On Wednesday, 19 March 2014 at 13:08:00 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
wrote:
On 3/19/2014 6:08 AM, Chris wrote:
On Wednesday, 19 March 2014 at 07:51:06 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
wrote:
[...]
even though "white" is still used all the time anyway and
I've never
seen anyone get offended.
QED. "white" has no negative connotations simply because the
majority of
people are white.
The majority of people are Asian. The majority of Americans are
white. But I'm being pedantic. :)
Of course, if I want get *really* pedantic, I'm not certain if
those are actual "majorities" (ie >50%) or simply just the
largest (erm, I mean most numerous) ethnic groups. But I don't
want to get that pedantic ;)
The dominant culture is white, or rather WASP. It doesn't matter
if the majority is actually white. The WASP culture is still the
one that defines that standards.
But you make a good point. If one group has historically been
treated badly, then any reference to them has a certain chance
of being interpreted as derogatory. I've noticed that the more
fresh the memory of ill-treatment, or the more such memory is
maintained and cultivated, the more likely things will be
interpreted, or misinterpreted, as offensive.
Interestingly enough, it makes no difference whether the
discrimination is still happening or not: As long as people
remember that is *has* happened, there will *always* be a
higher chance of someone interpreting a statement as
derogatory, even if it wasn't intended to be. Choose to believe
discrimination exists and it will *always* be found
*somewhere*, even if it has to be subconsciously fabricated in
order to fulfill the preconceived belief that it still exists.
Great example of this phenomenon is Resident Evil:
Several games, one after another, involving battle for survival
against hordes of people-turned-bloodthirty-zombies (infected
by an evil entity). First game set in an American mansion,
battling white American zombies, everything's ok. Next game set
in an American town, battling more white American zombies,
everything's ok. Three more games, all fine. Then one set in
Spain with (obviously) Spanish zombies. Everything's *still*
good.
Then, the same *non-American* developer, Capcom, makes the
unfortunate mistake of doing a North American release of a new
Resident Evil taking place in...Africa. Obviously, any zombies
in Africa would be...uhh...African? Oh, holy shit, *now* all
hell breaks loose. Surprise, surprise, *now* some crazed
fucking nutjob climbs out of the woodwork and starts squawking
all over about how overtly racist this game suddenly is. Same
fucking game as the rest of the decade-old series, just
different location. But no, *now* it's racist. So where the
fuck was she when the rest of the series was made? Off deciding
"Oh, well it's obviously ok if they're killing whiteys!" or
some such? Bah. In any case, so much for equality.
Nobody (at least in the US) discriminates against Italians or
Irish anymore. Oh, they used to get a lot of crap. Hell, they
got *plenty* of shit from people. All ethnic groups in the US
did at some point in time. But then it was dwarfed by the whole
African slavery thing, and civil rights and women's lib, etc so
everyone forgot to continue worrying about Irish
discrimination, Italian discrimination, etc. *That's* what
killed it off. Not some idiotic, self-perpetuating,
discrimination witch hunt.
One of the reasons why Irish (and Italian) immigrants stopped
being discriminated against was because they would find the
lowest (indeed very low) common denominator, i.e. giving out
about blacks. At least they were white (the Italians less so, but
still not really black), albeit Catholic.
Anti-white derogatory stuff no longer exists *because* we all
just shrug it off. Nobody's choosing to be offended, therefore
it can't offend. It has no teeth. Because we've given it none.
That's easy, if you are part of the dominant culture. Also,
"white" is too broad a term so every white person can choose not
to identify with it and point somewhere else (we're not rednecks
here in NY!). But if you attack a certain set of beliefs held by
the dominant culture, hell will break loose. Within the dominant
group, it's not an ethnic thing, it's about beliefs. If you
question them, you won't have an easy life.
This happened for one reason: Because we lost all our remaining
excuses to be offended. Hell, as americans, we're all too busy
playing guilt trip anyway over some crap that was pulled (in
*part* of the country) by some grossly unethical asshats who
none of us have ever even met (let alone *been* one) because
they've all been dead and gone for over a century.
Point of all this being, and history has proved this,
discrimination will always be kept alive in the hearts of
people who insist on forever being offended by it. It might
still exist. Or it might not. But whether or not it exists has
long since stopped being relevant, and if/when it ends we'll
never even notice anyway. Because as soon as it does go away,
it will only continue living on as a specter, built and
maintained by those who choose to believe in it, all because
they're too afraid to relinquish their comfortable, familiar
self-identity as a "victim" of some vague, conveniently hidden,
indentity-less, anyone-or-anything villain.
