Thank F*ck GUILTY

[FireHazard51 | 2,053]

53 minutes ago, phart010 said:

I think generations ago, there may have been first generation people from Africa whose skin color was closer to the color black. But with generations of inter-racial mixing the color has become more brown/tan, so the word “black” is kind of outdated.. Nonetheless people still say black people and seem to be ok with it’s usage at the moment.

anecdotal story, I played football with two outstanding identical twin brothers in high school (got full rides to play with University of Cincinnati) and they were the blackest people I've ever seen.  Even the other black players would joke that they were beyond "black".  Anyways one night after a game I got scared the shit out of by one of them as I only saw their eyes and smiling teeth in the dusk of night.  Like it look like floating eyes and teeth. 

Spoiler

Straight up reminded me of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.

They were a few years older than me and had a rather thick accent so they might of been first generation immigrants.  Naïve me just thought they had a speech impediment.  I heard nothing by praise for their character, sportsmanship, and intelligence.  They "taught" one of our coaches that if you aren't cheating (playing defensive backs) then you aren't trying hard enough.  Football is a bit of a game where cheating isn't cheating if you don't get caught.  But then there is real cheating.....looking at you Bill Belichick.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

52 minutes ago, FireHazard51 said:

anecdotal story, I played football with two outstanding identical twin brothers in high school (got full rides to play with University of Cincinnati) and they were the blackest people I've ever seen.  Even the other black players would joke that they were beyond "black".  Anyways one night after a game I got scared the shit out of by one of them as I only saw their eyes and smiling teeth in the dusk of night.  Like it look like floating eyes and teeth. 

  Hide contents

Straight up reminded me of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.

 

I feel like a terrible person for laughing so hard at this. 

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

3 hours ago, fcgamer said:

I do think it's shitty behaviour the whole "This is America, learn to speak English!" thing, but that's honestly not a racial issue, therefore it is not racist.

Curious if anyone else on the board shares this opinion. If so, please speak up, I'd love to get another POV since I'm so out of my league with this argument.

[Silent Hill | 276]

6 hours ago, FireHazard51 said:

You want to see police discrimination in action.  Pick a rich neighborhood with little population of minorities that has a decent size roadway go through it.  Now look at the rate of cops pulling over people.  Also look at who gets a warning and who gets a ticket.  You can take the "high crime rate" and "poverty stricken" statistics out and you'll still see cops have a bias against people of color. - While I wasn't referring to speeding tickets, I'd be interested to see data around minorities being pulled over and ticketed for the same infraction that white people weren't, on the same stretch of road, by the same officer(s). Also adjusted for driving records. Though any of that data still wouldn't negate my thoughts on why police patrol high-crime areas and have skewed interactions based on race. Not really apples to apples. Again, not denying discrimination exists, but I still believe it's an insanely small fraction of interactions, even more so if focusing on police shootings. 

I'd say it get's amplified when you look at police records in areas of higher minority populations even when you account for income and crime rates.  Because lets be honest here.  Crime and poverty are color blind.  You can fine poor high crime areas that are predominantly white too.  And by crime rates I would go off of murders and over doses.  Not reports of break ins, rape, shootings, etc. where no one died because some times these just go unreported when you don't trust the police - Overdoses aren't crimes, though they can correlate with drug activity in the area, but that's mainly why I chose murder rates as an example, because I think we can all agree that those are at the top of the list. Plus, poor high-crime areas that are predominantly white are most likely patrolled just as heavily, due to the crime of course. If there were two areas of a city, both with equal crime rates, but the area with a heavier minority population was patrolled more, then I could see an argument of racial targeting. Your last sentence confuses me, you mention not going off of reports of certain crimes where nobody dies but then say they go unreported?

 

[Silent Hill | 276]

53 minutes ago, CodysGameRoom said:

3 hours ago, fcgamer said:

I do think it's shitty behaviour the whole "This is America, learn to speak English!" thing, but that's honestly not a racial issue, therefore it is not racist.

Curious if anyone else on the board shares this opinion. If so, please speak up, I'd love to get another POV since I'm so out of my league with this argument.

