And contexts differ around the world. In South Africa, the mixed race community in the Cape define themselves as coloured for the most part rather than black.
The new director of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London, Adam Habib, formerly vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, has resigned after an outcry caused by his use of the term 'n*****' in an address to students. Habib said he told students, "If someone used the word [n-word] against another staff member, then it would violate our policy and action would be taken."
Black students immediately confronted Habib and told him he could not use that word. Habib was taken aback and said the n-word is not in common usage in South Africa and not considered as offensive -- this is debatable -- but Habib as an Indian South African would consider himself black and clearly didn't understand that he would not be seen as such in Britain. Some South African academics have complained that the outrage directed at Habib carries undertones of anti-Indian and Islamophobic prejudice. Others have pointed to Adam Habib's over-bearing managerial style and lack of sympathy for black students as an administrator in South Africa.
Habib himself apologised but posted a curious defence that indicates another approach to the issue and tensions within the older liberation movements in southern Africa: “I am aware that this is a common view among activists committed to an identitarian politics. I don’t identify with this political tradition. I grew up in a political tradition that is more cosmopolitan oriented and more focused on the class dimensions of structural problems.”
I believe a similar complication exists with "eskimo" where it is still in use in Alaska but considered pejorative in Canada, a relatively recent (~last 40 years or so) development.
As I understand it, that's because Eskimo is the name of the tribe who live in Alaska: it's a bit like referring to people from the UK as English.
My mother,60 or even 70 years ago, would never have used the word 'nigger' to describe anyone of whatever colour they might have been - but she had a coat which was most definitely 'nigger brown'. (like navy blue or blood red)
the phrase 'nigger in the woodpile' was an everyday phrase (not, of course, used every day !)
which few people would have connected with the word 'nigger' alone. tclune's recollection of his mother's horror at her moment of realisation would certainly strike a chord with me.
The most common counting out rhyme (link to Wikipedia) for deciding who was "it" when I was a child was "Eenie meenie minee moe, catch a n**** by the toe ..." which has virtually disappeared in the form I knew it (except with Jeremy Clarkson). We moved to "My little sister has a pinnie, Guess what colour it was? [choice of colour, count out colour]" from choice when we realised "Eenie, meenie ..." might not be great. Which was easy to game.
These days you're more likely to hear children saying "Ip, dip, ...".
I believe a similar complication exists with "eskimo" where it is still in use in Alaska but considered pejorative in Canada, a relatively recent (~last 40 years or so) development.
As I understand it, that's because Eskimo is the name of the tribe who live in Alaska: it's a bit like referring to people from the UK as English.
I hadn't heard that version (wikipedia mentions a whole boatload of folk-etymologies and notes that while Eskimo is still used in Alaska, those whose home is in Alaska are termed "Alaska natives" in officialdom and the former term refers to those outside Alaska).
Continuing with "Eeny, meeny, ..." the Wikipedia article references "tiger", and my Pie Corbett Kingfisher Playtime Treasury, published 1989, has "baby", but I Saw Esau by Peter and Iona Opie (1992 edition of 1947 original), doesn't include it at all.
Good point, @MMM and @Nick Tamen. That one's changed in the last 100 years in the US. But over 50 years ago my mother heard me say "colored," which I'd picked up at school in the first grade, and she firmly told me, "We say 'black people.'"
My mother said exactly the same thing to me, and that was in the mid-1960s. But in my case I wasn’t so much that I’d picked it up at school as that she knew I’d heard some older people use it, and I remember her adding that it had been considered an acceptable word to use, but not so much anymore. I think she put it that some times older people had a harder time remembering and used “colored” out of habit, but that I should always say “black.”
When I first heard that rhyme on the playground, I thought we were catching a "nicker" - a person who has nicked (stolen) something. At some point, I think "tinker" became the word normally used, but I don't think I used any kind of counting rhyme like that after age 7 - we'd all realized that it was just modular arithmetic, and not any kind of random at all.
None of this really has anything to do with a 17-year-old’s racist and homophobic tweets, does it? We’re not seriously considering the hypothesis that she was innocently just repeating a series of phonemes that she never connected with their widely understood meanings as bigoted slurs, are we?
It seems to me that in the olden days (before the advent of social media) these kinds of things faded into obscurity just because there was no permanent, easily transmissible record of them. I knew several kids in high school who were basically teenage assholes, but aside from the possibility of an offensive yearbook photo there’s no record of their behavior - they could be perfectly decent people today with no worries that someone’s going to dredge up something and rub their face in it.
What we have today isn’t the result of a change in attitude so much as a change in ability. If somebody pisses you off now, they may very well have a record of offensive behavior in the distant past that previously wasn’t available to you for use as a weapon. But the new technology doesn’t seem to have come with any feature that replaces the function that obscurity used to play in affording people the opportunity to privately regret their actions, learn from their mistakes and grow up without having to worry they’d blotted their permanent record. It wasn’t necessarily the same as repentance, reform, and forgiveness, but it still had its advantages.
But those who fall outside that "fully at home" include not only foreigners learning the language. But also teenagers trying out new words that they've picked up from their peer group. And also some elderly people for whom those words were normal when they learned them but have come to be more derogatory over time.
And for those groups the inference of attitude from vocabulary is false.
I think I'm going to disagree with this. Your suggestion requires your teenager to "innocently" pick up the use of a racist epithet from their peer group, without picking up any of the racist attitudes that come along with it, and I find that very unlikely indeed.
