Then, for the sake if nothing else, of my sanity, get out there on the blogs and help him clear his name.
BB has a 50/50ish split on this thread between those who believe it was racist and those who believe it wasn’t.
Discussing the finer points of rhetoric isn’t going to help him.
You and others like you can stop the witchhunt, if only you’d try.
Start a petition.
“Urban” = Black. Ok, didn’t realize that was a common colloquialism. When I see a statement where race is included in the person’s description I wonder how relevant that is. I see far more descriptions of people who are not white that include their skin color or ethnic origin but far fewer “the white woman” kind of descriptions. It appears there’s a predisposition to including race/ethnicity when it’s not white.
Does that mean calling Congress a bunch of whores is inappropriate?
Actually, there’s one thing this entire thread is missing … it stands out so obviously because it hasn’t reared its ugly head …
They’re a bunch of urbane whores.
Let’s see . . . MRAs?
You know, I’ll concede this. Strictly speaking, it was a comparison (btw, does your nitpicking count negatively, like mine does?), although it was only to illustrate the foolishness of having your policy of a speaker always being responsible for the emotional reception of one’s words. (That’s the reminder of why.)
It’s hard to logically infer anything negative about people of color from that comparison, but it was insensitive, and to be fair I now do question why I made it. (Then again, you don’t know my own background in interacting with schizophrenia and schizophrenics… just a thought. It certainly wasn’t a “ha ha, look at these delusional wackos” reference.)
Why do people do that in general? Some, of course, because they see the same behavior in themselves and don’t want to consider that they may be in the wrong. But I do think there’s a strong tendency among certain people to just… want to think the best of people. I’ve noticed it in myself at times, and try to reign in the impulse… it treads dangerously close to the “Just World” fallacy that leads to blaming the victim, not to mention potentially screwing yourself over by leaving yourself open to people who’ve screwed others over. But I still understand the gut feeling: if two people they respect (or don’t have enough of a connection to) have such a disagreement, it’s less of a slight on anybody’s character to assume person A is overreacting somewhat than it is to assume person B is a racist/sexist ass. And that instinct can be strong even when there were other aspects of person B’s behavior that are objectively bad.
I’m not trying to defend it (I think there are noble aspects to the impulse at times, but it’s too easily hijacked by subconscious affinity to one’s own peer-group, and in cases like this it’s inappropriate), but you asked why, not should they.
And yes, I’m fully conscious that I may be exhibiting the same behavior of thinking the best of people in trying to explain why people do this.
The problem with this argument is that I am allowed (last time I checked) to put my wife in a special, privileged position with respect to myself. Ditto my children. I am allowed to discriminate on familial grounds. There is nothing offensive about saying my wife or my kids are the best.
What I am not allowed to do is to put some people in a special, privileged position purely on the basis of their skin colour. If you think that being told where to sit on a bus on the basis of colour is offensive, you should be similarly offended by finding that some people are seemingly allowed to use words others are not. This is just linguistic apartheid.
That’s just normative totalitarianism.
mmmm you’re right, but not the exact one I was thinking of, and I think it would really reinvigorate the discussion.
No, just consistency.
Could you clarify in one sentence your original point, and give an example? I’m a little lost in the linguistic labyrinth.
I think it’s good of you to concede that it was an inappropriate comparison. I hope you also develop an interest in how common that kind of comparison is when the topic of discussion is the legitimate complaints of the oppressed, who all too often hear their complaints dismissed with trivializing or infantalizing analogies. Whether or not a person meant to trivialize or infantalize is really beside the point.
And so, regarding your intentions, whatever they were, I will refer you back to the earlier bone of contention, about whether the man in the OP meant to write a term that is both sexist and racist when he asked if a black woman is an “urban whore.” Whatever he meant is far less important than the effects of what he said.
It’s not about you, nor about him – it’s about what each of you said.
And as for my supposedly “foolish” “policy” that a speaker must always be responsible for the emotional reception of his or her words, no, I don’t have that policy – unless the negative emotional reaction is in response to a common, widespread term and its connotations (such as the common connotations in the U.S. regarding black people and “urban”). In those cases, the uninformed speaker is not necessarily responsible for not saying such things; instead, I think the speaker is responsible for owning up to the consequences (hurting other people) of saying them, and then of sincerely learning about them, and then of trying not to repeat the mistake in the future.
Objection, assumes facts not in evidence.
Or will you be willing to share the parallel-universe window that allows us to investigate the various “What Ifs” we’d like to ponder? Because if so, can I keep it for an extra week?
Here’s an interesting question, though… let’s say she called herself the Black Scientist (or, because that might suggest she’s the only one, something like One Black Scientist), and he said, “What are you, a black scientist, or a black whore?” Do you think it would be just fine, aside from the whore part?
Exactly my reaction. “Pay the writer!”
It doesn’t matter if you’re in a minority or not; they will always try to screw you, regardless.
But then, by your own logic, so it is allowing you to put your wife and children in a special, privileged position with respect to yourself, by calling them Sweetie or Honey, when I’m not “allowed” to do that because I’m not in your special group, that is, your family.
Similarly, the n-word has different meanings among black people when they use it for each other from the meanings that get attached to it when white people use it.
It’s strange – you’re allowing for context-bound limitations on usage in one group-specific case, but disallowing them in another.
Apples and oranges, even though both are about race. Recognizing that the n-word has different connotations depending on which race’s members use it is not the same thing as white supremacists telling black people to use separate-but-not-actually equal facilities.
There’s a difference there, you’re not trying to be insulting.
Because, let’s face it, the ‘joke’ he was trying to make… would have worked just fine as “Are you a scientist, or are you a whore?”. Adding the ‘Urban’ was a deliberate choice, in both cases. Going back to the ‘tall’ example, although I don’t have any evidence for it, I don’t believe he would have said “Are you a Tall Scientist, or a tall whore?”… because “tall whore” doesn’t really mean anything. It carries no baggage, and thus, it’s not even funny in a douchebaggy way… unless there perhaps was some kind of stereotype of tall women being whores in the popular culture. I think he would just have said “Are you a scientist or a whore?” in that case. But when you add words that DO carry baggage, you get more meaning out of the insult. He probably thought, consciously or unconsciously, “Oh, look, this is clever, I can suggest that she’s not really an urban scientist, but actually an urban whore, because an urban whore is a thing! It conjures up mental images that make my point.”
And, if someone were to say “Are you a black scientist, or a black whore?” the same applies: unless you’re trying to get a little extra dig in there with the “black” part, or it has some special significance, it seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to leave it entirely out. Even if she calls herself “The Black Scientist.”
OK, forget the logical argument, how about some pragmatic ones?
First of all, do you think it would be a good idea if whites developed words and phrases that blacks weren’t allowed to use?
Secondly, does your contextual approach relate to other groups? How about religious groups? Or political ones? How on earth could a reasonable person speak in a society where before repeating a word they heard someone else utter, they first had to analyse which group that person was from, what words that group had appropriated, and whether the word they were about to utter belonged to the appropriated group? Furthermore, what considerations should such a person give to the risk that the conversation might leak out and be overheard by other groups, who had that list on their list of appropriated words even if the original person did not?
Do you not see the craziness of the whole thing?
