It's actually less the content of your post and more some of your phrasing, which seemed to be daring your reader to be offended. Saying controversial things is fine (I did it myself a few posts above you); acting like you expect people to be mad at you for saying them (and that they're wrong for being offended) is pretty close to this site's definition of trolling: saying something with the express purpose of inciting a violent or inflammatory reaction.
The rest of your post was totally okay, and you make some compelling points (even if I don't necessarily agree with all of them).
Ah so. My rough edges are showing, it seems. I carefully avoid saying or asking things that would cause someone to react violently but I do sometimes look for a more inflamed response since those sorts of responses are emotionally charged and thus are better indicators of what someone thinks or feels about something. That being said, I am not the politics/current events moderator here so I will keep an eye on that and conduct myself accordingly.
If everyone always agreed with everything I said...well, that would be boring. We can't very well have that, can we?
@semiticgod I've only ever use ethnicity as an example, but here goes...
Race is a social constructs created for the purpose of division. It's a social construct that no matter how far we claim to have come, we continue to embrace it thoroughly, which to me is why humanity will continue to move away from our next step in mental in spiritual evolution.
Look at our history
The Chinese and Japanese... Caucasians and Africans... This can be continued on and on...
But, just looking at America, blacks were oppressed and mistreated even after slaves were freed all because of the color of their skin, something coming to their race.
Mesoamericans felt just as much as because of similar reasons and many of the stigmas tossed on both still exist to this day. Hell, a lot of blacks are the way they are now because they never saw any different. They feel trapped in a place that they never had any real choice or any real way out without following the trends of sports/music/acting (I guess now). Feeling trapped in a place where despite what people say, you still what is shown to them says the opposite. Looking at a tv, a poster board, listen to a talk radio and you don't see equality, you see the ruling class, the privileged class, and the 10%.
Now my thoughts personally? Everyone needs to shut the fuck up, and stop trying to be the "special" race, the "true" humans, and start understanding that only time ethnicity should ever be a thing, is when medical reasoning calls for it, and even then... That is a small spacial boundary.
We are holding on to the same concepts that continue to seperate us while creating new ones, "diversity is the code word for anti-white" (Google it, I still find it funny both the USA and South Africa weren't "white countries" to begin with, but now a group of people are so damn scared that Caucasians with be the minority in both these places soon. SO FUCKING WHAT?)
Then blacks magically can't be racists? Are you kidding me? If a gang of black men beat up a Caucasian because of the color of his skin, or a Muslim because of his belief; that's racism! Just because we don't control the country so we can't do it at that level, doesn't magically absolve us of it, and no we aren't owed it either. Doing what was done to our ancestors doesn't make us better or owed it, it makes us hypocrites. We are embracing the same ish, that separates us.
No one seems to be accepting, you don't reject what makes someone different, you accept it. I turned my back on Christianity when I was 13 years old, my parents are still christians, it took some and they are accepting (at least to my face) of it. They just hate when I start discussing it... Despite the fact it's the people who ask me. I neither celebrate Christmas nor thanksgiving, but my family still do, and I'm accepting of it. The whole thing with Dolezal, I didn't follow, because I knew instead of coming to an understanding of what and why she did it, most people would reject it despite what it might have accomplished, or how it could have been use to share experiences.
I'm all over the place because my views are all over the place. There are no real absolutes, there are no real black and whites on this topic, but there are things that need to happen before humanity can move forward, for example...
The word nigga (yea I said it), needs to be assimilated. Yes assimilated, not banned, not erased, and not ignored. The only way the word and its demeaning counterpart can ever lose its power is when the ones its meant to demean and hurt, show the word no longer can do that. We the sender and receiver give the words power, the word doesn't just magically come with power. The way blacks react to it being used by Caucasians, show those that would use it to hurt them, that they never lost the power.