You are of course free to disagree. Your experience may be different from mine.
But it seems to me that your disagreement consists of pushing your unwarranted assumption (that using language you consider derogatory indicates a hostile attitude) one person further away - from the person using the word to the person they learned it from. So your argument is in effect circular - person A's vocabulary indicates a particular attitude because person B's words indicate a particular attitude and A will have picked up the attitude along with the vocabulary. And if I point out that B could have picked up the word innocently you'll just push back your assumption to person C from whom B learned it...
As an example, it seems to me entirely possible for a young person to pick up the (comparatively recent) usage of the word "gay" to mean something like "lame" (in the non-literal sense) or "pathetic", without believing that all homosexuals are pathetic, and without feeling any hostility towards homosexuals. Possibly even without knowingly being acquainted with any homosexuals at all...
As an example, it seems to me entirely possible for a young person to pick up the (comparatively recent) usage of the word "gay" to mean something like "lame" (in the non-literal sense) or "pathetic", without believing that all homosexuals are pathetic, and without feeling any hostility towards homosexuals. Possibly even without knowingly being acquainted with any homosexuals at all...
I was able to see your point right up to the last sentence, which just seems OTT. ISTM that many of our most ardently-held prejudices are precisely those with respect to people with whom we have no acquaintance. Indeed, it is often the case that we consciously exempt those people we know personally from our antipathy toward the stigmatized group to which they belong.
As an example, it seems to me entirely possible for a young person to pick up the (comparatively recent) usage of the word "gay" to mean something like "lame" (in the non-literal sense) or "pathetic", without believing that all homosexuals are pathetic, and without feeling any hostility towards homosexuals. Possibly even without knowingly being acquainted with any homosexuals at all...
If your young people aren't acquainted with any gay people, that in itself looks like evidence of a problem. It's perfectly possible for someone in a remote area of the UK not to personally know any Black people, or Asian people, for example, if nobody of that ethnicity has moved to your remote area. That's not how homosexuality works, though. You don't need gay parents to have gay kids.
Statistically, if you know any reasonable number of people, you know some gay people. If you don't know that they're gay, it's probably not because they're feeling supported and affirmed in their identity. I know that some of my male colleagues are gay because they've mentioned "my husband" or "my boyfriend" in conversation, just like I know some are straight, 'cause they've mentioned wives and girlfriends. (Yeah, they could all be bi, but ...)
If the gay people you know feel the need to keep their sexuality hidden, perhaps you should be asking why?
I believe a similar complication exists with "eskimo" where it is still in use in Alaska but considered pejorative in Canada, a relatively recent (~last 40 years or so) development.
As I understand it, that's because Eskimo is the name of the tribe who live in Alaska: it's a bit like referring to people from the UK as English.
It is used as a summary term for a number of groups of people, not any sort of tribe. And no it's not like calling people the English. More like Limies or Goddams.
As I understand it, "Eskimo" is what the early white explorers were told when they asked other tribes who the people up there were, that it's other people's name for them and doesn't mean anything complimentary to say the least.
Favourite childhood sin; I was about 4 and a half and was shopping with my oldest brother G and Mum. G didn't get enough oxygen at birth so he was a slow learner (as people like him were called in those days) he used to come home crying because D a slightly older boy teased him unmercifully and beat him up. G pointed at a kid looking in the window of the toyshop and said, "That's D who hits me"
Apparently I said "that one?" marched up behind him and kicked him as hard as I could in the bum. D spun around, but the only person close was this tiny little girl whom he didn't know walking away from him.
I know pride's a sin too, but I am still proud of having done that.
As an example, it seems to me entirely possible for a young person to pick up the (comparatively recent) usage of the word "gay" to mean something like "lame" (in the non-literal sense) or "pathetic", without believing that all homosexuals are pathetic, and without feeling any hostility towards homosexuals. Possibly even without knowingly being acquainted with any homosexuals at all...
I was able to see your point right up to the last sentence, which just seems OTT.
You're right - that last sentence doesn't support the point being made in that paragraph. It's moving on to another idea which isn't developed, and would have been better omitted.
ISTM that many of our most ardently-held prejudices are precisely those with respect to people with whom we have no acquaintance. Indeed, it is often the case that we consciously exempt those people we know personally from our antipathy toward the stigmatized group to which they belong.
I think what you're describing is an antipathy towards an idea of how some particular group is, a stereotype, that isn't carried through into any negative feeling or action towards those they encounter who don't correspond to that stereotype.
If you have a low opinion of the stereotypical Irishman who drinks too much and fights too much and talks a load of blarney, that's not incompatible with esteem for all the Irish you actually know, none of whom are like that.
People like that are in a separate category from those who call the vehicle a paddywagon because that's what it's known as in their subculture, without meaning anything about Irish people in general thereby.
Which doesn't mean that there aren't people who nurse real antipathy towards everything to do with certain other groups.
But does mean that such people are much rarer than you imagine if what you go by is instances of politically-incorrect speech.
Leorning Cniht - I agree with most of what you say, but you seem to have missed the "knowingly" in Russ's post.
My central point was that if you know a reasonable number of people, and don't know that you know any gay people, then that's prima facie evidence of a problem in your social group, because it's a statistical certainty that you do actually know some gay people. And given that we're talking about the current era, where our countries have widespread acceptance of gay people, and that if you watch TV, read the newspaper, or in any other way partake in modern society, you're going to find examples of people who are gay, so it's just not plausible that you exist in a subculture that doesn't know that gay people exist.
