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Anachronistic Racist Language in 2021

Started by Chedney Honks, April 24, 2021, 07:56:54 AM

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TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on April 24, 2021, 04:36:00 PM
What about 'nips'? Do people still use that term for Chinese people?

Tee-hee... 'nips'. Stop sniggering, Judas. AAaaaaAAah, consider the lily...etc

Never heard of it; but looking now it's a slur against Japanese people not Chinese.

I'm not a big fan of controlling language; and really see some of the new stuff coming out of "the states" as having a lot of problems with it; however if something was brought to my attention that I was saying which caused offence to someone then I don't see any problem in respecting that.  I think there are however some very well known and often weaponised terms that should just not be used by people full stop; there is too much history and hate connected to them.

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on April 24, 2021, 04:40:13 PM
C**n getting renormalised is the one that really chills me.

American academics and activists use c**nery to refer to something with a surgically precise meaning, yet I've seen people who aren't black people use c**n and c**nery to mean "this black person on the opposing side of a political argument is exaggerating or affecting their blackness to score authenticity points" which is exactly how any explicit racist I've ever heard uses it. Its the most sickening word to me, its the word I associate with genuine dehumanising intent, because I've barely ever heard n****r used for anything other than shock value growing up in the 1980s and 1990s but I mostly certainly heard c**n and now its back, in acceptable middle class form.

Twitter is fucking poison.


Eh?! is it?! no one can use that term and not just be racist. 

Video Game Fan 2000

Its more "black twitter say it, so its ok if I do" ally shit.

We honestly should have drawn the line at white liberals using the word "minstrelsy", now look where its got us all. The concept of performativity was a mistake.

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on April 24, 2021, 04:53:32 PM
Its more "black twitter say it, so its ok if I do" ally shit.

We honestly should have drawn the line at white liberals using the word "minstrelsy", now look where its got us all. The concept of performativity was a mistake.

God I'm so glad I rarely have anything to do with Twitter; such a poisonous place for lots of reasons.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on April 24, 2021, 04:36:00 PM
What about 'nips'? Do people still use that term for Chinese people?

Tee-hee... 'nips'. Stop sniggering, Judas. AAaaaaAAah, consider the lily...etc

I got told off by a septic on IRC when I was a teenager for saying I was 'nipping out for a smoke' because it was racist against Japanese people, I wasn't even aware the word nippon existed. I guess nipping wasn't synonymous with 'going' in the US.

Funnily enough 'nip oan' is used in NE Scots to mean 'hurry up' though.

Video Game Fan 2000

I had to walk back "its a bit nippy out" once

edit: wait do we say this because of nipples?

jamiefairlie

Nippy means fast, like a nippy winger. Probably related to nipper for a child.

Video Game Fan 2000

Its because you can't stop thinking about children's nipples. Admit it.

A Pink Floyd song "The Postwar Dream" includes a line about the British boat-building industry struggling because of "The Nips being so good at building ships", so it must have existed as an anti-Japanese term in the UK. I used to assume it was just a slur used by Americans after WW2.

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

I always took "nippy" when used to describe temperature as deriving from "biting" cold. "Jack Frost nipping at your nose", frex.

Video Game Fan 2000

Oh yeah do we say "its witches out" because we think someone has hexed the clouds? I think not

Chedney Honks

I post these Venus Flytrap style threads to keep people busy.

Buelligan

Heheh.  I know, it's very good of you.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Am I still allowed to find the Major's "all cricketers are..." speech in Fawlty Towers funny, or does that make me bad? Asking for a friend.

touchingcloth

Is "San Francisco cock sucker" OK these days?

Dr Trouser

Quote from: touchingcloth on April 24, 2021, 06:12:11 PM
Is "San Francisco cock sucker" OK these days?

I'm pretty sure that's not one of Biggy's nicknames

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Zetetic on April 24, 2021, 04:41:49 PM
It's a Saturday afternoon and I'm worrying at strangers about the exact referents of racial slurs, but:
I always understood "Nip" to refer to Japanese people (derived from Nippon).

Oh yeah. Of course it's Japanese. What a silly bunt.

touchingcloth



Jockice

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 24, 2021, 12:21:56 PM
I've never heard the phrase gyppy tummy before, is dicky tummy a sanitised version of it or did it develop independently?


