Why do you giggle with the racists?

Killswitch said:

.

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SleepingWarrior said:

Huh? If I were you I'd just stop looking for companionship (friendship/lovers) on the internet then you wouldn't have to worry about becoming that 50 yr old lonely guy you fear you will become.


And my point is this... decrying racism doesn't change the fact that racism exists. Save the energy you use decrying the practice and actually go out and help the community because that is what combats racism, not just saying its bad.

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LovingTongue said:

Dude, you might as well quit now and address your Father's Day card to Irezumikiss...

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Queersetti said:

Let's say there are two kids on a playground. One kid is much bigger than the other. The big kid keeps slapping the little kid in the head and calling him...oh, let's say a "ratfink". He does this over and over again. After a while the little kid says "Hey, cut it out, poopyhead."


Are you comfortable claiming that both kids are equally guilty of calling names?

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Peregrinator said:

Dunno if anyone posted this yet, but "redneck" refers to the sunburned necks of white folk on the plantation. It's related to "cracker" for "whip-cracker." Most certainly not a rainbow-friendly term.

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Killswitch said:

Anyone noticed English Ladys crush on Kyle and he wont even acknowledge she exists. Never once quoted her or replied to her.

Whats that.

Fatism?

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bronzeage said:

Cracker has nothing to do with whips.

Mules in the field are fed shelled dried corn. A cracker was a poor white farm laborer who was so hungry, he would roast the mule feed in a skillet. The corn cracked, like the kernals left at the bottom of the popcorn bag.

Before the civil war, a cracker had a social status below that of slaves. After the war the number of impoverished young white men increased and crackers were more common.

In a world where everybody needs someone to look down on, a cracker was as low as it got.

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rosco rathbone said:

This must be the origin of the tune "Jimmy Crack Corn And I Don't Care"

Every day is a learning day.

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rosco rathbone said:

This must be the origin of the tune "Jimmy Crack Corn And I Don't Care"

Every day is a learning day.

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SeanH said:

Btw, I've heard people in Ireland, Australia and NZ referred to as rednecks. It's not exactly a geographically specific term.

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Queersetti said:

I've always understood the origin of redneck as being in reference to farmers who get red necks from working in the sun.

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wiki said:

A popular etymology says that the term derives from such individuals having a red neck caused by working outdoors in the sunlight over the course of their lifetime. The effect of decades of direct sunlight on the exposed skin of the back of the neck not only reddens fair skin, but renders it leathery and tough, and typically very wrinkled and spotted by late middle age. Similarly, some historians claim that the term redneck originated in 17th-Century Virginia, because indentured servants were sunburnt while tending plantation crops.

It is clear that by the post-Reconstruction era (after the departure of Federal troops from the American South in 1874-1878), the term had worked its way into popular usage. Several blackface minstrel shows used the word in a derogatory manner, comparing slave life over that of the poor rural whites.

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pink_ said:

i don't know. i could make derogatory comments to you as a person, am i necessarily being a bigot?

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y=mx+b said:

You already explained it for me in that you think negatively about a person because they hate people based on skin color or sexual orientation. There is no difference. You have given me the impression that you hate another type of human for what they are plain and simple.

There are plenty of people in life that I have encountered and have come to not like. If one was to hold open a door for me I'd walk though it and say thanks. You have given me the impression that you would not be so cordial, and it is this kind of treatment of others that I am disagreeing with.

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Morcheeba said:

May have nothing to do with her being a big gal. Perhaps she was a bad pirate.

*giggle

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pink_ said:

To me it would be like calling someone a dumbass. Does that make me a bigot? Anyone can be a dumbass, anyone can be a redneck.

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Peregrinator said:

No; one of them also is guilty of battery.

I get your point, but I think calling someone a nigger is as bad as calling someone else a cracker. They're both ignorant, stupid, hurtful things to say, and they both perpetuate the cycle of dumbassedness.

And by the way, when I used to work with kids, in that situation we would have sent them both to timeout. The slapping would have gotten a more serious consequence, but the namecalling would have been treated equally.