Some Caucasians not all, need to see beyond themselves. The internet actually proves that some people actually can't see past a "white" world. I mean the reaction to the star wars trailer and the fact that there is a movement called "diversity is Codeword for anti-white" which has been around for years, proves this. I'm still trying to figure out what is "white" culture, because eurocentrism still dominates the western world, and despite what one may think, eurocentricism is actually a multitude of different cultures. I swear by Nyame's will; hell I'm willing to bet most people on the forum don't even know who Nyame or Eledumare is, but if I name dropped; Zeus, Odin, or Ra they would.
Regarding the argument that we shouldn't talk about race because it's an outdated concept, people saying this are often conflating two different things, which leads to misunderstanding:
1. Talking about innate differences between people of different races. Like, I don't know, phrenology or something. This is obviously B.S., race is a social construct, and "we're all human" is the correct answer and conclusion to any discussions about this.
2. Talking about the effects of racism. The disparities in poverty, education, incarceration, health, etc. in the U.S. between those who are labeled "White" and those who are labeled "Black" are appalling. These disparities need to be discussed. To ignore them is to accept them, because the situation is not going to just spontaneously resolve itself anytime soon. And having a useful conversation about this requires acknowledging those labels and the role they have played in getting us here.
@booinyoureyes I...thought I phrased it so that he was the one talking over them? Or was there a typo in your post somewhere? Ah, no matter. I wrote that response in the heat of emotion at almost-midnight, and certainly wasn't one of my better-thought-out posts.
The biggest issue I had with that Atlantic article is that it doesn't share any of the first email sent out by the Intercultural Affairs Committee to Yale Students. The first email that stirred the waters. You can read it here.
To me, that just sounds like a really long fancy way of saying, "Hey, Halloween is coming. Racist costumes are racist and hurtful. Maybe think before you do that? Thanks." No one is trying to control what the students should wear. Considering the history of the referred types of "costumes," I don't think their request was unreasonable. Most of the student body probably skimmed it over, remembered that they weren't going to dress up as X-Offensive costume anyway, and went back to reading the rest of their email without another thought. A select few students felt "uncomfortable" enough to complain. (And really, if you feel uncomfortable by one email asking you to please think before you dress as a racist stereotype for Halloween... Let's just say that says way more about you than it does about them.)
The fact that we only see segments of Ms. Christakis rebuttal against this email and not the original email itself implies a bias. Maybe the writer had a point to make and was scrounging to stay below word count? I dunno. But I feel like the Committee's removal from the picture takes out a rather large slice of important context.
Now, with that context... Christakis writes:
"I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious... a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?"
Let me get this straight. She's saying we should--not only allow people to dress in such hurtful costumes if they so choose--but that we should excuse it? On the grounds that these young adults eighteen years or older are just children testing the waters of the obnoxious?
If I was a student at Yale, I'd be pissed at her too.
She's treating the whole thing like a joke. That may not be her intention, but that's how it reads (or else she wouldn't have garnered 700+ students against her). She opens her first paragraph with the image of a young blond (assumed Caucasian) girl dressing as Mulan, and somehow she thinks that equates to a foolish adult dressing offensively, whether they know the context of their costume or not. Such a comparison between two vastly different circumstances isn't just bad writing--it's insulting.
It's sad, really. Reading them back-to-back, it feels like Christakis and the committee have more in common than they think. Both of them want the students to decide for themselves what to wear. Both offer questions that the reader may ask themselves. But the fact that she felt compelled to challenge an already-reasonable email that targeted very specific bullying puts her in bad taste, at best.
No, I don't think she or her husband should lose their jobs over this. Yes, I agree the whole thing was blown out of proportion, on both sides. But I understand the anger, especially with everything else going on in the background (#BlackLivesMatter, police brutality). Not in a way that makes me know how they feel or excuse their behavior, but in a way that lets me empathize more with them than with the Masters. The students yelling and screaming are not "crybabies." They are angry at the raging world around them and the battles they still have to fight to be heard. Unfortunately for the Christakis', their email finally pushed those emotions over the edge, and it back-lashed on them.
