11-05-2013, 10:12 PM | #1 | |||
我が名は勇者王!
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Political Correctness
I'm a member of a baseball blog and I'm about to get "heckbanned" under the three strikes rule, if you violate their TOS three times you get kicked out, after a warning and two bans of increasing length.
The comments I'm being banned for (edited slightly to block Google search)- Quote:
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... Suffice to say, I am mad. I understand that California, and the Bay Area, are a lot more racially sensitive than other parts of the country (ironically despite the West Coast in general avoiding most of the events of the Civil Rights movement), but these comments seem pretty dang innocuous. And the community seems pretty dang intolerant. Which brings me to the debate topic. Political correctness in the modern use seems like an application of poison to fight poison. In cases where people take racial tolerance for granted, racism springs up again. There's a recent example of a football player calling a struggling rookie a "half-nigger" as a form of hazing. But at the same time, situations like the personal experience I just posted seem almost infantile in how reactionary they are, almost like an overreaction to anything perceived as a racial slight. My sins in the three examples were 1) implying the team was racist against blacks (lol), 2) grouping Cubans/Dominicans into the culturally demeaning, lazy term "Latin" and 3) implying the team kicked out the Japanese player for being Asian. All three were things I did not intend to say! Is context irrelevant? I don't even see how you can see racism in those comments unless you were looking to twist any comment that brought up ethnicity. Yet, I got at least 3 flags on all three comments (meaning three different people were offended) and the mod agreed with them. Ridiculous. ... Yeah, so, long story short. Is the current climate molded by political correctness preferred to the alternative? Before answering, consider that the racial atmosphere of the Civil Rights movement isn't around anymore. In that environment, whites had been enforcing racism against blacks for over a century, and integration was being done against the wills of many. Several generations have passed since then and people have grown up without the inherited hatred of their grandparents. But still, if we were to punish overly righteous political correctness, would "the alternative" be equivalent to something like the 1960's South, would it be slightly regressed from the status quo or preferable to the hypersensitive environment of today?
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11-05-2013, 10:55 PM | #2 |
時の彼方へ
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Lafayette, Indiana
Posts: 20,578
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Your first post isn't racist in the sense of racial hatred or intolerance but it is racist in this sense: you suggest that spicing things up racially is intrinsically good, i.e. that there is some merit to drafting players partially based on race rather than strictly based on non-racial factors. Your post essentially says (to some readers) "The team would do well to draft some black players." And not even because those black players would bring with them certain athletic competencies, no! You raise no such argument. You want black players on the team strictly because you want to feel good about the team having some black players on it. I think that to many modern youth and to many black Americans, such sentiments might sound like ... I don't know the proper term for it, but it's the whole "white people wanting to feel good about themselves and convincing themselves that they're not racist when really they are" thing. Like ... like a white guy who says "I'm not racist! I love black people!", lists off all the things he's done for black people in his community, but is doing it more to feel good about himself ("What a swell fellow am I. I am such a swell guy. I could not possibly be any more white." ) and less because of a bona fide concern about the welfare of underprivileged black Americans.
Here's the thing: your words, as applied to the major league teams of the 1920s and '30s, could have (and probably would have) had the 180° opposite sound to 99% of folks hearing them. In the context of an all-white or mostly-white baseball team that is not fielding talented black players because of racism, your post rings out like a gong for civil rights activists everywhere. But you don't actually say anywhere in the quoted text above "I believe that racism is preventing talented black players from joining the team" and so instead it comes out sounding like you're saying "The team may be doing fine, but I want us to field some black players because RACIAL STUFF THAT SHOULDN'T EVEN MATTER." Your post, to progressive readers of the 21st century, probably feels like the sort of writing that is keeping us from moving forward into a world that doesn't see race. Putting it another way, would you argue that the team needs to scout more players with blond hair because right now there are too many with brown or black hair? Probably not. Likewise, your detractors feel that the only reason you want to see more blacks on the team is because of superficial thinking that closets a subconscious racism. Long story short, I can see how the first post might have gotten you into trouble. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Your second post is a lot easier to address. Doppel: that was a pretty obvious racist snide remark you made. ^^; You try to play it off at the bottom of your post as though it was your use of the word "Latin" that got you into trouble. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh no. No one's angry with you for using the word "Latin." What got you into trouble with that post -- and I think you know full well, but if you seriously don't, then I'll spell it out for you -- is the fact that you suggested "those Latin guys" (so you're just generically lumping all of the Latin players together on the basis of their race) should get together and "start up a band and call it 'showboat'." Show Boat is a musical which deals with racism, particularly with people of partial black ancestry who pass for full whites. So you're basically making a racist jab at the Latin players by saying something along the lines of "they could pass for white guys" or "they're Latinos who try and act white". Whether that's true or not and whether that was your intention or not, such comments really aren't necessary on a baseball forum, especially not if you've already been warned to drop it with the race-centric comments. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ But the third post ... this is where I feel it's pretty obvious that (unless you doctored the post to make yourself sound more sympathetic to us) you've become that community's pariah and they're pretty much out to get you. Because I really don't see any racism in that last post. I don't even see how there could be. Swap out "Japanese" for "English" or "French" or whatever and your post still stands 100% the same (provided we lived in an alternate universe where England or France produced great baseball players who dreamed of signing American contracts ). So yeah, with that post, I'd say you have two options:
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11-05-2013, 11:18 PM | #3 |
Noted homosexual
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Praising the sun
Posts: 1,091
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Some people actually think that the terms black and latin are racist themselves, so the moderation tram on that site might have some people who think that.
