4 ms·
> It's not up to you. It's as much up to me as anybody else. I won't be discounted because you think I don't have the right skin color to have a valid opinion.
by b6 8y ago
> It's not up to you.
It's as much up to me as anybody else. I won't be discounted because you think I don't have the right skin color to have a valid opinion.
> There is something resembling a consensus among black people
I doubt you have any reliable way of knowing whether your claim is true, but it wouldn't matter if it was. I simply don't respect your, or anyone else's, racist notions about what skin colors entitle the wearer to say certain words, any more than I would respect racist notions about who gets to use which drinking fountain.
I have no desire to say that word, but if I want to use it, I will, as is my right as a human, and if someone wants to persecute me because they think my skin color does not authorize me to that word, that is their own racist, neo tribalist, re-segregationist thing, and nothing I've done wrong.
- tptacek 8y agoIt feels like maybe you stopped reading 1-2 sentences in.
- b6 8y agoIt feels like you're trying to use snark to wiggle out of apologizing for the lynching of somebody who got uppity. "There's near consensus you can't say a certain word if you're the wrong color. If you're the wrong color and you say the word you're not allowed to say, other people think it means something bad. Everybody knows it. Sometimes you might get away with being the wrong color and saying the special word. But you shouldn't push your luck too much! And this guy pushed his luck way too much! And they even gave him a chance to repent, and he just messed up again. So how much sympathy can we have for him?"
- tptacek 8y agoA lynching is an extrajudicial execution by a mob. It's clear to me where you're coming from, and that there's no point in us continuing to litigate this.
- b6 8y agoNow you seem to be pretending not to understand a metaphor. Is that to avoid actually debating the point? And please do let me know where I'm coming from. I'd like to hear that, since it's so clear in your mind.
- pvg 8y agoHmm, where.. You know the word for a musician who plays bass in a band? A rhymes-with-that sort of place.
- b6 8y agoYou can call me a racist all you want. At the end of the day, I'm advocating one standard of conduct for everyone without distinction by race, while my opponents are arguing for discrimination by race when judging conduct, for segregation of parts of our language by race, etc.
- tptacek 8y agoThat is in fact not what I'm advocating. What I am saying is that the words you choose and utter send signals, and the signal sent does, in fact, depend on who you are and, in this case, on the color of your skin (if we were discussing the f-word, it would depend instead on whether you were evidently an LGBT person). That's not a controversial statement. It's an obvious one. You have to work to make it problematic, and the work you put into making it problematic also sends a signal, as does your use of the word "lynching" to describe the termination of a Netflix executive (the subtext of my response to that comment was not that you don't know the definition of the word). That signal you've sent is what I was referring to when I said there was no point to us litigating this. I feel bad for having left enough of a string dangling for 'pvg to have felt the need to bat at (though I tentatively agree with the sentiment he shared). But now, having explained what I was trying to say for an entire second time, I'm confident there's really no need for either of us to make the same points again in escalating stridency. This is a deep, deep subthread on a flagged submission to HN that is a day old. We're the only people reading this. There are no stakes to this discussion. I think we can stop needling each other any time.