Anyway. I spent way too much time on this. I should be writing my novel. *hangs head in shame* Gonna bow out now, hopefully a little more gracefully than my last post.
Its too late for me to get into this, but I'll read everyone's stuff later. I will leave this from Bill Maher though. I don't agree 100%, but I think he's more right than wrong.
Wow, it had been a while since I watched any Maher. I cannot get past the smugness.
Look, the whole costume issue is clearly overblown, but I think there's some miscommunication about why people believe it should be an issue at all. Let me try to explain, with the caveat that there are also dummies on the internet and on the Yale quad who are raging out for less defensible reasons.
A common assumption is that the problem is the feeling of offense, the same way it is when someone clutches their pearls and writes letters to the FCC about seeing a nipple or a middle finger on TV. A situation like that is easily resolved either by removing the offending image or by the offended person being less sensitive, as @semiticgod said. NBC blurs the finger, or you develop a thicker skin, or you change the channel, or all three. Problem solved.
But when someone wears a demeaning costume (wherever we draw that line), the problem isn't just the feeling of offense. The problem is the potential social effects of that costume, namely reinforcing and legitimizing stupid stereotypes and making people take real, concrete problems less seriously. Cartoonish depictions of people create an emotional distance; they make empathy more difficult.
(I know that not everyone here will believe that last sentence is true, but try to understand that it really is something people are concerned about.)
In this situation, it doesn't really matter whether a Native American person is going to see your chief costume and "feel offended." Damage is done, the thinking goes, just by displaying that image to all of your White friends. Maybe they're now going to buy into stereotypes more, or maybe they'll be just a little bit less bothered next time they hear about the public health crisis at Pine Ridge, or whatever. With this view, telling someone to be less sensitive is beside the point, because it's not even about whether or not the person's feelings are hurt. It's about real-world consequences.
I'm not saying that everyone has to buy into all of this. I'm just saying that "toughen up" is kind of a non sequitur in this discussion.
The free speech debate is important, but "I'm allowed to say whatever I want" is a different thing from "You're not allowed to be offended when I say it".
Do I think a person should be arrested for wearing black-face? No, of course not. Same thing if a person wants to fly the Confederate flag in front of their house.
But do I think the world would be a better place if no one did either of those things? Absolutely.
On the subject of comedians and their jokes, there's also a big difference between using racial stereotypes as a lens through which to criticize the stereotype, and using racial stereotypes as a lens through which to criticize members of that race.
"Asian people are bad drivers" = racist "Asian people are bad drivers, so why do I keep getting pulled over for reckless driving when I'm wasted?" = commentary
Like most things, though, comedy works best when it demeans the author, not the subject matter. So if a comedian is making racist jokes instead of using stereotypes as commentary or social satire, it's a pretty good bet that they're not making very good comedy in the first place.
@Dee This will probably be my last time here but I'll like to say this; free speech in the stats at least, has always been taken out of context in a sense. "Freedom of speech" does not mean you get to say whatever you want without consequences. It simply means the government can't stop you from saying it." It also means others get to criticize what x person said, too many people try to use freedom of speech as a defense, when in fact freedom of speech doesn't protect their actions from reactions that they manifest.
It's also amazing how often "free speech" gets used as a defense on the internet, as though (to take an extreme example) the administrator of a private forum is somehow bound by law to let people spout abuses whenever and wherever they want without reprisal. (That's not directed at anyone in particular, just something you tend to notice when you're the administrator of a private forum...)
But when someone wears a demeaning costume (wherever we draw that line)
Lets do an exercise. Where is the line drawn on racial stereotyping? Here are the names of a couple of sports teams. Which ones should change their name for being offensive and which ones are fine and why.
