posted 09-12-2001 19:37            

quote:

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Originally posted by Demon-of-Elru:
Raghead takes less time to type than "Middle Eastern Citizen" or whatever the hell the PC term is, Palestinian or whatever, I don't care.

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DOE- you're a bright kid, but I think you're a bit off-base here. Keep in mind that "Kill the fucking arabs" takes less time to type than "We need to find the people responsible for this tragedy and fuck them up bad, but we should be careful not to get carried away with our emotions and start transferring our anger on innocents just because of the color of their skin." But that doesn't mean the second version is just PC bullshit.

Its easy to discount racism if you've never been personally touched by it. But your comment that the people who take offense are the ones who keep it going is just misguided. You wouldn't say that the pedestrian half of an auto accident is at fault because if he'd been more resilient there would have been no accident.

Words are words, but despite what you think, they do hurt people. The reason is that saying "You raghead" is not equal to saying "You Middle-Easterner". It is much more like saying "You stinking Middle-Easterner, who is below me, and unworthy of consideration as an individual beyond his race". There's a lot of connotation tied up in a racial slur.

The only question left is whether you can use a slur against one part of a racial group without implying it against the entire racial group. Jimbo says yes, I say no, in essence, and this is open to debate.

But if you're arguing that racial slurs have no power and that taking offense to them is just PC posturing, that's because you've never been called one, or because you've never been called one by someone who had the power to (kick your ass | deny your loan | evict you from your apartment | etc...).

posted 09-12-2001 20:04            

quote:

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Originally posted by fenomas:
The only question left is whether you can use a slur against one part of a racial group without implying it against the entire racial group. Jimbo says yes, I say no, in essence, and this is open to debate.

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I'll buy that statement, although I'd like to reiterate YET AGAIN that "raghead" isn't a racial slur. If you want to get excruciatingly technical about it, it's an ethnic slur.

As for all those of you making the inevitable PC "oh woe is the evil of the white man who just doesn't understand" crap, I might be predominantly caucasian, but I'm a card-carrying member of the Echota Cherokee tribe. Why, you ask, am I card-carrying member of a Cherokee tribe? Because my actual amerind ancestors were Creek, and there ARE no fucking Creek tribes left, because they were all exterminated except for random refugees - mostly women and children - taken in and hidden from the feds by local white families. I'm the descendent of those (non-plantation-owning, non-slave-owning, mostly Scottish and German) families and the Creek refugees they took in.

There are two things I'd like to get across with this little story:

1. Fuck off with your "your ancestors never went through the hardship" crap.
2. That shit is so over and done with it's fucking pathetic. Get out of the past and live in the present - or maybe even the near future. It's much healthier in the end.

On another note, I've got a question for all the rest of the caucasians out there - are you really offended when somebody says the KKK are a bunch of white trash? Tell the honest truth, now. I don't want a textbook answer, I want to know if you heard someone - of any race - making the statement "nobody but white trash would join the KKK", if your immediate gut reaction is to be hurt or angry or whatever.

posted 09-12-2001 20:05            

But yet, I'm lumped into the clan of the big bad white folk because people with my skin color kept slaves. It's reverse racism. Even people descended from southern plantation owners are not responsible since they never kept slaves themselves. We can't choose our parents or the past. But we can choose what we do in the present and that should be all that matters.

It's not easy and I slip occasionally, but at least I try to notice when I am being racist and try to stop. And I am trying very hard not to hate any ethnic groups after what has happened. I just can't understand people that could kill thousands of people because of a religious belief.

posted 09-12-2001 20:22            

Snag - I love how you said I can forget the past because I have money [ ha! damn I wish that were true! ] and power [ phew almost but not quite ] I forget the past because it is not affecting us currently. The past is not occuring in the present, and thus, is not affecting it. The memory of it is what affects those that will allow it to affect them. I'm sure you forgot about the Inquisition, that was in the past. Forgot about the massacres which were the Holy Wars. You choose what you wish to forget and to remember. You can't do SHIT with events that happened in the past. Why bother with them? I hate mostly everyone and everything I see. However, I cherish all that I hate. So in the end, I have a "Eh, whatever" feeling towards everything and everyone. Unless of course someone did something really good or bad. If Bin Laden is behind this, I'll hate him. He did things in the past that are currently affecting us. I'm not going to hate a descendant of a plantation owner. That's what pisses me off about racism [ namely racism towards black and whites ] because people are still living back then. Get over it already. [ sorry if that didn't make any sense BTW, I'm light headed right now for some reason :\ ]

"Too white to understand what everyone else, especially blacks, go through on a daily basis."