So whilst Russ's example might be theoretically possible, I find it completely unrealistic.
If you have a low opinion of the stereotypical Irishman who drinks too much and fights too much and talks a load of blarney, that's not incompatible with esteem for all the Irish you actually know, none of whom are like that.
And there's two ways you can go with that. It's perfectly reasonable to hold a low opinion of people who are aggressive drunks. But do you take your knowledge that the particular Irish people you know don't meet that stereotype, and extend it to the idea that perhaps some Irish people you don't know also don't meet that stereotype? Or do you double down, and think that most Irish people are aggressive drunks, and you just happen to know the good ones?
People like that are in a separate category from those who call the vehicle a paddywagon because that's what it's known as in their subculture, without meaning anything about Irish people in general thereby.
And it's plausible that someone has never connected the word "paddywagon" with the Irish, just like @tclune's mother didn't connect the woodpile phrase with the black family she was talking with. But once tclune's mother realized what she was saying, she had an "oh shit" moment, and didn't use the phrase again. If you're going to say that you know the origins of the word "paddywagon", and you know that Irish folk find it offensive (I have no idea how offensive this actually is), but you're going to use the term anyway, because that's what it was always called in your household, then you seem to be insisting on your right to offend people based on "well, I don't really mean anything about you - this is just what they're called". Which is, frankly, a stupid position.
It's like calling the colour "N***** brown" - it's offensive and unnecessary. Find a different word for the shade you mean. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find a shade with that label in a modern art supply store.
Another who caught a tiger by the toe. I also never heard the "n" word version until I was older. And I think the "tiger" version is better anyway, because of the alliteration with "tiger" and "toe".
Leorning Cniht - I agree with most of what you say, but you seem to have missed the "knowingly" in Russ's post.
My central point was that if you know a reasonable number of people, and don't know that you know any gay people, then that's prima facie evidence of a problem in your social group, because it's a statistical certainty that you do actually know some gay people. And given that we're talking about the current era, where our countries have widespread acceptance of gay people, and that if you watch TV, read the newspaper, or in any other way partake in modern society, you're going to find examples of people who are gay, so it's just not plausible that you exist in a subculture that doesn't know that gay people exist.
So whilst Russ's example might be theoretically possible, I find it completely unrealistic.
That explanation puts it in a different light.
Not at all sure I'd agree with the first sentence I quoted. One couple out of 15 to 20 in our group (that is, people who come for dinner/to whom we go for dinner) is gay. I think that's unusual around here; most others would not have anyone. "Around here" is largely a community of families with children. It's why people live here. Other parts of the city of course differ. The problem is going from the "statistical certainty" which applies to the city as a whole to a certainty in fact for a sub-section of it.
Then, the statistical certainty which applies to a community does not to individuals. For example, my year at school was of 80 or so boys. We've kept in reasonable touch, and none of us is gay - all married (at least most of the time) and with children. If you look to years above and below then there were some gay boys even if most did not come out until later. Statistics would say that out of the 80, at least 4 would have been gay. Those would be correct if you chose the larger community of the school as a whole.
It's perfectly reasonable to hold a low opinion of people who are aggressive drunks.
Agreed. If it were the case that aggressive drunkenness were a characteristic of a minority culture, that wouldn't make it above reproach.
But do you take your knowledge that the particular Irish people you know don't meet that stereotype, and extend it to the idea that perhaps some Irish people you don't know also don't meet that stereotype? Or do you double down, and think that most Irish people are aggressive drunks, and you just happen to know the good ones?
This seems confused - the propositions "some don't " and "most do" are not exclusive.
And if the truth is that most don't, but a significantly higher proportion do than in some other cultures, which side of your OK / not-OK division does that fall ?
If you're going to say that you know the origins of the word "paddywagon", and you know that Irish folk find it offensive (I have no idea how offensive this actually is), but you're going to use the term anyway, because that's what it was always called in your household, then you seem to be insisting on your right to offend people...
I can pretty much guarantee you that you could find an Irishman who thinks it's an insult to the Irish, and also find those who think it isn't.
You may be aware that there's an Irish company that drives (mostly American) tourists around Ireland in tour buses. They're bright green, with "paddywagon" written on the side and a cartoon of a red-bearded leprechaun...
Where I think you're going wrong is in assuming that Irish folk necessarily agree about anything. Collective opinion is a fiction.
If you were to take the position (which I note you're wisely not) that (because of the derivation rather than the meaning) the word "paddywagon" is
offensive and unnecessary, and campaign for its removal from the lexicon, that wouldn't be an act of respect and esteem for the Irish. It would be an act of an interfering busybody, choosing to side with the view of one Irish person against the views of other Irish people.
We don't need well-meaning "random internet guys" policing the language of others on our behalf.
I fully agree with you that if someone you're talking to genuinely (i.e. not manipulatively) finds a particular term offensive then it's polite to find an alternative term when talking to them.
Where I disagree with you is if you start thinking that their taking offense makes the word an objectively offensive one that you therefore should not use in talking to third parties.
One couple out of 15 to 20 in our group (that is, people who come for dinner/to whom we go for dinner) is gay. I think that's unusual around here; most others would not have anyone. "Around here" is largely a community of families with children. It's why people live here.
