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The Use of Racist Language (and Canada)
Posts
I'd love to hear what the explanation for this was.
THE UN IS NOT CRITICIZING THE IDENTIFYING OF DIFFERENCES AMONG ETHNIC OR CULTURAL GROUPS
The UN is criticizing the language used in official Canadian documents, specifically the term "visible minority." Everyone is patting each other on the back saying "fuck that PC lobby" which isn't at all what this is about. This is simply about the language used in official documents of the Canadian government and whether or not it should be changed.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
http://www.tuftsobserver.org/snyderblog/2007/02/jewish_basketball.html
Sports as a living are, for the most part, sought by people who do not feel that the system allows for them to succeed in business (Good Ol Boys Club, etc).
Music has the same notion applied to it.
They're like secret paths to wealth and fame for those whose way is blocked by WASPs.
No, "visible minorities" are ethnic groups, groups of poeple culturally related who also often share similar physical traits. If this was really just about our "visible" differences, then it wouldn't really make sense to say Chinese or African or Latino or whatever. We would have to say light-brown, dark-brown, tall, short, etc. etc..
The PC lobby is a strawman that somehow lets people think they're cool and/or making a point when they attack it.
But yeah, after read your previous post I realise that I should really go and read the fucking thread already. I'll be back shortly.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
A) Classify people of their ancestry by continent.
or
B) Have the name of very country on the damn forms.
Think about it. Middle easterners and Russians are Asians. There is a heavy white population in Africa(there was a big fight in my school because the white daughter of two white South Africans wanted to put Afro-American on a state paper). I want special government treatment because I come from Irish decent and the Irish have been treated like shit in this country, but I cant because Irish are white. Which brings up my point, they have skin color(white and black) then they have continental (Asian or Middle Eastern) and then cultural background (Hispanic) options on the forms I have encountered. So I say either get rid of the damn shit or go all out and include every country as an option to choose from on that list, because hell Im German Irish Slovakian and Native American and I dont look totally white, yet that is what Im told to put on a form.
I would imagine "visible minority" is primarily useful when determining racist intent in crimes and any other situation where race is a factor. Since stuff like DWB etc primarily relies on snap judgements where all the criminal has to go by to determine someone's etnicity is their appearance, in most crimes with racist intent the victim is only going to be someone who's "visibly" a minority.
For example, gays are a minority, but in the vast majority of situations, people are not "visibly" gay, and so if say, a gay guy was mugged it's probably not related to the fact that he was gay. Replace the gay guy with a black guy, and it's possible that the guy was chosen to be mugged sepcifically because he was black.
I probably could have explained it better, but that's the first thing I thought of.
No, I don't think 'ethnic minority' does the trick. Imagine that there are 1000 people living in a tiny little country. 800 of them have white skin, 200 have brown skin. Of the 800 white-skinned people, 700 are Irish, and 100 are Scottish. Scotts would be the Ethnic minority, while the people with brown skin are the Visible minority.
Now, I suspect that the brown-skinned people are more likely to be discriminated against than the Scotts - just because that's the way the world works. If the government of this little micro-country instituted some laws to protect those most likely to be discriminated against, and said it applied to the "Ethnic Minority"...see what I am saying?
Thanks.
It is unfairly forced equality.
The latter results in pretty much the same thing as I postulated; [/quote]
It really isn't. Note that in my example when the government forces quotas the hiring practices are actually more just (though not quite perfect).
I'm pretty sure that legally you are not required to fill that out on the form.
Wait, what? Are you actually suggesting that hiring equal amounts of employees from different recial backgrounds, regardless of skill, is a positive thing?
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
The point has been explained above for you better than I will here, but: Employers hire discriminatorially >> Levelled out by quotas/affirmative action/whathaveyou >> Equality. It's not perfect, but it's generally better than leaving people to their own devices.
Anyone complaining about "political correctness gone mad!!!!!!!!!!??" is invariably a giant knob.
It's just that the end result is questionable and the method is even moreso.
Because there's such a thing as a rich black guy and a ghetto-poor white guy.
Yeah, those fickle blacks, why can't they make up their fucking minds. Yeesh.
Okay. As African-Americans moved from illiterate slavery (where they were called all sorts of things, "Negro" or "colored" probably being by far the most innocuous) into literate enfranchisement, they took notice of the fact that the official language holding them back from full participation usually involved those words, and developed an understandable resentment of the terms. Black kind of bubbled up to the surface as a substitute after the '40s, although some people prefer African- or Afro- or whatever. I know it's confusing, and maybe they'll look sympathetically at your plight if you put in a request for clarification at the next global shareholders' meeting of Black Folk International.
Or you could just get up a little earlier in the morning, drink a little more coffee, and try to put in the immense taxing work of remembering that your black friend Rick likes to be called "black" and your black coworker Bob likes to be called "Jamaican." It's what I do; and rather than live in constant terror of offending someone to the point that I develop a nasty streak of petty preemptive snark and an unbridled sense of martyrdom, if I goof up I make all appropriate apologies and since my intent was clearly benign (without, it should be said, making light of their concerns) and my friends aren't insane, it's not a big deal.
All most people really want is to be treated civilly and with respect and not have retarded assumptions made about them - about their athletic prowess or math ability or, for that matter, how likely their fragile psyches are to ASPLODE over a semantic term because of something you read in the damn Wall Street Journal. It doesn't sound like much, but gosh this thread reminds me of what a fucking mountain it actually is.
Actual Play: Mage: the Awakening - At the Edge of All Things
What happened?