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Heroes Community > Other Side of the Monitor > Thread: Is it worse to be racially abused than just simply abused?
Thread: Is it worse to be racially abused than just simply abused? This thread is 4 pages long: 1 2 3 4 · NEXT»
JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted January 08, 2018 09:38 AM

Is it worse to be racially abused than just simply abused?

I ask the question because it seems that in sports the term "racially abused" is coming up quite often now. Players claim to have been "racially abused" now every couple of seconds.

I don't doubt that it's true - however, there have been abuse since I consciously followed sports. 40 years ago, when I went to football games as a supporter of my team, we would sing "player X is homosexual" full voice, and I know it wasn't because we'd hate homosexuals but instead to just anger and rile up the player(s) in question.

I wonder about this. Isn't the fact that pointing to one's skin color is widely considered a racial abuse a reminder that there IS still racism? I mean, you can use each and every term in an abusive way - if you call someone a "man" in a derogative way ("You ... MAN!"), it implies that the abused has all negative traits that are usually assigned to "men" and none of the good traits assigned to women - but if you called a WOMAN that way, would it be more of an abuse?

If you call someone the N-word who IS black, the abuse is in confronting him with a history in which people of his kind were held as slaves and considered animals, implying that he still is it. What if you call a white guy the N-word? If you say it's worse - you are a racist, because you imply that there is less abuse in calling a black the n-word than a white: there is a ring of factual truth at least in him being a black guy.

Same with calling a woman a man. Same with calling anyone anything.

In my opinion, an abuse is an abuse. Pointing out a difference is just a reminder that there still is a lot of bias and people are self-conscious about that. Is there really a difference in calling someone "a stupid idiot of a dickheaded @sshole" or a "n-word b..ch"? I don't think so. A slap in the face is a slap in the face, whether it stings left or right.

As if a racial slur would sting more than a sexual one or one that attacks a persons intelligence, sanity, spouses, relatives, abilities or anything else.

Any thoughts?

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friendofgunnar
friendofgunnar


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able to speed up time
posted January 08, 2018 10:46 AM

I remember this one time a hispanic guy leaned out the car and screamed "F***ing White Guy!" at me.  Which is certainly true on all three counts, but it still pissed me off.  Then there's this other time this black guy referred to me as "my nigga", and I was kinda tickled because under certain circumstances the term has come to mean kind of 'brothers in oppression'.  I'm not sure it answers your question but it's a couple of amusing anecdotes I recall.  I think context is everything.

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Ebonheart
Ebonheart


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Rush the rush
posted January 08, 2018 11:47 AM

How to get rid of racism.

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted January 08, 2018 12:22 PM

I agree that abuse is about context - and that abuse AIMS to offend with the intention to either piss someone really off or hurt them, which is more or less the same thing. Abuse is made to sting.

What I found quite funny is this little gem: there was a time when each and everyone would flip each other the finger in traffic (in Germany). Someone cut you? Flip them the finger. You didn't alow someone in? They'd show you the finger. Until this became a finable offense. Flip someone the finger and they could rat you and claim abuse, and you'd get fined.

It didn't take long that this nice little gesture was replaced by another one, as if by genetic memory or something. Instead of flipping the middle finger, people would signal an offending driver a very short length with thumb and forefinger, on the surface pointing out the amount of driving intelligence the offender just have been showing. Of course, when making the gesture to a man - and especially when made by a woman - the general consensus was that the meaning would subtly change into a comment on the offender's penis length.

I find this rather instructive on how this works. A comment on driving intelligence is one thing: "that was a really stupid thing to do". Abuse? Well, no. Justified opinion. However, interpreted as "your d..k is shorter than my thumb nail"? That's abusive, because it's just claiming something not really advantageous.

Of course, there are two involved here, and the abused has to put themselves into these shoes. If they do, well, the abuser may have a point - or so it may seem, which makes this actually work so well.

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OhforfSake
OhforfSake


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posted January 08, 2018 01:38 PM

My opinion is that any kind of abuse is bad, and to me it doesn't make much sense to say one is worse than the other.

E.g. so you were called bad names by kids when you were young? I were getting beaten up by them...