Yeah, but "people you know" doesn't just include friends you go to dinner with, who I'll agree are more likely to be "like you" - whatever that is. It includes colleagues that you say hello to in the elevator at work, people who share your hobbies. When I made my claim of statistical certainty, I was imagining that most people would have a conversation in which a spouse or partner was mentioned with something more than a hundred people over the course of a year.
(Although I'll note that I too live in a community which is mostly families and children. The family three doors down from me is a lesbian couple and their children. A couple of the local high school kids that I know are gay. I'd expect there to be more gay couples and gay kids among those of my neighbours that I don't know.)
And if the truth is that most don't, but a significantly higher proportion do than in some other cultures, which side of your OK / not-OK division does that fall ?
It's OK to just not stereotype, you know?
(Interestingly, Mr. Google tells me that the per capita beer consumption in Ireland is about the same as it is in the US. Although I suppose that depends on whether you count typical US mass-market "beer" as actual beer )
You may be aware that there's an Irish company that drives (mostly American) tourists around Ireland in tour buses. They're bright green, with "paddywagon" written on the side and a cartoon of a red-bearded leprechaun...
I was not aware, tour buses not really being my thing, but I'm not surprised. And I know we've had discussions before about members of particular groups poking fun at stereotypes about themselves, and outsiders making the same jokes.
Where I think you're going wrong is in assuming that Irish folk necessarily agree about anything. Collective opinion is a fiction.
I fully agree with you that if someone you're talking to genuinely (i.e. not manipulatively) finds a particular term offensive then it's polite to find an alternative term when talking to them.
Where I disagree with you is if you start thinking that their taking offense makes the word an objectively offensive one that you therefore should not use in talking to third parties.
Collective opinion is merely the union of all opinion. Imagine plotting all opinion on some kind of graph. You'd get clusters of points around opinions that are commonly held, and you could with some validity use that kind of data to make generalizations about the kinds of opinions that groups tend to have.
So you don't need all Irish folk to agree about whether using "paddywagon" to refer to a police vehicle is offensive. If a significant number of Irish people would find it offensive for me to refer to a police car like that, I shouldn't do it, because I'm probably going to offend someone.
We agree that we should choose not to use words that people we're talking with find offensive - that's part of normal polite behaviour. But if you know that particular words are often found offensive, it is equally polite to pre-emptively refrain from using them. You don't, for example, have to be told by a particular elderly lady that she finds being referred to as an "old fucker" offensive not to cheerfully greet elderly folk you meet at the bus stop with "Hello, Old Fucker!" because you know they're likely to be offended.
Irish people: they're similar enough in their faults for stereotyping to be OK, but not similar enough in their opinions that we should feel like bigots for stereotyping them.
One couple out of 15 to 20 in our group (that is, people who come for dinner/to whom we go for dinner) is gay. I think that's unusual around here; most others would not have anyone. "Around here" is largely a community of families with children. It's why people live here.
Yeah, but "people you know" doesn't just include friends you go to dinner with, who I'll agree are more likely to be "like you" - whatever that is. It includes colleagues that you say hello to in the elevator at work, people who share your hobbies.
I'll point out that the number of gay people in church is very dependent on how gay friendly the church is in the first place. And that gay friendly churches are not that easily found.
I'll point out that the number of gay people in church is very dependent on how gay friendly the church is in the first place. And that gay friendly churches are not that easily found.
Sure. (And at least in this side of the Pond, gay friendly churches actually aren’t that hard to find in many places.)
But the odds go up considerably if you not just counting gay people themselves, but people with gay family members.
This thread reminds me that when I came in from playing out with my friends as a 10 or 11 year old, all covered in dirt and who-knows-what, my Mum would tell me I was a 'dirty arab'. This really did have nothing to do with desert nomads, and I am sure she would have caught herself on in the same way as the example upthread, if by chance she'd bumped into a Saudi at the shops, or at church (the places my Mum went). She was very careful to be right on about Mrs J- the Japanese lady, at a time when lots of people still felt very raw about what had happened to POWs in the far east - a situation she was at pains to explain. She did well for the time - even coping with my questions about the Jeremy Thorpe affair without losing it, but I think we came close
Paddywagon did not connect to Irish in my understanding until I read the above. Probably because there are so few Irish. Paddy as meaning Irish is something literary only to me.
I'm reminded of how shocked my daughter was when she lived in London teaching. The school had something about "red Indians" and dress up. Highly inappropriate for here. It would result in discipline for the teacher.
It seems to me that in the olden days (before the advent of social media) these kinds of things faded into obscurity just because there was no permanent, easily transmissible record of them. I knew several kids in high school who were basically teenage assholes, but aside from the possibility of an offensive yearbook photo there’s no record of their behavior - they could be perfectly decent people today with no worries that someone’s going to dredge up something and rub their face in it.
What we have today isn’t the result of a change in attitude so much as a change in ability. If somebody pisses you off now, they may very well have a record of offensive behavior in the distant past that previously wasn’t available to you for use as a weapon. But the new technology doesn’t seem to have come with any feature that replaces the function that obscurity used to play in affording people the opportunity to privately regret their actions, learn from their mistakes and grow up without having to worry they’d blotted their permanent record. It wasn’t necessarily the same as repentance, reform, and forgiveness, but it still had its advantages.