Please man. Please explain how the colour of one's skin affects thier understanding. What is it? Some special pheremone or something?

Fen - Hrmm how can I say this? ::ponder:: Ok, I'll try to convey how I feel about it. I feel that if people didn't care about the words, they would lose meaning. Once the meaning is lost, the word is useless, which means it won't be used. If the words that cause people to get upset are not used, no one gets upset. [ That'll have to do for an explination, sorry I can't explain it better ]

Jimbo - I don't take offense to that. I hate the KKK, it's stupid. As far as I am concerned, people who will kill and put down others because of skin colour don't deserve life.

posted 09-12-2001 20:43            

quote:

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Originally posted by Snag:
Whitebread worlds.
Whites like us.
Too white to understand what everyone else, especially blacks, go through on a daily basis.

It's easy to forget when your white.

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snag i love your blaket statements. i guess you calling all whites racists is just as bad as me saying camel jockey. it is easy to forget that you have NEVER been a slave when you like to blame some of your problems on some other group.

posted 09-12-2001 20:58            

DOE- Well, obviously. And if people learned to learned to shit anchovie pizza, we could solve our sewage problems and feed the world at the same time. But people will not just stop being hurt by these words, at least not by next tuesday- And not just because people are shallow, but because these words often bring back memories of injury or foretell injury to come. If person A is hurting person B, I put the responsibility of change on person A.

Finally, Jim and Bex, your suggestions of putting all this in the past would be fine if we lived in a world where all the different colors had the same opportunity. If you're saying that's the case, then fine, let's argue. I don't think we'll ever get a society that's all the way to that point, personally. But we can continue the process of refinement, attempting to eliminate prejuidice where we find it. We won't do that by pretending slavery never occurred, or by pretending that america is perfect with liberty for all, and we sure as fuck won't do it by running websites with "fucking raghead" on the front page, which I'm still not very freaking thrilled about.

posted 09-12-2001 21:24            

I understand that it was disturbing to see around 20-25 muslims celebrating the attacks, but that is only 20-25 people out of 5-6 million people.

We have to remember that the people that condone/commited these acts are by no means a good "Representitive" of the muslim population.

Just like those coders that create stupid-assed viruses are not "representative" of the entire programming/computer science community

Or that pr0n sites are a good representative of the state of the internet

That is enough analogies for me, I think that I am going to take a nap

posted 09-12-2001 22:06            

I know things are getting better, but that doesn't mean we can all stop trying. We can't all forget slavery. We can't all forget that we are still above all on many of the "ladders" of this society.

I wish that I wasn't blamed for what happenned in the past too. But, in the United States the white man was the slaver. The black man was the slave.

As for every white man being a racist. I feel that we are all ingrained with a sense of racism since the day we were born. We have the power to be racist. We are all inherently racist. If you disagree, disagree with my ideas, not the person that I am.

posted 09-12-2001 23:21           

where to begin?

to say "slavery happened 100 years ago; it wasn't me personally who was involved, so lets forget about it and move on," is nothing short of PURE ignorance. what happened in the past doesn't affect today? really? then why did thousands of people die yesterday? why did the most serious act of violence in our country's history occur less than 30 miles from my house? why did i have to spend half of yesterday calling home, making sure loved ones were alive?

by the logic of "past not affecting present," it wasn't a reaction to things happening in the past.

why do acts of violence against innocent civilians, against children, happen every day in this world all over the globe?

why?

because of things that happened in the PAST. these acts of violence, these vicious cries out to humanity, are reactions to events occuring in the past, to history. the conflicts in ireland, in the middle east, everywhere, have been going on for years and years and years.

and yet, the past doesnt affect the present?

posted 09-13-2001 00:32            

quote:

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Originally posted by kleshlet82:
to say "slavery happened 100 years ago; it wasn't me personally who was involved, so lets forget about it and move on," is nothing short of PURE ignorance. what happened in the past doesn't affect today? really? then why did thousands of people die yesterday?