Atlanta Braves Chicago Blackhawks Washington Redskins Notre Damn Fighting Irish Ottawa Tomahawks Kansas City Chiefs Kansas City Scouts Cleveland Indians Cleveland Browns
@deltago Ultimately, they will all have to wind up changing their names and logos with the exception of the Ottawa Tomahawks, given that a tomahawk is a weapon and not a specific group of people. The only sports teams which will be immune to this trend are the ones whose mascot is an animal, an inanimate object (the mascot for the first school district I attended eons ago was a tornado), or a group of people with whom no one may claim ancestry with any certainty (such as "Trojans" or "pirates" or "paladins").
It takes only one person to complain or be offended in order for the pendulum of social shaming to swing. The problem with "let us take care not to offend anyone" is that you cannot avoid offending everyone; someone will always manage to take offense at something, no matter how relatively inoffensive the rest of us may find the subject to be. That is the way the world works now and we must always deal with the world as it exists, not as we would like it to exist.
@wubble They all have been complained about at one time.
@Mathsorcerer The amusing thing is, The Ottawa Tomahawks changed their name to Skyhawks due to the backlash they recieved prior to their first season. They are the only one to due so, yet you claim it is one of the least offensive.
Braves aren't a people either. Brave is an emotion. Scout (although they are defunct) are also not a person, but a job title. Brown is a colour but can depict Latin American decent.
The Browns were named after Paul Brown. And sure, let's change the Fighting Irish, just so I never have to listen to "See? This doesn't bother us. So what's wrong with Chief Wahoo??" again.
@Mathsorcerer The amusing thing is, The Ottawa Tomahawks changed their name to Skyhawks due to the backlash they recieved prior to their first season. They are the only one to due so, yet you claim it is one of the least offensive.
Not even I can tell when someone will find something offensive. There once was a time when the word "history" was offensive to some people because they thought it stood for "his story" and diminished or ignored the contributions of women. *shrug*
@joluv No, which is why my comment is an opinion rather than a fact. The sad reality is that once people start voicing their opinion that something is offensive and should be changed or made to go away I will listen to their reasoning but then I conclude that they need to get over it and move on. I understand that doesn't work for everyone but then I don't go around expecting everyone to see things the way I do.
The Browns were named after Paul Brown. And sure, let's change the Fighting Irish, just so I never have to listen to "See? This doesn't bother us. So what's wrong with Chief Wahoo??" again.
It takes only one person to complain or be offended in order for the pendulum of social shaming to swing.
Hmm, one person? Can you think of any examples to demonstrate that?
I hate to throw myself into the wringer here, but I can think of an example.
The shirt of scientist Matt Taylor comes to mind. One article snowballed out to make others latch onto the mob if I'm not mistaken. Granted, this wasn't a racial issue, so I don't know if it fits your criteria. He really didn't deserve to be so snubbed or driven to tears while making a breakthrough like this.
As a huge science fan, the ability to land a probe on a comet means we can send them out to the absolute furthest reaches of the Solar System (nearly 3 Light years out) without them needing any extra fuel because they piggyback on a comet. That's huge in the way of potential money savers, provided you can find a taxi. That's bigger than you might think it is!
So we are clear: I only agree with Bill Maher in the circumstances listed.
It is more of a case by case basis Black face=offensive Mariachi costume? I don't see it
I agree with @Dee particularly on the farther you are to the group being imitated, it becomes less "imitation" and more "mocking".
For example, if I dressed as an Orthodox Jew I could see it as being mocking. However if a Reform Jew, while still being different from an Orthodox Jew, dressed that way it would be more harmless.
"Freedom of speech" does not mean you get to say whatever you want without consequences. It simply means the government can't stop you from saying it." It also means others get to criticize what x person said, too many people try to use freedom of speech as a defense, when in fact freedom of speech doesn't protect their actions from reactions that they manifest.
There is a difference between Freedom Speech as a right, and free speech as a value.
