I just got up from conversation with a couple of older black men, that I said “well I got to go back to work and start cracking the whip.” And it occurred to me then that it was probably a really insensitive stupid thing to say.
Sadly, it hadn’t occurred to me until it’s already said.
If you want a list of potentially offensive terms, look for corporate communication guidelines. PR people love making everything inclusive to a fault.
For example, Google has this wordlist that contains quite a few “insensitive” words like “dummy” or “blind” or “to cripple”. Wikis also have lists like these.
You should probably take most of these “loaded” terms with a grain of salt, but you can use them as a jumping off point if you want to think about the language you use.
I personally find it amusing that modern sensitivity is treating terms related to slavery as if the exclusively refer to black people. The additional carefulness is reinforcing the idea that black people are inherently attached to slavery, even though slavery as it exists today is rarely ever race-based.
jumping off point
Woah there, corporate informs me this is insensitive to Lemmings
Lemmy HR will be in touch
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Is this Grok output?
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Oof. At work we currently have a project for words deemed insensitive. For the most part I think it’s worthy, but some things are overboard. The project group cast a very wide net, ignoring context and etymology. My biggest disagreement is over “black” and “white”.
Take “black box” and “white box” for types of testing. These are based merely on the properties of light. I have serious doubts about anyone ever having felt excluded by their use. And yet, we’re wasting time coming up with non-standard nomenclature to satisfy this supposed slight. There’s a whole laundry list of words like this.
You should call them “box that absorbs all light” and “box that absorbs no light” you fucking racist
I’m still mad about git master
Master as in “the master copy”
And they went and broke a bunch of tools and workflows to change it
Yeah, master has a few uses like this. Master bedrooms came about in the 20th century and had nothing to do with slavery. Then there is master in a pupil setting, though that is fairly uncommon in the US anyway. It’s more of a European/UK thing I think.
Again, I have nothing against changing things that are genuinely problematic. I just have a problem with busy work that is being demanded for items that aren’t actually offensive.
Unfortunately there isn’t really a full list because that shit changes so often. Previously accepted phrases become slurs and yesterday’s slurs get reclaimed.
And it is locational. Something insensitive in the US might be insensitive here in Oz or over in Europe… Or might not.
That is how idiom works.
Yep. Can be things you wouldn’t even think about too. For example the word ‘spastic’ isn’t offensive in the US, but is deeply offensive in the UK, similar to the word ‘retard’
Both of those terms are offensive in the US, too. People that use it just choose to not value the input from those that they offend.
TIL, and I’m sorry to hear that :(
This is kind of tangential, but I don’t think I ever would have known that “poof” was an anti-gay slur in Britain if I hadn’t played Pokemon White. I wanted to.use that as a nickname and had to look up online why the game was preventing me.
Exactly.
The one I always tell about is a yank commedian who, on his first tour over here, lost everyone when he asked for his audience to bend over and pat each other on the fanny. In context, the joke would have made sense in America. Here in Oz, it was far more offensive than he thought it was, and the audience got upset with him, and you could see him realising he lost us. A whole lot of explaining needed doing, for both sides. Apparently he honestly thought he was talking about backsides. Poor sod. Thankfully bewildered American being lynched by pissed off audience wasn’t the main event that night…
Odd to think of a land where poof is not a slur. It is a slur here in Australia too.
Yesterday
Cursèd Saracens did spoil my day
Give us strength to crush those hordes, I pray
Oh, I believe in Huns to slay
Where I live Huns a slur for a protestant.
Everywhere it is a slur for people of mongolian descent.
Not in Northern Ireland a place where people from protestant and Catholic communities were killing each other for 30 years. Educate yourself before you try to correct others. The reason it’s used against Protestants is because of the reformation being started by a German. Also hun was used against Germans during WW2.
You do realize you’re asking for a racist-o-pedia, right?
Me and the boys going to work on the Big Book of Slurs
So, basically twitter…
My grandfather, who passed away in the 90s, used to say “cotton pickers” for people that he meant as “jerks”. It took me until the 2010s that he was taking about black people. 🤦♂️
A lot of people post online that they love the phrase “cotton-headed ninny-muggins”.
But once you look at it thought this lens…boys I think this one’s not ok.
Isn’t that a line from “Elf”?
