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Underground > Policy & Help >

Racism? - now-locked legacy thread

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paranoidwriter waves hello

13:15 / 08.09.06

Maybe the irony's killing me?

Maybe I've tried, repeatedly, to explain?

Maybe I'm still trying to play nice?

Maybe Flyboy wants an online fight? (How's everyone's mental health these days?

Maybe I'm this close to going batshit?

13:21 / 08.09.06

Dude, it's a website on t'internet. If you really are having a hard time here, don't click that button in your bookmarks that ways 'Barbelith', or change your homepage or whatever. We're justwords on a screen. Words that are only here if you want them to be.

paranoidwriter waves hello

13:37 / 08.09.06

That's fair enough, I suppose.

But I should leave a place I've frequented because I feel I'm being unfairly treated? Or should I stay and try to help clear up any confusion, and maybe be there to defend myself when people make cheep pot-shots to the back of my head?

Should I just ignore everyone's words and feelings?

Would all of you like me to leave? Seriously, you won't have to ban me. I'll go voluntarily. Although I might kick up more of a fuss; depends how you go about it, I suppose...

And please, don't force me start using more cultural references make a point; some people don't like it.

That typed, because I particularly dislike nasty arguments, "For you"...

13:47 / 08.09.06

No, you shouldn't leave at all, but the option is always there. A silly little chat website on the internet is absolutely no fucking reason to make yourself upset or unwell, ever. If you feelyourself heading that way then knock it on the head, like I did with the crack that one time. That's justthe way I see it though, you maywant to stayand fight with fly et al if it's what makes you happy. But I doubt it does.

paranoidwriter waves hello

13:50 / 08.09.06

Cetainly doesn't make me happy.

Barbelith does though, usually?

I'll forgive the odd "crack" reference.

Apologies help though.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:55 / 08.09.06

Maybe I've tried, repeatedly, to explain?

Sorry, PW, but if you have tried to explain then I for one have not managed to understand your explanation, and nor has - well, actually, anyone on this thread. Redtara has defended you rather aggressively against accusations of racism that were never made, but nobody really seems to have a clue what you were aiming for there. You've described the situation as you see it with Triplets, DM and Flyboy, but you haven't explained (in a way I can understand, at least, or a way that others can either) how that insired you to start speaking in patois.

So, one more time. Nobody here has called you a racist. Nobody here has called you a fascist. Your decision to lapse into patois has been described as something causing confusion, and you've been asked for some help to understand it, which so far you have not successfully provided.

So, while I'm sorry that you feel you are being unfairly treated, actually I think you're not being unfairly treated, but treated in a totally proportionate fashion. Put simply, you are being baffling, and you are a result getting bafflement.

I'm really trying to help you here, PW, but you have to work with me.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:04 / 08.09.06

In case anyone was wondering, I'm staying well out of this because I have no fucking idea what's going on.

Can someone PM me when it's all over?

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

14:10 / 08.09.06

Many people stop work for the weekend. Why don't you all have the weekend off, spend som time with your loved ones, enjoy yourselves and come back happy and refreshed for the fray on Monday?

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:12 / 08.09.06

Reid, can you do me a favour and stop commenting on this thread as if all the posts in it were unnecessary gibberish? Many of them have in fact been very simple and clear.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

14:16 / 08.09.06

I wasn't I was suggesting that the meta-threads was begining to look too much like hard work for the people involved and perhaps a break or even concentrating on other areas of the bored might prove restful.

My previous comment was that there has been so much crossover that I could see it easily becoming confusing. However I have little to add so I'll stay out of it.

paranoidwriter waves hello

14:23 / 08.09.06

This is how I see this thread at the moment:

I have told you my intent, I have reprovided you with context, and then some.

I have apologised for my part in any confusion. I have asked whether anybody thinks I'm being racist or offensive, but nobody has actually said that they are really offended by anything I've said, or indeed why they think this might be racist. If anybody has it's because they assume the register is Jamaican patois, which (I now humbly suggest) may their problem, not mine.

And yet, this was started in a thread in Policy that asks about what to do about potentially racist posts, and this particular wing of our long winded discussion is still going on in this 'Racism?' thread.

During all this, all kinds of whacky shit has happened.

