I don't think anyone is saying anti-white discrimination or hatred never occurs.
That doesn't make cracker just as bad as the n-word though.
I never said I won't judge someone for using cracker. I will judge someone for using the word cracker, depending on how its used and the context.
Or if we're talking about Christians vs. minority religions, it's certainly possible for a Jew or Muslim to be offensively prejudiced against them, even in the US.
For example, I was forwarded an email by a friend once.
This was an email sent to a Jewish friend of my friend, by that person's father. It was about his impending wedding to a woman from a Christian background. In the letter, the father goes on about how the son is lowering himself by marrying a gentile and how while it's fine to use gentile women for sex, you shouldn't ever consider them worthy of marrying.
It's also easy to find similar sentiments from Muslim men about non-Muslim women.
That guy was a bigoted prick, and the fact that he's Jewish (a minority) and talking about Christians (the dominant majority) doesn't change that.
And there are certainly plenty of black people who are bigoted against white people and you can find bigoted rants about white people online quite easily.
Standards of evidence are lower for more mundane occurrences, particularly when they don't have any particular importance.
Having pancakes for breakfast is a mundane occurrence, and unless it's critical to an alibi or something like that, it's unimportant. And with no reason to suspect lying, if you told me you had pancakes for breakfast, I would find it very likely that you did, in fact, have pancakes for breakfast.
If I'm staking my spiritual beliefs on something, and commit myself to worship and lifestyle and tithing, etc., that's a situation that requires a much higher evidentiary standard. If, for some reason, my conversion to Mormonism hinges on you having had pancakes, I'm going to require more evidence.
If it's a fantastical event, I also am going to require more evidence. If you claim to have eaten a 10 lb pancake for breakfast, I'll want some proof, since that would be quite an ordeal (the kind that would get your photo on a diner's wall and win you some kind of reward). If you claim you ate a 50 lb pancake in one sitting, well, I'm not going to believe you based on your word or even normal photos and video at that point. So spectacularly defying normal feats of digestion would require an extraordinarily high standard of evidence (observation by trusted third-parties ensuring there's no slight of hand and so forth).
-----
Anyway, Mormonism has more serious problems than other religions. I find that the Abrahamic religions all have huge problems including some significant problems with their accounting of history (the Hebrews in Egypt, for example), but Mormonism basically takes that and adds a whole bucket of claims about history that are not just questionable but basically disproven.
As a linguist, I also know that Reformed Egyptian and Joseph Smith's ability to translate it is basically bunk.
-----
As for your forest experience, I can't really explain what you saw since I wasn't there.
But plenty of people have had similar experiences that are mutually incompatible (so they can't all be true), people can hallucinate such things, people can misinterpret things that they see, and even more importantly, people's memories are quite imperfect.
So to my mind, it's more likely that you hallucinated or misinterpreted what you saw, or that you had a less fantastical experience that you misremembered later.
It's possible that you happened upon a perfectly ordinary woman in a clearing and overheard her saying something and the lighting and angle was such that she seemed to be larger and glowing, etc. and you took it to be a much more fantastical event.
It's also quite possible, for example, that when you heard about your wife's moon and wind beliefs, that you filled in what had happened previously with that, because it sounded similar. Maybe it had been the moon and the night, or the moon and the stars originally, but the moon and the wind is certainly close enough to make you think "Hey, isn't that what that mysterious woman said?" and become convinced that it is in fact what you heard.
Those all seem more likely to me than that you actually encountered a moon and wind spirit or the like.
1. It's ultimatum time. Sell the cards or otherwise raise the money to replace the full amount of what he spent, or you're through.
If he won't, he still has to replace whatever was your portion of the savings, because he STOLE that from you.
2. If you're still together after that, you'll need to have a serious conversation about his Magic hobby. Spending money on Magic won't just stop being a problem after this. You're going to have to work with him to create a reasonable budget. If, for example, he can't pay his portion of the rent because he spent too much on Magic, who is going to be expected to bail him out?
3. Personally, I wouldn't spend that much money on the wedding, if you're saving up for that long. That money would be better spent on a house or car. Or even the honeymoon IMO.
