Yeah, I tend to see it used infrequently in contexts like "a faintly Oriental melody" mainly to refer to things that are, in essence, Western views of Eastern things, or else a bit vague, suggestive of East Asia rather than of or from it. Things that are mainly in and of themselves dated or intentionally antiquated, in other words.
Again, intent and context is everything. The joke was not at the expense of Asian people, it was at the expense of Daniel Snyder and the people who think that "redskins" is not a racial epithet. And frankly this sort of shit is only going to undermine actual social issues.
tumblrs are blogs, people write how they feel on them
if a person in a position of privilege is behaving in a way that, even completely inadvertantly, makes a less privileged group feel hurt or erased, that's a valid complaint
it doesn't make Colbert 'racist' or an 'asshole' but i don't think it's nonsense either
Intent and context aren't everything actually, you can be unintentionally racist or sexist and it still hurt people.
The fact that he chose a random ethnic group and "attacked" them to bring about some sort of "satire" doesn't change the fact that satire required him to say potentially hurtful things about an ethnic race.
tumblrs are blogs, people write how they feel on them
if a person in a position of privilege is behaving in a way that, even completely inadvertantly, makes a less privileged group feel hurt or erased, that's a valid complaint
it doesn't make Colbert 'racist' or an 'asshole' but i don't think it's nonsense either
That doesn't give them the excuse to be totally tone-deaf though, much less, in this case, calling for the cancellation of Colbert's show.
But by the same token, what Sorrow says is true: Complaining about such very small things as if they were actually racist muddies the waters and makes the truth harder to hear. There are problems with race in mainstream media, and treating broad satire of precisely such problems as part of the problem is not helping.
"Oriental" used to be more acceptable, especially for business ventures, but these days countries and peoples prefer to be called by their right names. China and Japan are big enough markets on their own that they have their own branches, though you still see a lot of southeast Asia lumped together because Singapore is the main financial center of the area.
tumblrs are blogs, people write how they feel on them
if a person in a position of privilege is behaving in a way that, even completely inadvertantly, makes a less privileged group feel hurt or erased, that's a valid complaint
it doesn't make Colbert 'racist' or an 'asshole' but i don't think it's nonsense either
Well, there's the fact that Asian-Americans with middle-class upbringings have turned their reactions into the story, instead of that of the American Indian community, who are the ones that are being affected by Snyder in the first place.
i guess i'm kinda of two minds... i feel that the left-wing social justice community should not be immune from criticism, but it does sometimes feel like they spend too much time fighting amongst themselves to the point where it impedes political action
Intent and context aren't everything actually, you can be unintentionally racist or sexist and it still hurt people.
The fact that he chose a random ethnic group and "attacked" them to bring about some sort of "satire" doesn't change the fact that satire required him to say potentially hurtful things about an ethnic race.
Well pardon my seeming insensitivity towards my fellow Asians and other people that seem to not be hard-wired to understand the concept of satire.
To make myself even more clear, I'm not saying that you can't be offended by the joke - if you don't like his usage of the slurs, that's fine. But that doesn't fully invalidate the joke itself, and if you are unknowing of the full context, and you immediately start to claim that the maker of the joke is racist for saying those slurs, people who do know the full context will not take you seriously.
It differs in terms of the extent of the abusiveness, and therefore (i would imagine) the likelihood of causing real hurt
As far as i'm concerned, white people don't ever get to use that word. It's just got too much history as a term of abuse, and is too heavily bound up with large-scale oppression of black people by whites. It would likely be completely disproportionate to the level of offence caused by the thing he's satirizing, even.
If anyone thinks i'm wrong about this please do say so, i don't pretend to be especially informed on the matter.
i suppose what i could ask is, how exactly does it not differ? It's a completely different word, and associated with a completely different cultural context.
^^ "Oriental" is a bit like "Negro" in that it is more offensive because of the antiquated attitudes that it generally implies than because of any consciously degrading aspect. The N-word is different: It was used as a derogatory term by white slave-holders and, in many cases, certain free, higher-class black people to degrade enslaved or lower-class African-descended people. It's a different context entirely.
^ I think it's more complicated than that, but it's... way thornier than using other slurs that way. Dangerous territory for rare and dangerous occasions. Never something that light. Ever. It's like using the K-word.
It might not help with "negro" that "nigger" is a corruption of it...
It's actually a corruption of an older English term, "neger," which arose in the 1500s as a corruption of a French word meaning, well, "black," in a qualitative sense. It gradually shifted pronunciation due to dialect, with the semantic meaning growing progressively nastier through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as African slavery supplanted indentured servitude as the favoured form of colonial labour. The only people you'll here using the original word are... really old racist Scots, maybe? It's rare now.
he is talking about his own country in this instance, so i'm inclined to think he might be more informed on the subject than he is when talking about, say, British wildlife, or gay pride
I recall a Russian guy we know on Plug talking about how embarrassing the casual racism of most of his friends could be, although it seems to be just as much an issue of ignorance as actual bigotry since they don't really know black people outside of TV. It's like Americans lamely imitating Russians based off of watching spy movies, but with a language barrier and even less context.
Apparently Finland isn't so racially insensitive as some of the former Soviet countries, though. I mean, there is discrimination, but it's... different. I think that the Fenno-Scandinavian countries are worse to native minorities than foreign ones.
