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Racism? - now-locked legacy thread

  
  

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Regrettable Juvenilia
22:59 / 06.09.06
Well, I guess the first step is for p.w. to explain what the effect he was aiming for was, and why...
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
23:10 / 06.09.06
wonderstar, apologies for my part in any of this confusion.

My intention was to be deliberately ambiguous..

e.g. Try reading that with a Brummie accent, or pretending you're a (say) white, working class kid from Hackney?

Still racist? Is is this sporting some kind of class based prejudice? Or none of the above?

What do you hear and see when you read that "register" and why?

Is that my fault? Should I not be so ambiguous in serious circumstances in future because of your (potentially) incorrect assumptions?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:14 / 06.09.06
Just to clarify, I wrote this;

It's probably best to draw a discreet veil over ... whatever that was; an apology's no doubt forthcoming in any case - why address it elsewhere?

in response to Ganesh's suggestion that you, Wonderstarr, should reply to Paranoidwriter's comments in a different thread. I said so because I don't in general see the point of cross-thread discussions - they're more messy than 'threadrot' in my opinion, although I do understand that others feel differently.

I was not for a second suggesting that you don't have a right of reply to Paranoidwriter's thoughts, as the way you've framed your above post kind of slightly implies.

For the record, I agree that Paranoidwriter's, apparently out of character, attempted experiment with Afro-Carribean London slang, or whatever it was he thought he was up to seemed to be a)a bit cringe-making and b) to say the least, slightly uncalled for, on Barbelith as anywhere else.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
23:14 / 06.09.06
Oh, and before you say it:

"Blood" and "bredrin" are pretty much absorbed into my culture now. I don't know about yours. I know their origins, but I also know they're not offensive to (say) my Jamaican friends, because the context and intent of when these word are used, is rarely ever intended that way, so...

One Love.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
23:16 / 06.09.06
Alex's Great Aunt, are you pulling my leg? (sincerely, with you I can never tell)
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
23:27 / 06.09.06
So were you MESSING with out MINDS, p.w., like the Chaos Culture Collective? Challenging our bouji assumptions? Or do you just need a nice lie down?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:37 / 06.09.06
My intention was to be deliberately ambiguous..

No, it wasn't. You were trying to be funny, weren't you? And it didn't work out. That's ... not really ok, but it's understandable. Which I suspect your position may not be if you carry on trying to maintain the above line of argument.

e.g. Try reading that with a Brummie accent, or pretending you're a (say) white, working class kid from Hackney?

Or (say) an upper-middle class kid from the Home Counties? Or a depressed single mother in an empty house in Slough? Or someone, more pertinently, of no particular race, sex, sexuality, ethnic background or class, which is the default postion of everyone on Barbelith, until they choose to say otherwise?
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
23:45 / 06.09.06
Alex's Great Aunt, sorry if I've offended you, sincerely.

It's just that I don't know who you really are. I get confused. Are you "1", "Alex", "Alex's Grandma", "Alex's Great Aunt", "Pete Doherty" or someone else today? I don't even know how many of you are sharing that suit or whether you're just one, single, funny, and earnest person exploring your own intellect and myriad personalities, and having a laugh in the process; which is cool, of course, I think...

But I admit, see?: I get confused. We all do, right?.... I mean, for example, isn't sharing suits frowned upon on Barbelith?.... Or...or...Well... It's probably wrong of me to bring up an old time where "Alex" and I jokingly tussled, but...

I don't know if you're aware but once someone wearing your suit decorated it with the name, "Alex is paranoidwriter" for 28 days. I admit, I got annoyed at first. But even though the joke wasn't explained to me, we had some nice PM's between us, we've had more since, whoever you are, and I've grown to really quite like your (for want of a better word) Loki style: you consistantly crack - me - the - fuck - up.

I admit, sometimes my ego worries people might get the wrong idea about the whole "Alex is paranoidwriter" & "paranoidwriter is NOT Alex" scenario of that period in Barbelith history, but I have little choice but to trust you to be honest and well meaning; and besides, I like you, and I can't help but forgive you almost anything... Whoever you are... I mean Alex's Great Aunt... I mean...

