rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

Muck seems like a fun person to completely ignore at a party

I grew up in New York and Europe

Ah yes, the places where there isn't any racism

What is 'Europe'?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw

I'm trying to imagine living near a giant Gaz Coombes mural and for some reason the picture in my mind has the terrible face tattoos from the RBG mural I linked

I mean, the resemblance is uncanny
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EvkFl0RWQAEmB12?format=jpg&name=mediumhttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/I_Should_Coco.jpg

zoom in on the even worse ruth bader 6ix9ine avatar of the screenshotted tweet

the what now pic.twitter.com/xDTkFeLpMW

— ALAB Series (@ALABSeries) March 2, 2021

well, tbh i can't say this is worse than the george floyd. no point in comparing.

I... what

what is wrong with these people

https://blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping/39028/wandering-dago-food-truck-we-were-booted-from-track-for-name/

Had to google that slur. I've never seen/heard anyone use it in Canada, including by idiotic teenagers who had no qualms about using, uh, synonyms.

I'd day it's pretty antiquated at this point. But have you never seen Fawlty Towers? That's my clearest memory of hearing it

Do the Right Thing is the place I know it best from.

Dago, wop, guinea, garlic-breath, pizza-slingin', spaghetti-bendin', Vic Damone, Perry Como, Luciano Pavarotti, Sole Mio, nonsingin' motherfucker.

Fawlty Towers is another thing I had to google a while back. Then again, my knowledge of TV culture is subpar.

Also, I should really wait for the coffee to kick in before posting. Language exceeds my grasp right now.

Wow that's a weird situation where it's tone-deaf at the very least but...they people who chose the name are from the affected group? Who imo? can't really be said to still experience significant marginalization from that identity? It's not my identity so I leave that question open.

Affected people have the right to reclaim language obv. This does seem like more of a hand-wave to how Italians aren't really at risk for discrimination anymore though. I'm curious now about who the "unnamed state official" was.

Do the Right Thing is the place I know it best from.

I had no idea it was used at all outside the UK.

Apparently it's American though.

oh yeah i wasn't posing "is it racist" about the dago thing, if she wants to call herself a dago i don't care. i was just struck by the horrible RBG avatar.

there's a couple places here that have dago in the name but they specifically sell dago sandwiches

I'd never heard of that before (I've only been to St Paul once). This article is p interesting: https://thetakeout.com/st-paul-s-hot-dago-sandwich-offers-no-apologies-few-1825333299

I mean, okay sure maybe can appropriate slurs against them but how many incorporated businesses out there in English-speaking countries use the word "nigga"

I need to find the photos I took at Cholo Tacos...in Helsinki, Finland.

I started googling and found this https://www.cholos.mx/

Yeah! Sure! I'm against the use of slurs generally!! The fact that it's the name of a well-known sandwich is another unpleasant new thing I just learned!

It's also my experience just anecdotally that Italian-Americans who strongly identify w their cultural identity like to emphasize their marginalization while also vociferously discriminating against literally everyone else.

ha yes, I have also experienced that

xp
oh yeah, it's a clear marker of the incorporation of italian-americans into whiteness, as much re-appropriated by the affected community as rendered toothless by that process.

Yes, thank you, rob, that's the rub: to me, the most offensive thing is using an outdated slur to portray themselves as victims of discrimination when it's really an acknowledgement of how they're part of the discriminating group now.

sorry, I read your post exactly wrong

Dago and Yankee are both slang based in first name si think.
Diego and Jan for Spanish and Dutch sailors respectively. Or at least taht's what I gather from things i've read over the years.

No worries, I wasn't very clear. rob put it better.

speaking as a half-Italian, nothing drives me more insane than when Italian-Americans rush to defend Christopher Columbus simply because a bunch of Italian immigrants swore their allegiance to America at one of his statues once.

This is the place I went to:

https://www.yelp.com/biz/cholo-helsinki

The food was good, TBF. And the cook might have been Mexican. He wasn't a Finn, at any rate.

It's also my experience just anecdotally that Italian-Americans who strongly identify w their cultural identity like to emphasize their marginalization while also vociferously discriminating against literally everyone else.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, March 5, 2021 7:19 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sort of the same with Irish people, too— so many working-class Irish like to bring up "wE wErE SlAvEs tOo" and I'm always pretty quick to smack that shit down because it's bullshit.

(Also I live in Philadelphia lol)

I'm slightly confused by the discussion of "cholo" here, tho— its strongest association is with Mexican-American street culture, most prominently in LA. I've known a few cholos, and it was never construed as a slur by them?

this is largely driven by me accidentally confusing "cholo" with "culo"

Spanish is not my forte

Columbus was sailing for the Spanih to celebrate the conquest of the moors in Al Andalus and I think to find a place to dispose of teh jews taht were getting kicked out of the kingdom . So lovely philanthropic gestures all around, noice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholo

Interesting. Sounds like tragic misunderstanding territory.

The article had someone claim that "dago" came from the day laborer immigrants, who wanted to be paid "as the day goes," which I had never heard before.

definitely seen ther derivation from diego explained before and seems to be the first thing popping up now,
also I thought it was a term usd in Britain at a time when those refered to would presumably have been at more of a distance tahnthe relationship with day labouring would suggest. Thought it turned up in naval terms though may be from the media I'm seeing things though being from hollywood

Yes, I was sure it was some British thing, probably naval, but not according to the internet. I cannot imagine anyone in the UK using that word and getting away with it these days.

Twas known as offensive "foreigner" slur in Norway in 1978 apparently, as that is when Hammerfest band Unit Five released "Polardego", about how South Norwegians view the North ("a bit more domesticized than last year").

she is female and diversity

The president of a lawyer recruiting firm accidentally emailed me ABOUT me 😭 pic.twitter.com/cIGQisdhr0

— Diversity 💙💜💖♥️🧡💛💕mzstarrburst (@GummiPie) April 26, 2021

i should have put this in a different thread because i am not questioning that it's racist, btw

I'm getting tired of the repeated point that conservatives don't know what Critical Race Theory means. Nitpicking over the definition is clearly misdirection, when what they object to is ANY discussion of race in the classroom whatsoever. Rather than saying "you don't understand what CRT is," it should be reframed as a simple question: is race an acceptable class topic? Y/N

i love how their repeated talking point is that they're ignorant

to me, that's the point, if they can fit any discussion of race under the scary umbrella of "CRT" it makes it easier to discredit and force it out of school curricula altogether.

Weellll I thought we were talking about old televisions! Now I don’t know what the heck is going on, I can’t learn!!

along with the CRT stuff the UK right has gone all in on any and all opposition to racism being "marxist" (and also inherently antisemitic for good measure). this is obv a classic r/w tactic worldwide but it has become so fucking intense here lately and the centrist pieces of shit who make up the left wing of UK media and politics are sufficiently racist and spooked by marxism that they've happily dropped any pretence of caring about black lives. you can really sense the relief

right, the labeling gives them an easy way out, but only when people fail to question what's being targeted and instead quibble about the meaning of "marxist".