I just got up from conversation with a couple of older black men, that I said “well I got to go back to work and start cracking the whip.” And it occurred to me then that it was probably a really insensitive stupid thing to say.
Sadly, it hadn’t occurred to me until it’s already said.
cracking the whip
I think this is a fantastic example of what you’re talking about.
On its face, “cracking the whip” doesn’t need to be seen as offensive. Humans have collectively spent far more time using whip cracks to motivate animals than fellow humans, I suspect.
However, the determination of offensive speech is not in the hands of the speaker, but rather in the reception by the listener. That is to say, you can have the purest of intentions but if someone is offended by what you say, no amount of explaining takes away the initial offense. And generally you don’t GET to do that explaining. Damage is done, and that person may then avoid you or already have a shifted opinion of you.
I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way. And fortunately have had friends who were willing to tell me that I had offended them when I thought what I said was completely benign.
However, the determination of offensive speech is not in the hands of the speaker, but rather in the reception by the listener.
Descriptively speaking, I think that it’s more complex than it looks like - the determination depends on the linguistic community, not just the listener.
Whether offense exists is more on the listener (or audience rather). Whether any action (a simple “sorry” or more severe) should be expected is the complicated part.
The offence existing or not can’t depend solely on the listener, because existence is an objective trait and feeling offended is subjective. Your parentheses get it though - it includes the audience (the linguistic community, not just the listener). I’ll use a silly example to show that.
Let us suppose that someone (“Bob”) got offended by your usage of the word “listener”, claiming that you’re insensitive towards people who communicate through sign languages, and since they’re mostly deaf that you would be ableist. (It’s insane troll logic, but bear with me.)
Bob can certainly feel offended by that. But that won’t change anything, if other people do not consider it offensive. At most they’ll tell Bob “you’re making shit up, touch grass” and call it a day.
The picture however would change if Bob got offended by something and people around him agreed with him.
Whether any action (a simple “sorry” or more severe) should be expected is the complicated part.
Both are complicated, I believe.
Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I’m now thinking about someone going off on a racist tirade alone in the woods. I guess that’s offensive.
But with your example, if you are offended by “listener” then offense exists. The greater community advisory corrective action could be “no action required, don’t even say ‘sorry’ is you don’t want to”. What action is taken does not change the fact that I offended someone. There could be a social-sphere that actually comes down on the other side and says “we don’t use that word here”, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t feel right trying to argue about.
I want to be clear to anyone reading this, no I do not think there is or should be anything like a formal committee. Just the social-sphere you wish to inhabit.
I get what you’re saying, but nobody who says they are going to start cracking the whip is talking about training animals. Even if they were, that’s not an inoffensive metaphor, either. You’re either comparing subordinates to slaves or animals. You’re suggesting that physical violence, the threat of torture, is an appropriate motivator, or you wish it were. If that’s not what you’re saying, then you shouldn’t say that, even as an exaggeration or a joke.
It is an offensive metaphor. You may not offend everyone, but if you have offended someone, it’s not their fault you said something offensive. They didn’t choose to be offended, and made no determination about what you meant. You should say what you mean, clearly, and with intent. Carelessness is not an excuse for using offensive language.
nobody who says they are going to start cracking the whip is talking about training animals.
It shouldnt be taken literally, its a metaphor, yes… Whats your point?
I gotta say I agree with you
I too learned this the hard way, but with an image. Specifically, the “Shut Down Everything” meme. It’s an older meme and I used it in chat room with a much younger (Zoomer) crowd. The image has some resemblance to certain offensive depictions of Black people. I think it was accidental, given that it appears to be more an influence of MS Paint.
Someone got offended and talked to their manager. Unfortunately it was only months later that I got word through my manager. I would have appreciated an opportunity to offer to apologize to them face-to-face. I should have spotted the resemblance and not used the meme.
My grandfather, who passed away in the 90s, used to say “cotton pickers” for people that he meant as “jerks”. It took me until the 2010s that he was taking about black people. 🤦♂️
A lot of people post online that they love the phrase “cotton-headed ninny-muggins”.