Maybe I'm missing the full context here and my comment is totally irrelevant, but an example of being frustrated with someone who can't speak English well is a judgement on their speech ability, not their race? 

Ex: Two people from India, one speaks very rough English - hard to understand, the other speaks it more fluently and can be understood well. Frustration with both is probably racist since it points to something deeper as speech isn't the cause of frustration, but only being frustrated with the one who can't speak it well isn't racist as the speech is the factor, not the person's race. 

Again, maybe I'm way off-base here....

[Khromak | 770]

I think it's really easy to dismiss any racist action other than burning a cross on someone's lawn as not racist when you look at it on a computer screen. "This is America, learn to speak English!" isn't necessarily racist, it's just asking someone to work on their language skills. But come on..."This is America" is basically saying "Go back where you came from." And I can all but guarantee if the person had a Scandinavian accent, the person wouldn't be saying "This is America, learn to speak English!" to them. I mean FFS can nobody read context?

In this Family Guy clip you could say Kermit is just giving directions. But considering the context, it's pretty clear he's doing that because the dude's black. If you just read the words "Back the way you came" he's not saying anything racist, but how many white guys from Louisiana are being told "back the way you came"? How many people with Russian accents are being told "This is America, learn to speak English!"? I'm sure the number is over 1, but I'd bet my entire video game collection that if an omniscient power gave us the statistics on who gets these phrases used against them more often, it would be people of color. Ya get it?!

Edited April 22, 2021 by Khromak

[Californication | 1,490]

4 hours ago, fcgamer said:

Not really a joke, I just thought it's a bit weird from a semantic point of view, that's all. Never actually thought about it until now.

Black and white are not literal definitions of skin color. 

Why are fair skinned people called white when lighter skin is made up of peach, pink, orange, etc. So stupid.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Californication

[Californication | 1,490]

1 hour ago, CodysGameRoom said:

Curious if anyone else on the board shares this opinion. If so, please speak up, I'd love to get another POV since I'm so out of my league with this argument.

I could care less. I think it is more interesting that all the people here who are always on the wrong side of issues involving race are the ones worried about semantics and one off issues. 

[phart010 | 1,708]

2 hours ago, CodysGameRoom said:

Curious if anyone else on the board shares this opinion. If so, please speak up, I'd love to get another POV since I'm so out of my league with this argument.

Asian American here (born and raised in USA). 

Most Americans unfortunately have a lower tolerance for people speaking their language poorly than most of the rest of the world. Most people here only speak one language, English, so they never developed  a good ear for different accents. I grew up around a lot of Asians, so  have got a very good ability to understand fractured English and heavy accents. It surprises me all the time that English speaking people get frustrated with others that to me sound like regular English-speaking people. 
 

In many other countries, I have noticed that even speaking poorly in other languages, the natives are usually pretty happy that you are even actually attempting to learn their language, and they often try to help you.

A lot of the rest of the world speaks at least some English as a second language, but Americans mostly only speak English. So instead of being able to relate to the experience of learning a second language they just get frustrated.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

1 hour ago, Californication said:

I could care less. I think it is more interesting that all the people here who are always on the wrong side of issues involving race are the ones worried about semantics and one off issues. 

It's always semantics and "what about this example?" etc. To them every issue is black and white, no wiggle room, no context, no tone. They can't possibly comprehend that any given situation has nuance to it. It's pathetic and to be quite frank it is pretty scary. 

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

1 hour ago, Khromak said:

"This is America, learn to speak English!" isn't necessarily racist

Depends on the context. Here in Nebraska I've literally seen, in a restaurant, a white man lean over to a Latino family eating dinner, minding their own business, speaking Spanish to each other, and say those exact words, or very close to it. Fucking appalling. 

 

[Californication | 1,490]

3 minutes ago, CodysGameRoom said:

It's always semantics and "what about this example?" etc. To them every issue is black and white, no wiggle room, no context, no tone. They can't possibly comprehend that any given situation has nuance to it. It's pathetic and to be quite frank it is pretty scary. 

I think they understand. I think they get off on trying to be cute and not having to directly say their racist thoughts.