Unbeknownst to most of you, I sent a PM to ibis and miss wonderstar yesterday, to try and explain myself further, to try and avoid prolonging this agonising death, to show them I don't think they harbour any malice towards me, and that I like them, as well.

To date, miss wonderstar has PM'ed me a lovely PM in return: ze may not still fully understand me, however, but I think ze understands more about where I'm coming from now.

However, my hand is now being forced in this thread (so to speak), so therefore I would like to reprint an edited, less private version of what I sent them, for the sake of this thread (hopefully). But unfortunately, I cannot find my original draft of this PM and I feel I should also ask their pomision before reprinting it.

So, if you're reading this, ibis, miss wonderstar: I'm about to PM you again to ask if you'd mind forwarding back to me the PM I sent you last night/this morning. Hope you don't mind.

Oh, and I think some of you might want to re-read redtara a few times? I think she understood pretty much exactly what I was saying, and am still saying. And yes, I admit, hir posts in this thread have really helped me keep positive throughout recent developments. Thanks, redtara.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:28 / 08.09.06

I have told you my intent, I have reprovided you with context, and then some.

I would agree with your first statement. I did not, however, understand your explanation. I do not understand the relevance of the context to your adoption of patois, and the some has been largely incomprehensible to me. As such, I may be missing something. Could you perhaps copy and paste what you was relevant, specifically, to your thinking behind the adoption of the patois "voice"?

paranoidwriter waves hello

14:35 / 08.09.06

Cool.

I have CC'ed a PM to ibis and miss wonderstar. I still can't find my original draft: I may have lost it during another sudden electricity power-cut I had in my pit last night. Not sure, yet...

Will post again, ASAP.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:40 / 08.09.06

Oh, and I agree that it's unfortunate that this thread is called "racism" - which is a bit of a scary word. Maybe a change to "Treatment of potentially racially or culturally sensitive or confusing material, issues and behaviour on Barbelith", or similar?

paranoidwriter waves hello

15:20 / 08.09.06

I'd rather you left it.

Context, and all that Jazz. Know what I mean?

19:28 / 08.09.06

I don't personally think that Mis Wondestarr selected the right thread to bring this up in. I mean the thread's titled racism, no wonder PW is getting a bit done in.

I've just been reading creation and I came across a post by xk, which reads in part:

Yo, art is an expensive undertaking yet it draws us closer and that is what makes it priceless.
Still you beatches owe me the time of day and maybe some toilet paper when I run out in the stall next to you. Just sayin'.

Okay and in my haste to get the mutha out da door

So PW also contributed to that thread, maybe he thought it was cool, who knows?

But xk didn't get quoted over here, did she? Why is that, if PW did?

19:46 / 08.09.06

Well, whatever the reason, I don't think it has anything to do with Wonderstar's attitude to PW.

20:00 / 08.09.06

I think PW gets picked up on things that others don't and that is one example.

20:31 / 08.09.06

I don't know, Lula. While that may be true (please note, I'm not necessarily agreeing with you), do you really think Wonderstar was exhibiting favoritism or judging PW by some special standard?

For the record, I think the ensuing furore has much more to do with the opacity of PW recent posts than people's prejudices.

miss wonderstarr

21:09 / 08.09.06

hi Olulabelle. I agree, really, that this might not have been the best thread for the discussion. What happened was, I wanted to comment about my response to PW's "patois" post, but not rot the existing thread, so I searched Policy for threads on "racism". And... obviously, this one came up. As I didn't really think this was an example of racism (though I do think it's an example of adopting voices associated mostly with an ethnic community, and perhaps "doing an impression" textually of someone from an ethnic community not one's own), I do take your point about the inappropriateness of this thread.

If I had a post ported across to a thread called RACISM? I'd be unhappy and probably start off defensive.

However, I have said quite a few times to PW that I'm neither calling him or his post racist, so I hope he knows that. I didn't mean to pick on him at all ~ I wanted to discuss my feelings about the post, and to take that discussion to another thread (rather than start a new one, which seemed even less appropriate).

Anyway, for the record I've sent PW's PM back to him in case he wants to cite it. My reply, as I remember it, said something like "I appreciate what you're saying ~ I didn't mean to imply you were racist ~ I didn't understand why you were putting on a voice ~ I understand that you don't want this discussion to drag on in public and thanks for saying your PM is an attempt to prevent tensions on the board." If that's fundamentally wrong, you can set me right, PW.

