quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:

quote:

ruh roh shaggy. I guess I can never again tell the joke about what you call a Japanese lady with one leg shorter than the other. Because slur, whatever.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Context is important. Telling that joke at the Japanese Embassy is probably not going to get laughs. Besides I have heard that joke and it is clearly not funny.

I've heard many variations of that joke and none of them are very funny or even amusing...the Trump one is at least a bit clever

You guys are being shortsighted. You are giving the other side an easy win. It’s not whether you think it’s a funny joke or not. It’s about control. They are controlling your speech by claiming some “slur” or hate speech. As for telling that joke at the Japanese embassy, well I wouldn’t do that anymore than I would tell gay jokes at your bachelorette party.

My weekly handgun shooting group discussed this very thing last Thursday while having coffee after shooting.

As one of the women said, she was Polish and an easy target and it didn't bother her in the least. She grew up with people who tossed ethnic and other slurs around all day long and nobody got worked up about it.

We all agreed that it was a nothing burger and we'd continue the way we had all our lives.

There are a whole lot that walk around with a chip on their shoulder tempting you to knock it off.
It's just wise to ignore and not play the game because anything you do even if it is correct, innocent, meaningless > you will lose.


....and there is this:

I've been told more than once that "speech is violence." Well, I've been cussed out, and I've had my ass thoroughly kicked, and next time, I want the cussin'.

Oh, almost forgot. Where does the one legged waitress work? IHOP.

I truthfully believe that when people don't care enough to be conscious of others.

Those that it affects negatively
Take it to the next leval.


We see their friends and siblings on the news,
Commenting on how damaged they had gotten

It depends on the intent, the context and the company. Within that company, a term that might otherwise be considered a slur is just good-natured ribbing. Outside of it, the same word can be a slur.

Neutral and inoffensive terms used to refer to certain ethnicities have also changed over time. Until around 1970, "Negro" was such a term, and organizations such as the United Negro College Fund and NAACP (the C for colored) still exist. I remember an old World Book Encyclopedia that had a whole article titled "Negro." In recent years, "Oriental" for an East or Southeast Asian seems to have become a slur, and "Asian" is preferred. Why, I don't know, because the Orient was and is a colorful and exotic part of the world, and Asia is a vast continent with many different ethnicities, but we don't call, for example, Indians (dot from India) or Arabs "Asian."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: egregore,

Words used to refer to me can be
1) technical
2) common, with none having real malicious intent
3) slurs and slang intended to insult

Call me what you will, I don’t care. I will respond appropriately, however, to your actions.

I see this “hyper-sensitivity” to being insulted as one of many plans by the left to divide and control the population.
- ie - get the people fighting among themselves (distract them) and we can sneak by more controls and higher taxes.
In their world, and much of what we see daily, everyone’s a victim. And, Oh Yes!, our politicians can come to our rescue, denounce the offender and sympathize with the victim.
“We’ll make more laws so you won’t be offended any more!” “Good for us!”

Bunch of crap. TV, news, media and politicians nurturing the thin skinned, easily offended younger generations.

And “toxic masculinity”? Jeez, don’t get me started on THAT one…

Joke 'em

"People of color" : acceptable phrase.
"Colored people" : unacceptable phrase.

I don't understand the logic.

I think some people are just programmed to react a certain way to words or phrases without thinking and are so invested in this way of thinking that they can never have a rational thought or conversation about them.
In example: Calling someone "retarded" by it's purest definition means simply that they are behind. Somehow this became "hate speech" like so many other adjectives.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:

In recent years, "Oriental" for an East or Southeast Asian seems to have become a slur, and "Asian" is preferred.

That's a sensitive here only thing I think. In many places in the world oriental is still the accepted term and if you call someone Asian you're talking about people from India or that region.


How and when they were used obviously is part of it. Jap and Nip bad, Brit and Swede not? Obviously just shortening it isn't the insult. They were used refereeing to our enemy, so they had a negative connotation. I can see people saying "it served it's purpose, the war is long over, leave them behind." And I can see (older) people disagreeing with that.