Or you were getting beaten up when you were young? I was being tortured during a war...

I don't understand why one person's pain should be looked as less important just because there exist people out there who have it worse.
In a way I find it similar to when I feel bad and gets told someone has it worse.. it doesn't address the problem at hand, rather it feels like a way to sweep it under the rug.

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Salamandre
Salamandre


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posted January 08, 2018 03:25 PM

We must redefine racism and separate it from accurate statistics. Otherwise this hoax will get out of hand, if it didn't already.

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Elvin
Elvin


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posted January 08, 2018 03:30 PM
Edited by Elvin at 15:34, 08 Jan 2018.

In my mind, racism and sexism sting more since they deny someone's ethnicity and nature and we are brought up to strongly identify with both. Compared to those others seem silly by comparison: Derogatory terms like manspreading(as if spreading your legs is a male privilege), non religious people who take issue with religious beliefs(what do they care?), people who consider themselves gender neutral and take offense when they are called male or female(would they prefer IT?) or people who will take offense if someone calls their manhood small or some such. But it starts with the people, someone with a defensive mindset or too much pride will find a way to be offended with less than that. Reminds me of this song.

What I find more interesting are non-universal abusive words. Try calling a Cypriot as Turkseed for instance. You can imagine why they wouldn't like it but that's probably not an insult you'd come up with on the spot.

Ps, not recommended!

Just remembered there is a line in the Iliad where Achilles calls Agamemnon a.. wine-overindulging dog-eye Doesn't sound as cool as in ancient Greek but you get the idea. Apparently back in the day that was considered insulting but if someone called me that irl I'd burst out laughing.
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tSar-Ivor
tSar-Ivor


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posted January 08, 2018 04:24 PM
Edited by tSar-Ivor at 20:46, 08 Jan 2018.

Something about having a deer heart too. (meanwhile in the movie we get: "you sack of wine", brilliant).


It depends on the particular person, it may be that the victim of racial abuse is more racist than the apparent offender.

A factor to consider is how strongly they identify with their own skin colour/ethinicity, if they don't they will not get offended at all, and will stare at you blankly. I recall one of my family friends asked if she had a different skin colour (not that she had, she was sort of Indian white), since someone randomly pointed it out in a very rude way. Since she didn't see herself as 'different' she was perplexed rather than offended.

To be racially abused (or to have it become more than mere abuse), the one being abused has to have a very strong relationship to his particular race (ergo the victim is essentially retains his indentity from race).

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artu
artu


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My BS sensor is tingling again
posted January 08, 2018 08:48 PM
Edited by artu at 20:50, 08 Jan 2018.

Salamandre said:
We must redefine racism and separate it from accurate statistics. Otherwise this hoax will get out of hand, if it didn't already.

Well, the context is using real racial insults in sports events, so it is not about what you shift the subject to, which seems to be calling statistical observations racist and which is a different matter all together.

Here's the thing, such sports events, especially football for some reason, are not just about sports. They are very different than, say, a billiards tournament or the Olympics. People participate in them to blow off steam, to decharge they lose themselves in group psychology, they become a clan, a mob, whatever you call it. Notice how JJ remembers the specifics, "We used to sing full voice." Elias Canetti even explains how the architecture of a stadium is designed so that the rival crowds face each other as masses in his brilliant work Masse und Macht. The hooligans are the most crystal clear example of such motive, taken one step further. So expecting a sterile and "politically correct" environment when it comes to such events kind of defeats the purpose. It's where people gather to release their Mr. Hyde. They do it under a controlled set up, the game functions like a pressure cooker, similar to some Rock concert or a stand up comedy where the norms get a little loose and otherwise shunned behavior becomes more tolerable.

You can even use it as a means to obseve, deep down, which group has a soft spot prejudice for which other.
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted January 08, 2018 09:40 PM

To clarify:

Football fans as a group say and sing everything that is SUSPECTED to offend an "enemy" player or team. For example, the great goalie Oliver Khan often was greeted with "apish sounds" (you know, uh-uh-uh), followed by a salvo of bananas in his direction when Munich played in Dortmund. Not nice - but sports are a proxy war ...