I find that sometimes I'm an arsehole, and sometimes I'm a perfectly decent person. I have reasons for being an arsehole - immaturity, anger, anxiety, jealousy, resentment, tiredness, illness, medication error, pain. I like to think that racism and sexism aren't on that list, but I might well be fooling myself.
I move in and out of these states. Is this the same for others? Or are some people good all the time or bad all the time?
Yeah, but "people you know" doesn't just include friends you go to dinner with, who I'll agree are more likely to be "like you" - whatever that is. It includes colleagues that you say hello to in the elevator at work, people who share your hobbies. When I made my claim of statistical certainty, I was imagining that most people would have a conversation in which a spouse or partner was mentioned with something more than a hundred people over the course of a year.
(Although I'll note that I too live in a community which is mostly families and children. The family three doors down from me is a lesbian couple and their children. A couple of the local high school kids that I know are gay. I'd expect there to be more gay couples and gay kids among those of my neighbours that I don't know.)
I think you're missing my point. Your first sentence was:
My central point was that if you know a reasonable number of people, and don't know that you know any gay people, then that's prima facie evidence of a problem in your social group, because it's a statistical certainty that you do actually know some gay people.
Now, there's a jump in that from knowing a reasonable number of people to a conclusion of there being a problem with a social group. I'd very much hesitate in saying that people I used say hello to in the lift (in the days when I was working) were part of my social group. We might on occasions have found ourselves in a work situation together, but I'd still not call them part of a social group. If I occasionally I had coffee with them, even as part of a table of 6 or 8, I'd say that they were. And then there's the word "problem" which I just don't understand.
I find that sometimes I'm an arsehole, and sometimes I'm a perfectly decent person. I have reasons for being an arsehole - immaturity, anger, anxiety, jealousy, resentment, tiredness, illness, medication error, pain.
Acting like Mr Grumpy in response to a situation where one is deprived of coffee seems perfectly normal to me. We all have good times and bad times. (And mornings without coffee are bad times...)
I like to think that racism and sexism aren't on that list, but I might well be fooling myself.
Seems to me that real belief in racial/gender superiority is pretty rare these days. But feeling an attachment to one's own tribe and a sense of ownership of and belonging to the lands of your tribe and the customs of your tribe is normal human behaviour. Which is why I find the use of the r-word as if it referred to a single phenomenon rather than a collection of disparate behaviours that the user sees as of significance to race relations as unhelpful to understanding.
The opposite of stereotyping being what ? Being open to the possibility that not all individuals conform to type ? Or being firmly convinced that any statistic that supports a stereotype is false ?
But if you know that particular words are often found offensive, it is equally polite to pre-emptively refrain from using them. You don't, for example, have to be told by a particular elderly lady that she finds being referred to as an "old fucker" offensive not to cheerfully greet elderly folk you meet at the bus stop with "Hello, Old Fucker!" because you know they're likely to be offended.
You've seen the movie Gran Torino ?
You're right that one does not generally have to be told what is and is not offensive within one's own culture. Growing up in that culture we learn these things. The issues that arise tend to be those of culture clash.
And at least some of the claims of offence taken are not genuine but manipulative - attempts to control the common culture of a multi-cultural society.
The opposite of stereotyping being what ? Being open to the possibility that not all individuals conform to type ? Or being firmly convinced that any statistic that supports a stereotype is false ?
The point is that, even in the cases when the stereotype has some basis in fact, rather than just folk wisdom, it's such weak information that it's practically useless.
You brought up the stereotype of Irish folk liking a drink. It's a well-known stereotype, it's true enough that plenty of Irish people do like a drink, and it's not one of the more damaging stereotypes in existence.
But what use are you actually going to make of it? In what way is the stereotype "Irish people like a drink" useful to you when what you're actually dealing with is your new employee, or your Irish mate? What do you learn from the stereotype that is more useful than the answer to your question "can I get you a drink?"
And if you're choosing to hire Muhammad in place of Domhnall, because you think Muhammad is probably a Muslim and won't drink, whereas Domhnall is likely to be a piss artist who's hung over every morning, then I think you know you're wrong, don't you?
The opposite of stereotyping being what ? Being open to the possibility that not all individuals conform to type ? Or being firmly convinced that any statistic that supports a stereotype is false ?
The point is that, even in the cases when the stereotype has some basis in fact, rather than just folk wisdom, it's such weak information that it's practically useless...
...what use are you actually going to make of it?
Sorry if I seem to be labouring the point. I'm trying to get you to state explicitly a clear ethical principle, rather than assuming that I know (if I think about it) and am bound by whatever is considered socially appropriate in your subculture.
"Weak information" is a good description. At the office party, it might be thought significantly more likely that Domhnall will have a Guinness and Muhammad will have an orange juice than the other way round.
If the manager behind the bar pours Muhammad an orange juice without asking, while most others are having wine, does he wrong him thereby ? If he does it because he knows Muhammad well as a person ? Or conversely if he does it as an assumption based entirely on Muhammad's name and appearance and what he remembers of Islam from GCSE Religious Studies and that's the easy thing to do while he's busy trying to serve three different groups of people at the same time ?
It is a shame when perfectly good words which were used freely in the past are now considered to carry offensive overtones. In Australia there is a much loved icecream called Golden Gaytime which dates back to early last century. Now we find that certain oversensitive people want the name changed. I maintain that gay is a word used over many centuries to denote happiness and only recently has it been given sexual connotations. Maybe people who don't like the icecream name should find a new name for their group other than gay. This is all becoming ridiculous and it is time some of us said leave our language alone.