[Silent Hill | 276]

2 hours ago, Californication said:

3 hours ago, CodysGameRoom said:

It's always semantics and "what about this example?" etc. To them every issue is black and white, no wiggle room, no context, no tone. They can't possibly comprehend that any given situation has nuance to it. It's pathetic and to be quite frank it is pretty scary. 

I think they understand. I think they get off on trying to be cute and not having to directly say their racist thoughts.

It's almost as pathetic as labeling people closet racists because they have differing opinions.

[CMR | 522]

2 hours ago, CodysGameRoom said:

Depends on the context. Here in Nebraska I've literally seen, in a restaurant, a white man lean over to a Latino family eating dinner, minding their own business, speaking Spanish to each other, and say those exact words, or very close to it. Fucking appalling. 

 

They should have looked at him and said, "This is America.  We'll say what we fucking want."

[fcgamer | 4,754]

5 hours ago, Californication said:

Black and white are not literal definitions of skin color. 

Why are fair skinned people called white when lighter skin is made up of peach, pink, orange, etc. So stupid.

Yeah I honestly never understand that either, and thought it was a stupid description too.

[galacticlint | 42]

5 hours ago, Californication said:

all the people here who are always on the wrong side of issues involving race

what do you mean by "on the wrong side"

Is that just a different way of saying "people I disagree with" or is it more of a racism accusation? Or is it just suggesting the people with different viewpoints than yours in this thread are wrong, and you are right?

Just trying to understand, thanks.

3 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

Yeah I honestly never understand that either, and thought it was a stupid description too.

To me the terms black and white were never meant to be exactly literal, they're just linguistic shortcuts and/or rough approximations. Instead of saying "Melanistic Humanoid Organism with Ancestry Primarily Originating from Africa"  you can just say the one simple word.

[fcgamer | 4,754]

44 minutes ago, galacticlint said:

Instead of saying "Melanistic Humanoid Organism with Ancestry Primarily Originating from Africa"...

 

That has quite a ring to it, maybe it should become the standard.

[Californication | 1,490]

57 minutes ago, galacticlint said:

what do you mean by "on the wrong side"

Is that just a different way of saying "people I disagree with" or is it more of a racism accusation? Or is it just suggesting the people with different viewpoints than yours in this thread are wrong, and you are right?

Just trying to understand, thanks.

To me the terms black and white were never meant to be exactly literal, they're just linguistic shortcuts and/or rough approximations. Instead of saying "Melanistic Humanoid Organism with Ancestry Primarily Originating from Africa"  you can just say the one simple word.

It's more of this is an ongoing conversation that has stretched from months going on years. And when some people take the side everytime against minorites, not only over subjective areas, but when they are factually wrong and repeat the talking points of racist groups a normal person comes to believe that these people have an issue with minorities.  

Edited April 23, 2021 by Californication

[fcgamer | 4,754]

7 hours ago, phart010 said:

Asian American here (born and raised in USA). 

Most Americans unfortunately have a lower tolerance for people speaking their language poorly than most of the rest of the world. Most people here only speak one language, English, so they never developed  a good ear for different accents. I grew up around a lot of Asians, so  have got a very good ability to understand fractured English and heavy accents. It surprises me all the time that English speaking people get frustrated with others that to me sound like regular English-speaking people. 
 

In many other countries, I have noticed that even speaking poorly in other languages, the natives are usually pretty happy that you are even actually attempting to learn their language, and they often try to help you.

A lot of the rest of the world speaks at least some English as a second language, but Americans mostly only speak English. So instead of being able to relate to the experience of learning a second language they just get frustrated.

I disagree with a lot of this, honestly, but after writing a few pages with of text, decided not to post it as it really would be getting way off track.

I'll condense everything to a few points, though it's still longer than I'd like:

1. Australia is quite monolingual, maybe even slightly worse than the States. England is also quite poor in this regard, though a bit better off than the States. 

