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Jogging in Georgia while black.

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Are we really having the "It's okay to use a slur if you're really, really pissed off" discussion yet again?
 
I Am The Scum said:
I think a more appropriate version of Giordano's point would be that one "defaults to their norms" during a moment of tension. An American, for example, in a moment of shock might cry out "Oh my God!" (even if he's an atheist), but is extremely unlikely shout "Sacre bleu!"
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I use "Oh my god" and "Jesus Christ" and "For the love of god" all the time. Because they're common phrases in the US, not because of any belief. If it were common to say "By Odin's left eye!" I'd probably be saying that.
 
Thermal said:
I'm a building contractor, and my crew has been jokingly called United Nations Construction. Four distinct languages spoken, not even getting into different Hispanic dialects and whatever the hell the Irish guys are speaking.

If your experience is working in a Cracker Barrel (metaphorically), then I'm sure we have different experiences with use of the language.

Also, I like how you said 'you and your co workers' when I specifically said I did not. Disingenous, I believe is the non insulting descriptor? :D
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That's the UN? My last office we had white British in English, Welsh and Scottish varieties, British Asian (Muslim), British Asian (Hindu), British SE Asian, British Caribbean, French, Italian, American and Senegalese.

We weren't a particularly big office and I doubt my experience is particularly unusual here.
 
Checkmite said:
Yeah. They didn't call him a "effing n-word" because they were "just angry and he happened to be black". They called him the N-word because they were racist as hell.
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Oh, my.

That's going to make things difficult for the "just protecting the neighborhood against trespassers" defense.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
That's the UN? My last office we had white British in English, Welsh and Scottish varieties, British Asian (Muslim), British Asian (Hindu), British SE Asian, British Caribbean, French, Italian, American and Senegalese.

We weren't a particularly big office and I doubt my experience is particularly unusual here.
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For an American East Coast construction site, hell ya mine is diverse. Been to the States recently to opine on the bichromatic rainbow of commonly spoken languages?
 
carlitos said:
You are 100%, 180 degrees, dead wrong.

ETA - I messed up the multiquote:



Now. Now it is now ok. That time when you grow up, it should be now.
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Either there are at least a couple typos in there, or...or I'm not sure what you are trying to say.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
That's the UN? My last office we had white British in English, Welsh and Scottish varieties, British Asian (Muslim), British Asian (Hindu), British SE Asian, British Caribbean, French, Italian, American and Senegalese.

We weren't a particularly big office and I doubt my experience is particularly unusual here.
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Indeed. My primary project group has around thirty members and has eleven nationalities.
 
I'm not sure I'm really following the logic here. It seems like a couple of you are claiming that because your larger workforces are more diverse than Thermal's... his workforce isn't diverse? or is this just an odd kind of one-upsmanship?
 
I'm not sure why the subject comes up in the first place, really, but I suspect one would be justified in differentiating between the kind of inappropriate things one says in an argument or a barroom brawl from the things one says over the body of a person one has just murdered. We all say imprudent and regrettable things at times, and as we know there's a cultural bias beating at our door all the time, which most of us who are aware enough work to exclude from our actions, but none of this applies, I think, to the racist remarks one makes over the body of a person one has just murdered.
 
wareyin said:
I've seen it argued on this forum before by "the totally not racists" that calling someone by the only racial slur we don't allow here doesn't make one a racist. It just sort of slips out when people get excited. Could happen to anyone.

And we can just ignore the Confederate Flag right out, since it was actually part of the Georgia state flag as recently as 2003. (I honestly know people here in GA who are still upset it was removed, I kid you not)

Those are, of course, stupid arguments. But I expect they will be trotted out again.

And yeah, now that it's come out that they used their truck to repeatedly hit Arbery, that really shows how blinkered some of the stupid "it was only 4 minutes running for his life, there's no way he was stressed. He should have just stepped off the pavement, they had no intention of shooting him" arguments really were.
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I made an argument along these lines in that thread about the superintendent or school board member or whatever who let slip a slur on tape.