It is a shame when perfectly good words which were used freely in the past are now considered to carry offensive overtones. In Australia there is a much loved icecream called Golden Gaytime which dates back to early last century. Now we find that certain oversensitive people want the name changed. I maintain that gay is a word used over many centuries to denote happiness and only recently has it been given sexual connotations. Maybe people who don't like the icecream name should find a new name for their group other than gay. This is all becoming ridiculous and it is time some of us said leave our language alone.
It is a shame when perfectly good words which were used freely in the past are now considered to carry offensive overtones. In Australia there is a much loved icecream called Golden Gaytime which dates back to early last century. Now we find that certain oversensitive people want the name changed. I maintain that gay is a word used over many centuries to denote happiness and only recently has it been given sexual connotations. Maybe people who don't like the icecream name should find a new name for their group other than gay. This is all becoming ridiculous and it is time some of us said leave our language alone.
Has it occurred to you that someone might be taking the piss?
It is a shame when perfectly good words which were used freely in the past are now considered to carry offensive overtones. In Australia there is a much loved icecream called Golden Gaytime which dates back to early last century. Now we find that certain oversensitive people want the name changed. I maintain that gay is a word used over many centuries to denote happiness and only recently has it been given sexual connotations. Maybe people who don't like the icecream name should find a new name for their group other than gay. This is all becoming ridiculous and it is time some of us said leave our language alone.
Let's assume that this is serious. What would be wrong with an ice cream apparently celebrating homosexuality?
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The new director of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London, Adam Habib, formerly vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, has resigned after an outcry caused by his use of the term 'n*****' in an address to students. Habib said he told students, "If someone used the word [n-word] against another staff member, then it would violate our policy and action would be taken."
Black students immediately confronted Habib and told him he could not use that word. Habib was taken aback and said the n-word is not in common usage in South Africa and not considered as offensive -- this is debatable -- but Habib as an Indian South African would consider himself black and clearly didn't understand that he would not be seen as such in Britain. Some South African academics have complained that the outrage directed at Habib carries undertones of anti-Indian and Islamophobic prejudice. Others have pointed to Adam Habib's over-bearing managerial style and lack of sympathy for black students as an administrator in South Africa.
Habib himself apologised but posted a curious defence that indicates another approach to the issue and tensions within the older liberation movements in southern Africa: “I am aware that this is a common view among activists committed to an identitarian politics. I don’t identify with this political tradition. I grew up in a political tradition that is more cosmopolitan oriented and more focused on the class dimensions of structural problems.”
the phrase 'nigger in the woodpile' was an everyday phrase (not, of course, used every day !)
which few people would have connected with the word 'nigger' alone. tclune's recollection of his mother's horror at her moment of realisation would certainly strike a chord with me.
These days you're more likely to hear children saying "Ip, dip, ...".
I hadn't heard that version (wikipedia mentions a whole boatload of folk-etymologies and notes that while Eskimo is still used in Alaska, those whose home is in Alaska are termed "Alaska natives" in officialdom and the former term refers to those outside Alaska).
Always a tiger when I were a lad.
Same here, or a rabbit—and again that was the 1960s in the American South.
What we have today isn’t the result of a change in attitude so much as a change in ability. If somebody pisses you off now, they may very well have a record of offensive behavior in the distant past that previously wasn’t available to you for use as a weapon. But the new technology doesn’t seem to have come with any feature that replaces the function that obscurity used to play in affording people the opportunity to privately regret their actions, learn from their mistakes and grow up without having to worry they’d blotted their permanent record. It wasn’t necessarily the same as repentance, reform, and forgiveness, but it still had its advantages.
You are of course free to disagree. Your experience may be different from mine.
But it seems to me that your disagreement consists of pushing your unwarranted assumption (that using language you consider derogatory indicates a hostile attitude) one person further away - from the person using the word to the person they learned it from. So your argument is in effect circular - person A's vocabulary indicates a particular attitude because person B's words indicate a particular attitude and A will have picked up the attitude along with the vocabulary. And if I point out that B could have picked up the word innocently you'll just push back your assumption to person C from whom B learned it...
As an example, it seems to me entirely possible for a young person to pick up the (comparatively recent) usage of the word "gay" to mean something like "lame" (in the non-literal sense) or "pathetic", without believing that all homosexuals are pathetic, and without feeling any hostility towards homosexuals. Possibly even without knowingly being acquainted with any homosexuals at all...
I was able to see your point right up to the last sentence, which just seems OTT. ISTM that many of our most ardently-held prejudices are precisely those with respect to people with whom we have no acquaintance. Indeed, it is often the case that we consciously exempt those people we know personally from our antipathy toward the stigmatized group to which they belong.
If your young people aren't acquainted with any gay people, that in itself looks like evidence of a problem. It's perfectly possible for someone in a remote area of the UK not to personally know any Black people, or Asian people, for example, if nobody of that ethnicity has moved to your remote area. That's not how homosexuality works, though. You don't need gay parents to have gay kids.
Statistically, if you know any reasonable number of people, you know some gay people. If you don't know that they're gay, it's probably not because they're feeling supported and affirmed in their identity. I know that some of my male colleagues are gay because they've mentioned "my husband" or "my boyfriend" in conversation, just like I know some are straight, 'cause they've mentioned wives and girlfriends. (Yeah, they could all be bi, but ...)