But once you look at it thought this lens…boys I think this one’s not ok.
Isn’t that a line from “Elf”?
When I was younger, I thought the term “cracker” referred to white people being pale like a cracker that you’d eat. I did not realize until later that it was referring to whipping.
I’m 38 and I did not know this.
Whip cracker is actually probably false etymology, like a retcon of the origin that is popular, but actually not true.
Ok but “Cracker Barrel” still refers to the customers, right?
No. It refers to the answer a man gives when asked about their bathroom experience.
“Did you use your Cracker Barrel?”
Yeah, after I posted that, I did some searches and found lots of possible origins. I just remember being told the whip crack thing by a black friend of mine.
So you’re telling me Saltines aren’t part of my American heritage?
Oh, fuck. This would have been nice to know sooner.
To be fair, in Florida at least it referred primarily to the whips used to drive cattle, not anything slavery related.
Huh. Never heard of that before. But then, am Aussie and don’t know much yank idiom.
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I’m a Linux user and love some good rices. But I’ve no idea what “ricing” comes from. Why is it offensive?
Rice rocket was a term used for modified Japanese cars, and ricing your car meant turning it into a rice rocket.
Oh… I had assumed it was like an acronym for some tech thing
Nah, just subtle racism
I thought “ricing” meant submerging your stuff in rice to get the moisture out to stop water damage.
Slang can mean different things, depending on context
What! No one’s ever told me that before!
I’m a Linux user and love some good rices. But I’ve no idea what “ricing” comes from. Why is it offensive?
I believe it is racist slang that emerged in the 90s with the advent of cheap japanese and korean cars that were easily customizable (civics, accuras, etc…). Throw a turbo and a loud exhaust, and bam, now its a rice burner. These were prevalent in Asian immigrant communities, but also other places.
It basically meant like, cheap, but also very fast car, of Asian origin.
I know some people that refer to Japanese motorcycles, mostly “crotch-rockets,” as ricers.
The only people I know who say that are in fact Japanese, but I agree it is a racist term.
Racist slang against Asians, think “beaners” for Hispanics.
Sort of an insult to beans and rice, two of the greatest categories of food, to make slurs of them, too.
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I think one of the Lemmy comms for it changed their sidebar and posts to remove that a few months ago
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jumping off point
Woah there, corporate informs me this is insensitive to Lemmings
Lemmy HR will be in touch
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Is this Grok output?
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The two that really make me wince are “Indian giver” and the related “Indian summer” and of course calling hooch “firewater” isn’t great either.
I always thought “Indian summer” sounded very poetic, maybe related to the climate of the Indian subcontinent.
But it’s just garden variety American racism?
That’s so disappointing!Does anyone know more about the etymology?
Indian summer (n.)
“spell of warm, dry, hazy weather after the first frost” (happening anywhere from mid-September to nearly December, according to location), 1774, North American English (also used in eastern Canada), perhaps so called because it was first noted in regions then still inhabited by Indians, in the upper Mississippi valley west of the Appalachians, or because the Indians first described it to the Europeans. No evidence connects it with the color of fall leaves, or to a season of renewed Indian attacks on settlements due to renewed warm weather (a widespread explanation dating at least to the 1820s).
Source: Etymonline
That’s not so bad!
I followed up the etymology of “zipper head” above so I was prepared for waaaaaaaaay worse.
Well, and specifically, it’s related to the concept of an Indian giver: The warm weather is “taken back” and impermanent.
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Idk about that. I’ve met “Native Americans” who prefer the term Indian over Native American.
That’s pretty much all American Indians. Their governmental orgs literally have Indian in their name. My wife does most of her work on a reservation and they all want to be called Indian, not Native American
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You can still be called Indian, there’s no reason they get a monopoly on the name… Just like people call people from USA “Americans” even though that literally applies to 35 countries, you can still call canadians “americans” or peruvians “americans”. Context clues give people a lot of information, you don’t need to always be explicit. You can also do exactly what I did above and specify “American Indian”, which clearly gave you enough information to proceed to make the comment you did…
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so why should Native Americans be called “Indians”
Because that is what they were primarily called for hundreds of years, and what many still prefer to be called today.
