Not getting racism when you're young

[TrenterPercenter]

Is calling someone an Aussie cunt not racist? The rules are confusing.

I'm not going to quote the sentence in which that comment was made but you can work it out for yourself why Aussie and Brit are not the same as the term they are comparing it too.  That "question" is a basic racist trope; it is what racists say.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Now you've got MikeyP here seeing it as their invitation to actually question whether some racist terms are actually racist and innocently ask why abbreviating Aussie is not racist.  Fuck off.

He asked why abbreviating 'Australian' to 'Aussie' was racist?  Abbreviating 'Aussie' would give you 'Aus.'  In either case, it doesn't seem much different to saying 'Brit' as a shortening of 'British person.'

[Jerzy Bondov]

My best friend early in primary school was mixed race and he taught me the n-word version of eenie meenie. My mum heard me saying it and she quite rightly joined in and laughed explained what a terrible thing to say it was and that it was actually quite sad that Sam knew that version. Lovely conversation to have while choosing shoes in Clarks[nb]joke[nb]it was Start-Rite[/nb][/nb].

[TrenterPercenter]

He asked why abbreviating 'Australian' to 'Aussie' was racist?  Abbreviating 'Aussie' would give you 'Aus.'  In either case, it doesn't seem much different to saying 'Brit' as a shortening of 'British person.'

That isn't all that he said; he was questioning the validity of, and comparing those abbreviations to, the N word and the P word.

Show some fucking respect; those words have been used to to dehumanise and abuse POC historical; this isn't some linguistic error ffs.  You know this.  We don't need this explaining or discussing.

[buttgammon]

My nana used to keep a couple of decks of cards in a cigar box: normal ones, Happy Families and this nursery rhyme-themed game called Bob's Yer Uncle. My parents asked her to keep the Bob's Yer Uncle cards away from me; my dad would've remembered them from my own childhood, so knew what was on them. Although we stopped playing with the cards, I remember rummaging through the box and looking at them.

The cards:



I think we tried to play the game with those cards removed.

[touchingcloth]

The word "Aussie" hasn't been used as a systematic rule of oppression for people from Australia. It's a tiny and almost insignificant difference, but I'd say that's what makes it different from the contraction Rolf Harris used for "Aborigine" in Tie Me Kangaroo Down.

Speaking of kangaroos, why is "Roo" not racist? I'm starting to build quite a picture of A. A. Milne, what with that and Tigger. 

[timebug]

I am old, so I unfortunately heard the 'Eeny meeny ' one with the original 'N' word in place. It did contain 'holler' though, so where and how that came in, I have no idea. The other common one in the sixties,was W** to describe anyone of colour. I regret that I did use it occasionally myself, as did my mates. We were young and daft, I have no other excuse!

[Jerzy Bondov]

My wife bought some fun vintage styled card games for the kids and we had a look and decided to get rid of them. It wasn't as bad as that but it just had a very brexity sort of feel, like the card game equivalent of an old guy insisting he should be allowed to say n--- in the woodpile, some red faced pot bellied local councillor type, you know (uncle Roy)

[bgmnts]

I'm not going to quote the sentence in which that comment was made but you can work it out for yourself why Aussie and Brit are not the same as the term they are comparing it too.  That "question" is a basic racist trope; it is what racists say.

I'm not comparing it to anything, just saying is calling someone a Taff cunt or a Frog cunt or a Kiwi cunt racist?

[TrenterPercenter]

I'm not comparing it to anything, just saying is calling someone a Taff cunt or a Frog cunt or a Kiwi cunt racist?

You realise the context that this was said in but you chose to ignore it, that is abysmal.  Do you really need explaining why your question is bollocks? I thought a bit better of you bgmnts.

[bgmnts]

Yes i would like it explained why calling someone any of those things isn't racist. It seems quite offensive to me.

[pigamus]

I'd love to go to this magical fairytale Birmingham that Trenter grew up in. It sounds brilliant!

[JaDanketies]

Thought "Chinese, Japanese, what are these, dirty knees" would've made an appearance itt. I believed that Chinese and Japanese people's eyes slanted in different directions and that's how you could tell 'em apart.

I remember hearing the word 'gyppo' for the first time and asking for an explanation, and being informed that it refers to an Egyptian person. "Oh right, we hate Egyptians now? Fair enough. Nile-dwelling pyramid-loving cunts. About fucking time." And then 'gyp' as a synonym for steal. I guess kids won't fully understand what 'gypsy' refers to.

"Jew" was always a popular insult, but I knew immediately that it was racist. Clearly we had a lot of Corbynites in my primary school.

[earl_sleek]

Yes i would like it explained why calling someone any of those things isn't racist. It seems quite offensive to me.