If the gay people you know feel the need to keep their sexuality hidden, perhaps you should be asking why?
It is used as a summary term for a number of groups of people, not any sort of tribe. And no it's not like calling people the English. More like Limies or Goddams.
Apparently I said "that one?" marched up behind him and kicked him as hard as I could in the bum. D spun around, but the only person close was this tiny little girl whom he didn't know walking away from him.
I know pride's a sin too, but I am still proud of having done that.
You're right - that last sentence doesn't support the point being made in that paragraph. It's moving on to another idea which isn't developed, and would have been better omitted.
I think what you're describing is an antipathy towards an idea of how some particular group is, a stereotype, that isn't carried through into any negative feeling or action towards those they encounter who don't correspond to that stereotype.
If you have a low opinion of the stereotypical Irishman who drinks too much and fights too much and talks a load of blarney, that's not incompatible with esteem for all the Irish you actually know, none of whom are like that.
People like that are in a separate category from those who call the vehicle a paddywagon because that's what it's known as in their subculture, without meaning anything about Irish people in general thereby.
Which doesn't mean that there aren't people who nurse real antipathy towards everything to do with certain other groups.
But does mean that such people are much rarer than you imagine if what you go by is instances of politically-incorrect speech.
My central point was that if you know a reasonable number of people, and don't know that you know any gay people, then that's prima facie evidence of a problem in your social group, because it's a statistical certainty that you do actually know some gay people. And given that we're talking about the current era, where our countries have widespread acceptance of gay people, and that if you watch TV, read the newspaper, or in any other way partake in modern society, you're going to find examples of people who are gay, so it's just not plausible that you exist in a subculture that doesn't know that gay people exist.
So whilst Russ's example might be theoretically possible, I find it completely unrealistic.
And there's two ways you can go with that. It's perfectly reasonable to hold a low opinion of people who are aggressive drunks. But do you take your knowledge that the particular Irish people you know don't meet that stereotype, and extend it to the idea that perhaps some Irish people you don't know also don't meet that stereotype? Or do you double down, and think that most Irish people are aggressive drunks, and you just happen to know the good ones?
And it's plausible that someone has never connected the word "paddywagon" with the Irish, just like @tclune's mother didn't connect the woodpile phrase with the black family she was talking with. But once tclune's mother realized what she was saying, she had an "oh shit" moment, and didn't use the phrase again. If you're going to say that you know the origins of the word "paddywagon", and you know that Irish folk find it offensive (I have no idea how offensive this actually is), but you're going to use the term anyway, because that's what it was always called in your household, then you seem to be insisting on your right to offend people based on "well, I don't really mean anything about you - this is just what they're called". Which is, frankly, a stupid position.
It's like calling the colour "N***** brown" - it's offensive and unnecessary. Find a different word for the shade you mean. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find a shade with that label in a modern art supply store.
It was also "tiger" among my friends, and I never even knew the "n-word" version existed until I was an adult.
That explanation puts it in a different light.
Not at all sure I'd agree with the first sentence I quoted. One couple out of 15 to 20 in our group (that is, people who come for dinner/to whom we go for dinner) is gay. I think that's unusual around here; most others would not have anyone. "Around here" is largely a community of families with children. It's why people live here. Other parts of the city of course differ. The problem is going from the "statistical certainty" which applies to the city as a whole to a certainty in fact for a sub-section of it.
Then, the statistical certainty which applies to a community does not to individuals. For example, my year at school was of 80 or so boys. We've kept in reasonable touch, and none of us is gay - all married (at least most of the time) and with children. If you look to years above and below then there were some gay boys even if most did not come out until later. Statistics would say that out of the 80, at least 4 would have been gay. Those would be correct if you chose the larger community of the school as a whole.
This seems confused - the propositions "some don't " and "most do" are not exclusive.
And if the truth is that most don't, but a significantly higher proportion do than in some other cultures, which side of your OK / not-OK division does that fall ?
I can pretty much guarantee you that you could find an Irishman who thinks it's an insult to the Irish, and also find those who think it isn't.
You may be aware that there's an Irish company that drives (mostly American) tourists around Ireland in tour buses. They're bright green, with "paddywagon" written on the side and a cartoon of a red-bearded leprechaun...
Where I think you're going wrong is in assuming that Irish folk necessarily agree about anything. Collective opinion is a fiction.
If you were to take the position (which I note you're wisely not) that (because of the derivation rather than the meaning) the word "paddywagon" is
offensive and unnecessary, and campaign for its removal from the lexicon, that wouldn't be an act of respect and esteem for the Irish. It would be an act of an interfering busybody, choosing to side with the view of one Irish person against the views of other Irish people.
We don't need well-meaning "random internet guys" policing the language of others on our behalf.
I fully agree with you that if someone you're talking to genuinely (i.e. not manipulatively) finds a particular term offensive then it's polite to find an alternative term when talking to them.
Where I disagree with you is if you start thinking that their taking offense makes the word an objectively offensive one that you therefore should not use in talking to third parties.
Yeah, but "people you know" doesn't just include friends you go to dinner with, who I'll agree are more likely to be "like you" - whatever that is. It includes colleagues that you say hello to in the elevator at work, people who share your hobbies. When I made my claim of statistical certainty, I was imagining that most people would have a conversation in which a spouse or partner was mentioned with something more than a hundred people over the course of a year.
