Consider this - would it be acceptable to insult the gay lifestyle simply because one was not directing their insult directly at a specific gay man? I recognize that my mathematically-oriented lifestyle is far more unconventional and rare than simply being gay, but I don't believe that excuses Jessamyn's blatant intolerance, even if she is a popular mod here.This is a useful comparison. Gay men and lesbians experience intolerance of their quote-unquote lifestyle in a range of ways running from jokes at their expense through to career discrimination, lack of marriage equality and, ultimately, being killed. And these forms of intolerance have a long history.
I'm a white person who grew up in an area where to be white was to be the lowest person in the pecking order, and where the use of slurs referencing my whiteness were used to intimidate. In junior high, there was a Kill [white-slur] Day, on which day white kids were jumped and beaten.[citation needed]
There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar. —quoted in People magazine interview, 1991.That's what all of this is reminding me of.
Like I say, that's a counter-experiential position which is probably diametrically opposed to a counter-experiential statement - hypothesized by Bugbread - that a simple majority or a past indignity might justify any current abuse of an ethnic or cultural group. I don't think the second argument has been seriously advanced, and I believe the first has only been made by Phaedon, and does not represent a mainstream of thought..
4. U.S.Sense 4 has been brought up before -- I'm personally more familiar with it being used as a noun in sense 6c, as in a cracker is referencing whites who were either slave owners or the task masters who would be cracking the whip as the slaves toiled.
Thesaurus »
Categories »
a. A contemptuous name given in southern States of N. America to the ‘poor whites’; whence, familiarly, to the native whites of Georgia and Florida. Also attrib.
According to some, short for corn-cracker n.; but early quots. leave this doubtful.
1766 G. Cochrane Let. 27 June (D.A.), I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.
1767 N.Y. Mercury 21 Sept. in Mag. Amer. Hist. (1878) II. 250 A number of people called Crackers, who live above Augusta, in the province of Georgia, had gone in a hostile manner to..Okonee.
1784 London Chron. No. 4287, Maryland, the back settlements of which colony had since the peace been greatly disturbed by the inroads of that hardy banditti well known by the name of Crackers.
1850 C. Lyell 2nd Visit U.S. II. 73 Sometimes..my host would be of the humblest class of ‘crackers’, or some low, illiterate German or Irish emigrants.
1856 F. L. Olmsted Journey Slave States 548 The operatives in the cotton-mills are said to be mainly ‘Cracker girls’ (poor whites from the country).
1887 Beacon (Boston) 11 June, The word Cracker..is supposed to have been suggested by their cracking whips over oxen or mules in taking their cotton to the market.
1888 Harper's Mag. July 240 They will live like the crackers of Georgia or the moonshiners of Tennessee.
...
6c. An attachment to the end of a whip-lash by which a cracking sound can be produced. U.S., Austral. and N.Z.
1835 J. W. Monett in J. H. Ingraham South-West II. App. 288 To the end of the lash is attached a soft, dry, buckskin cracker... So soft is the cracker, that a person who has not the sleight of using the whip, could scarcely hurt a child with it.
1880 A. A. Hayes New Colorado (1881) x. 140 Each wagoner must tie a brand-new ‘cracker’ to the lash of his whip.
1890 ‘R. Boldrewood’ Colonial Reformer I. xviii. 110 Stockwhips garnished with resplendent crackers.
1907 W. H. Koebel Return of Joe 164 Fresh and efficient crackers swung continually at the ends of the stockwhips.
1966 ‘J. Hackston’ Father clears Out 64 I'd plaited a whip specially for the occasion with a new green cracker on it.
There's no need for sarcasm, you privileged crackerinto a conversation, they're still behaving like an asshole regardless of how you approach the question of what defines systemic racism.
prejudice or bigotry or discrimination or intoleranceIt's not like she's saying "if you got marginalized and bullied at your school for being white, that's totally awesome". She's saying that, structurally, such incidences of racially motivated prejudice or bigotry or discrimination or intolerance take place against the direction of institutional racial disadvantage in America.
Yo, is this institutionally racist?posted by running order squabble fest at 11:10 AM on February 1
I fail to understand why we shouldn't be allowed to describe acts of non-institutionalized racial bias as racism.It is dramatic language. As is "insinuation", by the way. That's kind of "just what are you implying?", door-slammy, "I said good day!" language, TBH.
Basically, "why can't I, as a white American, say that I am a victim of racism in the US if black people can" is pretty much the same kind of question as "why can't I, as a white person, call black people [insert epithet of choice] if black people can?"That stands. You are allowed to call whatever you like racism. Not only will nobody on MetaFilter stop you, but nobody on MetaFilter can stop you. The mods have already listed the things that are no-hesitation deletions, and that isn't any of them. There is no guarantee you will not be contradicted, however. This does not mean that you are not being allowed to do something. It means the system is working.
[Hold onto the "I said good day!" for a second. Same kind of question, not same degree of awfulness. The point of similarity, which you did not quote in your previous refutation, follows.]
In both cases, the answer is "actually, you can. However, depending on the company you keep, and the quality of your argumentation, you might find that they think less of you as a result." In the former case it's more likely to be an eye-roll than an angry confrontation, but there isn't really a way it can be guaranteed not to happen unless you pre-select the people you say it to.
Your conception of what institutional racism means is a little different. It is "racial prejudice + power" (where "racial prejudice" and "racism" are interchangeable terms) - because you want to preserve the term "racism" for other forms of prejudice without bringing considerations of power into it - anyone can be racist against anyone else, regardless of where they are in the privilege stakes, if their negative perceptions or actions are driven by perception of racial difference. So, what you call racism (arugula), School-of-Thought calls prejudice, bigotry, racially-motivated aggression etc (rocket). What you call institutional racism (cilantro), S-o-T calls racism (coriander). S-oT also has the term "institutional racism", which means something else again and is a subset of what they call "racism" (um... coriander leaf?).Now, there are things which spin off from there, and could be examined in good faith - for example, how these discourses can coexist. One might, for example, look at the saw "patriarchy hurts men, too" - which is used by critical gender theorists at the sharp end to highlight that the power dynamics of sexism hurt men, even when they are not directly subject to sexism. The coining "kyriarchy" is aimed at doing something related - baking an intersectional series of privileges together to acknowledge both that many men are disadvantaged by sexist structures, and that women can perpetuate those structures.
That's fine. However, the people Jessamyn was citing are not particularly interested in employing the word "racism" to avoid issues of relative power, because they are interested in employing the word "racism" to examine issues of relative power.
Not at all. I would not be offended in the slightest if somebody expressed the wish to kill me (in fact I would probably be rather amused), as long as they did so in a polite and respectful way because I am a robot, beep boop.or
P.S. Sorry Corb! I didn't notice your user profile was female because I am a robot, beep boop.You decide!]
But if I choose of my own free will to curtail my language or change the way I use a word I'd like the reasoning behind it to make sense.In a funny sort of way, this is actually further outside what I think is going on than the idea that you weren't going to be allowed to use the word "racism" to describe prejudice against white Americans by black Americans (on MetaFilter*).
30 Rock's characters' ability to live alongside each other is an acceptance that institutional and incidental racism and sexism and homophobia are part of how we live. We can survive by laughing at them.posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:13 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]
posted by magstheaxe at 7:33 PM on January 28 [28 favorites]