"He called me a ratfink" doesn't excuse your behavior; you are responsible only for what you do. Surprisingly, kids "get" this really fast; I used to say, "Whatever he did, this is your behavior, and this is the result of that behavior according to the rules." Very concrete.

I think that the historical context should be taken into account, but not to the point that Bill Cosby (harmless and absurd example) can get away with calling somebody a redneck white trash trailer park ho. You know?

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planetqueen said:

Because racism, built on a history of white oppression, is completely different to racism from a people with no historical or current power basis. Its not just about the semantics, but about the actual repercussions of the racist act and thought. Because of this, it is very different. I am not saying that it is ok for one race to hate another race, what I am saying is that the ability of one race to continue to oppress another race, because of the different power base, is what makes the racism completely different.

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Queersetti said:

But I don't believe that it's an equal situation. In fact, I believe that in the vast majority of situations in which someone objects to the use of words like redneck or cracker, it's manufactured outrage, an attempt to turn the tables by pretending that they are the oppressed faction.

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VermilionSkye said:

Pssst

see my post above..


also...
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intolerance

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Peregrinator said:

Marry me.

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DV81 said:

ok, list ways in which certain groups are "oppressed" today. As far as most can see, gays can get married, Affirmative action is still in place. So, who is being left out?

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Queersetti said:

Dude, buy a fucking newspaper.

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bronzeage said:

Cracker has nothing to do with whips.

Mules in the field are fed shelled dried corn. A cracker was a poor white farm laborer who was so hungry, he would roast the mule feed in a skillet. The corn cracked, like the kernals left at the bottom of the popcorn bag.

Before the civil war, a cracker had a social status below that of slaves. After the war the number of impoverished young white men increased and crackers were more common.

In a world where everybody needs someone to look down on, a cracker was as low as it got.

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There are various theories concerning the origin of the term "cracker".

The term "cracker" was in use during Elizabethan times to describe braggarts. The original root of this is the Middle English word crack1 meaning "entertaining conversation" (One may be said to "crack" a joke); this term and the alternate spelling "craic" are still in use in Ireland and Scotland. It is documented in Shakespeare's King John (1595): "What cracker is this ... that deafes our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?"

By the 1760s, this term was in use by the English in the British North American colonies to refer to Scots-Irish settlers in the south. A letter to the Earl of Dartmouth reads: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode". A similar usage was that of Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species, to refer to "Virginia squatters" (illegal settlers) (p. 35).

Spaniards in Florida called them “Quáqueros,” a corruption of the English word “Quaker,” which the Spanish used to contemptuously refer to any protestant. [2]

Other possible origins of the term "cracker" are linked to early Florida cattle herders (Florida crackers) that traditionally used whips to herd wild Spanish cattle. These cowboys were distinct from the Spanish vaqueros of Florida. The crack of the herders' whips could be heard for great distances when they were used to round cattle in pens and to keep the cows on a given track. Also, "cracker" has historically been used to refer to those engaged in the low paying job of cracking pecans and other nuts in Georgia and throughout the southeast U.S.

One theory claims that the term dates back to slavery in the antebellum South. The popular folk etymology is based on slaver foremen using bullwhips to discipline African slaves, and the sound the whip being described as 'cracking the whip'. The foremen who cracked these whips were thus known as 'crackers'. [1][2][3]

According to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, "cracker" is a term of contempt for the "poor" or "mean whites," particularly of Georgia and Florida. Britannica notes that the term dates back to the American Revolution, and is derived from the "cracked corn" which formed their staple food. (Note that in British English "mean" is a term for poverty, not malice.) [3]

Historically the word suggested poor, white rural Americans with little formal education. Historians point out the term originally referred to the strong Scots-Irish of the backcountry (as opposed to the English of the seacoast). Thus a sociologist reported in 1926: "As the plantations expanded these freed men (formerly bond servants) were pushed further and further back upon the more and more sterile soil. They became 'pinelanders', 'corn-crackers', or 'crackers'." [Kephard Highlanders]

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