2. From my experience, those that are happiest when you speak their language, albeit poorly, are those who speak a language that most non-natives don't learn. So if I speak Bulgarian to someone, they will feel somewhat happy about it, since most native English speakers don't try to learn Bulgarian; however, something like German, French, or Spanish aren't likely to win me any prizes. Similarly, if it's a place where the general population learns English to a high level, such as the Netherlands or Scandinavia, there also isn't going to be a lot of encouragement for learning their language, with even many people trying to be pragmatic and tell you not to bother learning it.

3. We can't really compare the different language-learning experiences of different people. Someone immigrating to a country without knowing the language, is going to have a totally different experience than that of a person taking English lessons in a bilingual kindergarten, then thrown into private classes afterwards up until high school. And if the person is an adult and has to juggle a job and family, it's a different experience yet.

4. Being hostile to anyone for not speaking your language is wrong, period. Being hostile towards someone for not speaking the country's lingua franca or de facto language is also wrong, period. It happens in many places though, not just in the USA. 

With that being said, I can also understand why some people might feel hostile about it. If you immigrate to a different country, for any great length of time, you should learn the language most commonly spoken there. It comes down to a matter of assimilation, as well as a matter of respect towards the new country and its people, with whom you are now residing. 

I personally know folks that have been living in Taiwan for twenty+ years, who speak broken, minimal Chinese at most. Although you can easily get by here solely on English, you certainly miss out on a lot from a cultural standpoint, which keeps you from really assimilating at all. I find it appalling, and while getting aggressive towards those that don't bother to learn the language is wrong, I can still understand why someone might take issue with it. 

[fcgamer | 4,754]

2 hours ago, Californication said:

It's more of this is an ongoing conversation that has stretched from months going on years. And when some people take the side everytime against minorites, not only over subjective areas, but when they are factually wrong and repeat the talking points of racist groups a normal person comes to believe that these people have an issue with minorities.  

As a minority myself, I hope you are not referring to me as part of this group of people.

[fcgamer | 4,754]

23 hours ago, KokiriChild said:

I think a big part of why the "let's not even bring up our differences and be nice to each other" policy doesn't work in reality is because its main purpose is to allow white people to avoid having uncomfortable conversations with or about people of color (or POC for short.) 

As a minority myself (white guy in predominantly Han-dominated Taiwan), I personally don't want people "bringing up our differences" or "celebrating our differences" or whatever the other guy said a few pages back. All I want is to be treated with respect and leave it at that. Other people in the minority that I know over here feel similarly.

We shouldn't be looking for and then celebrating the differences amongst people, and I honestly don't believe that other people really want that either.

[fcgamer | 4,754]

On 4/22/2021 at 1:29 AM, CodysGameRoom said:

This is another problem. Different races should be noticed and should be celebrated. 

Um yeah, how about no.

As a minority myself (white guy in predominantly Han Taiwan), I definitely would rather people look at me for the human I am and my accomplishments, rather than my race and ethnicity, which at times honestly feels quite dehumanizing. 

You probably wouldn't be able to relate to that though.

[phart010 | 1,708]

25 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

I disagree with a lot of this, honestly, but after writing a few pages with of text, decided not to post it as it really would be getting way off track.

 

You may notice that I took great care to be sufficiently vague in my post, using words like, “most people,” “many other countries,” “a lot of the rest of the world.”

I really tried being careful not to use any definitive statements in anticipation of you guys shredding my post apart

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by phart010

[fcgamer | 4,754]

21 minutes ago, phart010 said:

You may notice that I took great care to be sufficiently vague in my post, using words like, “most people,” “many other countries,” “a lot of the rest of the world.”

I really tried being careful not to use any definitive statements in anticipation of you guys shredding my post apart

 

Yeah I did notice that

In my original reply, I even apologized to you, as I don't mean anything personal by any of it.

[Californication | 1,490]

5 hours ago, fcgamer said:

As a minority myself (white guy in predominantly Han-dominated Taiwan), I personally don't want people "bringing up our differences" or "celebrating our differences" or whatever the other guy said a few pages back. All I want is to be treated with respect and leave it at that. Other people in the minority that I know over here feel similarly.

We shouldn't be looking for and then celebrating the differences amongst people, and I honestly don't believe that other people really want that either.

Were you born in Taiwan?