My feeling was that we had probably got as far to the bottom of things on this thread as we were going to, and I felt PW's PM came from good intentions, ie. trying to explain himself and trying to foster courteous relationships. I don't think it really helped me answer my original question, but that's almost something I've given up on now.

Finally, Olulabelle ~ xk's comment ~ it's as simple as that I didn't read that comment, whereas I did happen across PW's on a thread I was contributing to. I understand that you see a discrepancy, but it's just that I saw one post and not another. Xk's post looks like a less sustained, slightly less caricatured "experiment with dialect" than the original one from PW.

22:25 / 08.09.06

Miss Wonderstarr, thanks for the explanation. My only issue in anything you have posted was with the choice of thread - I wasn't specifically suggesting you were deliberately singling PW out, just putting forward the feeling that it seems to happen rather a lot to PW when it doesn't to others.

I agree much of the problem here is with PW's answers, and probably he would have been much better off saying, "I have no idea why I said that" but unfortunately he didn't.

But I think if we are to have a discussion about imitating ethnic dialect I think we have to include other examples of people doing it. It is not an issue peculiar to PW, as my example of xk's post shows.

Personally I have no problem really with either post other than that I prefer not to read colloquial writing, but that is personal preference. I just think it very rarely 'works' and PW's post certainly shows that.

23:14 / 08.09.06

Well I think PW would ordinarily have (just about) got away with that, had it not been posted in the middle of any already contentious thread, which PW seemed to be using as his personal soapbox, a bit. On the other hand though, I'm not sure if it was ever treated as anything more serious than ill-advised - he wasn't particularly tarred and feathered there, was he?

00:23 / 09.09.06

I totally agree with Alex's relative.

Also I think that it seems PW is all too eager to coach others into the apologies that he demands, but when he makes an inappropriate post his decorum goes out the window.

This may well ellicit replies of "yeah well, who the hell are you", but I have been around for a while and have naturally read all these posts. I just found most distressing PW's assertion that "Flyboy wants an online fight" when quite obviously other people are questioning him on this.

I am not calling into question anyones character, but PW has willingly or not put himself out there as an arbiter of disputes, and a vocal advocate, let alone demander, of the "specific apology". As such I feel he is doing his cause a great disservice by refusing to produce one himself. But then again, perhaps its all an ironic comment!

P.S.

Yes i found the post in question rankling and vaguely offensive and not the kind of thing I'd expect to read on Barbelith.

miss wonderstarr

06:46 / 09.09.06

That's a very interesting point, Adamski. On occasions when someone else has seemed to owe an apology, PW has been really keen to talk them through the very wording of it (33 and Flyboy, I think? on nearby Policy threads) for the sake of harmony.

Here, I think, a comment along the lines of "sorry, it was meant to be a light-hearted 'putting on a voice' just to raise the mood and make people smile ~ it fell flat, it was ill-advised" would probably have been the best way to reply early on. That's what I would have done, anyway, instead of try (quite confusingly) to suggest that the joke-accent was meant to provoke... something, and demonstrate... something, something that everyone else should work out for themselves, and which I'd already explained between the lines if only people could read it.

miss wonderstarr

06:51 / 09.09.06

On your point, Olulabelle, you have brought xk's post into the discussion and we could (I'd say) certainly open this up beyond PW by asking if that post provokes the same kind of feelings in anyone ~ and what other comparable examples of people briefly inhabiting "other voices" for various effect can be found on the board. I would suggest that response to someone doing another "voice" textually does depend on how the speaker's cultural position is perceived, in relation to the "voice": that is, as I suggested above, someone whom I know or believe is white, putting on a jokey British Asian accent, has associations for me with a racist way of doing the same thing. The person's intention may have been different (they might be shocked at any suggestion of racism, and might have intended to show that a British Asian accent is now widespread beyond just British Asians) but it might seem as if they're joining in with an unfortunate... tradition of mocking comparatively disempowered, minority ethnic groups from a comparatively empowered position.