There is a difference between saying "I disagree. This is offensive" and yelling "SHUT THE *expletive* up"
It's also amazing how often "free speech" gets used as a defense on the internet, as though (to take an extreme example) the administrator of a private forum is somehow bound by law to let people spout abuses whenever and wherever they want without reprisal.
There is also a difference between censuring someone spouting abuses and labeling someone a "troll" who did not do that.
Free speech is a right, but being provided a forum is all together different. Yet there is a right and wrong way to handle that kind of dispute, and it has nothing to do with the law.
There are reactions and overreactions. This week between the Yale students and the Starbucks red cup outrage we've seen the latter imho.
Can someone shed some (unbiased) light on what happened at Mizzou this week with that journalism professor? Everything I've read has been about the confrontation between her and the reporter (the reporter was being supremely unprofessional in my opinion), but I haven't read anything about why the protest is being held in the first place or why they didn't want a reporter present at their campsite.
It's also amazing how often "free speech" gets used as a defense on the internet, as though (to take an extreme example) the administrator of a private forum is somehow bound by law to let people spout abuses whenever and wherever they want without reprisal.
There is also a difference between censuring someone spouting abuses and labeling someone a "troll" who did not do that.
Free speech is a right, but being provided a forum is all together different. Yet there is a right and wrong way to handle that kind of dispute, and it has nothing to do with the law.
I could be mistaken, but it sounds like you're bringing up what happened a couple days ago. If not, feel free to ignore the next couple paragraphs, but in the event that that is the case, let me clarify what I was saying to Mathsorcerer:
The rhetoric being used signified what appeared to be an intent to upset people or get them to react violently (or as much as one can be "violent" on the internet), which is what this site has defined as "trolling". Trolling, in the sense that it is against the site rules, is a verb, not a noun. I would not have said that Mathsorcerer was a troll any more than I would say that someone who flames someone else is a "flamer", or that someone who posts R-rated material a "pornographer".
Troll is obviously an emotionally charged word, but in the context of this site's rules, it's the verb form of the word that I was using, not the noun. Which, granted, may be a sign that the site rules should probably find a different word to describe the behavior.
Which brings it back to questions like "What is offensive" and "When is it important to be politically correct". Because obviously the word used here is one that has been misinterpreted based on its historical use as a derogatory term, even though the word itself is being used correctly in this context; is it then appropriate or worthwhile to change the word we use to describe the behavior for the sake of not offending people?
(I would actually argue that it is, but since political correctness is something that frequently gets brought up on this and other forums as something that "goes way too far" to protect people's feelings, I'm curious what people in this thread think about the notion.)
Comments
If everyone always agreed with everything I said...well, that would be boring. We can't very well have that, can we?
I like this forum.
I've only ever use ethnicity as an example, but here goes...
Race is a social constructs created for the purpose of division. It's a social construct that no matter how far we claim to have come, we continue to embrace it thoroughly, which to me is why humanity will continue to move away from our next step in mental in spiritual evolution.
Look at our history
The Chinese and Japanese...
Caucasians and Africans...
This can be continued on and on...
But, just looking at America, blacks were oppressed and mistreated even after slaves were freed all because of the color of their skin, something coming to their race.
Mesoamericans felt just as much as because of similar reasons and many of the stigmas tossed on both still exist to this day. Hell, a lot of blacks are the way they are now because they never saw any different. They feel trapped in a place that they never had any real choice or any real way out without following the trends of sports/music/acting (I guess now). Feeling trapped in a place where despite what people say, you still what is shown to them says the opposite. Looking at a tv, a poster board, listen to a talk radio and you don't see equality, you see the ruling class, the privileged class, and the 10%.
Now my thoughts personally? Everyone needs to shut the fuck up, and stop trying to be the "special" race, the "true" humans, and start understanding that only time ethnicity should ever be a thing, is when medical reasoning calls for it, and even then... That is a small spacial boundary.
