@Olivier5,
Olivier5 wrote:
Whaaat??? So far you were doing good (you're right on Americans being fair game in some quarters. I always thought that the sort of antiamericanism de rigueur in the French left was a form of racism) but y You lost me there. I hope i didn't come across as someone who wants to eliminate mockery... I'm just asking for fair treatment of all slur on A2K, using the same criteria than for everybody else. Égalité. A leveled playing field. No double standard. You've been asking for the same thing, unless I misunderstood you.
You're correct. I have been asking for the same thing: consistent and similar treatment of all slurs.
I did not take your comments to mean you wished to eliminate mockery.
Sometimes my posts can be misunderstood because I tend to transition from addressing "you" the poster of the comment to which I am directly replying to "you" the generic everyman, without a clearly recognized break in perspective.
My point was that in a world where it seems as if there is a concerted effort to eliminate mockery, by building PC shields around every group of people that has been fair game for quite some time, there remains (and likely always will) a few groups who are denied the shields. In America, urbane sophisticates who would rather give up their Starbucks than mock gays, the homeless, Muslims, doctors who sell baby parts etc don't think twice about mocking, and often cruelly, white, working class Southerners. For the reasons I suggested in my prior post, the mocking of inbred, toothless, Rednecks who live in double-wides and shop at Walmarts is perfectly acceptable in certain segments of society where mocking "protected" identity groups is a capital offense. The French, on a global basis, seem to also be fair game among nationalities when Africans, Arabs, indigenous peoples, etc are shielded.
I've suggested that arrogance attracts mockery which helps explain why, in the global arena, Americans and the French are often mocked. Clearly, the majority of Americans and French are not arrogant, and just as clearly there are other nationalities which could easily be described as being so, but arrogance has become a very familiar aspect of American and French caricatures just as stoicism, and hot tempers are familiar aspects of the stereotypical Scandinavian and Latino.
Quote:It's all very simple. In short, if you can't say it about them "Negroes" or "Youpees", well then you can't say it about them Yanks or Frogs. If you think you can't say "Blacks are dirty", what makes you think you can say "the French are dirty"? (not YOU, i mean anyone)
You are preaching to the choir.
Quote:Yeah well, that may apply to me and to quite a few French and Americans... but i've travelled the world and the seven seas, and can tell you that arrogance (and racism) is in no short supply in this world. We all look down to each other, we human beings, everywhere. There's the arrogance of the Parisian intelkectual of course, and that of the American billionaire of course, but also that of the Chinese official, the Thai who see sea gypsies and montainers as inferiors and foreigners, the Afghan who idealize the pack of tribes he calls Afghanistan, the Turk, the Russian, the German and yes, the Brit, they all have more than their fair share of arrogance. Even totally inconsciously, we often see our own team as better than it is. More central to the whole game than it is. We are all equal ALSO in that no nation is without pride and prejudices.
Again, I agree.
Quote:But double standards are annoying.
And yet again we are in agreement.
Now I expect that someone will join our discussion and point out that a lot of the groups who have been removed from the buffet table, and afforded shield of political correctness were (and in some instances, still are) the targets of more than simple mockery: discrimination, persecution and violence being among the arrows in humanity's nasty quiver. This of course is true and when mockery takes the form of slurs and/or calumny, a line has been crossed, but in terms of the US experience, white, working class Southerners are hardly members of America's elite classes. They also are not, generally speaking, targets of persecution and violence, but illegal or immoral discrimination is usually based on the discriminating party's ill regard for a group, and where American Rednecks are concerned, there is plenty of ill regard.
As well the mockery of American Southerners very often takes the form of slurs and calumny.
That many "rednecks" themselves often engage in the mockery of identity groups is immaterial. So do the members of the identity groups.
I've no doubt that this same hypocrisy exists in other lands wherever progressives reside, but I am not familiar enough with these societies to identify the local groups who are fair game.The chances are pretty good though that they are white and male though, because as noted previously, White Males are a near universal target which not only will never be afforded PC shields, but are considered , by large numbers of bashers to be very much deserving of mockery.
See Panzade's earlier post wherein he wrote:
Quote:This is the realm of the middle-aged white men that make up the majority of the posters on A2k.
Now Panzade is most often a reasonable fellow, but while his cited comment is hardly dripping with sarcasm, one can easily detect the ill regard he has for this very large group of shieldless people.
Which leads me back to one of my main points. Prohibit all mockery that crosses the line (as previously defined) and "you" will do much to eliminate undesirable behavior on A2K. Defining unrestrained mockery in terms of identity groups is not necessary.
