Racism Part two

[chrisp65]

58 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

It is. But it’s different than explicit racism. 

Using or acting on a racial stereotype that you don’t know or realise is offensive isn’t the same as deliberately discriminating against someone because of their race. 

 

47 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

**** me the lines are blurry. 

 

For me, I think speech and offence changes over time. When I was younger, it was absolutely not the accepted thing to describe someone as black. Now, black appears to be perfectly acceptable to most. Recently I’ve listened to a couple of people I would describe as black, self describe themselves as brown. So I am aware I’m not always bang up to date with what is acceptable today.

So, I think, if we’re all being civilised then I should be able to use the words I believe are not offensive. For instance I might describe someone as ‘black’, if I am told in a reasonable way by that person that they want to be referred to as ‘mixed heritage’ for example, then I should revert to that. No offence to or from either party.

Problems arise when I say black and there is a pile on of people organising a shaming party because now ‘everyone’ says brown. Or the person that doesn’t know me instantly jumps to the conclusion that me, the middle aged balding chubby white guy is being deliberately provocative and using trigger words. 

Equally, if I then hear the corrections, but still insist on using the wrong word, then I am being a git. 

Someone that’s 85 and has said ‘coloured’ for the last 50 years is highly unlikely to simply switch to whatever is currently in vogue. Someone savvie enough to be on social media or on TV giving out opinions, should be able to amend their speech, and, their personal bias.

On VT, most of us already know each other’s positions on most topics by now. When we get a couple of newbies, there will be an element of sounding someone out. That’s bound to happen and some people are bound to be challenged.

I’ve been way off the mark about someone on here recently, had them down as a full on racist. I was wrong. We still don’t have many views in common, but once I recalibrated the language I was expecting to be hearing, I was wrong, the guy was cool enough. Just different to me, so not perfect. 

[Stevo985]

8 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

 

For me, I think speech and offence changes over time. When I was younger, it was absolutely not the accepted thing to describe someone as black. Now, black appears to be perfectly acceptable to most. Recently I’ve listened to a couple of people I would describe as black, self describe themselves as brown. So I am aware I’m not always bang up to date with what is acceptable today.

So, I think, if we’re all being civilised then I should be able to use the words I believe are not offensive. For instance I might describe someone as ‘black’, if I am told in a reasonable way by that person that they want to be referred to as ‘mixed heritage’ for example, then I should revert to that. No offence to or from either party.

Problems arise when I say black and there is a pile on of people organising a shaming party because now ‘everyone’ says brown. Or the person that doesn’t know me instantly jumps to the conclusion that me, the middle aged balding chubby white guy is being deliberately provocative and using trigger words. 

I agree with this and I'd also add that a key thing is the reaction of someone who uses inappropriate words.

If I said something that offends someone then I'd like to think my reaction would be to understand why it was offensive and try not to use that word again in the future.

 

It's when people answer "you can't say that" with ridicule and disbelief that it could ever be offensive and refuse to not use the term that it bothers me.

The "All Lives Matter" stuff is a great example. I can see why someone might not realise that that's an offensive or at least "clumsy" thing to say. But a lot of people point blank refuse to be told any different and will carry on saying it. That bothers me, and that's more a judge of somebody's character than accidentally using an inappropriate word.

Edited July 2, 2020 by Stevo985

[bickster]

12 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So I am aware I’m not always bang up to date with what is acceptable today.

It's the race equivalent of he / she / it / they

You can't possibly know until the individual has self identified to you. Person of colour is the best catchall I guess but even that is problematic

[Stevo985]

Another good example I've thought of. One of my best mates is Chinese and his dad owns a couple of Chinese restaurants that he also works in, and my friend has worked in too.

He said they'd often have people come in and use the word "Chinky". Either to order "chinky chips", or just in general "Oh yeah we love coming for a chinky"

 

Now the vast majority of cases the person doing it hasn't realised it's an offesive word to use. They're not saying it maliciously (as opposed to if they were saying something like "you chinky word removed" when it's obviously deliberate), and don't realise they're being inappropriate.

He said half the time they'd politely ask someone to not use that word the person would be horrified that they'd been offensive and apologetic and generally just realise they've done something wrong.
But the other half people would just laugh at them, or tell them it's actually not offensive and basically refuse to see anything wrong.

