Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Calling People Apes
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Mili
Shipmate
# 3254
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Posted
The Lions are the team I support - I knew they were the Gorillas at one point, but not why they changed. I just googled it and it turns out they they changed the name because it led to people mocking the team and a cartoonist called Sam Wells liked portraying the players as gorillas. Part of the reason they chose the Lion was because it was a symbol of England! So you can see how times have changed - noone would call their team gorillas now and definitely nobody would name an Australian sports team in honour of England!
Also another team is called the Bombers, but you wouldn't call a Muslim player that. Nor would I want to be yelled at for swanning around or being catty.
Posts: 1015 | From: Melbourne, Australia | Registered: Aug 2002
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Soror Magna: Yes, that is an example of racism. Why? Because it is applied selectively. If you happen to have three friends who are Irish and are all librarians, it's an amusing coincidence. When introduced to another Irish person, it would never occur to you to say, "Hey, you must be a librarian!" But if you happen to have, oh, say, two or three Asian or South Asian friends in technical professions, it might seem perfectly natural to start a conversation with certain persons with, "So, do you work in IT?" See the difference? Some people are subjected to statistical assumptions, others are not.
Sounds like your objection is to people having one set of manners or standard of politeness for use with dark-skinned people and another standard for use with pale-skinned people.
(I'd agree that that is racism, by the way)
But on that understanding, the person who is equally rude to everyone, or equally over-attached to stereotyped ideas of other people (thinking that all Irishman work in construction and drink Guiness, and all computer programmers have no social life and live on pizza) is not racist. Just struggling to cope with the complexity of life...
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Is being subjected to occasional rudeness better than suffering violence or discrimination? Well, yeah, sure, but they still all come from the same roots.[
Which again sounds like the issue is with the attitudes underlying the action rather than with the speech-act itself.
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We're all going to have to get used to seeing lots of faces that are not like our own. Seeing them as people is even better.
Agreed. Treating people as people is what it should be all about.
Best wishes,
Russ
-------------------- Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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