Sorry. Will you forgive me? I mean you no harm. Honest.
 
 
redtara
00:24 / 07.09.06
Wow, it just doesn't stop does it?



I must admit that I found P's post totaly unworthy of comment. It was the mimicing of an accent that could belong to someone of any colour skin if they were born in England and watched enough telly, like Ally fucking G. I bet kids who talk like this don't go home and talk to their ma's like that. 'Cos nobodies British born Ma speaks like that it would have been shaken out of her by a hostile 70's.

A Jamaican accent is exactly that. A white Jamaican speaks with a Jamaican accent, as does an asian Jamaican or Chinese Jamaican. It's where they are from.

I think lots of people feel uncomfortable when confronted with themes that they havn't resolved for themselves. There is no shame in this, but while it is healthy to investigate what provoked a reaction, it is not mature to blame the cause and take no part in rewiring the buttons pushed.

By the way, it took me ages to frame this and if you want to dabate any of the points of substance then I'll get to it when I can. I am not, hopwever, prepared to ingage in hair-slplitting or petty semantics. My time is too precious and there is too much of worth I still havn't read yet.

Hadn't seen Alex's clap-o-meter's last post when I wrote the above. I Don't doubt that PW is more than able to cope with the tone and content of said nasty little post, but I feel I must point out that it makes me squirm inside. I find it a little bit uncomfortable and am embarrassed that even if the content were true and PW had failed to be funny it was drawn to everyones attention. Then the gleeful catching him out was topped with being able to call him an unfunny racist!

Or someone, more pertinently, of no particular race, sex, sexuality, ethnic background or class, which is the default postion of everyone on Barbelith, until they choose to say otherwise?

What shite. If I was called Redbrian you would have made a different set of assumption than the ones you did, however superficial and transient.
 
 
redtara
00:31 / 07.09.06
Yeh, one love.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
01:01 / 07.09.06
Thanks, redtara.

I was feeling VERY alone before I read your post.

Flyboy, Or do you just need a nice lie down?

Didn't you recently post something remarkably similar towards me in the Bullying thread, only a few hours ago, and then (for your own reasons) had it deleted?

Have you seen what Triplets is trying to do in the Bullying Thread right now? How ze's trying to apologise properly to DM, and acknowledge why ze was wrong to insult him in the first place on that occasion? Not quite there yet, IMO, but..

I think that's commendable; whatever demographic ze, I, and y'all belong to...

And Flyboy, do you want to fight online with somebody? Or am I reading your wrong?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
01:36 / 07.09.06
What shite. If I was called Redbrian you would have made a different set of assumption than the ones you did, however superficial and transient.

I'm not sure if I would, you know.

I don't think I've made any assumptions about you at all, have I? If I have, I'm sorry, but I don't honestly see what I'd be expected to infer from a user ID like redtara, except that, I don't know, that you possibly like the colour red? The board's so full of people with gender-ambiguous (horrible phrase, but still,) 'fic-suits' that it doesn't seem to make any sense, to me anyway, to try and second-guess their personal details (and in any case, why would why I, or anyone else, want to,) until they've at least hinted at them on-line.

More worrying is the suggestion that I'd *treat* you any differently if you were 'Redbrian' (which I'd almost certainly read as 'Redbrain' in any case,) as opposed to 'Redtara' - I'm not clear at all on why you think this. If I really am teh clap-o-meter, 'playing to the crowd' then the, um, anti-feminist agenda you seem to be implying I'm peddling (I'm at sea with your point otherwise,) would ... well on Barbelith, I'd be shooting myself in the foot a bit, wouldn't I?

PW; I wasn't *offended* by your post, at all, nor did I think it was racist or anything like that - it just seemed a little uncomfortable, for pretty much the reasons outlined by Wonderstarr above. The ensuing material about 'deliberate ambiguity' did look more ill-advised, but fair enough, my reply was perhaps more sharp than necessarily intended.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
05:28 / 07.09.06
I think lots of people feel uncomfortable when confronted with themes that they havn't resolved for themselves.