Every person holds zero responsibility for what their ancestors did and meant when used certain words.
What would that have to do with determining the meaning and connotation of words?
The meaning and connotations of words are very much so determined by what our ancestors did and meant when using certain words.
If it were not so, Shakespeare would be incomprehensible to us now.
I'm not responsible for f*** being an obscene word in English, but I am responsible for what I do with the word.
Precisely. As a human being free from the past of my ancestors I can use the word the way I want in the modern context.
If i use "n word" the way black people use to call themselves, there's zero issue in it. To bad my ancestor used it with other intentions, but I'm not.
That's not what I meant.
I meant that it has its meaning and its offensive connotation because of previous generations of English speakers. You can't change (as an individual) anymore than we can change the fact that "f***" is considered obscene and "copulate" is not.
You aren't responsible for the n-word being offensive. But it IS offensive, no matter what you supposedly intend. And you know that it is. And if you go ahead and say it anyway without regard for the context you're in, people will judge your usage of it on that basis.
Unless you're just taking a page from Humpty Dumpty.
Quote from Lewis Carroll"s Alice in Wonderland »
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
Saying that Humpty Dumpty isn't responsible for what anyone meant in the past when they said "glory" doesn't make his statements there any less ridiculous.
Calling racism "views different from your own" is fine and dandy if you're white.
Also, like I said, I'm not basing my opinion of her on the assumption that all she did was say the n-word once, 20 years ago. I wouldn't really care if that was the case. So, dismissing it as just being something from 20 years ago is just a misrepresentation of what happened.
Aside from the stuff that you personally don't think is racist (but that plenty of people do), she also admitted to sexist business practices (i.e. that she wouldn't have ever put a woman as manager if not for the fact that the previous manager had slept with one of the underage employees) and other offensive statements (referring to that underage employee as a "piece of *****"). She also tolerated her brother engaging in sexual harassment of female employees. This is not 20 years ago. This is 5 years ago.
And I really don't think that she last said the n-word 20 years ago. You might take her at her word, but she made some comments that clearly indicates she thinks "******" is an appropriate description for at least some black people.
And like I said, there's still a pending lawsuit. If she refuses to settle, expect even more stuff to come out about her.
So can the talking point that people are holding old news from 20 years ago against her and/or that it's all about the time she said one word just die?
The difference is a comedian and a cook. Paula Deen has a following, she will be back on T.V. after this all blows over. It was things that happened 20 years ago.
It wasn't all things that happened 20 years ago.
What she's accused of with discrimination in her business and comments about plantation-style weddings was just in the past few years.
Furthermore, this is also operating on the assumption that she was totally truthful. Probably the truth is worse than what she's admitted to (and she admitted to some pretty offensive stuff, including some offensively misogynist stuff). Some of her other statements make me rather doubt that the last time she said the n-word was 20 years ago.
We'll see how her former employee's suit goes, but if it doesn't go well for her, her career will truly be over. If I were her and there's any truth to the allegations, I would be looking to settle quickly and quietly with some kind of agreement that they're not to discuss the terms of the settlement.
The Zimmerman verdict has made many forget about her.
Taken her off the news isn't the same as people forgetting about her. We'll see if people have forgotten when she gets on TV again.
Also, racism isn't her only problem. Having diabetes and marketing food that causes diabetes and also marketing diabetes treatments was hurting her image as well.
Answer the question directly. I don't care if you think it's better or worse than some other statement. This isn't a question about degree of offensiveness.
Just simply... Is it a bigoted statement?
It's not bigoted. It's discriminatory and prejudiced.
Hence the ridiculousness of your position.
Yes, you ARE trivializing real racism and real prejudice.
Canadians DO tend to be better at hockey than Americans. You know why? Because hockey is very popular there, and not very popular in most parts of the US. So many more Canadians play hockey starting in childhood, and therefore many more Canadians (proportionately) are good at hockey. There are ten times as many serious hockey players per capita in Canada as there are in the US. So the average Canadian is better than the average American.
This is not a racist, bigoted, discriminatory or prejudiced observation.
