rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

Yeah that shits me, Australians seem to do that a lot - defensively REFUSE to stop saying shit like "gay" or "fag" or "chink" or whatever, becase "its not my problem you have no sense of humour" is the common answer. Or "fuckin yanks cant tell us what to do". It is so embarrasing.

This is correct, we cannot tell your countrymen not to be backward jailbird descendants with low class and bad humor. They will only defy our oppressive ways.

Did the really bad ones stop having intercourse with kangaroos yet?

Oh yeah, and shrimp on the barbie, etc

(Australian stereotypes)

back in college there was a bunch of folks hanging around the lounge drinking and getting wasted, as people are wont to do in college, and someone mentioned that something was "retarded" and this girl just went off on a three-minute rant about how offensive that word was to her, how she had a cousin or something who had down's syndrome, and basically the entire room just sat there stunned as she poured her heart out. i heard about this rant second-hand and after the fact because of course i stumble like an idiot drunk into the room just after she finishes the rant and burst out (referencing someone i can't remember) "god (x) is so RETARDED!!"
didn't end well.

Given that our political system is centred around victimising racial minorities and gay people for cheap vote grabs, you could make p much any allegation about Australians and it would be correct xp

I have seen people tear strips off others for calling people "dumb", because thats "abelist" to ... mutes? or something? I mean... o_0

crazy mind-meld with omar, but:

i had a major crush on a certain girl in college. i went to her dorm room for a lovely 'night in' (her words). we partook of the ... mycological... pleasures on offer and borrowed a telescope to look out her window at a meteor shower. a dormmate of hers stopped by and laughed at me for getting really excited about a constellation. i pulled out a 'stars are wonderful, don't be so retarded' and the visiting dormmate and the girl i'd been visiting both started crying and berating me for insensitivity while my ... chemically emboridered interpretation of events took me to some dark pit of loathing and despair and my host and her (other guest) made me look at a photo album of one of their brothers who had been brain damaged a few years before and was a, you know, better man than i would ever be. afteward they threw me out and never talked to me again.

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.

She'll be back later, she's gone on a brief walkabout

So I read up on I Travellers in the US - p interesting then wound up on FB looking at IT's fb pages and stuff and well I really want someone to do some research into IT fashion. I mean where did it come from and how did the following end up becoming the in look for ladies:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/395759_217937724956782_100002216682974_493944_442496284_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/388186_219793021437919_100002216682974_498355_1651929339_n.jpg
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=217840858299802&set=a.217840788299809.54651.100002216682974&type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=216089111808310&set=a.216082368475651.54313.100002216682974&type=3&theater

It's pretty amazing, really.

I want to infiltrate and write a book about women in traveller communities. Seriously.

I would probably have to dress the part which would likely be a deal breaker. Damn.

enbb's april WDYLL pic

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Irish_Tinkers_1946.jpg

Wait Omar did you look at the links?

wau @ those pics ENBB linked to

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.