 

That's a better judge of a person than the actual use of the word.

(this would also be a good example of what I meant in reply to @lapal_fan when I said using racial stereotypes is different than actually being a racist)

[lapal_fan]

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

Another good example I've thought of. One of my best mates is Chinese and his dad owns a couple of Chinese restaurants that he also works in, and my friend has worked in too.

He said they'd often have people come in and use the word "Chinky". Either to order "chinky chips", or just in general "Oh yeah we love coming for a chinky"

 

Now the vast majority of cases the person doing it hasn't realised it's an offesive word to use. They're not saying it maliciously (as opposed to if they were saying something like "you chinky word removed" when it's obviously deliberate), and don't realise they're being inappropriate.

He said half the time they'd politely ask someone to not use that word the person would be horrified that they'd been offensive and apologetic and generally just realise they've done something wrong.
But the other half people would just laugh at them, or tell them it's actually not offensive and basically refuse to see anything wrong.

 

That's a better judge of a person than the actual use of the word.

(this would also be a good example of what I meant in reply to @lapal_fan when I said using racial stereotypes is different than actually being a racist)

He must work in Worcester! No joke!

[Seat68]

You have to admire Peter Sutcliffe, he was an excellent driver. 

[Stevo985]

15 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

He must work in Worcester! No joke!

Grimsby actually

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

It's the race equivalent of he / she / it / they

You can't possibly know until the individual has self identified to you. Person of colour is the best catchall I guess but even that is problematic

Yes, I mean, it doesn’t actually come up as an issue very often at all. I can’t think of the last time I needed to discuss someone’s race or colour or sex or sexual preferences.

There aren’t really very many real world scenarios where it comes up. 

We had someone marry in to the family, new blood, always exciting. At the first social meeting, my parents, love them, had to point out to everyone (once she’d left) that she was black. Personally, I had noticed this already via my eyes and brain but I hadn’t seen any reason to point it out to others. My parents, love them, were never going to be able not to mention it. I was just really really pleased they didn’t think they had to tell her.

 

 

[chrisp65]

We had a very minor kerfuffle at the football recently. We’ve probably (definitely), got more black players than any other team in our league. This will partly be down to geography, people aren’t moving house to play for these teams and Barry is closer to a much more diverse pool of talent than, say, Haverfordwest. So logically we have more black players than Haverfordwest. 

(as an aside, there is one team in the league in a similar catchment scenario to ours with a strangely poor history of selecting black players, stands out as being well beyond the realms of chance)

Anyway, we’ve got two black players that play international football, one for St Kitts, and one for Antigua. Straightaway, over excited people are on twitter suggesting we need to look in to the background of ALL our BLACK players in case they too could be playing for national teams. 

Well meaning, but utterly thoughtless on several levels. 

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

26 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

You have to admire Peter Sutcliffe, he was an excellent driver. 

He was so good he was on the company calendar in 1978 driving a big truck.

[Stevo985]

Another racist story happened recently that I've suddenly recalled (not really in relation to anything that's been said in the thread recently)

Had a bbq recently with my girlfriend and her family. Her dad is a horrible person. Racism being one of his many faults.

 

He told a story about someone called Kevin he worked with. Very positive story.

Then he just casually finished it with

"and you know the thing about Kevin is, he's black... but he's actually alright"

I facepalmed

[Paddywhack]

29 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Another racist story happened recently that I've suddenly recalled (not really in relation to anything that's been said in the thread recently)

Had a bbq recently with my girlfriend and her family. Her dad is a horrible person. Racism being one of his many faults.

 

He told a story about someone called Kevin he worked with. Very positive story.

Then he just casually finished it with

"and you know the thing about Kevin is, he's black... but he's actually alright"

I facepalmed

Obviously never met the bloke, but I’m guessing if you’d tried to explain to him why that’s racist he’d have said something along the lines of “how is it racist? I said he was one of the nice ones”

[Stevo985]

1 minute ago, Paddywhack said:

Obviously never met the bloke, but I’m guessing if you’d tried to explain to him why that’s racist he’d have said something along the lines of “how is it racist? I said he was one of the nice ones”

Yeah, basically. I genuinely think he thought he was paying the guy a massive compliment and that it was a really nice thing to say.

