Yarhaarrharrr ye facist curr

  • fartographer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    My grandparents on my dad’s side used to make jokes that were funny when I was a kid, more concerning when I got older, and especially concerning as their dementia set in and they began outright stating people’s races in the jokes. In the years since their passing, it’s made me wonder what their beliefs on racism were, even though they raised me to never judge anyone by their race and that race will usually be a factor in how people are treated in the real world but should never be a factor in my personal interactions with anyone.

    But those jokes had been weighing kinda heavy on me in recent years. I know they had dementia, but was this possibly at the core of their beliefs?

    I recently heard a story, unprompted, from a family member who was present when my dad was in high school or college, in the '70s, and made an off-color joke . Apparently my dad said that a car with a poorly done paint job “looked like a Mexican car.” Without missing a beat, my grandmother punched my dad in the jaw with a right hook and yelled, “WE DO NOT MAKE DEROGATORY JOKES ABOUT PEOPLE FOR THEIR RACE!” My grandmother was always known for how passive, playful, and gentle she was, especially with her kids.

    Turns out grandma was not only adamant about race sensitivity, she was kinda a badass. And the jokes I thought were possibly racist were truly homophone humor about regional dialects and not about people’s nationality.

    • 🧟‍♂️ Cadaver@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      You know, let us be honest for five minutes.

      Psychology has shown that we have biases against anyone who doesn’t look like us. It’s just survival 101 from not so ancient times.

      So maybe your parents had theses biases, unconsciently. Maybe even, they have been raised in a society which was racist, by definition. If they have lived anytime before the eighties, things were really rough (not that it’s not right now, but it was something else…)

      Now, let’s just say that at their core, they were racist. So what ? Is it really important ? They have shown you how to behave, what is right and what is not. They have worked to better themselves, so that is the only thing that should matter.

      Because, in the grand scheme of things, your parents would have told you from age two : do not shit in your pants, and they would have done the same. With dementia, maybe at some point they even forgot that one rule so… Being racist is excusable, because -and I’m sorry- they were not themselves in their final hours.

      • fartographer@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        I appreciate and understand your perspective, but I want to clarify some context:

        This was my dad’s mom, so my grandparents. Had they been my parents and I’d known them at the age at which they raised me, then I’d immediately know how they raised their kids. But since this was my grandmother who raised my dad, it left me wondering what kind of parents my dad had. Was my dad a non-judgmental person in spite of his parents?

        And the answer was, “no.” He learned to cast aside prejudices from my grandmother’s sick right-cross. It was mostly that kind of revelation that I needed to feel my catharsis.

        (Added context: my dad is dead and I never heard that story from him. He died before my grandmother did, so I never got the opportunity to ask him about what her views on race were when he was a child.)

  • Revan343@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    Well, they might get made fun of for how they dress; gender expression, or furry costumes, or whatever is all well and good, but you have to draw the line somewhere, like socks and sandals

  • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    Many golden age pirates were actually kind of like that

    Big multiethnic crews. Lots of gayness, transgressive gender identities, liberatory politics. It was extremely punk, but with very very slightly better music and substantially worse booze.

      • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        Graeber really gets unto the mess of it all in ‘pirate enlightenment: the real libertalia’

        If you want something much less complicated and academic, i think the podcast ‘cool people who did cool stuff’ has a few episodes on it.

          • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            3 months ago

            Theres some more crunchy stuff i remember but i can’t think of where i read it, sorry. The academic stuff all kind of blurs. Except for a few who could serioudly wrote like Graeber and Foucault.

  • Sundray@lemmus.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    Don’t worry. They’ll be teaching all of that in school, soon enough. 🤬

  • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    … honestly, I don’t think anyone has ever explicitly said to me (especially growing up) to not use slurs - you just don’t use them bcs they obviously harm people, basic empathy & stuff (if the greed of just living on a better society isn’t enough).

    … but there sure have been a fucktone of folk telling me not to use some arbitrary “bad words” they deemed vulgar. No logical reason given, just random societal oppression.

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      I had an aunt Julia growing up and my parents sat me down when I was four or five and they heard me calling her aunt Ju to explain that “Jew” wasn’t inherently a slur, but it could be offensive to people if I just shouted it randomly after my aunt. Based on that, I suspect they would have talked to me about slurs if it had come up, but I never used them.

      I did once talk to my grandmother at around age eleven about seeing a huge Afro and she asked if I meant the person or the hairstyle. I complained to my mom about her being racist and she set me straight. Both of my my grandparents taught at colleges in the greater Boston area around the time they were integrated and my grandmother insisted on renting a room in their house out to black students who couldn’t get housing otherwise (for only the cost of meals) throughout my mom’s whole childhood and ended friendships with people who had a problem with it. She was just from another time and didn’t consider “Afro” to be an offensive term, probably because she was involved in civil rights through the seventies, when that was used by lots of black groups as a term of empowerment

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      They’re the no-no word because someone used them to hurt someone else.
      I don’t know what “removed” means, I assume it’s black in spanish or something, it doesn’t make sense on it’s own.
      It’s just a word that people used to hurt other people, so we can’t use them.
      Literally, “we can’t have nice things” applied to word, although, whatever that word means, I guess we have other words that mean black so, ok, whatever, we still have plenty of other 6 letter words so “meh”.

      Would be nice if people stopped being such shitheads and using group dominance to subjugate other groups.

      I think instead of attacking words, we should attack the mechanic behind them ? If the slur comes out it’s already too late, the dominance play has already infected them.

      It has to be defused before they even say it. Find why people are being so shit, it’s not just a reaction, it’s not the word itself making them do it.

      There a reason why they become nasty slur-spewing goblins.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        Sure, and it’s not like there arent any efforts towards that.

        But since hate words do exist we don’t use them in order to not empower further the mechanics/shitheads that do use/promote them.

  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    I will insult people for how they dress, specifically people who were clothes with Confederate flag shirts. I once saw someone with a confederate flag shirt that said “Try burning this one” my grandmother saw me staring and told me no. Yes I was working out the logistics of how to set someone on fire, I took the shirt as a challenge.

  • Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 months ago

    Why wouldnt you call someone an illegal immigrant if thats what they are? Being a “human being” isnt a get out of jail free card. If you drink and drive, youre a drink driver. If you rape someone, youre a rapist. If you murder someone, youre a murderer. If you steal, youre a thief. You move countries, you are an immigrant. If you do it without falling the rules of the country you moved to, youre an illegal immigrant.

    Why the fuck are you people always over correcting???

    • jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      3 months ago

      Given the context he’s talking about judging people by their looks. You cannot tell just by looking at someone whether or not their immigration status is legal. You need more information than just their apparent ethnicity.

      • Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        3 months ago

        Dont know how you got that, chief. The context is “human being”, nothing else. Every time these insane fuckwits posts something unhinged, theres always people ready with the excuses. You can not like the laws, thats fine. But if you enter a country illegally, an illegal immigrant is what you are.

        If the guy wants to say that calling brown people illegal just because theyre brown, well, I think he all ready did. As that would full under the racial slur.