You should use some Jaap's health salts for that.

timebug

A bunch of us old scrotes were talking about films (way back before the Covid!) and my mate Geoff tried to describe an actor in a film, who was possibly from China/Japan/Korea/Phillipines and as his memory is kaput, he referred to the actor as being 'an oriental bloke'. Out pal John's neice who was present (she is about twenty two years old) was horrified and told Geoff 'You can't say that! That's racist!!' This was news to us elder statesmen, as when we were at school, we were told the general rule was, that folk from the west were classed as 'Occidental' and folk from the east were 'Oriental' to differentiate the two.
Okay, I accept it may not be PC to use the term that way now, but we h ad no idea of how things had changed on such issues!

JaDanketies

I got in some social media controversy for using 'oriental'. Tesco still uses it to describe food so it might be an okay word for food but bad for people.

jobotic

If someone is a bit radio rental can I still say they're chicken oriental?


It's like opening a can of eggshells!

chveik

Quote from: JaDanketies on April 26, 2021, 09:51:05 AM
I got in some social media controversy for using 'oriental'. Tesco still uses it to describe food so it might be an okay word for food but bad for people.

ever heard of 'orientalism'? of course it's a dodgy term (and it has been for a while), it's tied with colonialism.

El Unicornio, mang

In America it's more to do with the fact that the word is used to describe objects from the Orient (Oriental rug, etc) so it's seen as insulting to apply it to people. Afaik it's never actually been used as a "racist term", and some Asian-Americans (particularly older) don't have a problem with it, but regardless, if people (groups or individuals) find a term offensive for whatever reason (aside from things which describe their particular awful behaviour), don't use it. Pretty simple. I used it once there because I didn't know it was offensive, and a second time just because I forgot about the first incident and it slipped out.

Buelligan

On all of these words, maybe we need to think about what work they're doing.  Even the sanctioned ones.  When we talk about a person, do we need to specify their gender, race, age, hair colour, whatevs?  If we don't, why are we including that information?  Would we say a brown haired person, unless brown hair was really important in the conversation?  Is it poetry?  Or is it because our racist, sexist, ageist, society always does shit that way? 

Maybe the easiest way to avoid offending other people and perpetuating negative behaviour and stereotypes, is to stop including all of these words.

El Unicornio, mang

I agree. And as far as insults go, there are many which are deemed acceptable (short, lanky, old, fat, Irish, ginger, bald, etc) because "well it's just pointing out something about them, I don't hate [physical characteristic] people". But no-one insults someone by saying "you handsome prick" or "you average sized idiot". So clearly these attributes have negative connotations in some way to the person using them.

touchingcloth

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on April 26, 2021, 10:22:58 AM
In America it's more to do with the fact that the word is used to describe objects from the Orient (Oriental rug, etc) so it's seen as insulting to apply it to people. Afaik it's never actually been used as a "racist term", and some Asian-Americans (particularly older) don't have a problem with it, but regardless, if people (groups or individuals) find a term offensive for whatever reason (aside from things which describe their particular awful behaviour), don't use it. Pretty simple. I used it once there because I didn't know it was offensive, and a second time just because I forgot about the first incident and it slipped out.

Yeah, it's similar to "Scotch" as applied to people rather than whisky, eggs, tape, guards.

Buelligan

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on April 26, 2021, 10:36:01 AM
I agree. And as far as insults go, there are many which are deemed acceptable (short, lanky, old, fat, Irish, ginger, bald, etc) because "well it's just pointing out something about them, I don't hate [physical characteristic] people". But no-one insults someone by saying "you handsome prick" or "you average sized idiot". So clearly these attributes have negative connotations in some way to the person using them.

They did use to use words like busty or curvy, ostensibly not critical but clearly used to objectify the woman individually and preserve a dominant judgmental sexist narrative towards all women.  If a word isn't relevant, when talking about a person and you're not writing poetry, I think it's worth thinking about what work it's doing there.

Paul Calf

A few years ago, I was in a meeting where I used the term 'jerry-built' to describe a piece of software we were using. Some people think that's related to the pejorative term for German people: 'Jerry'. It's not. It comes from the same root as 'jury-rigging', which is a process of hacking  a solution together when you don't have the proper tools for the job.

There were German people on the teleconference though, and it's close enough to sounding offensive that I still cringe to this day.