But the racist abuse thing is also punished when it is PLAYER vs. PLAYER, and we all know that players don't stop at anything to rile an opponent sufficiently up to lose it; just ask Zinedin Zidane what happened when France played their final against Italy.

So the question is STILL, why a racist abuse is worse than ANOTHER one, say, offending the mother of a player or the sister or wife and so on. I think, that sends the wrong signal. Racism is bad, but so is sexism, anti-semitism and so on.

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Kipshasz
Kipshasz


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posted January 08, 2018 11:41 PM

Quote:
Football fans as a group say and sing everything that is SUSPECTED to offend an "enemy" player or team. For example, the great goalie Oliver Khan often was greeted with "apish sounds" (you know, uh-uh-uh), followed by a salvo of bananas in his direction when Munich played in Dortmund. Not nice - but sports are a proxy war ...


Prolly will say nothing new here, but football ultras are grade A retards in general. Polish ultras are the prime example of this. Or Russo-khokhol ones, or whatever they were in the latest Eurocup. Brits too. And not only in such "choreographies" as this. In other fields as well, like claiming casual fans are "posers" or some crap like that.
Some basketball ones are not far behind either. "Putin Xuilo" chants in the home game with Russian clubs, but only one of them actually got the balls to travel to Moscow once our team played CSKA in an away match.

By the way, you can get away with racial/ethnic bigotry and "hatespeech" in my country, just as long as you be a bigot against russians.



In general, within Ultras you see a gopnik level herd "toughness" in them. Alone they're sissies. Bleep 'em. Worse is when their team loses an important match. Does riot police still get deployed in Germany during a larger football game?
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Salamandre
Salamandre


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posted January 08, 2018 11:45 PM

I do not trust Zidane when he tries to justify poor gestures that all people saw. I do not trust people who cry racism but are unable to prove what was been affirmed, what happened and suddenly there are no longer phones or several witnesses to record, is like the whole "men rapists thing". Modern scapegoats as racism, nazis and rape culture references are now used just to shut off the other and unleash another form of hate, then almost always the accusations are made up. Is real racism when soccer supporters use whatever they can to distract a player and make their team win? I think not, if not followed by concrete acts, by material and physical discrimination.

So far we have no evidence that racism is a problem in our western society, as I specified elsewhere, there were 16 cases of racism judged in court in France during the whole 2016, and that included chamber gas negations and accurate statistics as "blacks and arabs are the majority of prison inmates". Seeking for the accurate diagnostic is not racism if uses real and confirmed data, but people turn it into racism because they don't want to acknowledge and use the results into creating a better society. Am I empathetic to a black athlete who makes several millions bucks/day complains about a bunch of uneducated rednecks being rude to him? No, because so far our western world is the only world where everyone can have the opportunities to fulfill his dreams and goals, given he keeps trying. Let's not judge it in comparison with some hippie ideal, but in the whole context, and then it looks real good.

This morning I had some anecdotic incident which made me think about, after seeing this thread. A guy came to my house to change my front door, so he worked several hours then we talked a lot as I had to be present, then he started complain how Romanians  brought a thieving culture in France (my name somehow made him think I am russian). So he was there, criticizing homeless Romanians and making up tons of stereotypes and while listening to that litany, I realized I was amused, not angry at all. Because I have a goal, I have a job, I am respected and integrated, I have real and close friends so his speech does NOT affect my life or my actions, do not penalize me at all, tomorrow will be same. BUT, if I was unemployed, with a lot of social anger and contempt, I would probably feel discriminated and personally insulted by that speech, so the whole thing bows to personal responsibilities and achievements.

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Tsar-ivor
Tsar-ivor


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posted January 09, 2018 03:22 AM

I don't get the concept of race. Seems to be merely a particular form of human grouping, with it's own inclusions and exclusions that are lucid.

For instance was MJ black or white?
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artu
artu


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My BS sensor is tingling again
posted January 09, 2018 03:55 AM
Edited by artu at 03:59, 09 Jan 2018.