“Seek offence and you shall find it” - The secret mantra of Tumblr users
It’s a tricky one because if someone wants to be offended, they definitely will be. I once knew a guy who, for some reason, found the use of the word “slug” (in any context) intensely offensive. To this day, no-one ever learned why.
Speaking of stupid and insensitive, I was in my 20s before someone explained to me that to reference “jewing someone down” on price was not a great thing to say. It seems absurd. I’d just never seen it in writing or thought about it–it was an idiom, that’s it. You want to get a better price, so you jew them down. I guess I thought it was a homonym, if anything, but I didn’t really think about it, at all. Big-time facepalm moment when it clicked for me. Likewise for, “I got gypped.”
My family always pronounced it “chewing them down,” so I was surprised to see it written the first time. I was probably in college.
I thought it was “chewing” too. It’s not a common religion here, and the two words are not homophones with our accent.
The two that really make me wince are “Indian giver” and the related “Indian summer” and of course calling hooch “firewater” isn’t great either.
I always thought “Indian summer” sounded very poetic, maybe related to the climate of the Indian subcontinent.
But it’s just garden variety American racism?
That’s so disappointing!Does anyone know more about the etymology?
Not so much an etymology, but how it was used in pop culture:
Our local paper used to publish a cartoon and poem every fall. The piece was called Injun Summer, and it was printed every October from 1907-1992.
It’s very much a relic of its era, which is to say “it was weird; really fucking weird.” The image is lovely. The text is an old man telling a young boy a totally made up story. It’s folksy, wistful and nostalgic. It talks about the past and how native spirits (literally ghosts) return to the land each fall. It’s also written in the vernacular of what an old man in 1907 might sound like.
Personally, I don’t think the complaints about racism were what caused them to stop printing it. I think it was the weirdness that just didn’t appeal to anyone under the age of 50 (in 1992!).
The fist link shows the image with text. The second shows how it would have looked in print.
http://www.sewwug.org/images/injun_summer_2.pdf
https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-history-of-john-t-mccutcheons-1907.html
Indian* here, and I don’t know anyone offended by Indian summer.
*It says Indian on my ID.
Ok I’ve thought about it a bit and I need to know. What’s wrong with Indian summer?
It’s related to the concept of an “Indian giver”: the warm weather seems like a gift, but is taken back.
I have never heard it described that way. It’s the last warm weather of the year before winter. It was something to look forward to.
It originally referred to a specific meteorological phenomenom that occurs in North America consisting of late warm weather that native tribes would take advantage of to hunt. It’s definition has become more general, and it’s taken the place of similar phenomena around the world, but it’s not related to the concept of taking gifts back.
I’ve never heard of it used with that connotation. Even the most PC people I know use the phrase. Just because it uses the word “Indian” doesn’t automatically make it a pejorative. Some native Americans/first people call themselves Indian.
Most Natives call themself “Indian”. You’ve misunderstood my objection if you think that’s the problem.
The misunderstanding of your objection comes from the fact that I’ve just never heard of it in the context of “giving good weather and taking it away” as in “Indian giver”. The fact that they both have the word Indian the only connection I can make to what you’re saying. The only references I can find to a pejorative origin is in articles from years ago saying that the phrase possibly needs to be changed because of possible negative origins. Obviously culture hasn’t decided it’s necessary to change the phrase (yet). The fact that it’s used as a positive metaphor for non-weather things should be considered too.
Yes, but it still reeks of colonial insensitivity when a white person says it. Non-indigenous Americans should have replaced that word with Native by now.
Could you explain the firewater one?
It’s sort-of an antique trope whose main thrust is implying Native cultures are backward and unworldly because they don’t have distilleries (though, point in fact, some of them did ferment alcohol).
Firewater and other drinking stereotypes were about the myth of Native Americans all being raging alcoholics, which are as racist as saying black people are inherently violent or Jewish people inherently coveting money.
The alcohol abuse rates of Native Americans aligns with poverty issues, just like everyone else.
I honestly had no idea until now that firewater had anything to do with Native Americans. I just thought it was a term for alcohol, and don’t use it myself anyway.
