100% behind Dan on this one. The world's going to hell in a handbasket over politically correct nonsense. If something offends you, tough ****, this is life, not a fantasy land.
What really makes me mad is people who complain about TV shows or movies being offensive. Look, if you're offended, don't watch it!
What really makes me mad is people who want to pretend like slavery/oppression/exploitation of various races never happened, or don't have lasting effects, because they don't want to be inconvenienced by having to think before they speak.
Hmm, funnily enough this issue (political correctness and people going out of their way to not be offensive) was brought up on another forum I'm on just recently. Two interesting posts from that thread:
Actually believe it or not, I agree with the police to a certain extent on this. It’s obvious taking the mick, but I personally think the whole support anyone but England thing a bit "sad" and wish some fellow Scots were secure enough in their heritage and culture to rise above this bullcrap.
+1 It's also worth noting that in every single case of officials over-reacting and restricting innocuous activities over concerns of racism, it's just some individual stupid official somewhere not knowing their arse from their elbow - not joined-up policy. And there's a reason why you only ever read about it in the red tops.
If you saw a photo with 10 people of varying appearance "ethnic" background, and were asked to describe each of them, and how they differ from one another, are you not allowed to mention the word "black"?
How absurd, "black" people refer to themselves as black all the time. There are Music of Black Origin awards. "Black Power".
Would it be more PC to say "really really tanned"?
There is no more wrong with saying "the black guy" than there is with saying "the short guy" or "the skinny guy" or "the old guy" or "the Asian guy" or "the spotty guy". Good luck taking someone to court for referring to you as acne-ridden.
And if you think that if whatever else you say is offensive, and makes the term "black guy" racist, then it's offensive regardless. "I hate that "xxxxxx" guy, he's so lazy and workshy".
It's stupid. A child with no concept at all of racial prejudice would describe someone that was dark coloured as black or brown if that was the most distinguishing feature when compared with another person. They might also say a Chinese person has different eyes, or that an American has different eyes.
I really think people need to re-assess their ideas of what racism actually is.
It is a lot like health and safety in a way, the improvement of health and safety has stopped a lot of horrible accidents, injuries and illnesses from happening by every so often it gets taken too far, and when it does it gets jumped upon by the media because it makes a good story.
Personally I don't get it, the word black is a descriptive word, just like tall or short, it dosen't normally have any negative connotation.
The guy obviously thought that you said it in a negative way, some people are arseholes like that, you can't say anything to them without them taking offense.
It would be nice to see more religious tolerance from other nations and races though, sometimes it does get unfair when you're quite happy with other people's cultures and beliefs, but they can't do the same in return, or they try to force their beliefs upon you, and yes, it does happen.
Say you're buying a car, there are two cars, exactly the same, apart from one is white and one is black.
You say to the man "I'll take the white one."
He'll say "What? Why not the black one? What's wrong with it? You racist?"
And you try to calm them down "It's just a car, I just wanted the whi-"
"You got a problem with black cars? Huh?"
Bit of a silly example, but you see what I mean.
EDIT@ I just noticed a minor bit of sexism, I forgot to say "he/she", Oh my, I do hope I will be forgiven.
so how exactly could something that happened way before either some hypothetical black guy whos round about my age (ie mid 20s) or i was born have any relevant effect on how we deal with each other?
im all for teaching and remembering the mistakes of the past to avoid repeating them in the future and theres nothing wrong with avoiding obviously offensive slurs but going out of your way to avoid anything that migh in some ridiculous way be misinterpreted as racist (like in the case of the op) is just plain stupid
+1, that would be like me taking an instant dislike to you or anyone else from germany because of WW2, which i havn't by the way, but its the same logic really.
Because racism is in large part a learned behavior (nurture, not nature), passed down from parents to children (often unconsciously), and so are the defense mechanisms inherent in those who have been discriminated against in the past.
It takes generations upon generations for these things to work themselves out, even after the original stimulus is gone. And even then learned biases, even dormant ones, are easily reinforced through anecdotal encounters.
But note that you still immediately reached for the WW2 analogy, because somewhere in the recesses of your mind you still instinctually associate Germany (modern Germany, where most living people have no memory of the war) with barbaric Nazism, the holocaust, the bombing of England, etc, rather than any of the other more positive things you might associate the country with.
So what is one of the other association to Germany Dan could have used to support his agreement to Shotglass' comment? He used that analogy because it fits.
I also would like to know, why is the suggested racism discussed in this thread not OK, but it is OK to suggest that I (as well as you, Ben) am lazy, fat, and stupid because I am "American" just as how it goes on constantly in this forum? Racism today in normal lives has nothing to do with slavery and all the rest mentioned. It has to do with the fact that any and every time you turn on the news, you see news of gang members shooting people on the street, you see 90% of the robberies in the news where the culprit was a certain "type" of person, you see the majority of the crime in the news with a picture of a certain "type" of person.
A) I'd never say that that's ok, any more than any other form of prejudiced discrimination is, and B) "American" isn't a race, which would make that prejudice/discrimination/bigotry, but not racism, which is a small subset of the much larger problem.
...which begs the question of why that "type" is so often in that kind of situation, which inevitably leads back to the days of slavery and oppression. Blacks, Latinos, and east Asians others who fall into gang behavior and crime, and who live in poverty, live in the way they do at least in part due to the legacy of those earlier times, or due to their status as immigrants from poorer countries. History and present-day conditions aren't unrelated. (Which is not to say that "slavery" is a reasonable justification for why an African-American dude is a gangbanger...)