Obviously SOME Americans are very good at the sport, and MANY Canadians are very bad at it. And there's nothing inherent to being born a Canadian citizen that makes you any better at the game. Growing up in Canadian culture, however, will make you considerably more likely to end up being a good hockey player.
What a prejudiced ******* I am for recognizing that fact.
(Ok, so Canadian and American aren't races. Is it just as bad as a racist statement?)
See above. I'm not trying to say one is worse than the other. The fact it occurs is enough or me to know its racist and should be looked down upon.
Answer the question directly. I don't care if you think it's better or worse than some other statement. This isn't a question about degree of offensiveness.
Racism is defined by animus towards a particular ethnic group and/or the belief in the superiority/inferiority of particular ethnic groups.
No, it's not. Antagonism is not a requirement for racism otherwise, the use of "Redskin" for the Washington football team is an abject failure as example of racism. So would be "white pride" and many, many other examples of of racist things.
Learn what "and/or" means, plz.
I'm not saying what a group of people should be offended by or to what extent, I believe that ones offensiveness is completely dependent on the individual's experience. I'm attacking individuals who hold different standards of outrage based upon a persons skin color, irrelevant of the history or justification they want to give for that difference.
Hey, here's a thought that might not have occurred to you:
Black people are aware of the history and presence of racism against them in this country. That is part of their personal experience.
You know what's NOT a part of white people's personal experience? Knowledge that there's a anti-white racist history in the US and that it continues to this day. You know why not? Because there is no such history.
So, since I put it in terms of "personal experience" for you, do you ****ing get it yet? You think that saying it's all about personal history somehow makes history irrelevant? You're acting like they're completely separable things. They're not.
Equivocating the racism faced by blacks with the "racism" faced by whites is a classic technique used to trivialize the anti-black racism endemic in the US.
This is amazing considering you, yourself trivialize the experience of racism experienced by white people.
This.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
No. Once again you remove a part of my argument to fit your narrative. I believe you are racist because you think a black person is more offended from a racial slur than white person. I've never once argued that ****** is not offensive, so...
So you're saying that 80+% of white people are "extremely or very offended" by "cracker"?
And despite growing up in North Carolina and interacting with hundreds of white people my entire life, this fact escaped my notice? Despite the fact that society (which is run by white people) very clearly treats the words differently (hint: only one of them gets censored on TV)? If white people really didn't want that word to be on television it wouldn't be.
This strains credibility.
It makes for a world of nonsense, where despite having all the power necessary to censor that word in the way that the n-word is censored, white people choose to allow an extremely offensive word to routinely go uncensored, despite vigorously censoring even mild terms like piss and ****.
I don't know dude, but as erimir said in his reply, this look like its in bad faith.
Of course it is.
He doesn't think Paula Deen is racist for wanting a bunch of "tap-dancing ******s" serving the white people at a wedding, but he claims that we're racist for thinking that black people are more offended by the n-word than white people are by cracker.
It's obvious he doesn't really believe one of those things.
That doesn't make cracker just as bad as the n-word though.
I never said I won't judge someone for using cracker. I will judge someone for using the word cracker, depending on how its used and the context.
Or if we're talking about Christians vs. minority religions, it's certainly possible for a Jew or Muslim to be offensively prejudiced against them, even in the US.
For example, I was forwarded an email by a friend once.
This was an email sent to a Jewish friend of my friend, by that person's father. It was about his impending wedding to a woman from a Christian background. In the letter, the father goes on about how the son is lowering himself by marrying a gentile and how while it's fine to use gentile women for sex, you shouldn't ever consider them worthy of marrying.
It's also easy to find similar sentiments from Muslim men about non-Muslim women.
That guy was a bigoted prick, and the fact that he's Jewish (a minority) and talking about Christians (the dominant majority) doesn't change that.
And there are certainly plenty of black people who are bigoted against white people and you can find bigoted rants about white people online quite easily.
Having pancakes for breakfast is a mundane occurrence, and unless it's critical to an alibi or something like that, it's unimportant. And with no reason to suspect lying, if you told me you had pancakes for breakfast, I would find it very likely that you did, in fact, have pancakes for breakfast.