But where did the "negative" come from? The people who said it? Or the actions of the people it was said in reference to? It's interesting to think about.

In a few years, it will be unacceptable to use ‘colored people’ or whatever is acceptable today. Those offended by other terms will find reasons to be offended by whatever is considered okay today. It’s their nature. Ever offended. They die if they can’t find something to be offended about.

I call Hawaiian people “natives”. I visit my friends there every 6 months. Local can mean Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese, quite the mix there. Asian, Asian mix, Hawaiians, are the majority and the Haole is the minority. Know your place when you go, all is well.

I also call the Native Americans, Natives. No Indians, no red man, just natives, because they were. They grew here, we flew here or sailed here. Big fan of those people and they’ve been royally fucked over for a few hundred years now and I don’t see them with a bunch of letters running around crying about shit. They don’t even have their own holiday unless you consider T day as they call that a National Day of Mourning.

As far as the “colored” stuff goes. It depends on who I am talking to. Saying “black” is acceptable to most, but not to all. But African-American, if that offends, I’m done.

I never understood African American. If someone has recently immigrated here and have become naturalized, say from Taiwan or Korea or Mexico, then they can be referred to as American or, for example, Korean American or Mexican American if the distinction is appropriate.

But for someone whose ancestry spans 200+ years in America, why are they African Americans? People here who are descendants of the original settlers through the next 100 years, are they referred to as British Americans or Spanish Americans or Italian Americans or German Americans or whatever?

If we refer to Caucasians as white people, Asians or Mexicans as brown people, what is wrong with the term black people? Is it bad to reference people with blonde hair? Black hair? Brown hair? Are colors offensive? Is it factual but unpalatable?

Perhaps the term Asian is only acceptable here. If I go to Japan or Korea or Taiwan, they don’t really identify as Asian, other than in the context of regional continent, but rather as Korean or Japanese or Chinese. If I went to France and talked to a french person and referred to him as European (“you Europeans enjoy cooking”) would he be okay with that or would he prefer to be referred to as french?

Is there a rule book for what’s offensive and what isn’t? Because I really need one. I’m not even sure when I’m supposed to be offended when someone calls me something other than American.

Let’s not study STEM or anything that could be productive. By all means, let’s prioritize a detailed analysis of a living list of how every unique person should and should not be referenced.

Infringe on my natural rights. Depress the economy. No worries. Refer to me by some word that actually may be true that, for some reason, someone other than me determined to be offensive, now that hurts.

One definition of “native”: “a person born in a specified place or associated with a place by birth, whether subsequently resident there or not.”

Although the accepted meaning of words get changed all the time, that’s the meaning that was attached to the word for most of my life. That means I’m a native American because I was born in America, just as is anyone else who was born here. If we want to refer to people whose earliest known ancestors discovered and lived in the Americas before other people found the continents and traveled here, a more technical term is aboriginal. But of course that would be considered offensive as well, not to mention that as more becomes known about the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, it seems that they didn’t all come from the same place, and there are questions about which were really the first, and which were later interlopers.

And let’s not get started on “America” which was derived from the name of one of those evil Italian explorers.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
And let’s not get started on “America” which was derived from the name of one of those evil Italian explorers.

My favorite part of "Native American", the irony.


I used to drive a coworker crazy teasing him that I was more African American than him. (black guy, while most of his political views aligned with liberals, some of his social views didn't).
My great grandfather left Sicily and moved to north Africa for some years, where some of the children were born. I'd tell him "Your ancestors left Africa in the 19th century. Mine left in the 20th century, I'm 100 years closer to being African than you are."

Of course his view was that North Africa isn't Africa. (I guess much the same way he felt black people couldn't be racist)

quote:

When do slurs become slurs?

When the intent is to harm that person.
When it is meant as a good natured joke then it is the offended that needs to grow up and let a joke be a joke.
Sticks and stones yadda, yadda.
BUT WORDS CAN NEVER HURT YOU.
(Unless you're a giant pussy)