Well, biologically speaking, almost  no human group is isolated enough to be called a distinct race, some consider very limited island people etc. that live in total isolation as an exception but that is beside the point. There are of course racial distinctions between a Chinese man and an African one but today, the concept is much more of a social construct than a biological one, similar to nations. Afro-Americans, even if you dont take an example as MJ who wants to be whiter, are all mixed as well, when Forrest Whitaker plays an African dictator, he goes to make up and they darken his skin to "African black." When it comes to Eurasia with much older and mixed up history, the concept of race turns additionally pale:


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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted January 09, 2018 08:39 AM

Kipshasz said:
Quote:
Does riot police still get deployed in Germany during a larger football game?
Of course. And not only in and around the stadium, but also in the main station (where most of the visitor's fans arrive and losely along the footway to the stadium and in the town centres (since visitor's fans are known to arrive early and drink themselves into a stupor while marauding through the town centres.

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kiryu133
kiryu133


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posted January 09, 2018 05:16 PM

yes it's a lot worse and it mostly (as always) come down to power dynamics. People of colour, diverging sexuality, women and NB's, etc. are all marginalized in our modern society and abusing someone for that is in many ways a way of pushing them further down, proving to them (and yourself) that you're better than them by sheer luck of birth.
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fred79
fred79


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posted January 09, 2018 06:16 PM

kiryu133 said:
yes it's a lot worse and it mostly (as always) come down to power dynamics. People of colour, diverging sexuality, women and NB's, etc. are all marginalized in our modern society and abusing someone for that is in many ways a way of pushing them further down, proving to them (and yourself) that you're better than them by sheer luck of birth.


Quote:
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the cis are at it again.


i've been meaning to address this for quite a long time, and i think now is certainly the time, while you're on your moral high horse in this appropriate thread. are you referring to the "cis" who made you a moderator? because anyone using such a term can hardly side with high morality when it comes to equality-based discussions(such as race vs non-race abuse).

so, to reiterate: you're a moderator. you have a tagline that negatively targets a specific group of people, and yet it is allowed because whoever doesn't want to seem intolerant of your special-interest views. and yet, you still find yourself, or people like you, to be marginalized. this is the kind of thing i was speaking out about in a post that i had to change/remove, because it was too honest and straightforward(which could be considered rude). don't think for a second that i won't debate you on this. i don't care if it leads nowhere, either. as long as you decry that special interest groups are mistreated instead of treated specially, i will be here to point out where you're wrong.


that being addressed, i think abuse is abuse. it doesn't matter why it happens, it only matters that it happens. you can't place significance on abuse, or murder, simply because of it's motivation. because that's the beginning of thought-crime tactics, and that leads down an even worse road than we're on now.

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OhforfSake
OhforfSake


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posted January 09, 2018 06:34 PM
Edited by OhforfSake at 18:36, 09 Jan 2018.

Signatures most usually aren't meant to be taken seriously, but are more, I think, tongue-in-cheek.

Edit: I have also seen signatures used to honor or tease other members through "quotes" or used as a link reference to something the person finds important.

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted January 09, 2018 06:35 PM

kiryu133 said:
yes it's a lot worse and it mostly (as always) come down to power dynamics. People of colour, diverging sexuality, women and NB's, etc. are all marginalized in our modern society and abusing someone for that is in many ways a way of pushing them further down, proving to them (and yourself) that you're better than them by sheer luck of birth.
You say yourself it's not. Calling someone the n-word is NOT worse than calling someone a fa...t, is what you say. And in THAT regard calling someone a "retard" is basically coming from the same corner, because there ARE retarded people, and calling people that way is marginalizing the retarded. It shows that retarded are in low regard.

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artu
artu


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My BS sensor is tingling again
posted January 09, 2018 06:46 PM
Edited by artu at 18:48, 09 Jan 2018.

How about this JJ, and I'm just contemplating here, it's not conclusive in my mind. Theoratically, all abuses are equal but "some are more equal than others" depending on the significant sensitivities of the society. Imagine German team supporters in a football match against the Israeli team going "ain't that a cold shower jew, huraay, goal." The effect would be so irritating it would turn into a scandal in a matter of seconds. So, if racial slurs in Europe have some kind of amplified effect, it's probably because "racism" is already a touchy subject because of the immigration issues.
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