rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

lol this reminds me of watching yt videos of the great tyson fury and his entourage, altho hes a bit more real obv

Tip of the iceberg, Crut. It's totally fascinating to me. You should see the communion gowns they put the little girls in. Most of them get pulled out of school or drop out at 15 or 16 and married soon thereafter. In the pics when they're complimenting one another they often compare one another to Barbie's or princesses. A lot of their wedding cakes are barbie themed too. I've seriously been looking at the girls' FB pics since about 8. It's pretty much another universe and totally fascinating imo.

Barbies not posessive, oops

Or they compare each other to just dolls in general like here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=100823999958368&set=a.145486978825403.17469.100000923045945&type=3&theater

It's kind of like a cross between Jersey Shore and people of Wal-Mart

That first pic with the bride and bridesmaids and the (presumed) maid of honor with her belly hanging out

wau

holy

I used to do the same but I've decided I'd rather risk pissing someone off than to say nothing.

I've always regretted not saying anything to a racist car service guy in NY a couple years ago. Since then I've twice had someone make shitty comments and both times I've just looked at people and lied to them - "my stepmother is black" and "my brother is gay" (I have no brother or stepmother).

Saying it in a serious, deadpan manner took them off guard and they started apologizing and backpedaling in a terribly uncomfortable way. Not sure if this is the right thing to do but it made me feel better and hopefully from now on they won't assume everyone is as racist / homophobic as they are.

Trayce, see upthread on gypsies - just because you never experience a set of people doesn't mean they don't exist and don't have feelings.

I mostly agree, however "dumb" is a word in such common usage for "stupid" (rather than as a handicap) I really cant get with being reserved about its use... apart from the fact its rude to be calling someone dumb to start with, of course. I certainly dont like using words like "retard" or "spaz".

like 90% of the words that are considered ableist began as medical terms ("dumb" for "mute") and were taken by the general public and turned into pejoratives, mostly aimed at intelligence. it's not far off from saying "that's so gay" when you mean "that's so stupid."

i've heard different arguments for and against "dumb" tho. also arguments that "stupid" itself is slur-ish and that the very idea of rating and quantifying someone's intelligence is oppressive. ableist issues are complicated like most things.

'anything that makes things worse is a step towards sheeple waking up and revolting'

perhaps i'm just trolling myself, but this sort of thing strikes me as the logical and perhaps the inevitable endgame of politicized attempts to avoid oppressive speech. it's also the point at which the whole thing starts to seem like "harrison bergeron", like a ghastly parody of itself, and some long-buried reactionary impulse arises from my hindbrain. i start wondering whether cruelty, inequality and even oppression are such bad things, necessarily, and then i get spooked like what if i'm gonna start reading ayn rand and voting for ron paul? i tried to reassure myself by feeding the cat really expensive food and going extra rough with the charcoal soap when i took a shower, but still the shadow lingers.

DANG! that was supposed to respond to this:

i've heard different arguments for and against "dumb" tho. also arguments that "stupid" itself is slur-ish and that the very idea of rating and quantifying someone's intelligence is oppressive.

why wouldn't they be bad things? like, as i was saying in the other thread, these things exist simply because the people within marginalizations and intersections have shared their feelings on the issues, labeled them hurtful and damaging and destructive, and people with privilege should try to avoid contributing to all that.

but that's simple, and part of it is understanding that it will always be complicated and that fighting oppression boils down to a lot more than simply deciding what words can and cannot come out of your mouth.

sorry for overuse of vague pronouns, hope that made sense

thanks, z, that helps.

i'm sometimes tempted to hammer my (generally pretty flexible) principles into these weirdly rigid logical mechanisms - which typically results in nonsensical pronouncements and cognitive dissonance. i get all het up and forget that common sense and compassion are a better default position than ironclad if-then integrity.

i think there's an obvious and enormous difference in using a word like 'dumb', which emerged from a medical term but is used, what, 99% of the time without any reference to that term in any meaningful basis, and using a racially pejorative term which genuinely can't/hasn't/may never evolve in language usage sufficiently far from the origin.

