Appropriateness of posts

[Chris]

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.