If I'm staking my spiritual beliefs on something, and commit myself to worship and lifestyle and tithing, etc., that's a situation that requires a much higher evidentiary standard. If, for some reason, my conversion to Mormonism hinges on you having had pancakes, I'm going to require more evidence.
If it's a fantastical event, I also am going to require more evidence. If you claim to have eaten a 10 lb pancake for breakfast, I'll want some proof, since that would be quite an ordeal (the kind that would get your photo on a diner's wall and win you some kind of reward). If you claim you ate a 50 lb pancake in one sitting, well, I'm not going to believe you based on your word or even normal photos and video at that point. So spectacularly defying normal feats of digestion would require an extraordinarily high standard of evidence (observation by trusted third-parties ensuring there's no slight of hand and so forth).
-----
Anyway, Mormonism has more serious problems than other religions. I find that the Abrahamic religions all have huge problems including some significant problems with their accounting of history (the Hebrews in Egypt, for example), but Mormonism basically takes that and adds a whole bucket of claims about history that are not just questionable but basically disproven.
As a linguist, I also know that Reformed Egyptian and Joseph Smith's ability to translate it is basically bunk.
-----
As for your forest experience, I can't really explain what you saw since I wasn't there.
But plenty of people have had similar experiences that are mutually incompatible (so they can't all be true), people can hallucinate such things, people can misinterpret things that they see, and even more importantly, people's memories are quite imperfect.
So to my mind, it's more likely that you hallucinated or misinterpreted what you saw, or that you had a less fantastical experience that you misremembered later.
It's possible that you happened upon a perfectly ordinary woman in a clearing and overheard her saying something and the lighting and angle was such that she seemed to be larger and glowing, etc. and you took it to be a much more fantastical event.
It's also quite possible, for example, that when you heard about your wife's moon and wind beliefs, that you filled in what had happened previously with that, because it sounded similar. Maybe it had been the moon and the night, or the moon and the stars originally, but the moon and the wind is certainly close enough to make you think "Hey, isn't that what that mysterious woman said?" and become convinced that it is in fact what you heard.
Those all seem more likely to me than that you actually encountered a moon and wind spirit or the like.
1. It's ultimatum time. Sell the cards or otherwise raise the money to replace the full amount of what he spent, or you're through.
If he won't, he still has to replace whatever was your portion of the savings, because he STOLE that from you.
2. If you're still together after that, you'll need to have a serious conversation about his Magic hobby. Spending money on Magic won't just stop being a problem after this. You're going to have to work with him to create a reasonable budget. If, for example, he can't pay his portion of the rent because he spent too much on Magic, who is going to be expected to bail him out?
3. Personally, I wouldn't spend that much money on the wedding, if you're saving up for that long. That money would be better spent on a house or car. Or even the honeymoon IMO.
They affect people (such as her employees) even if they don't affect you.
I meant that it has its meaning and its offensive connotation because of previous generations of English speakers. You can't change (as an individual) anymore than we can change the fact that "f***" is considered obscene and "copulate" is not.
You aren't responsible for the n-word being offensive. But it IS offensive, no matter what you supposedly intend. And you know that it is. And if you go ahead and say it anyway without regard for the context you're in, people will judge your usage of it on that basis.
Unless you're just taking a page from Humpty Dumpty.
Saying that Humpty Dumpty isn't responsible for what anyone meant in the past when they said "glory" doesn't make his statements there any less ridiculous.
The meaning and connotations of words are very much so determined by what our ancestors did and meant when using certain words.
If it were not so, Shakespeare would be incomprehensible to us now.
I'm not responsible for f*** being an obscene word in English, but I am responsible for what I do with the word.
Good thing you put "truth" in quotes.
Also, like I said, I'm not basing my opinion of her on the assumption that all she did was say the n-word once, 20 years ago. I wouldn't really care if that was the case. So, dismissing it as just being something from 20 years ago is just a misrepresentation of what happened.