(Although I'll note that I too live in a community which is mostly families and children. The family three doors down from me is a lesbian couple and their children. A couple of the local high school kids that I know are gay. I'd expect there to be more gay couples and gay kids among those of my neighbours that I don't know.)
It's OK to just not stereotype, you know?
(Interestingly, Mr. Google tells me that the per capita beer consumption in Ireland is about the same as it is in the US. Although I suppose that depends on whether you count typical US mass-market "beer" as actual beer
I was not aware, tour buses not really being my thing, but I'm not surprised. And I know we've had discussions before about members of particular groups poking fun at stereotypes about themselves, and outsiders making the same jokes.
Collective opinion is merely the union of all opinion. Imagine plotting all opinion on some kind of graph. You'd get clusters of points around opinions that are commonly held, and you could with some validity use that kind of data to make generalizations about the kinds of opinions that groups tend to have.
So you don't need all Irish folk to agree about whether using "paddywagon" to refer to a police vehicle is offensive. If a significant number of Irish people would find it offensive for me to refer to a police car like that, I shouldn't do it, because I'm probably going to offend someone.
We agree that we should choose not to use words that people we're talking with find offensive - that's part of normal polite behaviour. But if you know that particular words are often found offensive, it is equally polite to pre-emptively refrain from using them. You don't, for example, have to be told by a particular elderly lady that she finds being referred to as an "old fucker" offensive not to cheerfully greet elderly folk you meet at the bus stop with "Hello, Old Fucker!" because you know they're likely to be offended.
But the odds go up considerably if you not just counting gay people themselves, but people with gay family members.
I'm reminded of how shocked my daughter was when she lived in London teaching. The school had something about "red Indians" and dress up. Highly inappropriate for here. It would result in discipline for the teacher.
I find that sometimes I'm an arsehole, and sometimes I'm a perfectly decent person. I have reasons for being an arsehole - immaturity, anger, anxiety, jealousy, resentment, tiredness, illness, medication error, pain. I like to think that racism and sexism aren't on that list, but I might well be fooling myself.
I move in and out of these states. Is this the same for others? Or are some people good all the time or bad all the time?
I think you're missing my point. Your first sentence was:
My central point was that if you know a reasonable number of people, and don't know that you know any gay people, then that's prima facie evidence of a problem in your social group, because it's a statistical certainty that you do actually know some gay people.
Now, there's a jump in that from knowing a reasonable number of people to a conclusion of there being a problem with a social group. I'd very much hesitate in saying that people I used say hello to in the lift (in the days when I was working) were part of my social group. We might on occasions have found ourselves in a work situation together, but I'd still not call them part of a social group. If I occasionally I had coffee with them, even as part of a table of 6 or 8, I'd say that they were. And then there's the word "problem" which I just don't understand.
Perhaps "community" would be a better word than "social group"?
Seems to me that real belief in racial/gender superiority is pretty rare these days. But feeling an attachment to one's own tribe and a sense of ownership of and belonging to the lands of your tribe and the customs of your tribe is normal human behaviour. Which is why I find the use of the r-word as if it referred to a single phenomenon rather than a collection of disparate behaviours that the user sees as of significance to race relations as unhelpful to understanding.
The opposite of stereotyping being what ? Being open to the possibility that not all individuals conform to type ? Or being firmly convinced that any statistic that supports a stereotype is false ?
You've seen the movie Gran Torino ?
You're right that one does not generally have to be told what is and is not offensive within one's own culture. Growing up in that culture we learn these things. The issues that arise tend to be those of culture clash.
And at least some of the claims of offence taken are not genuine but manipulative - attempts to control the common culture of a multi-cultural society.
The point is that, even in the cases when the stereotype has some basis in fact, rather than just folk wisdom, it's such weak information that it's practically useless.
You brought up the stereotype of Irish folk liking a drink. It's a well-known stereotype, it's true enough that plenty of Irish people do like a drink, and it's not one of the more damaging stereotypes in existence.
But what use are you actually going to make of it? In what way is the stereotype "Irish people like a drink" useful to you when what you're actually dealing with is your new employee, or your Irish mate? What do you learn from the stereotype that is more useful than the answer to your question "can I get you a drink?"
And if you're choosing to hire Muhammad in place of Domhnall, because you think Muhammad is probably a Muslim and won't drink, whereas Domhnall is likely to be a piss artist who's hung over every morning, then I think you know you're wrong, don't you?
Sorry if I seem to be labouring the point. I'm trying to get you to state explicitly a clear ethical principle, rather than assuming that I know (if I think about it) and am bound by whatever is considered socially appropriate in your subculture.
"Weak information" is a good description. At the office party, it might be thought significantly more likely that Domhnall will have a Guinness and Muhammad will have an orange juice than the other way round.
If the manager behind the bar pours Muhammad an orange juice without asking, while most others are having wine, does he wrong him thereby ? If he does it because he knows Muhammad well as a person ? Or conversely if he does it as an assumption based entirely on Muhammad's name and appearance and what he remembers of Islam from GCSE Religious Studies and that's the easy thing to do while he's busy trying to serve three different groups of people at the same time ?
That's more accurate.
We caught tigers. Which is nicely alliterative.
We too caught tigers, and I don't remember where I first heard the racist version.
Whoa privilege much?
Has it occurred to you that someone might be taking the piss?
Let's assume that this is serious. What would be wrong with an ice cream apparently celebrating homosexuality?