We are holding on to the same concepts that continue to seperate us while creating new ones, "diversity is the code word for anti-white" (Google it, I still find it funny both the USA and South Africa weren't "white countries" to begin with, but now a group of people are so damn scared that Caucasians with be the minority in both these places soon. SO FUCKING WHAT?)
Then blacks magically can't be racists? Are you kidding me? If a gang of black men beat up a Caucasian because of the color of his skin, or a Muslim because of his belief; that's racism! Just because we don't control the country so we can't do it at that level, doesn't magically absolve us of it, and no we aren't owed it either. Doing what was done to our ancestors doesn't make us better or owed it, it makes us hypocrites. We are embracing the same ish, that separates us.
No one seems to be accepting, you don't reject what makes someone different, you accept it. I turned my back on Christianity when I was 13 years old, my parents are still christians, it took some and they are accepting (at least to my face) of it. They just hate when I start discussing it... Despite the fact it's the people who ask me. I neither celebrate Christmas nor thanksgiving, but my family still do, and I'm accepting of it. The whole thing with Dolezal, I didn't follow, because I knew instead of coming to an understanding of what and why she did it, most people would reject it despite what it might have accomplished, or how it could have been use to share experiences.
I'm all over the place because my views are all over the place. There are no real absolutes, there are no real black and whites on this topic, but there are things that need to happen before humanity can move forward, for example...
The word nigga (yea I said it), needs to be assimilated. Yes assimilated, not banned, not erased, and not ignored. The only way the word and its demeaning counterpart can ever lose its power is when the ones its meant to demean and hurt, show the word no longer can do that. We the sender and receiver give the words power, the word doesn't just magically come with power. The way blacks react to it being used by Caucasians, show those that would use it to hurt them, that they never lost the power.
Some Caucasians not all, need to see beyond themselves. The internet actually proves that some people actually can't see past a "white" world. I mean the reaction to the star wars trailer and the fact that there is a movement called "diversity is Codeword for anti-white" which has been around for years, proves this. I'm still trying to figure out what is "white" culture, because eurocentrism still dominates the western world, and despite what one may think, eurocentricism is actually a multitude of different cultures. I swear by Nyame's will; hell I'm willing to bet most people on the forum don't even know who Nyame or Eledumare is, but if I name dropped; Zeus, Odin, or Ra they would.
1. Talking about innate differences between people of different races. Like, I don't know, phrenology or something. This is obviously B.S., race is a social construct, and "we're all human" is the correct answer and conclusion to any discussions about this.
2. Talking about the effects of racism. The disparities in poverty, education, incarceration, health, etc. in the U.S. between those who are labeled "White" and those who are labeled "Black" are appalling. These disparities need to be discussed. To ignore them is to accept them, because the situation is not going to just spontaneously resolve itself anytime soon. And having a useful conversation about this requires acknowledging those labels and the role they have played in getting us here.
The biggest issue I had with that Atlantic article is that it doesn't share any of the first email sent out by the Intercultural Affairs Committee to Yale Students. The first email that stirred the waters. You can read it here.
To me, that just sounds like a really long fancy way of saying, "Hey, Halloween is coming. Racist costumes are racist and hurtful. Maybe think before you do that? Thanks." No one is trying to control what the students should wear. Considering the history of the referred types of "costumes," I don't think their request was unreasonable. Most of the student body probably skimmed it over, remembered that they weren't going to dress up as X-Offensive costume anyway, and went back to reading the rest of their email without another thought. A select few students felt "uncomfortable" enough to complain. (And really, if you feel uncomfortable by one email asking you to please think before you dress as a racist stereotype for Halloween... Let's just say that says way more about you than it does about them.)
The fact that we only see segments of Ms. Christakis rebuttal against this email and not the original email itself implies a bias. Maybe the writer had a point to make and was scrounging to stay below word count? I dunno. But I feel like the Committee's removal from the picture takes out a rather large slice of important context.
Now, with that context... Christakis writes:
"I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious... a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?"