I don't think what you said was in any way racist though. I think that political correctness is good in its simplest sense that it basically means not being a racist,, misogynistic prick but the definition had been stretched too far.
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11-05-2013, 11:19 PM | #4 |
Not sure if gone...
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Or just lurking.
Posts: 2,709
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Political correctness is a necessity in the current environment, but not an inherent good. This also goes for a craptonne of other stuff.
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11-05-2013, 11:38 PM | #5 | |||||
我が名は勇者王!
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Literally, it sounds like someone looking for a reason to make an accusation of racism. Quote:
I used "Latin guys" because the two guys who were doing the showboating were from different countries, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. That is literally the only thing I could imagine that would have gotten me in trouble, since as a general tendency, foreign players are encouraged to showboat in their native countries, while American players are discouraged. So there's a cultural clash once they all meet in MLB. Quote:
I think on the third comment, I think there needs to be some context. The team has been criticized for the reason I brought up in the first quote, but more along the lines of "the team doesn't scout in other countries". So they ended up signing the Japanese player to show that they scout in other countries. The team had no needs for this player, and he played well in the team's minor league affiliate before being called up to play out of position. But, despite his good production, he was released from the team at the end of the year for no reason. My attitude was that the team brought him in without a serious intent to see what he could do, and didn't want to deal with him because of his age and the difficulties associated with translating for him. They interpreted that as me thinking the team got rid of him because they didn't want a Japanese on the roster. I can see how they can infer that, but it's not the same as what I said at all. Quote:
The community is huge and genuinely fun, save these incidents. I did keep a low profile after the week ban so I'm considering just dropping my account, then starting a new one. If you are banned, it's easy to sort banned accounts and trace the IP. The mod has no reason to trace IP for non-banned accounts (although, if they happened to trace my IP and saw that it matched my old, 3 strikes account, I could be banned for that).
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11-05-2013, 11:50 PM | #6 |
時の彼方へ
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Lafayette, Indiana
Posts: 20,578
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Baseball season's over for the year anyway. Why not just sit the ban out?
As for the showboat thing, if that's the case, then I'd say Post #2 isn't really racist either. It's the "Latin guys" in conjunction with Show Boat (the musical) that makes it a 1-2 punch of baby racism. Without the musical to back it up, I agree that the "Latin guys" thing just becomes a generic descriptor not selected for any racist reasons but simply because -- let's face it -- we human beings sort things by color very, very frequently and easily. (There's a reason that the Power Rangers have each got a different color and that children even refer to them as "the Red Ranger," "the Green Ranger", etc.)
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11-06-2013, 06:53 AM | #7 | ||
Archbishop of Banterbury
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11-06-2013, 08:32 AM | #8 |
Banned
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 14,729
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This doesn't seem to be an issue of PC; several of those posts of yours are clumsily worded. Clearly, banning you is ridiculous, but you could be more sensitive in how you phrase things.
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11-06-2013, 09:38 AM | #9 | |
我が名は勇者王!
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I'm going to have to sit the ban out, but since it's the "hot stove" offseason I was looking forward to it since the regular season sucked arse.
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There isn't a consensus, it seems, but "black" is almost never wrong. It's a physical description and not necessarily one of ethnicity. African American is insulting to say, black Britons (or so I've heard).
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11-06-2013, 09:59 AM | #10 | |
Archbishop of Banterbury
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The thing with African American is twofold; one, the vast majority of black people around the world aren't American, and yet it's not unusual to hear Americans using that as a default term. But the second is that if I started referring to white Americans as "European Americans" or "English Americans", people would look at me like I was crazy despite it being no less accurate a descriptor.
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11-06-2013, 10:01 AM | #11 |
時の彼方へ
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Location: Lafayette, Indiana
Posts: 20,578
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The problem with "African American" is that the term is used as a racial descriptor but it sounds like more of an ethnic descriptor or (even moreso) a label for people of African birth who have immigrated to America. For the same reason that we quickly abandoned the idea of calling them "Indian Americans" and moved to "Native Americans" because of confusion with Americans of ethnic Indian (i.e. of India) descent, I feel like "African Americans" is a poor choice of label for American blacks since it's the label we really ought to be reserving for Americans who have come to us directly from Nigeria, Zaire, South Africa, etc. If we are to even use it all.
