I don’t think I saw the lynching comments. What thread was that in?
I obviously dislike jalfrezi, for reasons I’ve stated, so some of this is personal. I don’t know why/when he started being such a dick to me, I’m pretty sure it was when I defended jman when he was trashing him pretty badly. This turned ugly when his response to my initial comment on the term was to lash out at me and deny it, and obviously given our history I was going to respond negatively to that.
I’d say it would have ended quickly with almost anyone else, but that’s also be due to the fact that almost anyone else on this forum would have just been like, “You know, I hadn’t realized that, I’ll stop using it.”
I think he would (lose that bet), and I’m grunching, and I’m not sure about this, but I think jalfrezi and and cuse have had some acrimonious history.
more grunching
I saw jalfrezi say they don’t use the word “ghetto” in the UK (I think), which is surprising. The word has a long history and doesn’t necessarily/originally have anything to do with Black neighborhoods. The original use refers to a Jewish neighborhood.
“ghetto blaster” is pretty obviously racist when you think about it, but I’m sure lots of people have used it without thinking about it at all. It was a very very common description of a boom box (if such things even exist anymore) back before everyone had ear buds. Shouldn’t be a cause for something that reads “you’re a racist”, but it also shouldn’t be a big deal to just learn that and move on.
This is true. But jmakin argued that everyone else is piling on because of a dislike due to a mismatch in political views. I think most of the forum has a huge overlap in political views with jalfrezi.
I’m going to drop from this argument now anyway because me and jalfrezi have had our moments, (all relating to covid and jman), but I think we’ve mostly gotten over them and I don’t want to be perceived as piling on.
I had heard the word maybe once before but thought it was a racist term for “gun” until this argument. Now that I learned it means boombox, I think it’s less racist than what I thought before, but still not good.
On a different note this reminded me of something that I first heard as a yute when I moved to the Texas in the 80s.
I don’t remember the name I knew this fireworks as at the time, but they seem to be called “whistling chasers” these days. I was taken aback when I regularly heard them called nword chasers. In fact that usage was very common amongst the privileged whites I knew in Texas back then.
I wish I could remember what my more innocent upbringing always referred to them as but that baje was extremely common and was even publicly advertised in the 1940s.
Certainly everyone calling them that in the 80s were not intentionally trying to be racist, as that is the name they were commonly known and referred to as, but that ignorance only allows immunity for so long. Once you are educated on the meaning it is no longer okay even if that is what you grew up with.
The broader point is what it says about society that we called them that, and how a pernicious form of racism is the passive kind you don’t think about, like breathing. It’s coded into our every day language.
I mean Texas is still in 2020 the home of the Texas fucking Rangers. It’s horrific and unconscionable, and demonstrates how we as a society condone and promote genocide to this very day.
Q: Am I talking about the baseball team or the state law enforcement body?
A: Yes.