Let me get this straight. She's saying we should--not only allow people to dress in such hurtful costumes if they so choose--but that we should excuse it? On the grounds that these young adults eighteen years or older are just children testing the waters of the obnoxious?
If I was a student at Yale, I'd be pissed at her too.
She's treating the whole thing like a joke. That may not be her intention, but that's how it reads (or else she wouldn't have garnered 700+ students against her). She opens her first paragraph with the image of a young blond (assumed Caucasian) girl dressing as Mulan, and somehow she thinks that equates to a foolish adult dressing offensively, whether they know the context of their costume or not. Such a comparison between two vastly different circumstances isn't just bad writing--it's insulting.
It's sad, really. Reading them back-to-back, it feels like Christakis and the committee have more in common than they think. Both of them want the students to decide for themselves what to wear. Both offer questions that the reader may ask themselves. But the fact that she felt compelled to challenge an already-reasonable email that targeted very specific bullying puts her in bad taste, at best.
No, I don't think she or her husband should lose their jobs over this. Yes, I agree the whole thing was blown out of proportion, on both sides. But I understand the anger, especially with everything else going on in the background (#BlackLivesMatter, police brutality). Not in a way that makes me know how they feel or excuse their behavior, but in a way that lets me empathize more with them than with the Masters. The students yelling and screaming are not "crybabies." They are angry at the raging world around them and the battles they still have to fight to be heard. Unfortunately for the Christakis', their email finally pushed those emotions over the edge, and it back-lashed on them.
Anyway. I spent way too much time on this. I should be writing my novel. *hangs head in shame* Gonna bow out now, hopefully a little more gracefully than my last post.
Look, the whole costume issue is clearly overblown, but I think there's some miscommunication about why people believe it should be an issue at all. Let me try to explain, with the caveat that there are also dummies on the internet and on the Yale quad who are raging out for less defensible reasons.
A common assumption is that the problem is the feeling of offense, the same way it is when someone clutches their pearls and writes letters to the FCC about seeing a nipple or a middle finger on TV. A situation like that is easily resolved either by removing the offending image or by the offended person being less sensitive, as @semiticgod said. NBC blurs the finger, or you develop a thicker skin, or you change the channel, or all three. Problem solved.
But when someone wears a demeaning costume (wherever we draw that line), the problem isn't just the feeling of offense. The problem is the potential social effects of that costume, namely reinforcing and legitimizing stupid stereotypes and making people take real, concrete problems less seriously. Cartoonish depictions of people create an emotional distance; they make empathy more difficult.
(I know that not everyone here will believe that last sentence is true, but try to understand that it really is something people are concerned about.)
In this situation, it doesn't really matter whether a Native American person is going to see your chief costume and "feel offended." Damage is done, the thinking goes, just by displaying that image to all of your White friends. Maybe they're now going to buy into stereotypes more, or maybe they'll be just a little bit less bothered next time they hear about the public health crisis at Pine Ridge, or whatever. With this view, telling someone to be less sensitive is beside the point, because it's not even about whether or not the person's feelings are hurt. It's about real-world consequences.
I'm not saying that everyone has to buy into all of this. I'm just saying that "toughen up" is kind of a non sequitur in this discussion.
Do I think a person should be arrested for wearing black-face? No, of course not. Same thing if a person wants to fly the Confederate flag in front of their house.
But do I think the world would be a better place if no one did either of those things? Absolutely.
On the subject of comedians and their jokes, there's also a big difference between using racial stereotypes as a lens through which to criticize the stereotype, and using racial stereotypes as a lens through which to criticize members of that race.
"Asian people are bad drivers" = racist
"Asian people are bad drivers, so why do I keep getting pulled over for reckless driving when I'm wasted?" = commentary
Like most things, though, comedy works best when it demeans the author, not the subject matter. So if a comedian is making racist jokes instead of using stereotypes as commentary or social satire, it's a pretty good bet that they're not making very good comedy in the first place.