Because worse still, even the quality of the label "African American" (as a descriptor for Americans who've come to us from Africa) is pretty poor. Indian Americans works since, by and large, India has a national culture with one national identity. It has many subcultures too, sure, but what nation doesn't. Likewise, Japanese Americans works even though there are various small cultural differences between Japanese from the various corners of the country. But "African American" ... you may as well be saying "Asian American" or "European American". For starters, anybody from a nation north of the central African jungle is automatically excluded from our thoughts as an "African American" since sub-Saharan Africa and Saharan Africa are worlds apart culturally, ethnically, and so on. But even if we stick to just sub-Saharan Africa, there's a world of difference between South Africans, Kenyans, Congolese, and Nigerians. But the label "African American" just lumps them all together into one label. So even as an ethnic descriptor, it's pretty poor. (And again: if we want to argue for its use as a racial descriptor, why not just use black? ) I remember in the early 1990s the term black was still in vogue. It was around 1995 that I remember the delicate social pressures to stop using "black" and to start using "African American". By the late 1990s, this was pretty much the norm all across the country. It's interesting to see in recent years this resurgence both amongst American blacks and amongst their non-black associates to begin using the term "black" again rather than "African American". I dunno: to me, it just feels like Word Pair A fits better for a world that is trying to not see in terms of race rather than Word Pair B does:
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11-06-2013, 03:30 PM | #13 |
Primordial Fishbeast
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Honestly labels like Italian American and Irish American have always bothered me too. I don't get it really. It's not like my Grandfather's family describes ourselves as Prussian British.
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11-06-2013, 03:57 PM | #14 |
Mrow?
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Camping the White Market
Posts: 6,934
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If someone called me Italian American I would probably punch them. I am of Italian descent, this is true. I live in America, yes. Do not make it seem like I just rode the last fucking boat into the country yesterday by calling me Italian American. You may, however, call me white as much as you damn well please. I know I've clicked that check mark on more staffing applications than I care to count, so what is the big deal in calling a black man black as opposed to the much more rigid and far less accurate African American? Zero. There is zero difference. The only reason it is still done is, to put it bluntly, a sort of reverse racism that forces us to come up with a new "politically correct" term every time a single person screams loud enough that they are offended by the old one.
If you REALLY wanted to attach a geographic label to it, the simple term African would honestly work best. After all, we have Asian, European, Native American, Latino (don't get me started on this one, please), and even "Middle Eastern". Why do we have to force the idea that using their "homeland", for lack of better word, as the primary descriptor is a negative thing? |
11-07-2013, 08:07 PM | #15 |
#009: Blastoise
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: here, there, everywhere...
Posts: 342
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Some people in the world tend to think everyone is racist, I call my sister black, but that's because she is? I don't call her anything offensive, and treat her nicely(mostly). When people get mad at others because they have called them black, it makes no sense at all. I don't call her a Haitian-Canadian, because that would just be stupid. She lives in Canada at the moment, she is a legal citizen here, therefore she is a Canadian. BUT Doppleganger, there is a way that your comments could have been taken the wrong way. It is all in the head, and how people imagine someone saying your comments. Try saying your comment out loud in a deep ass-holeish way, and you'll see what I mean.
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11-07-2013, 08:14 PM | #16 |
Barghest Barghest Barghe-
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swampert everything is offensive when you say it in a deep-assholeish kinda way.
The only comment I would have considered offensive out of Dopple's was the showboat one, and that's only because I didn't have the prior knowledge before hand. The other two to me were perfectly fine. I got what he was going at with those two. I don't like the term African-American either, because like Talon said, you can't group all of sub-saharan Africa under one roof. And at the same time, while Italian-American is heard of, other ones are generally considered offensive. People are Irish or Polish or Croatian, not Irish-American(I have heard this one, but rarely), Polish-American, or Croatian-American. It's odd. Black is a perfectly acceptable term, of course context included.
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11-08-2013, 02:44 AM | #17 |
我が名は勇者王!
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In reference to the Richie Incognito incident incident I posted earlier...
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11-08-2013, 04:03 PM | #18 |
The Path of Now & Forever
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 5,304
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Your first post comes off as a sarcastic affirmative action mocking racist post. I believe the term Talon was looking for was 'reverse racism.'
The second one comes off really racist without any context. Did they do a lot of showboating on the field or something? I think your third ban is likely due to your other two bans. It has your bringing up the hiring of the Japanese player as affirmative action and then going on to say he's doing it for the money and prestige. Sorry to break it to you, but I'm 99% sure that all major league players are doing it for the money and prestige. |
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