Friday, September 25, 2009

Touchy Topic This Week...

This week's topic: bigotry/racism.

Okay, this could potentially get involved in religion and politics, but since I don't want any bickering in cyberspace, let's agree to disagree, shall we? We all have our different views, and that's okay.

So what exactly is bigotry? Or, maybe a more appropriate question would be, "When it comes to comments about others, how far is too far?" Jokes about Mexicans, Lutherans, blondes, whatever--when do those jokes stop being funny, and go too far?

A lot of it, I think, depends on your attitude. If you don't mean what you're saying, then what's the harm? And I can almost hear people say it: "What if the other party doesn't know you're joking?" That's where we run into some issues. You may not mean it, and the other person may know it, but they can still feel put down. Hopefully, that's something we all want to avoid.

There are also comments that could be taken different ways. You know what I mean--things that when someone says it, you can't tell if they're joking or being serious. Maybe it's their tone of voice, or previous comments they've made, or just intuition--but you can't be sure.If you can't tell whether or not a person's joking, chances are they're not (at least, that's been my experience).

And then there are the things that no matter how you try to explain them away, they're just racist and prejudiced comments. Whether the people that say those things are prejudiced against other races, genders, or faiths, the fact of the matter is this: they are simply not bothering to understand something before they judge it.

We've all done it on some level, whether or not we want to admit it. I know I have. And dont' worry, this isn't some huge altar call where I tell you "Now is the time to confess your sins!" That's your business. Just something to think about.

6 comments:

Met said...

Maybe you should disable the comment feature for this, otherwise I forsee a large debate between Reogan and I over Capitalism and Socialism. It's interesting, but keep in mind that it's also a valid point if you back it up with the correct reasoning. I'm not going to give an example because no matter how well I'm hidden I still can be found and assassinated, but I just reccomend disableing the comment feature for this post and removing this comment (obviously since no one can comment), it's a good something to think about, but having comments may be a bad idea because some people can't agree to disagree.

Reogan said...

I agreeably disagree, but I will never agree too ;)


Might I remind everyone that non-aggressive factual comments can be taken as offensive? Really in today's society you can say anything around certain people, and nothing around others. Unless it's about the French. You can say pretty much anything about them safely. Otherwise, though, you take a risk by saying anything, negative or positive, against any group.

Met said...

Actually Elphaba if you enjoy writing/reading people's responses to this sort of thing you'd probably do what I do and just spend hours paging through PPR on the OCR forums. However, you must have an account on the OCR forums to do so (which is a minor thing that involves little), it's worth it if only to read PPR. My handle on the OCR forums is OutSpoken incase you're wondering.

Reogan said...

Save yourself, Elphaba, flee!

Met said...

*rolls eyes* You have an account Reogan, although you have yet to post. I'm still waiting on you Elphaba...

Reogan said...

I might have to soon.