If you've a problem with the concept expressed by the '99%' meaning of 'dumb' (grading of people by intelligence), well tbh in a competitive world of scarce resources etc i wish you luck with that one tbh

or, perhaps using contenderizer's 'sense and compassion' model, i'd acknowledge that you can and maybe should take offence at anything you consider suitable, but maybe pick your battles?

The word 'Spaz': classic or dud?

Thank you darragh, thats kind of what I was getting at. Pick yr battles indeed. I mean, yes, oppresive abuse sholdnt be tolerated, but come on.

darraghmac, i'm not sure if you're talking directly to me, but i actually don't really have strong feelings either way on "dumb," i was just sharing POVs i've encountered about it. i don't really use it anyway, and i've sort of agreed with that strict idea about intelligence since i was in HS albeit for entirely different reasons. but as i said it's not one of those things that's as easy as self-censorship-goodbye-done.

with the intelligence thing, i do think it's always interesting that the two metrics we use (in american society anyway) to quantify intelligence, the IQ test and the SAT, were created by eugenicists trying to prove white intellectual superiority.

i'm sometimes tempted to hammer my (generally pretty flexible) principles into these weirdly rigid logical mechanisms - which typically results in nonsensical pronouncements and cognitive dissonance. i get all het up and forget that common sense and compassion are a better default position than ironclad if-then integrity.

ya, i understand. before i became ensconced in anti-racism stuff (which i barely even am, have not even read a whole bell hooks book loooool) my brain would act the same. i think my brain a year and a half ago would malfunction if it jumped to how it is right now, but i guess that's normal in any situation when your priorities shift.

no, zach, just a muddled response to what i missed overnight tbh

The actual effectiveness of grading intelligence is (actually) another thread and i think everyone pretty much agreed that standard models/systems are far from perfect. I just measure wheel rims myself.

i think there's an obvious and enormous difference in using a word like 'dumb', which emerged from a medical term but is used, what, 99% of the time without any reference to that term in any meaningful basis, and using a racially pejorative term which genuinely can't/hasn't/may never evolve in language usage sufficiently far from the origin.

one last thing: you would be surprised how many white people defend their usage of the n-word by saying its meaning has evolved. i think i've read the line "i just use it to mean 'a bad person'" a million times.

well i would 100 defend their right to do that

-_-

i wasn't suggesting you were. actually i regret posting that, comparing marginalizations isn't cool, nm, sorry.

ha srsly don't mind me

Zach where do you go to college

backstage (on left) terrorizing plastic newborns

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8194/gunsyg.jpg

Only racist if the baby is Jewish

omg TOTALLY the wrong thread

hahaha

The actual effectiveness of grading intelligence is (actually) another thread and i think everyone pretty much agreed that standard models/systems are far from perfect. I just measure wheel rims myself.

http://rvecafe.com/Assets5/bike01f.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLd3dYK6_Vs

mainly cuz it's a white guy

lol "mainly"

it's p well established that they're all racist

Yeah pretty racist but "which John Lee" can actually be a relevant question ime. "which Eric Pak" not as likely.

Side note: no video entitled "Shit _____ _____ say" has, to my knowledge, ever been funny

The NYers one made me giggle but that was mainly because of the "All I've had to eat today was a bagel" line.

yeah the ny one was okayish

I was trying to figure out if the guy in it was horatio sanz

lol really? I don't know who he is but I'm p sure it wasn't Sans.

no it's just some rando comedian

i like "shit white girls say to black girls" but on balance i wish the whole "shit ____ say" had never happened

I haven't watched that one. . . .

The NYer one just reminded me of those YOU KNOW YOU'RE A MISSOURIAN IF… type emails I get every once in awhile.

"shit no one says" was pretty funny i thought

lold at the first 20-30 seconds of "shit people say about the shit people say videos"

i like "shit white girls say to black girls" but on balance i wish the whole "shit ____ say" had never happened

― horseshoe, Friday, January 20, 2012 1:35 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh then you should DEFINITELY watch the brian williams "rock center" segment on it

yeah "shit no one says" was pretty funny

I don't know where to put this but this story just depresses the hell out of me

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/teens-detained-brutal-beating-chicago-boy-appears-youtube-video-article-1.1007573

idk why it surprises/depresses me in 2012 but I find it surprising and depressing that there's a knowyourmeme entry on it already

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/chicago-teens-beating-video