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Well... call me crazy, but somehow I don't think Kunta Kinte[ sp? ] is the mastermind behind the events of the 11th. We'll say Bin Laden is behind it all. In the 1800's was one of Bin Laden's ancestors a slave to a white person living in America? I don't think so.

By saying that the past doesn't affect the present, I mean like... we'll say your ancestors and my ancestors were arch enemies. We'll say it's 1000 years ago this occured. Large fight between your ancestors and mine, mine killed some of yours and yours killed some of mine. Because of that event in the past, I'm not going to hunt you down and extract revenge in the present.

The past has no affect on the present. It's the memory of the past and the interpretation[ sp? ] of the past that affects the present.

------------------
We live life afraid of death, but only live to die.

posted 09-13-2001 02:09            

quote:

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Originally posted by fenomas:
Like I said, DOE- you're a bright kid, but you might want to re-evaluate your policy on speaking out on topics you have not direct experience with.

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this sounds like the pothead calling his dealer black.....

....or something like pot and kettle

posted 09-13-2001 05:47            

quote:

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Originally posted by kleshlet82:

to say "slavery happened 100 years ago; it wasn't me personally who was involved, so lets forget about it and move on," is nothing short of PURE ignorance. what happened in the past doesn't affect today? really? then why did thousands of people die yesterday? why did the most serious act of violence in our country's history occur less than 30 miles from my house? why did i have to spend half of yesterday calling home, making sure loved ones were alive?

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To forget history is to repeat it. There are many who say that if Hitler had studied french history (specifically, Napoleon) that he wouldn't have invaded Russia when he did, and he would have won WWII.

A surprisingly small piece of the population actually owned slaves, even in the 1800's. Of course, the people who DID own slaves in the 1800's owned several dozen a piece (on average).

The black man never did own any land in the US before he was brought over by slave traders. Why aren't they mad at the Europeans that would bring shiploads of people over here to be sold? Or the native peoples that sold people from neighboring tribes to the traders? That part of history isn't as well known as the evil man with the whip keeping great-great-great grampa down.

Saying its 100% the fault of the white man is as ignorant as saying "Well if you dont like it go back to africa".

How long do we dwell on the past?

The palestinians lost a country at the end of WWII when it was given away to people who had lost a country themselves MANY years ago. Most people however, agree that they lost that in a vicious war, that they should just forget their past and move one.

Who is right? At least in that case there are people left who actually remember having their own land and country

If I were a member of the "Hatfield" clan and 300 years ago the "McCoy's" down the street shot my grandfather, do I keep that fued going? Or do I move on and sleep with their sister like any good mostly white boy?

What I find the funniest is people who claim that they are without ANY sort of prejudice. Hey, you're prejudiced against prejudiced people

By the way, reverse racism is really just racism.

-Chris

posted 09-13-2001 07:34            

Clme your right, it's not 100% the white man's fault. But, the majority of it is. Guess who has to take the majority of the blame?

posted 09-13-2001 08:23            

quote:

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Originally posted by Amazon:
I am prejudiced. I only like the white meat on the chicken...

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posted 09-13-2001 10:34            

quote:

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Originally posted by Snag:
Clme your right, it's not 100% the white man's fault. But, the majority of it is. Guess who has to take the majority of the blame?

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The only ones who have to take blame are those who, individually, were the perpetrators of slavery, or, in your case, are the ones who keep saying shit like this which is neither constructive nor helpful in resolving the multitude of difficulties facing the world today.