I have no idea what you mean by this; it seems a non sequitur.
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I have to disagree completely. Pain is something you have no choice in. Offense is someone trying to rattle your cage. You have a choice to be rattled or not.
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Yes. Thatās it. And if you cannot extrapolate from the setup of the scene, and the race of the people involved, combined with everything else that has been mentioned, that it refers to race, then you are being deliberately dense.
Want another reference?
Seriously, do your own research. That took me less than 2 minutes to find.
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Ah, apologies. I misread your post. I thought it said āI am no longer confident that -you- know what your argument is.ā I think I conflated it with the structure of pixleshifterās response.
In that case, I apologize for my flipancy with that non sequitor comment.
We seem to be using different meanings of āoffenceā. How you react emotionally to an insult is uncontrollable in the moment; though one can train oneself to be the kind of person to turn the other cheek, for example, how you feel about being slapped is how you feel about it. If it offends you, it offends you. You can ignore it, offer the choice of weapons or write a blog post about it, but you donāt get the choice of being hurt by being called a whore, āurbanā or otherwise.
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The Wikipedia reference is spot on, thatās what a citation looks like. Nice one. Your Blazing Saddles one still falls completely flat however as itās used in comparison with āruralā quite plainly.
So if we establish that āurbanā is indeed a euphimism for black, then all thatās needed is to determine whether it was used in a racial context.
Now, considering that her username is āurban scientistā and he called her āurban whoreā it seems to me, (as someone else pointed out earlier, if she had called herself ātall scientistā he would have called her ātall whoreā) that he is guilty of sexism and there never was any racial connotation.
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That the email actually existed, and was actually written by the person/organization in question, would likely be what needed verification. If the email was false, inaccurate, or falsified there could potentially be a messy libel suit.
They probably pulled this before verifying because in the event there is a problem with the factual assertions being made it is best to minimize any damage the blog post may cause. On the other hand, if the facts are verified the blog post can easily be put back up.
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Donāt matter none. He armed the nuke heās being hit with. Erroneously, or not.
This is the big wide world of PR. The multiple potential meanings are clear, but he pissed her off, itās hit the news trail, itās being amped and pumped.
He shouldāve just called her a sub-urban scientist.
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See, this is where the subtleties of the English language start causing problems. An adjective can be used in a positive way, or a negative way. A word commonly used as derogatory to a minority that is instead used in a positive connotation is an attempt to ātake the word backā, or to actively attempt to change the connotations of that in the minds of those who listen to it.
By taking that same word, and in a play on that phrase, associate it with something meant as degrading, comes across as deliberately circumventing the attempt to make positive connotations with that word. This is a standard part of any propaganda campaign - to tear down positive associations and build up negative ones.
When this tactic, however inadvertently, is applied to a person of that minority, it can be offensive to those who understand the effort being made to counteract the negative associations that word has.
The phrase ātake back the xā is in common use, but is very hard to find a proper definition of. You will see it used in articles, primarily from activists, in feminist, queer, and sex-positive literature as well as in some African-American literature.
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Someone should Shepard Fairey that pic. Itās already got a nice red/blue background.
(Sorry, Falcor, I know itās not relevant to the topic)
Calling a woman a whore in professional correspondence is unacceptable, no matter what her profession is. I think āurbanā is touchy though. I work with plenty of african-american and plenty of urban-americans but only a few urban-african-americans, so I donāt naturally associate the word urban the same way others do. Usage here has more to do with culture than race.
The bottom line is that editor needs to learn how to use email professionally.
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As Iāve stated, Iām not going to research someone elseās argument for them. Thatās absurd. The burden of proof is already in place.
That said, letās dissect that wikipedia article.
This article has a number of readily apparant issues. First, for a topic as complex as the culture of cities, it is remarkably short. Secondly, for a topic as universal as the culture of cities, it is remarkably narrow in focus. Thirdly, for being such a potentially contentious issue, it has a comparatively small number of revisions. Fourthly, for being such an ostensibly pertinent topic to the average public, it has a very low number of page views.
These are problematic qualities. The neutrality and accuracy of the article are immediately called into question, and authorial biases are unlikely to have been removed.
However, weāre concerned only with one facet of the wikipedia article - the usage of āurbanā as a racial epithet.
The page cites a single source for itās statement that āIn the United States, āurbanā is often used as a euphemism to describe contemporary African American culture.ā This citation is an editorial piece from Time magazineās website, dated Wednesday, Aug. 04, 2010.
In this piece, the author refers to President Obama as the nationās first āurban presidentā. However, as the piece is specifically concerned with the matters of urban economics and the administration of the nationās cities, and as the only even remote references to race are collective and concerned with economic disparity - with āurbanā here being used akin to the phrase āinner cityā - this, combined with the other content of the wikipedia article, heavily suggest authorial bias and a severe lack of credibility.
So no, Iām afraid your source doesnāt support your claim as to the usage of the word āurbanā as a racial epithet.
Shaming is not censorship. Rob, if Iām not mistaken, has full editorial powers and could consign your posts to the bitbucket in a trice if he so chose; that would be censorship. Whether he and others are right to use the words they have is another matter entirely, but it aināt censorship.
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To be honest, when I read the email I didnāt attach much significance to the āurbanā part of the insult, for the combination of two factors: 1) the symmetry with her title of āurban scientistā; and 2) because Ofek doesnāt sound like an American name and his writing style doesnāt seem American, I assumed Ofek was European or non-American, while I believe that using āurbanā in a racial context is decidedly American.
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Are you saying itās only censorship when itās an official refusal to publish a work outright? That coercion to silence is not censorship?
You donāt have to, but it wouldnāt hurt. You might find something that will change your mind. And even if you donāt, you might find further support for your argument. The best debaters respond to the most likely objections before they close their arguments.
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Iām not going to do original research for the purpose of winning a debate on a website. Thatās just insane. If you want to walk away, smug in your belief that by poking holes in peopleās arguments on the racist nature of a statement, you have somehow achieved something, then by all means, walk away.
There is no reasoning with someone who is living in an ivory tower. You are massively disconnected from the real world, if you think that discussion on racist terminology requires the kind of scientific rigor normally reserved for academic discourse.
Itās a blog, man. Get a sense of proportion.
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You can say what you like, but you can also be held liable if your speech is defamatory, which is probably the point of this entire incident. Of course, you also cannot incite violence or shout āfire!ā in a crowded theater.
From someone who is twitchy of even using words like ābananasā or āwatermelonsā or āporchesā for fear of offense, it seems to me that youāre not living in the real world. you see racism everywhere there is none.
How do you ask for bananas if your shopkeeper is black?
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Thatās pretty much the definition of the word, check any dictionary. Your words remain to be read, therefore they havenāt been censored.
It is definitely an American thing, but hardly obscure. If he isnāt American, then it is more likely that he wasnāt aware of it, but he easily could have been. As a non-Anglophone foreigner who has never set foot into the US, I would expect everyone with a certain level of interest in American society and politics to know.