Hey I just want to say i think this is a really good question and I’m glad you asked it. So many things get recycled into the language and we don’t know/ever get taught their original meanings. I think it’s good to look into, not just to avoid social slip ups, but because language and idioms have an impact on how we think about things. I’m glad to have these links on my radar
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It’s not quite what you’re looking for, but there’s this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
To add to this:
List of lists of pejorative terms for people
It includes lists for men, women, lgbt+, disability, age, ethnicity, religion, location. The severity of the terms is varying and arguably location-dependent.
For example, while I (probably) wouldn’t use the word “wanker” in a formal professional large meeting in my current workplace without it being somehow contextual, almost no Australian or New Zealander in that company would blink an eye if I said it casually at lunch. But when I worked in the education sector I used the personal rule “if I don’t want it written on my gravestone, I shouldn’t say it”, because teachers have subsonic and lightning-fast swearing detection reflexes, even when they’re not at school.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_derogatory_terms
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_offensive_terms
these aren’t phrases but they’re words
This is a great list for ableist terms . https://www.autistichoya.com/p/ableist-words-and-terms-to-avoid.html I’m disabled in multiple ways and there were a few on here that caused me to re-evaluate my lexicon.
A list has limited use because language evolves, and so do people, and on top of that, context is everything — but it can be a good place to start
phrases that are stupid
We haven’t invented a storage big enough for that yet
About the others, there are some obvious ones but other than that it mostly depends on context and culture. Some pointed the ricing thing for Linux, but I don’t think anyone in the community, myself included, thought about Asian ppl when calling themselves a ricer; nor I think it’s racist, so again: aside for obvious insults or widely known slurs, it basically falls back to context
I remember in my 20s the phrase “indian giver” coming out of my mouth. I hadn’t used that phrase since I was a kid of 10 years old or so.
I immediately realized that I should never say that shit again. Adult me realized it is a horrible thing to say but as a kid I just thought it meant you gave and asked for it back. I had much more context as an adult.
Most of the time I think before I speak, but not always.
And Indian cuts. I realized it was racist when I heard the next generation calling them Chinese cuts.
Oh god I went to a public school rear a native reserve, it was always insane to me to see how many times the faculty referred to things as ‘Indian’
Ex. we had an Indian meal day that i don’t think was either east India nor native american inspired
American Indians prefer to be called Indian, not Native American.
Kinda broad statement considering some do but some are offended by it.
Of course its entirely incorrect given they aren’t in India, so it seems obvious not to call them indian (shit even some actual east Indians are offended by it, especially cause now they need to be called east indians)
and more anecdotally all indigenous people I’ve met couldn’t careless what theyre called down to calling themselves ‘indjiuns’
My wife works on reservations. I haven’t heard of any of the tribes she works with being fine with being called Native American. They have their own government organization called the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it seems pretty clear that they prefer that term.
Yes great! But they don’t live in India :( So it’s pretty hard to call them indians
Not really. If you’re struggling with it it’s a you problem (and probably partially racism to boot). This isn’t a hard concept. Mexicans are Americans, Canadians are Americans, Peruvians are Americans, even though none of them live in the USA. Just because we (white people) decided to call two locations India doesn’t mean that only one group gets that name. That’s idiotic.
This is halarious, youre definitely american aren’t you?
Canadians aren’t in america eh? Absolutely no classification we can think of, perhaps a continent or 2 that could describe let’s say a north and south “america” of some sort?
Id encourage you to try and find another true analogy though, and you’ll see it doesnt exist - cause everywhere else’s name is based on where it is
also I gotta edit to add this, I’d love to see where you perceive racism in my comment, just as a readers exercise
@Sethayy the existence of people not offended by something prejudiced always seems to be dragged out as a justification for that prejudice.
If some people being offended isn’t reason enough not to say something, then it stands to reason that some people not being offended isn’t a reason why it’s okay.
If it is, then there are definitely people who are offended.
Okay, but what if they like being called indian as opposed to native american? Now you’re being offensive to those people. It’s kind of like that ridiculous latinx term that some PC people have being pushing for a few years now, I’m yet to meet anyone thay likes being called that as opposed to just latino/latina.
If you’re in doubt what to call someone, just ask, don’t assume.
Excellent! So let’s just call them what country they live in, which isn’t India (nor even close to India)
I hear just ‘natives’ more often. That reminds me though of this girl I knew who was just pissed about the term “African American”, saying “I ain’t got nothin to do with Africa! I’m Black!”.