I could be wrong but it seems to me you and Trenter are at cross purposes somewhat. I don't think he's saying those things aren't racist, he thinks you're following the troll's lead in asking 'why is racist to say this but not this?' Which isn't what I take you to mean, but I can see why he's taken it that way.

[JaDanketies]

Vijay got in trouble for calling Scott "The Milky Bar Kid."  what about Scott's hurt feelings, eh, fuckin liberal do-gooders

[madhair60]

What horrifies me is the way modern society deems a simple word to be racist, sexist, ageist or any other ist you care to mention, then substitute another word to describe exactly the same thing. But the new word (or words) is deemed to be acceptable. For example the much maligned 'n' word is now unacceptable (unless you are black) but black is still relatively widely used. Both mean exactly the same thing. Likewise with 'half caste' and it's current substitute 'mixed race'.

Too late now, but way back at the beginning of this linguistic discrimination we should have refused to crumble before it.

How is it that Aussie is acceptable as a shortening of Australian, Brit seems to be an acceptable shortening if Briton, or British person., but p**i canot be used as a short form of Pakistani? Does not even begin to make sense.

And why did we allow the word 'gay' to be hi-jacked as a substitute for 'homosexual'? IT MEANS THE SAME THING!!!

Sorry. Rant mode off

Pathetic

[TrenterPercenter]

Yes i would like it explained why calling someone any of those things isn't racist. It seems quite offensive to me.

Have you tried not adding "cunt" to the end of it.

Once you've done that do you seriously think Aussie, Brit or Kiwi is racist?

Can you not tell the difference between two derogatory words that were used to describe all people based on the colour of their skin regardless of what nationality they might actual have been; and simple abbreviated nationalities used by white colonial groups to refer to themselves. 

Taffy and Frog whilst racist terms in regards to racial science; they are stereotypes and prejudices of a nationalities culture.


Fucking grim having to spell that out to a supposedly progressive grown man.

[TrenterPercenter]

I'd love to go to this magical fairytale Birmingham that Trenter grew up in. It sounds brilliant!

It wasn't a fairytale far from it; but were I grew up in Birmingham it was an intensely activist and antiracist area - there is a lot of history about it all if you ever bother to look into it (because of Birmingham was the workshop of the world and therefore had a lot of immigration into it's factories in which solidarity was formed between workers on a socialist anti-racist basis).  This set the tone for lots of community activists working together against the racism of local MPs like Enoch Powell (who is talking about Birmingham in his Rivers of Blood speech); it was a difficult time but also really brought out the best in some people.

[bgmnts]

I'm not really that progressive I just try not to use offensive terms, whether it's skin based, ethnicity based or nation based etc. Any dehumanising language is shit.

As long as I know that Taffy and Frog are racist that's fine by me.

[TrenterPercenter]

I could be wrong but it seems to me you and Trenter are at cross purposes somewhat. I don't think he's saying those things aren't racist, he thinks you're following the troll's lead in asking 'why is racist to say this but not this?' Which isn't what I take you to mean, but I can see why he's taken it that way.

It isn't hard for bgmnts to actually read what the original poster said; why he has decided to remove context from this and pose a question so banal, unconnected and obviously flawed I still don't understand but perhaps there is some crossed wires as you say.

[TrenterPercenter]

I'm not really that progressive I just try not to use offensive terms, whether it's skin based, ethnicity based or nation based etc. Any dehumanising language is shit.

As long as I know that Taffy and Frog are racist that's fine by me.

If you actually care about racism I'd sort your fucking priorities out; riffing off some racist trolls comments about "words" and then engaging in some utter bollocks about whether "Aussie" is a racist term is fucking abysmal.   You might want to have given the slightest fuck about what was originally said.  That is all.

[Kankurette]

It was 'catch a bunny' for me. I still say it. I didn't even know what the racist version was until I was a lot older. It might have been because I grew up in Brighton and I went to a pretty diverse school - majority white but there were a lot of black/Asian/foreign kids there and also kids of different religions. We had a dinner register in class where you had to say if you were having a main meal, a veggie meal or a packed lunch, and the Muslim lad in my class would always say, "Nothing" during Ramadan. I'm not saying there was no racism but it was a minority of idiots. Mum also impressed on us at an early age that 'n*****' was a word that we must NEVER use, and it stuck.

Ours was ip dip bird shit

Ippy dippy dation, my operation....

[Butchers Blind]

We used to eat Robinsons Marmalade as kids.