It's not usual in Australia, and it's still offensive and bigoted, but it is more common there than here. Again, different contexts. But then again, racism against the aboriginal peoples was perhaps even more vicious than racism against black people in much of the US; as late as the early 1800s, they were hunted as sport by certain British colonists...
i was gonna say, many Aborigines identify as black these days, which might complicate matters there.
i definitely think it's possible for something to be a slur in one part of the world, but not in another. Like how the c-word is a deeply misogynistic word in America, whereas in Australia it's mainly applied to men, lacks connotations of femininity altogether, and is arguably less offensive than 'fuck'.
Part of the problem with Colbert's statements and things like it is the "white guy doubles down and refuses to apologize" strategy.
This is when a white guy(And it is ALWAYS a white guy) says something that gets a subgroup's lather up, and then refuses to apologize because they won't admit the possibility of missing something and don't see what the fuss is about. See: Dickwolves, John Steppling's comments on autism, Colbert's asian jokes, Macklemore to some degree.
The reason this doesn't work is that refusing to apologize is exactly the wrong move. If you apologize, you look like the humble better man to people who think you did nothing wrong and the people who are angry won't hold a grudge, or at least as much of a grudge.
If you apologize, you look like the humble better man to people who think you did nothing wrong
Sometimes. Other times, the folks who think you did nothing wrong are themselves asses, and they'll criticize your apology as a sign of "weakness". That you're letting the other side "win", somehow.
If you apologize, you look like the humble better man to people who think you did nothing wrong
Sometimes. Other times, the folks who think you did nothing wrong are themselves asses, and they'll criticize your apology as a sign of "weakness". That you're letting the other side "win", somehow.
If you apologize, you look like the humble better man to people who think you did nothing wrong and the people who are angry won't hold a grudge, or at least as much of a grudge.
The problem with apologizing (at least, on-air) is that doing so will compromise his gimmick, making it difficult to continue to use it.
Part of the problem with Colbert's statements and things like it is the "white guy doubles down and refuses to apologize" strategy.
This is when a white guy(And it is ALWAYS a white guy) says something that gets a subgroup's lather up, and then refuses to apologize because they won't admit the possibility of missing something and don't see what the fuss is about. See: Dickwolves, John Steppling's comments on autism, Colbert's asian jokes, Macklemore to some degree.
The reason this doesn't work is that refusing to apologize is exactly the wrong move. If you apologize, you look like the humble better man to people who think you did nothing wrong and the people who are angry won't hold a grudge, or at least as much of a grudge.
yeah, but the thing with the Colbert jokes is that it was the shitty self defense that was supposed to be the joke
Part of the problem with Colbert's statements and things like it is the "white guy doubles down and refuses to apologize" strategy.
This is when a white guy(And it is ALWAYS a white guy) says something that gets a subgroup's lather up, and then refuses to apologize because they won't admit the possibility of missing something and don't see what the fuss is about. See: Dickwolves, John Steppling's comments on autism, Colbert's asian jokes, Macklemore to some degree.
The reason this doesn't work is that refusing to apologize is exactly the wrong move. If you apologize, you look like the humble better man to people who think you did nothing wrong and the people who are angry won't hold a grudge, or at least as much of a grudge.
yeah, but the thing with the Colbert jokes is that it was the shitty self defense that was supposed to be the joke
Generally i'm not too hot on Colbert's "HA HA I'M LIKE A DOUCHEBAG BUT I'M NOT ACTUALLY A DOUCHEBAG SO IT'S FUNNY" schtick because it doesn't really seem intrinsically funny, if that makes any sense. like his level of exaggeration doesn't seem high enough because the people he's supposed to be making fun of are so unhinged that they are hard to top significantly.
but this routine/skit/whatever worked a lot better in my mind because it was very clear what/who the joke was on, which makes the fact that this is the one everyone decided to leap on kinda ironic.
I think it's annoying seeing people literally just use "I'm offended and it's racist!" devoid of any further qualifiers as an argument. I've only really seen one actual argument presented and that was what Counterclock posted.
Comments
tumblrs are blogs, people write how they feel on them
if a person in a position of privilege is behaving in a way that, even completely inadvertantly, makes a less privileged group feel hurt or erased, that's a valid complaint
it doesn't make Colbert 'racist' or an 'asshole' but i don't think it's nonsense either
The fact that he chose a random ethnic group and "attacked" them to bring about some sort of "satire" doesn't change the fact that satire required him to say potentially hurtful things about an ethnic race.
or at least, nobody said that
or perhaps I am mistaken about this.
wait....
I'm just curious at this point.
The N-word is a much more heavily loaded slur, with a history of much more abusive usage than 'oriental'.
Just my two cents.
As far as i'm concerned, white people don't ever get to use that word. It's just got too much history as a term of abuse, and is too heavily bound up with large-scale oppression of black people by whites. It would likely be completely disproportionate to the level of offence caused by the thing he's satirizing, even.
If anyone thinks i'm wrong about this please do say so, i don't pretend to be especially informed on the matter.
i suppose what i could ask is, how exactly does it not differ? It's a completely different word, and associated with a completely different cultural context.
i'm kind of sceptical though because from what i hear the racism up there is pretty horrendous, and my flatmate is full of shit about a lot of things
while True:print("you don't say")
he is talking about his own country in this instance, so i'm inclined to think he might be more informed on the subject than he is when talking about, say, British wildlife, or gay pride
Likewise, I don't know how true it is.
i definitely think it's possible for something to be a slur in one part of the world, but not in another. Like how the c-word is a deeply misogynistic word in America, whereas in Australia it's mainly applied to men, lacks connotations of femininity altogether, and is arguably less offensive than 'fuck'.
But do you really want to please those people?
Have we learned nothing from The Prestige about the dangers of slavish adherence to kayfabe?
Well then perhaps I did not do enough research.