Ah, yes - if somebody has a different view on what is or is not racially offensive than mine, it must be because they are secretly upset about being racist themselves. Dude. This argument was first put forward on Barbelith by Oblivion, about four years ago, and has not matured like fine wine.
 
 
Ganesh
06:15 / 07.09.06
I've previously appended generalised to-the-board queries with "y'all", although I am not American. I've also sometimes added "innit?" to the end of a sentence, which could be taken the same way as PW's comment.

Both habits are potentially cringe-making (the first one makes Xoc cringe) and arguably viewed as A Little Bit Racist. My point, if there is one, is that it's not necessarily common to 'borrow' from accents and dialects other than one's own, magpie-like, and while this risks embarrassment, I don't think there's malign intent there. One could argue that it's unexamined, but I'm not sure to what extent there's an 'ism' case to be answered here.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
06:46 / 07.09.06
I'm still confused as to why paranoidwriter posted that tbh, as it doesn't appear to have any connection to the discussion. Is it a deliberate off-topic comment to try and derail the discussion?
 
 
*
07:04 / 07.09.06
Ganesh: Imitating accents largely from white USA, which currently has approximately 89.27% of ALL OPPRESSIVE GLOBAL POWER EVER*, is not quite equivalent to borrowing accents from Jamaica, which currently has, um, less than that.

Hi, pw, I think your impression was not a good idea. It falls into the Little Bit Screwed Up category. It's a signpost— "Potentially fucked up attitudes and actions may await down this path— please keep all eyes on the road at all times." It's nice of people to take the effort to make sure you've seen that sign, but unless someone does have personal experience of the dangers— say, they know that road goes over their property and that Very Fucked Up Things do in fact await— I think we've now done what's called for. You're a grown-up and you're driving; you decide how seriously you take the road-hazard warnings.
 
 
*
07:05 / 07.09.06
*Statistics made up in my head may not have any relation to reality.
 
 
*
07:14 / 07.09.06
Sorry for the third post in a row... but I wanted to raise the issue of what exactly is funny about the accent thing in the first place. To me, that's always where to look. After "Is there a tangible harmful effect?" (e.g. perpetuates a negative stereotype), comes "Does the humor of the joke hinge on racist, classist, or otherizing imagery?" (e.g. "It's funny because they're foreign!" {or "different" or "gay" or "little"})

Anyway, pw, service to you; opportunity to self-examine. If you're not up for that, I won't cry tears of blood. I have better things to do and there are more important issues to struggle over than "Do people get to mock accents of people who are funny and foreign to them on Barbelith?"
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
07:23 / 07.09.06
Didn't you recently post something remarkably similar towards me in the Bullying thread, only a few hours ago, and then (for your own reasons) had it deleted?

Le sigh. p.w., I deleted it because Ganesh said more or less the same thing, more broadly - let's all have a nice lie down, essentially - in the post just before mine, and I wanted to avoid duplication. I felt the need to add it to my last post because... well, because I don't actually want to "fight" you, and I thought I should offer you the opportunity to get out of this particular scrape with little fuss. "Yeah, it was a joke that backfired, I've not had much sleep" - and so on. If you carry on trying to claim that you were making some kind of clever point about the mutability of online identities, then you're on a hiding to nothing, quite frankly. And it's nothing to do with any recent other events on this board with which I've been involved. I guarantee you that if I bail out of this thread now, and you continue to stick to that line, you will still end up making a lot of other people very exasperated.

(Ganesh, I think there's a world of difference between the odd "y'all" and the sudden lapse into a sustained 'patois' for two posts as is being discussed here, even aside from id's point.)
 
 
Evil Scientist
07:28 / 07.09.06
How ze's trying to apologise properly to DM, and acknowledge why ze was wrong to insult him in the first place on that occasion? Not quite there yet, IMO, but..

I disagree, I think Triplet's apology is more than sufficient, no-one said ve had to have a Road to Damascus style conversion to liking DM into the bargin.