Aside from the stuff that you personally don't think is racist (but that plenty of people do), she also admitted to sexist business practices (i.e. that she wouldn't have ever put a woman as manager if not for the fact that the previous manager had slept with one of the underage employees) and other offensive statements (referring to that underage employee as a "piece of *****"). She also tolerated her brother engaging in sexual harassment of female employees. This is not 20 years ago. This is 5 years ago.
And I really don't think that she last said the n-word 20 years ago. You might take her at her word, but she made some comments that clearly indicates she thinks "******" is an appropriate description for at least some black people.
And like I said, there's still a pending lawsuit. If she refuses to settle, expect even more stuff to come out about her.
So can the talking point that people are holding old news from 20 years ago against her and/or that it's all about the time she said one word just die?
What she's accused of with discrimination in her business and comments about plantation-style weddings was just in the past few years.
Furthermore, this is also operating on the assumption that she was totally truthful. Probably the truth is worse than what she's admitted to (and she admitted to some pretty offensive stuff, including some offensively misogynist stuff). Some of her other statements make me rather doubt that the last time she said the n-word was 20 years ago.
We'll see how her former employee's suit goes, but if it doesn't go well for her, her career will truly be over. If I were her and there's any truth to the allegations, I would be looking to settle quickly and quietly with some kind of agreement that they're not to discuss the terms of the settlement.
Taken her off the news isn't the same as people forgetting about her. We'll see if people have forgotten when she gets on TV again.
Also, racism isn't her only problem. Having diabetes and marketing food that causes diabetes and also marketing diabetes treatments was hurting her image as well.
Probably they'll think I'm idiotic for even bothering to argue with you. The end.
Yes, you ARE trivializing real racism and real prejudice.
Canadians DO tend to be better at hockey than Americans. You know why? Because hockey is very popular there, and not very popular in most parts of the US. So many more Canadians play hockey starting in childhood, and therefore many more Canadians (proportionately) are good at hockey. There are ten times as many serious hockey players per capita in Canada as there are in the US. So the average Canadian is better than the average American.
This is not a racist, bigoted, discriminatory or prejudiced observation.
Obviously SOME Americans are very good at the sport, and MANY Canadians are very bad at it. And there's nothing inherent to being born a Canadian citizen that makes you any better at the game. Growing up in Canadian culture, however, will make you considerably more likely to end up being a good hockey player.
What a prejudiced ******* I am for recognizing that fact.
Just simply... Is it a bigoted statement?
In your view, saying black people are better at basketball is as bad as anything Paula Deen said.
That's ludicrous.
Let me ask you a question.
Is this a racist statement?
"Canadians are better at hockey than Americans."
(Ok, so Canadian and American aren't races. Is it just as bad as a racist statement?)
Hey, here's a thought that might not have occurred to you:
Black people are aware of the history and presence of racism against them in this country. That is part of their personal experience.
You know what's NOT a part of white people's personal experience? Knowledge that there's a anti-white racist history in the US and that it continues to this day. You know why not? Because there is no such history.
So, since I put it in terms of "personal experience" for you, do you ****ing get it yet? You think that saying it's all about personal history somehow makes history irrelevant? You're acting like they're completely separable things. They're not.
This.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
So you're saying that 80+% of white people are "extremely or very offended" by "cracker"?
And despite growing up in North Carolina and interacting with hundreds of white people my entire life, this fact escaped my notice? Despite the fact that society (which is run by white people) very clearly treats the words differently (hint: only one of them gets censored on TV)? If white people really didn't want that word to be on television it wouldn't be.
This strains credibility.
It makes for a world of nonsense, where despite having all the power necessary to censor that word in the way that the n-word is censored, white people choose to allow an extremely offensive word to routinely go uncensored, despite vigorously censoring even mild terms like piss and ****.
And this is how I know you're arguing in bad faith.
Nobody could say that with a straight face.
He doesn't think Paula Deen is racist for wanting a bunch of "tap-dancing ******s" serving the white people at a wedding, but he claims that we're racist for thinking that black people are more offended by the n-word than white people are by cracker.
It's obvious he doesn't really believe one of those things.