 

I wouldn't bother trying to explain why it's racist. He's too far gone, a lost cause.

[Keyblade]

2 hours ago, mjmooney said:

I used 'white van man' a couple of posts back, when mentioning the 3M HK Chinese. 

Yeah, it's a stereotype for 'uneducated right wing racist', much like 'Essex man', 'Mondeo man', etc. Personally, I don't really care about offending them - despite their protestations to the contrary, they are not an oppressed minority, with centuries of slavery and abuse in their history. And, yes, I'm well aware that there are those who don't fit the stereotype - the local builder I use is a working class Leeds bloke who does indeed drive a white van. He's a Labour Party activist, vehemently anti-racist, and a supporter of BLM. 

Also crucially, they're not blanket stereotypes of all white men. They sound like specific stereotypes of specific types of people who display a specific behaviour. Another example of this is the recent Karen stereotype. It's a stereotype of a certain type of woman, usually white granted, who takes a special interest in policing people's lives or convening with various store managers when she doesn't get her way. If the behaviour doesn't apply, then the stereotype doesn't apply. Racial stereotypes like lazy (black people) or greedy (Jewish people) etc are blanket stereotypes that apply to everyone in that group.

[Follyfoot]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

Another racist story happened recently that I've suddenly recalled (not really in relation to anything that's been said in the thread recently)

Had a bbq recently with my girlfriend and her family. Her dad is a horrible person. Racism being one of his many faults.

 

He told a story about someone called Kevin he worked with. Very positive story.

Then he just casually finished it with

"and you know the thing about Kevin is, he's black... but he's actually alright"

I facepalmed

Unfortunately the older they get the worse they get, old dog and new tricks and that. I remember one Christmas lunch where my sister playfully let it slip that I was courting a mixed race girl and the reaction from my Nan was, never bring her to meet her, the races should never mix and her stating she was going to reassess leaving me anything in her will if such actions 'persisted'amongst other things. She also killed a swan with a rock cake but that's a different story

[Stevo985]

5 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

She also killed a swan with a rock cake but that's a different story

Deliberately?

[lapal_fan]

16 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

Also crucially, they're not blanket stereotypes of all white men. They sound like specific stereotypes of specific types of people who display a specific behaviour. Another example of this is the recent Karen stereotype. It's a stereotype of a certain type of woman, usually white granted, who takes a special interest in policing people's lives or convening with various store managers when she doesn't get her way. If the behaviour doesn't apply, then the stereotype doesn't apply. Racial stereotypes like lazy (black people) or greedy (Jewish people) etc are blanket stereotypes that apply to everyone in that group.

I wouldn't be comfortable with that to be honest.  There are lots of subsets of any group which I still wouldn't reference that would only apply to a specific behaviour. 

[Follyfoot]

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

Deliberately?

Impossible to be 100% sure but I would say there is a high possibility she knew what she was doing based on a similar previous encounter with a duck 

[blandy]

2 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

The "All Lives Matter" stuff is a great example. I can see why someone might not realise that that's an offensive or at least "clumsy" thing to say. But a lot of people point blank refuse to be told any different and will carry on saying it. That bothers me, and that's more a judge of somebody's character than accidentally using an inappropriate word.

That's very true and also I have seen examples of people making very careful and sensitive arguments on some subjects and being utterly pounced upon for "hate speech" when they've done no such thing. In other words there are "right on" people who steadfastly and resolutely refuse to accept that anyone who doesn't have their particular take on a subject around human rights has a perfectly reasonably held and caring position. There are bell ends everywhere!

[Keyblade]

2 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

I wouldn't be comfortable with that to be honest.  There are lots of subsets of any group which I still wouldn't reference that would only apply to a specific behaviour. 

I mean, it's definitely not a kind thing to do and is usually done with the intent to insult. But at least it's targeted and you don't have strays hitting uninvolved people.

Like with @Stevo985's story about the guy who called a black guy "one of the good ones". He wasn't even insulting the guy, but yet somehow managed to insult every black person even though only 1 guy was the subject of that conversation.