid “slippery slope” assumptions that words alone will lead to this conclusion unless stamped out beforehand.
Do you recognize that demeaning language can by itself create conditions that encourage such disadvantageous results? In other words, that humans are social beings and the use of demeaning language in context can actually have tangible negative effects?
see above
Yes, although the latter tends to inform the former; there is where the main problem lies.
If you believe seriously that United States is more just and peaceful than the rest of us outside of your happy neoliberal bubble, then you are the PERFECT example of why speech-codes do nothing but “perfume the pig”, and leave your society exposed for the hypocritical laughingstock that it is.
Nobody else is talking about jail or fines for speech, either.
Wait, so you would consider fighting over words sometimes appropriate, but not social rejection? Interesting.
We’ve got many problems, but we’ve improved a lot over past decades. Fewer murders, less crime in general, fewer instances of discrimination (and those that remain are less severe), etc. We still have a lot of class-based problems and income inequality, and that needs a lot of work.
I do believe we’re “more just and peaceful” than many societies, in general- such as those in the Middle East and SW Asia that heavily discriminate against women and homosexuals. But there are societies that have less violent crime than us, and less discrimination, so we’ve still got a lot of work to do.
If you disagree, can you give some specifics?
I don’t know what those mean, so clearly you live on a society that I have no direct experience with. How deep is your experience with American society?
Do you continue to associate with them socially? Do you show approval or disapproval?
They are not “slippery slope” assumptions. They are tangible and observable phenomena that have dominated American society in the recent past. Racial epithets were part-and-parcel of a legal and social system geared toward maintaining a white supremacist culture. That’s why anti-white slurs have no social power in America. Anti-minority slurs still have power, but are being solely eroded by vigilant social policing of such language.
No idea what you mean by that.
If you believe that American society has not improved since racist language started becoming socially unacceptable, then you don’t know anything about America.
I believe huesos is saying that he is an Argentine, or at any rate South American, in Britain? Or Australia?
You were right- Argentine with several decades residing in the States, just outside of New York. Don’t worry; I’m not “illegal”…
What you don’t see, and that many foreign people do, is that your society attempts to correct its collective mistakes by focusing very myopically on superficial things, and then deciding to make everything better by going on your attempts at moral policing through things like employment quotas, speech-codes and the like, without doing much to get at the causes of your problems in the first place. Rather than to educate people from a very young age so that they understand various cultures and so forth, you instruct them not to say this or that “slur” of “hate-speech” in order to be a good person. You tell them that everybody is entitled to have their delicate sensibilities “respected” and never “triggered”, and that various ethnic descendants are nearly their own separate nations (I cannot even begin to describe the drama that I get here from people who don’t even realize that “Hispanic” is not a racial condition in the first place! “I thought you were white!” “Wait, so you DO speak Spanish?”), rather than compatriots of the same country- and then you continue to wonder why they quarrel endlessly and remain pitted against each other constantly.You use the very specific example of African descendants in your southern region, and generalize it to form some kind of “affirmative” anti-racism program to be applied to every other group in the world, both inside your borders and abroad- all while you continue to support the capitalist, warmongering system responsible for FUELING much of the racial, national and class conflict (and hunger) plaguing the whole planet today. Do you not see how myopic and self-congratulatory the whole thing is? Your liberal wing is not even remotely leftist by any other society’s point of view.
Before you even ask why the hell I am up here if I feel that way: family matters.
I do not claim that America has no racial problems, and if you think that you are uniquely situated to observe those problems as opposed to, for example, *me *, then you’re wrong.
And you’re also wrong if you think that changes in language acceptability are causing those problems rather than helping change them.
America is a better place than it used to be. If you think it’s bad now, then you should be thankful that things are not as bad as they were when racist language was socially acceptable.
As for ignorance of the world outside, yeah, sire, I have dealt with that my whole life. But when it comes right down to it, people learn about other people when they interact with them. Asking stupid questions is a step on the road to knowledge.
Have you considered that you might be interacting with a group of people that includes immigrants or children of immigrants?
I appreciate reading the input of someone with a different perspective. I agree with Ascenray- things are certainly far from perfect here, but they’re much better then they used to be.
Don’t insult others in this forum. Also, our main rule here is “Don’t Be a Jerk”, so keep that in mind.
Also see this note.