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Yes
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I don’t know enough about Thai cultural history to answer this but it seems like it would be less problematic.
You might be shocked to find out how racist, by these kinds of standards, a lot of non-European cultures are, at least the ones I’ve experienced.
For Latin Americans race is just a thing you joke about, talk about. Same with being fat btw. Asia seems the same on fat at least. And India. They’ll all flat out tell you you look fat lately. When that Latin American baseball player got busted for making Chinese eyes - he really was completely unaware of how this is not societally accepted in in America like it is in Mexico.
Indians in my experience are the most racist, classist, caste-ist people on the planet. I love my Indian coworkers. But when you get a few beers in them it’s pretty obvious race/caste is everything in their culture. My friend is a 45-year-old virgin because she doesn’t want to alienate her parents by marrying outside of her caste (among other reasons - it’s not lack of attractiveness though). And her family has all been living in America for decades.
I get it. Things are very different when you’re in the oppressor country vs. the oppressed. But I do think sometimes we take it too far, and that sometimes being able to joke w/o directly attacking any group, is better than making A VERY BIG DEAL about them. I put this Khan thing in that category. I’m not convinced anyone living in USA 2021 with broken English would be offended or hurt by that.
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Imagine going THIS HARD into the paint to defend racism after you basically conceded it was at least racist-adjacent but “not a big deal”.
You are one progressive superstar.
No doubt there is tons of racism globally. I’ve seen it to on my travels and even had a whole lecture about non-white racism in the race course I used to teach.
For the record, I didnt really make a huge deal of it. I simple made a one line post pointing out the racism. It became a huge deal when a few people decided to go hard into the paint to defend it.
Just want to say no hard feelings to you or stim. I just wanted to point out something that seemed problematic to me in the hopes someone might think a little more deeply about some of subtle biases in our everyday lives.
Mongols left lots of people alive if they agreed to pay tribute. And killed lots of those who didn’t. That was largely as a warning to everyone else who was given the choice of pay tribute or fight. The Mongols didn’t really have the infrastructure to deal with transporting masses of slaves all over the way the Romans did and they didn’t have anywhere near the need/use for slaves either.
The whole of Mongolians running all over Eurasia and a bit into Europe only spanned like 50 years (they were in China longer, but that was much different under Kubai Khan and later times.
How did you get that interpretation from my post?
It seems that you have some opinion to push forward and you’ll strawman any post just to make it. It’s really frustrating to discuss almost anything with you because you do so in such bad faith.
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The joke, not you, is belittling and mocking the Kahn for speaking bad English. That’s the whole point of the discussion here.
I thought I made that clear with the last sentence. If I wasn’t clear my apologies.
The joke is mocking Joe Rogan, the broken English is mocking Joe’s steroid shrunk brain, you’re going out of your way to make it more than it is imo.
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As I’ve made clear that is not my read.
I mean yeah it’s mocking Rogan, but come one it’s mocking him by saying he’s a backwards idiot just like those Mongols.
Maybe I’m being oversensitive here, but it just seems like white dudes using eye dialect to imitate non-white peoples has a long and really not good history and maybe we just should not.
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Why man with light skin who like woman no speak? Tiny hat man with wife with desert between legs say so. Tiny hat man blame people who no sleep. Me think tiny hat man right.
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Eye dialect is absolutely the most racist shit and I absolutely hate it. I mean, everybody has an accent and nobody speaks ‘proper English’ except for like maybe seven people and they all work in BBC broadcasting.
The debate is whether this is that (well technically it’s not, it’s broken English, but we can put written broken English and eye dialect in the same bucket). I read it as distinctly that caveman/cro-magnon man voice, so maybe the joke maker was mixing metaphors and wasn’t clever enough to think of something thematic.
Some of Clovis’s analysis seems to get the causal relationship backwards.
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It’s odd you, like victoar, are walking right up to agreeing it is at least racist adjacent and given my super offending post that started all this said it had “racist undertones” what are we even talking about here.
Let’s assume it’s not overtly racist. Why do we want to condone things like this that dabble around the edges of racism? Is it so funny that it’s value overcomes the possible harm, even if an edge case?
Nobody here is posting swastikas, so when your community is all progressive the interesting cases are those on the edge where we can all check our own implicit biases. No?
This was my take on it. Rogan brings on people on his podcast who he THINKS are smart so he can learn from him.
Most of them are just grifters though using him and his ignorance.
The last part may directly tie into genghis I am ignorant of that.
The problem with claiming everything is racist is it makes it virtually impossible to fight serious racism. At some point it is simply too much and you can’t be dissecting every single sentence to declare it racist or non racist. It hurts the actual fight against racism, it really does.
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Enough people are pushing back at me here to concede I may be wrong about the value of pointing out these edge cases so I’d like to explore your idea a bit more to clarify my thought.
Let’s put aside the discussion over the joke that started this and let me ask why you think too much focus on pointing out racism hurts the cause of anti-racism?
It seems to me that racist power structures operate by infusing themselves into every part of a culture.
There are:
Type 1) the neo-nazis marching with tiki torches;
Type 2) the otherwise nice couple who vote democratic but would be concerned if a black family moved in next door; and
Type 3) the guy who really believes “the best person should get the job”; and
Type 4) the guy who completely innocently says “circle the wagons”.
Micro aggressions or subtle racism form the foundation of the power structure. It’s only because these subtle ideas pervade our culture that the neo-nazis get to even exist, right?
As I said earlier, given the demographics of this community and the fact that we have no type 1-3 people isn’t it worthwhile to discuss type 4 where we all might still need some expansion of our thinking?
Sure we might be uncomfortable, and even wrong sometimes. Maybe I am wrong about the joke.
However, I think the worst thing we can do is to accept the rights premise that too much anti-racism is bad!
Spitballing here, but people do not just call people racist out of pure unadulterated benevolence, a part of it is our own form of power seeking.
It makes us feel like we are better people than the racists, and it’s even cooler that our segment of “liberal” society rewards us for seeking validation in that way.
You can see this clearly in stuff like shitlibs harshly attacking people like Bernie over non-sense like advertising Rogan’s endorsement.
So pushing edge cases a) makes people feel powerless and policed to a degree they find unacceptable and get resentful over it b) makes them feel like you are harassing them for your own selfish reasons and need to feel superior, rather than for benevolent reasons.
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Can’t the same argument be used to suggest we shouldn’t police any type of racism?
How do we decide what type of racism deserves policing and what doesn’t?
Seems the cleanest version is to combat it all.
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I think some of you guys are overthinking this.
Is Gary Larson racist for making caveman Far Side cartoons?
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There is nobody alive with a cultural or ethnic connection to “cave men”.