Note that the American Indian Movement, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian reservations, etc all still use the term.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controversy
Ever heard of […] Canadian Wet’suwet’en or other people being called “Indians”?
It’s been changing there much quicker than in the US, but, yes. And Canada’s Indian Act is still in force (and still called that) today.
Indian burn
Is that the same as a “Chinese Burn” where you twist someones arm-skin?
Yup it’s the same
Could you explain the firewater one?
It’s sort-of an antique trope whose main thrust is implying Native cultures are backward and unworldly because they don’t have distilleries (though, point in fact, some of them did ferment alcohol).
Never heard it that way. It is a calque of a Native American name from the northern plains. I always thought a white person using it was offensive due to negative stereotypes about native Americans and drinking (and also mocking somewhat, like walking about saying “how” or speaking pidgin).
Indian* here, and I don’t know anyone offended by Indian summer.
*It says Indian on my ID.
Oof. At work we currently have a project for words deemed insensitive. For the most part I think it’s worthy, but some things are overboard. The project group cast a very wide net, ignoring context and etymology. My biggest disagreement is over “black” and “white”.
Take “black box” and “white box” for types of testing. These are based merely on the properties of light. I have serious doubts about anyone ever having felt excluded by their use. And yet, we’re wasting time coming up with non-standard nomenclature to satisfy this supposed slight. There’s a whole laundry list of words like this.
You should call them “box that absorbs all light” and “box that absorbs no light” you fucking racist
I’m still mad about git master
Master as in “the master copy”
And they went and broke a bunch of tools and workflows to change it
Yeah, master has a few uses like this. Master bedrooms came about in the 20th century and had nothing to do with slavery. Then there is master in a pupil setting, though that is fairly uncommon in the US anyway. It’s more of a European/UK thing I think.
Again, I have nothing against changing things that are genuinely problematic. I just have a problem with busy work that is being demanded for items that aren’t actually offensive.
phrases that are stupid
We haven’t invented a storage big enough for that yet
About the others, there are some obvious ones but other than that it mostly depends on context and culture. Some pointed the ricing thing for Linux, but I don’t think anyone in the community, myself included, thought about Asian ppl when calling themselves a ricer; nor I think it’s racist, so again: aside for obvious insults or widely known slurs, it basically falls back to context
It’s not quite what you’re looking for, but there’s this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
Odds are that such a list won’t ever exist. Insensitivity and bias depend on meaning, and meaning depends on context. As such, we [people in general] need to pay attention to what we’re saying, and to whom, in to avoid both things. No easy way.
My mother-in-law used to call everyone “zipper-heads” until someone pointed out that it’s a slur against Koreans (and a particularly graphic one at that).
In school there was a group of mostly white friends that had a Asian kid in their friends group. His nickname was Nip. I honestly didn’t know his real name as another was never used. It was a few years before I realized the connotation that was there once I started studying history. Not sure if it was a parent or where it came from but most of us at the time had no idea how bad it was. It was just his name and he used it too.
Then I think of my church going father. One of the kindest men I knew. Never had a bad thing to say about anyone unless it was personal thing based on a issue first hand.
Race wasn’t on his mind at all. Being from the westcoast in a remote wilderness area most of the demographic was white and native with very few in those days what were called east Indians and Asians mixed in. More the exception if at all.
He worked for a logging outfit and towards the end of his career he was a logging road grader operator. I recall going down a road that he maintained in a Jeep with him. As I was navigating this rough road the logging trucks pounded constantly he told me to watch out for this large rock that was below the surface. Just the head of the rock was sticking up. He called them " the N word- heads" I was shocked. I knew he wasn’t racist and was friends with the only black church member in town but the word just came out of this mouth as easily as any other word.
I asked him why he called it that, he said that’s just what they were called. He didn’t continue after that day with me as I don’t think he thought about it until our conversation.
