N word is actually a good example.
Lots of kids outside of America grow up using this in a non racist way after hearing it in rap, and may use it with PoC.
It’s still racist tho.
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I used to call things “retarded” when I was younger. Actually, embarrassingly, probably into college age. At some point I had it explained to me why it’s an offensive term and can be hurtful to some people. Honestly, probably multiple times before I finally came to terms with it and stopped using it. I never meant it in a hurtful way, but of course I see that the term is inherently problematic and have since grown and stopped using it. There are probably a dozen terms that I used, without ill intent, that I have stopped using as an adult and find embarrassing to think back on. It’s ok to not understand things and learn from it. But holy shit you don’t get to claim that YOU get to define whether a term is offensive and if you didn’t mean it that way then it’s not racist.
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One of us isn’t.
You and your ilk certainly don’t get to claim which linguistic terms are racist in other countries that you know nothing about, based purely on what’s happened in your own shithole.
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This entire thread comes down to cultural relativism. Symbolic things, especially language, often mean different and sometime opposite things in other cultures. It’s only meaningful to talk about something like racism in its cultural context.
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N word is a terrible analogy for obvious reasons.
Ok you knew the term was American. In the 80s, what did you understand an American ghetto to be? Obviously only a tiny percent of British racists use the term, of course, but what did you think Americans meant when they said ghetto?
Hurrah. Someone gets it.
What are they
Do Americans need to avoid using the word “spastic” because of its very negative connotation in the UK?
- Yes
- No
0 voters
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lol
lol
I was curious because I didn’t know.
Yeah I only knew that because I looked it up a long time ago after some idiot here (in UK) claimed it was invented by Yanks.
Is spastic a term that was invented in Britain with offensive connotations, and then simultaneously adopted by Americans to refer to the exact same thing while we plugged our ears and screamed how WE don’t mean it that way?
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Ok so honestly what are they though
Your bad faith bullshit heralds the end of our chat. Have a great day!
“but it’s not racist in my culture” is one of the most oft-cited defenses of racists
Like, these guys are sincere in their defense that what others consider to be racist is not racist in their culture.
Do we excuse children who grow into adults never knowing anything but an isolated white supremacist culture from having racist positions and actions? Of course not. What we ask is that they acknowledge their ignorance and the racist impact of their positions and actions, and work on discarding their racism to the best of their ability each day.
I’m not calling anyone ITT a white supremacist, just using an extreme example to illustrate the outer boundaries of the argument and working back to more common positions.
We all have unacknowledged racist positions. And even those of us who have dedicated enormous parts of our lives to processing this still have lots of shit otherwise to work through. Some people are dedicated anti-racists and still have unprocessed transphobia, homophobia, dogphobia, good movie-phobia.
I really hesitate to label someone a racist, because virtually no racist has malicious intentions from their POV. But I will call someone a racist if when confronted with the racist impact of their words, they refuse to show any empathy or compassion for the people their actions affect outside of their community where something isn’t considered racist.
I’ve learned that none of us know what another person needs to go through on the inside before we will ever see an external manifestation of their growth. So in that spirit, I hope this is part of jalf’s process to one day acknowledge the larger historical and cultural impact of this and any other racist phrases he continues to use.
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I’m gonna chime in here and say Ghetto Blaster has absolutely zero racist connotations in the UK, I’ve learned in this thread it has in the USA which was news to me, and I now wouldn’t use it if talking to Americans, but in no way is a racist term over here
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I try to put myself in the shoes of a naive child gazing up at the sky when talking about foreign subjects with them, but christ do some of them come across horribly sometimes.
The best bit is they don’t realise it’s these “qualities”, that they share in common with the deplorables, that brought Trump to power.
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