PW, I have to say I'm a little surprised you thought that your "impersonation" wasn't going to catch some flack. You come across (to me anyway) as a relatively smart fella, and you've been in the thick of more than enough meta-threads about this kind of thing to know how it works.

I did think the impersonation was inappropriate and I do think it does you a deservice to try and defend it.
 
 
Char Aina
07:46 / 07.09.06
"Blood" and "bredrin" are pretty much absorbed into my culture now.

i'd say that's fairly true of much of britain.
y'all and innit are both in my own occasional lexicon and, while i dont say the other two, i do know folks who do.
i live in glasgow, and we dont have a jamaican community of any great size.

i also say 'rad' despite never having been a californian surf rat, and use a smattering of yiddish on occasion despite having few (and bloodless) connections to judaism.


that said, adopting the accent seemed a bit wierd to me, on account of making no comedy sense.
why jamaican?
i dont see what further depth the accent added to the point, and surely that would be the only reason to use it..?
using the occasional word in your own speech is fine, i think. if you want to steal a whole accent for effect, you should figure out why, and what that effect is meant to be.
 
 
redtara
09:32 / 07.09.06
I think the accent was more mockney/jamaican, if I am reading it right and as such is the cultural property of every prebubescent child in the country irrespective of race/heratige/geography.

I know my daughter and her mates (of various cultural heritiges) do this voice and not exclusively. They also do a vile valley girl thing that does my fucking nut. My son (who is ten) drops his voice an octive when talking to men.

My point is that assimilation is not the same as exploitation. Like Ganesh said we all co-opt and manipulate what surrounds us. I sometimes suck my teath and was once accused of attempting to take on black cultural ticks for their cache. I actually got the habbit off a very exotic (white) spanish mate who I wanted to be when I was twenty. I also say 'Oy!' and 'Oy vey!' habitually after a relationship with a jewish lad in my youth. I think PWs context is 1000 000 miles away from Chalky White and the horrors of 1970s british caberet depiction of blackness.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:39 / 07.09.06
There's a big difference between things you've picked up becoming part of your speech and even writing patterns, and consciously doing an 'impression', a 'voice', in an isolated incident. If you seriously think that p.w.'s sudden switch into this:

Well den, right: I started finkin', and I fawt "Yeah, right, I know, I'll find me a silly, happy dance pict-yah, yeah? To post when all dis blows over and the parties kickin' again.." Yeah?... D'ya ged me? Sose anyways, yeah, I typed in "Silly dance" into Google, yeah, and guess what the top result was, blood?...

Nah man, guess...

Seriously, bro. Try it! It's well dark, innit?

An' I'm talking to ALL ma bredrin, yeah? No factions in the community, yeah?

...counts as an example of the former rather than the latter, when he has, to my memory, never used terms like "bredrin" or "D'ya ged me?" in his posts before, then I don't think there's any chance of us agreeing on this one, redtara.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:40 / 07.09.06
I.E. for Big Brother viewers: it's not Aisleyne. It's Russell Brand doing an impression of Aisleyne, because of how WEIRD she talks. See the difference?
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
12:20 / 07.09.06
Flyboy, I'm sorry that you do not get my point, despite me elucidating on it.

Here's an anecdote for you to ponder:

I have a close friend who's mixed race. Ze grew up in a villiage in North East Scotland, where ze and hir familly are still remembered because they are one of the few "black" families to have EVER lived there, even over thirty years later. My friend, who I'll call XYZ, grew into a teenager then and young adult (etc) but as ze did so ze pretty much moved south slowly, spending time in Liverpool, Coventry, Birmingham, and eventually Hackney, London.

Whenever ze gets pished (sorry, can I say "pished"?) and / or wound up, we (his friends) have noticed that his accent changes and seems to "go north". It's something ze laughs at hirself, because we're a pretty sarcastic and yet self-debasing loose group of people. Indeed, when XYZ is talking in hir Scottish accent, it usually means someone's touched a nerve.