Some people do have limited vocabulary and go for the insult closest to the tip of their tongue but it's inexcusable either way.
 
bruto said:
I'm not sure why the subject comes up in the first place, really, but I suspect one would be justified in differentiating between the kind of inappropriate things one says in an argument or a barroom brawl from the things one says over the body of a person one has just murdered. We all say imprudent and regrettable things at times, and as we know there's a cultural bias beating at our door all the time, which most of us who are aware enough work to exclude from our actions, but none of this applies, I think, to the racist remarks one makes over the body of a person one has just murdered.
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Yeah, exactly. I'm as white as a fishbelly, but once when I cut someone off in downtown traffic (totally my fault) he started yelling every racial epithet in the world at me, including 'spic' and ******. So either genuinely crazy, or simply trying to vent all the nasty words he could imagine at the jerk who'd cut him off. Kinda not even remotely in the the same ballpark as chasing someone down, shot-gunning them, and then breaking out the slurs.
 
bruto said:
Iwe know there's a cultural bias beating at our door all the time, which most of us who are aware enough work to exclude from our actions, but none of this applies, I think, to the racist remarks one makes over the body of a person one has just murdered.
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Before I start, Travis McMichael has lots of evidence against him proving he's a racist, and he would be a murderer even if he were not a racist.

Now, for the rest of us....

I think the hilited part is the key. Many people might think of something like the N-word, or all sorts of sex and gender related things, but we know it's bad, so we make sure we never say it. Moreover, I want to emphasize I am not saying "we know we'll get in trouble" or "we know that it's not politically correct". I mean that there are certain things that truly ought not be said. Really. It's just the wrong thing to say, and most of us make sure we don't, and we don't even have to work very hard at it.

One little use of the N-word, though, does not make someone a racist.

A brief digression. There's a thought experiment I've run across in several instances. I first encountered it when I used to play a lot of D and D. One of our party had a magic carpet that only worked if you did not think about elephants.

Of course the amusement value in that was that, knowing something about elephants makes the carpet work, you can't ever use the carpet, because thinking about using the carpet makes you think about elephants. So, this being D and D, there were Forget spells and the like to make him "forget" how the carpet worked, and the DM would throw elephants in various forms into the game, just to make people work to try and get the carpet owner to somehow avoid thinking about them while they were all riding along on the carpet.

The N word is a little bit like that. There's this word that we are never supposed to think about when we see a dark skinned individual and, knowing this, we sometimes think about the word when we see a dark skinned individual. When under extreme stress, or drunk, we might accidentally say the word. I don't think I ever have. I can't recall any such incident, but I think it could happen.
 
Craig4 said:
A cracker refers to a specific class of white person. One chooses to be a cracker. A cracker is an unsophisticated, stupid southern white with a history of doing things like lynchings. I would argue I'm being classists no racist because one could elevate oneself out of being a cracker if they so chose. Not every white person in the south is a cracker.

Here is the original definition

But yes, I feel entirely justified to dehumanize these morons and classify them as a hated other because that's what they did to someone else. It's okay to dehumanize people who deserve to be dehumanized. Not everyone is good enough to rate basic human dignity.

I've learned the lesson of 2016 well. This is a powerful and effective weapon and I, at every opportunity, online or in person apply it to their kind. I'm dehumanizing them because of choices they made to put themselves in a category that deserves it.
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Just pointing out that in a lot of the flat-south “cracker” is not an insult. It denotes people who had land and livestock. They take pride in it; a one-story house with a porch is a “cracker-house.”

Trying to use it as an insult in this case is counterproductive and makes you seem childish.
 
Meadmaker said:
One little use of the N-word, though, does not make someone a racist.
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:rolleyes:

Oh, please. This is little different from requiring evidence of multiple racist incidents in order to accuse someone caught on camera who is obviously letting their racist flag fly.

Let me be clear: If you are white and use that word in public, you are a racist. I don't care if you're drunk, high, or just got your ribs caved in by a black person wielding a baseball bat. I don't care if you've got 5 black buddies clapping you on the back after you say it. For ****'s sake, there are so few words left that aren't at least tolerated by the general public. How else can we explain the fact that some stupid honky can't edit that word out of their goddamn vocabulary despite decades of culture telling them that it's off-limits?
 
Meadmaker said:
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One little use of the N-word, though, does not make someone a racist.
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It does if you have just killed the person you're talking about. And what evidence is there that this is his "one use" of the word, as opposed to being typical of his speech and world view?

And back to the beginning, do you claim that the McMichaels would have chased and confronted Arbery if he was white?
 
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