In some ways I did equate this to the numerous white kids I knew singing the NWA lyrics in school despite not even seeing a black kid before but this was in the 90s. I can still hear those lyrics as I type this.
Now this isn’t to say kids were not nasty, as they were. There were several unkind things used when talking about the native kids that made up to half the school population and more of that where my family lived.
Back to my grandfather’s time bonds were formed with the local native bands and friends were made but I’m sure the languaged used at times like “Indian giver” wasn’t connected to the real reality.
I do fear as I get older I’m falling into one of these traps with gender and identity words. I think as we get older and comfortable with our understanding of the world we have figured out, some aren’t really willing to figure out more.
Despite interacting and having friends from the older local gay community I’ve not been exposed to anyone that introduces themselves with their name and then their pronouns.
I’m not sure if we can just call everyone “them” or “they” without offending people? Feels like a good starting place but I’ve not learned yet it this is as bad as the N-word?
Here in Australia I am surrounded by people of many different genders, and so far have not caused complaint by using they/them for everyone, regardless of gender, whether cis or trans. Plenty of others do the same, and they tend to be people wearing the rainbow flag, rather than the insensitive.
It is always best to ask and try to remember the pronouns, but often it is not possible at the time, and it is better to err on the side of caution when you don’t know yet what they use. Eg: As a female, I do prefer she/her, but if someone didn’t know that, then I would still prefer they/them to being persistently referred to as he/him. Males likely have a similar dislike of being referred to with the wrong pronouns, but they/them encompasses everyone in common Australian English (eg “whoever left their jumper behind, they need to go pick it up from the office”) so seems the best compromise till a conversation can happen.
Great tips. I’ve for years referred to most people at work as hey guys (males and female) and then ladies when it was a older group of them in a department. Orientation was never really apart of the discussion for any of us. If taking about people at home it was my husband, wife, gf, bf, partner. Didn’t really get much deeper than that.
It would certainly be more convenient if they/them became a generic pronoun for everyone regardless of gender. But at the moment it’s not nessararily polite to use it that way in all circumstances. There are people that only use gendered pronouns to refer to themselves, to the exclusion of neutral pronouns like they/them. Generally if there’s any uncertainty about someone else’s preferred pronouns you can just ask. If you wanna skirt around it you can introduce yourself including your pronouns which will give others a safe opportunity to do the same. Messing up someones pronouns can be embarrassing but it’s not the same as dropping a slur. (Though it can still be very hurtful to those involved.)
“Seek offence and you shall find it” - The secret mantra of Tumblr users
It’s a tricky one because if someone wants to be offended, they definitely will be. I once knew a guy who, for some reason, found the use of the word “slug” (in any context) intensely offensive. To this day, no-one ever learned why.
You can’t be stupid, otherwise you’d be on Reddit 😊
Hey I just want to say i think this is a really good question and I’m glad you asked it. So many things get recycled into the language and we don’t know/ever get taught their original meanings. I think it’s good to look into, not just to avoid social slip ups, but because language and idioms have an impact on how we think about things. I’m glad to have these links on my radar
where does everyone stand on cretin? IMHO it’s medical use is obsolete afaik, so really it’s just an insult right?
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I think it might have originated in the Bible. Paul says in Titus 1:12-13 NIV
"One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’ This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith.
I always found it comical that Paul, the great apostle, endorsed this stereotype of the people of Crete.
I think it’s medical and insulting use are obsolete lmao
I dunno man, cretin perfectly describes Trump…
Isn’t it somebody that experienced an iodine deficiency in childhood. There’s a particular look, he doesn’t have it.
No, you’re thinking of hypothyroidism (iodine deficiency)…
I’m thinking of cretinism.
He’s wealthy, or at least he’s treated as such most of the time, so the word you’re looking for is eccentric.
No, shitbag, fuckwit and narcissistic treason douche are all more appropriate than eccentric.
being rich doesn’t mean you can’t be a fuckwit, and he’s proven it time and again.
