rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

I don't care what you guys say about Chapelle Show, I probably love some of the horrible material as much as anything.

The fake commericals: Rockapads. The one where Redman is on a jetski in the toilet advertising a toilet bowl cleaner. I admit it.

You guys are being Randalls

I'd probably be outraged, if I had any idea what you meant.

its pretty offensive to suggest that movie had any highlights.

its pretty offensive of you to not understand that rosario dawson will never not be a highlight, even in such a fan-servicing turdfest of a movie.

xp randall aka one of the two main protagonists of Clerks & Clerks II

Andrew: See most recent youtube in thread

I still don't get the thing where if you've never heard black people called monkeys, you're supposed to instinctively go "Waaait a minute, maybe I shouldn't say this, this person I'm talking to might take it as a racial insult." It seems a little... racist?

*facepalm*

You're not supposed to instinctively know, but when someone points it out to you the correct response is not "oh, well I never heard it that way growing up so I'm going to continue to say it"

you were looking for that "conversations that come up on ILX once a fortnight" thread, i believe

It certainly isn't an obscure or exclusively US thing, cf. soccerfootball fans throughout the ages throwing bananas onto the pitch, making monkey noises etc.

I guess I will reshare when I went out with a mixed race black/white girl and called her "really tan".

hahaha

xxx-post DJP on point as always

I call my kids monkeys. Because they look like monkeys. Because people look like monkeys. Because we're primates. And my son was born in year of the monkey. And I've definitely, as a separate issue, been aware of the unpleasant racial connotations of the word. And now I'm wondering how I'm going to talk to my son about it so he doesn't turn into a Randall. : \

You're not supposed to instinctively know, but when someone points it out to you the correct response is not "oh, well I never heard it that way growing up so I'm going to continue to say it"

Dude, I'm not saying that! I'm just surprised by eg Je55e describing himself for dumb for not knowing it beforehand. I have great respect for him not insisting on it in any way when called on it! Which I know shouldn't ideally be the sort of thing that gets you great respect, but if the internet has taught me anything it's that people = shit.

it's okay to call white people monkeys I think

lol @ australians

wait your kids are white right kkvg

More of a cultural and not race thing but I knew someone (ok, dated) someone who pulled out this faux-knowledge of Muslims and Islamic culture where she thought that the preferred nomenclature was "Islamic people" and saying "Muslims" was offensive or some sort of claptrap and I'm trying to explain that it is not what my past friends who have actually lived in that culture said and then I'm kind of waving and pointing at wikipedia and articles online and she's disagreeing because she knows and...

oh god, why do we torture ourselves like this?

i have no self-consciousness calling white people (cheeky) monkeys because it connotes a little bit differently for some reason

tbf djp i don't think anyone's advocated any such response

tho it would be kinda worth seeing the reaction

it's okay to call white people monkeys I think

"You cheeky monkey!" only works with Lancashire/Yorkshire accent

wait your kids are white right kkvg

― iatee, Thursday, January 19, 2012 10:36 AM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

I call little kids monkeys all the time when they're being cute/silly. It's sort of my go-to pet name for kids, I think. I knew a black couple in college who had a baby together and the first time I met the baby I said "OMG what a cute little . . . " inside voice: don't say monkey, don't say monkey "bastard". The parents were not married and I'm not sure monkey wouldn't have been the less offensive choice in that situation.

Suggest "chap"

hahaha enbb

classic material

cute little dumpling maybe

It was an irl Larry David moment for sure.

lol totally

I've never called anyone either chap or dumpling but, sure, there were a million things I could have said at the time but I just froze and for some reason bastard was what I found coming out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

calling little kids "monkey" is totally within the remit of this thread because it's often intended to be cute and innocent but the whole "this is also a term used to denigrate black people" thing makes it fraught with peril

calling adults "monkey" is a lot less ambiguous IME; I've never heard anyone use "monkey", "ape", "gorilla" etc to mean anything positive about someone

Dude, I'm not saying that! I'm just surprised by eg Je55e describing himself for dumb for not knowing it beforehand. I have great respect for him not insisting on it in any way when called on it! Which I know shouldn't ideally be the sort of thing that gets you great respect, but if the internet has taught me anything it's that people = shit.

I think it's more when someone points out the horrible beginnings of these innocuous phrases, you feel dumb for not being more up on the history of things and coming off in a manner you didn't intend to portray at all. It's super difficult, too; thanks to the way humanity works, all sorts of seemingly innocent thingss have really horrible origins that someone will invariably take offense to (see: the unfortunate phase "eeny meeny miney moe" went through and defacing pictures by drawing horns on them having roots in anti-Semitism, to name a couple)

also E that story is amazing

I once told the parents of a new (adopted) child, that he was really wonderful, and if they got tired of him I'd be happy to take him. I was 12, though. They got really mad and never talked to me again.

ENBB, it is a Larry David moment!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9jERprj5x0

i once told my niece i was taking her to the baby changing room at tescos cos she wet herself and she had a huge freak attack

haha

I've called my son a "little bastard" in affection the other. I'm his adoptive parent and he's never met his biological one. I totally winced about it right afterward. Like, he knows the word but not its actual meaning.

Beeps and I have off-and-on been working on her very public acknowledgment of people we see and what color they are.

BEEPS: Look, Daddy. That brown boy has a balloon!
ME: You know, you can just say 'that boy has a balloon.'
BEEPS: But I'm talking about the brown boy with the balloon, not the other one.
ME: You mean the white boy without a balloon?

She also once pointed to Barack Obama on television and said, "Why does the president always have brown skin?" I guess when your memory begins in early 2009, it may in fact seem that way.

other day.

LBI - lol. I don't think I've ever seen that episode.

She also once pointed to Barack Obama on television and said, "Why does the president always have brown skin?" I guess when your memory begins in early 2009, it may in fact seem that way.

haha that is great

She also once pointed to Barack Obama on television and said, "Why does the president always have brown skin?"

... Ms. Palin then announced her intention to run for the presidency of the United States

I was unaware of the origin of the word "gyp" until high school. I thought it was just some old English word.

Aw, beeps. Kids noticing difference between people but not having any filters is one of the funniest things but must be really tough/embarrassing at time to manage.

When I was a kid and we were living in Key West we went out to dinner and were sat next to a table of very flamboyant and effeminate gay men. During dinner I loudly asked my parents why "those men over there" were "talking like ladies". They heard but luckily they thought it was hysterical.

differenceS

People still misuse "gypsy" all the time in North America, probably due to a lack of Romani people or knowledge of that culture. I've read apologies saying it's OK, but... we live in a pretty culturally diverse society and you never know when the website you're commenting on is more international or cross-regional than it appears.

People definitely need to drop "he gypped me on a deal" out of their language, and I know my friend who posted she wanted to be a gypsy really meant she wanted somewhat of a nomadic lifestyle, but...

Then there's the case I mentioned on ilx of the dude who I knew in college who said "He jewed me out of $5!" and I instinctively punched him. He claimed that he never thought about the phrase?!?

last time i fought with nv was about gypsy/romany stuff iirv

"Gyp" over here means a pain or ache, never heard the other definition, though I imagine it's probably British

tbh I never even associated the term 'jipped' (which I think is the more common spelling?) with gypsies!

bit of a debate as i recall back in the heady days before My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding put an end to discrimination here in the UK

"gyp" is a weird one. I also didn't know where that came from until maybe five years ago or so? Also, we don't really have gypsies the here the way they do in Europe so we're a bit more removed from it which maybe makes it seem less offensive somehow? Not saying it's not a bad term - it obv is. Oh Lord this show and the comments on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HAUmII_hcg