08:04 / 09.09.06

i know when i mimic an accent it's always a celebretion rather than a mockery.
i think there is quite a difference between racist mockery of an accent and the manner in which someone does an accent with love, and i dont see evidence of mockery in paranoidwriter's post at all.

i see him thinking that someone else's voice would say the same thing better, for whatever reason.
i disagree with his thinking, but i dont think his words bear anything but a superficial resemblance to the words of a racist.
this isnt too like 'mind your language', i reckon.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:00 / 09.09.06

toksik, dude, we've been through this. Nobody has called PW a racist. Many, Olulabelle, Wonderstarr and myself included, have agreed that putting this conversation in this thread was unfortunate. Nobody is calling anyone a racist.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:01 / 09.09.06

Also, toksik, if only it was that simple - if only we could draw a line between benign "celebration" and malign "mockery" and say that one was basically okay and the other was bad nasty racism. But anyone who's seen a Lilt or Bacardi advert that encouraged white people to chill out, y'know, like they do in the Caribbean, can attest that things are not that simple - see ibis' post here, also.

23:18 / 09.09.06

A newspaper report I read today made me remember this discussion.

I get the impression that paranoidwriter's original post was intended to be funny, and that subsequent arguments in this thread are unfortunate side-effects of 1) the thread title, 2) pw's embarrassment and confusion at being accused of making people 'uncomfortable' (in keeping with his username), and 3) subsequent posters failure to sympathise or empathise with 2).

The newspaper report was on Sacha Baron-Cohen - the ulitmate impersonator and mocker of ethnicities. He is very funny (IMHO), quite good at the impersonations (on both counts better than pw's post), and crucially he is much more scathing and potentially offensive than pw was. So what exactly was wrong with pw's post then...? (or perhaps someone is going to suprise me by pointing out exactly how SB-C is in the slightest way racist)

PW, I feel for you - I think maybe you got carried away, and forgot how sensitive Barbelith can be. Personally, I didn't think your post was offensive, nor cringe-worthy, nor identifiable as any ethnicity. But, I think you should try to give satisfaction to those that seem to have.

Off-topic... I enjoy the discussions and arguments on Barbelith which address issues of free speech, attitudes to minorities and the vulnerable, etc. I do think the odd post verges on trying to control/limit behaviours that are part of "normal" human weaknesses and strengths, on which topic I am about to go find and read past threads, as on Ali G (and also re-read the aims of the board).

Apologies for bringing television into a Barbelith post-related discussion, but for me it was relevant.

Regrettable Juvenilia

00:22 / 10.09.06

You do know that there has been really quite a lot of discussion in the mainstream UK media about whether or not and if so how the Ali G persona is racist, right?

Tryphena Absent

02:00 / 10.09.06

As Flyboy notes this kind of comedy is questionable. If Ali G, Peter Sellers and co. don't make you uncomfortable, if you don't see it as a comment on race and to an extent, class then that's questionable. It's not simply subjective, there are far broader issues about deliberately employing racial/class sterotypes in this kind of way and the idea of propping up and parodying other's perceptions. That subject deserves a thread of its own and not in P&H.

The question for us is probably what are we gaining from airing all of this here in a Policy thread? Clearly the intention is not to ban PW and a number of people have stated that they're not accusing him of racism so this discussion shouldn't be happening in a thread entitled racism. If anyone wants to support or criticise PW I suggest that they take it to private message because this isn't (in light of what people are discussing on this page) really a specific Barbelith issue, it's a much broader cultural thing and any response to PW has to take note of that wide context.

miss wonderstarr

07:46 / 10.09.06

You're right... this is an interesting discussion but it isn't actually a Policy issue as nobody is asking "what should we do to discipline PW or someone who posts this kind of thing" Maybe the discussion on this specific topic should be ported or re-started somewhere else (unless it's run its course now?), perhaps on the Conversation.

I still have some notion that discussions about Policy-related themes (ie. potentially-offensive racial stereotypes) should be on Policy, but on the other hand, as I agreed above, maybe the location of the thread should be decided by its intent (ie. whether we're just discussing the textual performance of ethnic "voices" or deciding what to do about people who use them offensively).

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:04 / 10.09.06

I agree with Red Concrete. I am going to start a thread proposing that Ali G be banned from Barbelith.

Ah.

08:06 / 11.09.06

putting on a jokey British Asian accent, has associations for me with a racist way of doing the same thing.
...
i dont think his words bear anything but a superficial resemblance to the words of a racist.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:18 / 11.09.06

I think that technique would work better if anyone had put on a jokey British Asian accent, toksik.

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