[bgmnts]

It was 'catch a bunny' for me. I still say it. I didn't even know what the racist version was until I was a lot older. It might have been because I grew up in Brighton and I went to a pretty diverse school - majority white but there were a lot of black/Asian/foreign kids there and also kids of different religions. We had a dinner register in class where you had to say if you were having a main meal, a veggie meal or a packed lunch, and the Muslim lad in my class would always say, "Nothing" during Ramadan. I'm not saying there was no racism but it was a minority of idiots. Mum also impressed on us at an early age that 'n*****' was a word that we must NEVER use, and it stuck.Ippy dippy dation, my operation....

I got same upbringing where the n word is like viscerally unuseable but other racial slurs are still not on but not on the same level. It's always confused me a bit because all racial slurs should have that same level of taboo.

[Kankurette]

I wondered how long it would be before we got a 'wah wah I'm mad that I can't call people nasty names' post and Mikey there didn't disappoint.

bgmnts, I never used 'P***' or 'C*****' or any other word like that either. I knew 'P***' was a slur from reading a book where an Asian woman was describing a bunch of white men calling her a 'P*** whore'. I did make a few jokes and sing a few songs that I cringe at now (like a version of The Sign with the line 'the baby was a s*****c') but that was it.

[TrenterPercenter]

You know how people started to use the N-word in place of the actual word; it is the same with the P-word; it isn't cool to just keep using it.

[Kankurette]

Fair point, I've starred it out now.

[bgmnts]

I wondered how long it would be before we got a 'wah wah I'm mad that I can't call people nasty names' post and Mikey there didn't disappoint.

bgmnts, I never used 'P***' or 'C*****' or any other word like that either. I knew 'P***' was a slur from reading a book where an Asian woman was describing a bunch of white men calling her a 'P*** whore'. I did make a few jokes and sing a few songs that I cringe at now (like a version of The Sign with the line 'the baby was a s*****c') but that was it.

Oh yeah not referring to you i just mean generally. I am certain people still use those terms frequently. I mean I know someone who will still say ch**ky chows to refer to chinese food.

And you'd assume with our history of imperialism in the asian subcontinent and the dehuminsation of Indians and Pakistanis that the term P**i would be as taboo as the n word. If not more so.

[Kankurette]

A former friend of mine is from Belize and she's half-mestiza[nb]This is an acceptable term to use in Belize and she calls herself that[/nb], her mum is a mestiza of Mayan descent, so she can pass for South Asian. She's had random blokes speaking Urdu to her a few times. Her relatives in Chester got called 'P***s' by local idiot racists because clearly all brown-skinned people must be South Asian.

[flotemysost]

That sort of thing was rife growing up in the 90s, but I'm not sure I ever connected it with actual people. The pulled-back eyes don't really look Asian where the defining feature is more an absence of eyelid than anything else. Likewise there seemed to be an obsession with bindi spots, but they weren't something I was coming across with any regularity. I've definitely said "bud bud, ding ding, 2.99" more times in my life than I've seen an actual bindi, but I have no fucking clue what it means.

Yeah, I think it was an interesting time to be growing up around this stuff culturally, because on the one hand there was definitely increased visibility and platforms for people of colour (even if that was often in the most superficial sense - e.g. the fad for bindi appropriation that you mention), but on the other hand you still had lots of people who were ignorant and/or fearful or anything foreign - namely the parents of many kids of that generation.

As an example, I remember Goodness Gracious Me being really popular when I was at school. I'd watched it at home and as a child it seemed fairly obvious to me that it wasn't racist and was sending up stereotypes, but then white kids used to quote it in the playground in over-the-top "birdy num num" type accents and I suspect a lot of the time they were laughing at those funny brown people rather than really getting it (my school was very white, though being in SW London most kids probably would have been familiar with the local Asian communities, but I suspect viewed them as an "other", in the same way they did with the Traveler population in the area too).

What horrifies me is the way modern society deems a simple word to be racist, sexist, ageist or any other ist you care to mention, then substitute another word to describe exactly the same thing. But the new word (or words) is deemed to be acceptable. For example the much maligned 'n' word is now unacceptable (unless you are black) but black is still relatively widely used. Both mean exactly the same thing. Likewise with 'half caste' and it's current substitute 'mixed race'.

Too late now, but way back at the beginning of this linguistic discrimination we should have refused to crumble before it.

How is it that Aussie is acceptable as a shortening of Australian, Brit seems to be an acceptable shortening if Briton, or British person., but p**i canot be used as a short form of Pakistani? Does not even begin to make sense.

And why did we allow the word 'gay' to be hi-jacked as a substitute for 'homosexual'? IT MEANS THE SAME THING!!!

Sorry. Rant mode off

You're horrified by this? When you think about the fact that it's not OK to refer to a person of colour by a racist slur, you experience a feeling of horror? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you must be thick as pig shit or at least incredibly sheltered, because if you really need to have the difference between these things explained to you then you must be one of the two, and I hope it's that and not the more sinister alternative that you're an actively racist homophobic troll.