rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

great red panda punchline
http://www.xojane.com/files/JennyAn3.jpg

her back-pedaling is also lol

http://twitter.com/jenny_an

'junot diaz-inspired performance art'

that was the most annoying part of her dumb "piece," when she namechecked junot diaz. i was like, i'm preeeeeetty sure this is not what junot diaz was talking about when he said we have to acknowledge the white spremacist within us.

anyway she's an idiot; asian american dudes doged a bullet

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

gross

Pretty sure ted is a racist.

or bob even.

http://laist.com/2012/09/12/middle_schooler_booted_from_class.php

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/558245_514703765213483_1661924772_n.jpg

also for his bad haircut

he's missing the frosted tips

http://nativeappropriations.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-frank-offends-every-native-person.html

Read the follow-up!

that is fantastic

that's amazing.

White Republican President Joe Christmas.

the follow-up I meant: http://nativeappropriations.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-frank-offends-every-native-person.html

president of paul frank industries personally reaches out, apologizes, promises to purge design catalog of anything vaguely looking like this

still, how the living hell did that shit get greenlit to begin with

i think you mean this:
http://nativeappropriations.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/paul-frank-powwow-party-update-am-i.html

A shame they had to come up with those designs and throw the party in the first place, but pretty cool for them to take responsibility like that and take actionable steps to improve. A lot more than you'd get from most companies.

lol, yes, somehow found the follow-up and then pasted the original

oh whoa, that's pretty rad!

the pieces on hipster headdresses on that blog are p interesting

Hey cool, that's like an exemplary way to apologize for anything in life.

i like yo is this racist mostly but i always want to write him really long emails when he answers questions about religion

― max, Tuesday, July 10, 2012 11:59 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i've been reading yo is this racist all day and keep having this thought

Is it racist that 'pee poop patel' has taken over most of my mental cursing since harbl had it as her display name?

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/398314_487233024629026_1226429939_n.jpg

- nothing to do with grammar
- no one spells it like that
- prescriptivist assholes: stfu
but more importantly
- racist?

I have always hated it when people say "aks" instead of "ask" but in recent years I have heard people say that they do so intentionally because "ask" sounds too much like "ass" and they don't want to curse

this makes me so furious that I don't even know what to do with myself

it's a nonstandard pronunciation, but it's just that -- pronunciation, an articulation of sounds. it has jack shit to do with grammar and no business on a "grammar pet peeve" poster but seriously fuck a grammar pet peeve poster.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/africanamerican-neighborhood-terrorized-by-ask-mur,24821/

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/01/added-bonus-irregardless-of-what-you-think-quot-conversate-quot-is-a-word/6549/

TNC: What fuels the notion that certain words aren't really words?

JS: There a lot of different things. People feel that there is a certain kind of language that's appropriate and a certain type that isn't appropriate. And these judgments are based on many things--some may make sense, some might not. People take these things very seriously. People are told things about the language in school that are demonstrably untrue, and they think anyone who doesn't follow along with those beliefs is stupid or wrong.

Let me give you an example, in terms of looking at things historically. At the beginning of this conversation you pronounced the word "ask" as "aks." This is something that people often object to. People say it's the wrong pronunciation, and it's stupid. But if you look at the history of the English language, you can't tell if the correct pronunciation is "aks" or "ask." The "aks" pronunciation goes back 1000 years. It's in Beowulf. It's in Chaucer.

What happened was both were in use. But at some point, the dialect in which the "ask" pronunciation was used became dominant. But both continued and have been in use since then. When you look at America, the "aks" pronunciation is widespread in Southern American English. African-Americans used this because they were in the South--it's not especially African-American, but its Southern.

Now, if you look at other Germanic languages, the "correct" pronunciation is, in fact, "ask"--but you can't tell that looking just at English and it ultimately doesn't matter. If I asked you to name the ordinal number between "second" and "fourth" you'd say, what?

TNC: Third.

JS: Right, third--but the old pronunciation is "thred," it comes from three. But if you were to say thred, you'd be considered a moron--even though it's "correct."

Sheidlower seems cool

He's totally cool.

But again, this is (1) not a grammar error and (2) not even technically an error and (3) never used in writing ANYWAY

So, again, is it racist?

just be safe and say yes

- " So then my manager had the nerve to axe me if I was going to stay late to work on the papers he could've given me a week ago!"

- "It's 'ask', by the way, but go on."

- "Oh, I'm sorry. Did they not include Beowulf in your high school curriculum?"

racists are lower in the food chain than prescriptivist grammar pedants, but a combination of the two really makes me see red

'Aks' - thought it had a class rather than a race element eg. bridge'n'tunnel/Working Girl typing pool; there's also a Jennifer Belle novel where the protagonist needs a job, winds up selling real estate in NYC and knows she has ~crossed the great divide~ when she catches herself saying 'aks' to a client.

grammar nazi

word supremacist

yes its racist

it's racist but also like, something more than racism

it transcends racism

it's post-racist

It's new RacismPLUS (tm)

with a brand new whitening formula

Just put this together, but bond trader slang for things you really want to buy/sell is an "axe" and people will have lists of "axes." It's got to be because this is simply easier to pronounce and remember (and sounds a bit more macho than?) "asks".

Just axe the Askis.
He knows everything man.

I have always hated it when people say "aks" instead of "ask" but in recent years I have heard people say that they do so intentionally because "ask" sounds too much like "ass" and they don't want to curse

that unspeakable curse-syllable, "ass"

Thank you for reminding me that the business-speak people in my office sum up problem-solving meetings by saying, "So what's our ask?" to mean, What requests do we have as a result of this discussion?

In the (frankly batshit) conversation where the cursing thing came up, J pointedly asked the dude who said this nonsense, "When you have a headache, do you aks if anyone has any apsirin?"