This will probably be my last time here but I'll like to say this; free speech in the stats at least, has always been taken out of context in a sense. "Freedom of speech" does not mean you get to say whatever you want without consequences. It simply means the government can't stop you from saying it." It also means others get to criticize what x person said, too many people try to use freedom of speech as a defense, when in fact freedom of speech doesn't protect their actions from reactions that they manifest.
Atlanta Braves
Chicago Blackhawks
Washington Redskins
Notre Damn Fighting Irish
Ottawa Tomahawks
Kansas City Chiefs
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It takes only one person to complain or be offended in order for the pendulum of social shaming to swing. The problem with "let us take care not to offend anyone" is that you cannot avoid offending everyone; someone will always manage to take offense at something, no matter how relatively inoffensive the rest of us may find the subject to be. That is the way the world works now and we must always deal with the world as it exists, not as we would like it to exist.
@Mathsorcerer The amusing thing is, The Ottawa Tomahawks changed their name to Skyhawks due to the backlash they recieved prior to their first season. They are the only one to due so, yet you claim it is one of the least offensive.
Braves aren't a people either. Brave is an emotion. Scout (although they are defunct) are also not a person, but a job title. Brown is a colour but can depict Latin American decent.
@joluv No, which is why my comment is an opinion rather than a fact. The sad reality is that once people start voicing their opinion that something is offensive and should be changed or made to go away I will listen to their reasoning but then I conclude that they need to get over it and move on. I understand that doesn't work for everyone but then I don't go around expecting everyone to see things the way I do.
The shirt of scientist Matt Taylor comes to mind. One article snowballed out to make others latch onto the mob if I'm not mistaken. Granted, this wasn't a racial issue, so I don't know if it fits your criteria. He really didn't deserve to be so snubbed or driven to tears while making a breakthrough like this.
As a huge science fan, the ability to land a probe on a comet means we can send them out to the absolute furthest reaches of the Solar System (nearly 3 Light years out) without them needing any extra fuel because they piggyback on a comet. That's huge in the way of potential money savers, provided you can find a taxi. That's bigger than you might think it is!
It is more of a case by case basis
Black face=offensive
Mariachi costume? I don't see it
I agree with @Dee particularly on the farther you are to the group being imitated, it becomes less "imitation" and more "mocking".
For example, if I dressed as an Orthodox Jew I could see it as being mocking. However if a Reform Jew, while still being different from an Orthodox Jew, dressed that way it would be more harmless.
There is a difference between saying "I disagree. This is offensive" and yelling "SHUT THE *expletive* up" There is also a difference between censuring someone spouting abuses and labeling someone a "troll" who did not do that.
Free speech is a right, but being provided a forum is all together different. Yet there is a right and wrong way to handle that kind of dispute, and it has nothing to do with the law.
There are reactions and overreactions. This week between the Yale students and the Starbucks red cup outrage we've seen the latter imho.
The rhetoric being used signified what appeared to be an intent to upset people or get them to react violently (or as much as one can be "violent" on the internet), which is what this site has defined as "trolling". Trolling, in the sense that it is against the site rules, is a verb, not a noun. I would not have said that Mathsorcerer was a troll any more than I would say that someone who flames someone else is a "flamer", or that someone who posts R-rated material a "pornographer".
Troll is obviously an emotionally charged word, but in the context of this site's rules, it's the verb form of the word that I was using, not the noun. Which, granted, may be a sign that the site rules should probably find a different word to describe the behavior.
Which brings it back to questions like "What is offensive" and "When is it important to be politically correct". Because obviously the word used here is one that has been misinterpreted based on its historical use as a derogatory term, even though the word itself is being used correctly in this context; is it then appropriate or worthwhile to change the word we use to describe the behavior for the sake of not offending people?
(I would actually argue that it is, but since political correctness is something that frequently gets brought up on this and other forums as something that "goes way too far" to protect people's feelings, I'm curious what people in this thread think about the notion.)