And here's where it gets interesting (regarding identity). XYZ had a child nine years ago with a white person: a beautiful little baby girl; white, curly blonde-haired, blue-eyed little bundle of joy. Thing is, when XYZ takes hir daughter out in the wider public world, people just can't believe it's hir child. "But...but...you're...and....she's...."

It's winds - hir - the - fuck - up. Why? Because people are faaaaar too black and white when they think about race and society. They asssume too much.

As XYZ's child grow's, ze is still making hir daughter "black aware"; ze is still teaching hir about hir ancestral history and the many appalling events which started the big racist, anti-black, ball rolling. And I believe ze is right to do so.

But guess what? When hir daughter becomes a teenager and an adult and starts talking to different people of different "demographics" about (say) racism and prejudice, what do you think some people are likely to say to this white, blonde, blue-eyed angel (for she IS an angel, trust me)? Do you think they'll say,

"What do you know? You're white... and you're good looking...are you gay?...."

Think about this for a while, before you start suggesting more "isms", yeah?


And please, try putting "Silly dance" into Google, look at the first link, and tell me whether I'm teh fascist.

Oh, and am I anti-Brummie now, as well?

Flyboy, I think I have used "bredrin", "Oy vey", "innit", and other cultural references from MY culture before on this board, quite a few times in fact. Maybe you should read more? I think I once even asked everyone to "testify", a bit like Haus in his post in the Bullying thread where he typed:

Can I get to Widness? I said, can... I get.... to Widness?

What's a "widness"? What accent's that?

Oh, and anybody here know for sure what demographic I belong to, or what accent I have?

Are you saying I'm a racist? Can you show me how and why what I've said is racist?

Just curious...
 
 
Quantum
12:28 / 07.09.06
Widness is a town in Cheshire. Pun, innit.
 
 
Saturn's nod
12:31 / 07.09.06
Can I get to Widness? I said, can... I get.... to Widness?

What's a "widness"? What accent's that?

I assumed a mispelling of Widnes.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:32 / 07.09.06
Dear Christ. I genuinely might kill myself now.
 
 
Saturn's nod
12:32 / 07.09.06
Sorry, cross-post with Quantum: and pun, like he said.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
12:35 / 07.09.06
Dear Christ. I genuinely might kill myself now.

Now you know how I feel.

By the way, you a Christian?
 
 
redtara
12:44 / 07.09.06
Dear Christ. I genuinely might kill myself now.

So you did get to Widnes then?
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
12:50 / 07.09.06
That's rather Cheshireist.
 
 
Quantum
12:51 / 07.09.06
You forgot Yours Sincerely, The Car You See Too Late xxx
 
 
Quantum
12:52 / 07.09.06
Ask some people where it is and most have no idea, some folk think its in Liverpool or somewhere around the Manchester area and a lot have never even heard of the town ! its a great pity because many famous people along with many great things have been brought into the world from Widnes, such as: Richard Bancroft who became the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1604...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:53 / 07.09.06
When they ask that little angel how she is qualified to talk about racism and prejudice, she will be able to talk about her ancestry and culture, pw, and her childhood, during which some people (none of whom, to my knowledge, post on Barbelith) found it difficult to reconcile her skin colour with her parent's. That's sort of part of the point. One does not need to be visibly x to know something about x, or indeed to be x. On the other hand, I see no connection between that and the situation in which you find yourself, for a number of reasons. One of _my_ best friends is mixed-race, as well. I don't take that as giving me invulnerability against any possibility that I might behave in a way that shows insensitivity or naivete on issues of race.

Also, nobody is calling you a fascist or a racist, and it does you no favours to try to ramp up the emotional temperature. MW says to commence:

Anyway, as I said, I am not saying "you're a racist, PW!" or even "you've done a racist impression." I thought it was worth noting my feelings though, and seeing if anyone else had a comment on them.

God knows where you got fascist from - link, pls?

Now, I have spent long hours meditating, drinking nothing but tea and living on locusts, and have found an ocean of inner calm. Do not make me swear in front of the children.
 
  

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