I worked for a company that was going to start a new online service. One of our jobs was to create a list of names that users couldn't adopt. The meetings to go over the list are some of the funniest experiences I've ever had in my life.
My previous jobs included journalist and editor. I'm black. Slang is one of my hobbies. I contributed so many words to the list that one meeting was taken up just explaining my contributions. First question at that meeting?
"What the f*** is a "porch monkey?!"
The memos are well-intentioned but hilarious. Best laugh I've had all day.
Phoenix_Rising
· 7 months ago
Was the meeting in which you answered that question perhaps captured for posterity?
Partly for the laughs and partly because I have heard that expression ONLY in lists of every racial slur someone in the room can think of. Never has it been contributed by a white person, in my limited experiences (3 exposures). So I'm thinking everyone who thinks that's a racial slur they'd long to use is, how can I say this, dead of old age.
And no one can seem to explain what the F*** it's supposed to mean.
ShirleyGoodnessanMercy
· 7 months ago
I've had straight co-workers in liberal northern & west coast educated areas ask me crazy shit questions about being gay: "How do you decide which of you wears the women's clothes?" "Uh... neither of us wears women's clothes. Ever." "You don't?!"
There's a vast ocean of ignorance out there. Even in places like Manhattan and San Francisco.
I've heard "I like you. You're a GOOD gay." And I can't begin to tell you how often I've been asked to arrange flowers or do decorating even though I am a serious professional who has nothing to do with flowers or decorating.
woodroad34
· 7 months ago
I HAD a friend, who found me boring because I wasn't gay enough (read queeny/flamboyant). She couldn't figure out why her other best gay friend (who was "queeny") left her as well after saying how much she loved him because he was just sooo queeny. Some people just don't get it and it needs to be s-p-e-l-l-e-d out for them. This same person also asked me how we determined who was the top and who was the bottom. I turned around and asked her the same thing. She blushed.
SkippyFlipjack
· 7 months ago
This is straight of "The Office"'s 'Diversity Day' episode. Dialog that wasn't in that episode but could have been:
Michael: "We need to be sensitive to diversity. For example, don't ask Stanley if he likes fried chicken, just because he's black. He doesn't." Stanley: "Actually, I like fried chicken." Michael: "No you don't, Stanley. That's racist."
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 7 months ago
It's a primer Jeff Sessions will need to use during the SCOTUS confirmation process.
TheAngryFag
· 7 months ago
People should not be upset at DDoT for distributing this material with these words in it. They should be upset that there are people dumb enough to use those words at DDoT that made them have to write that material in the first place.
henrythefifth
· 7 months ago
That can't be for real can it? Hilarious comment KMLR. :)
nicho
· 7 months ago
Unfortunately, John, you live in a rarefied atmosphere, as do many of us.
The advice here is not as outlandish as you might think. It may seem intuitive to you not to say these things, but the level of ignorance and racism out there is astounding. In fact, I've heard people ask many of the things in this list.
People often think they're being supportive when they ask or say stupid things.
Sometimes, they're not being suportive. I'm doing some advanced study in Spanish conversation and you won't believe the number of people who say, "What the hell are you learning Spanish for? Let them learn English."
John Aravosis
· 7 months ago
Absolutely. I still have to give people the "oriental" lecture. And I've even heard "colored" from people who absolutely positively meant no offense. It's just a word they've heard used for black people.
yawn
· 7 months ago
i think that the emergence of "people of color" has some folks confused and they think its 'ok again' to say colored people. i'd also like to get everyone to stop saying "me likey" and "homosexual" and i'd be much happier.
SkippyFlipjack
· 7 months ago
It's not that these things don't need to be said, it's that you don't write a manual about racial sensitivity by enumerating all the racially insensitive things people say. You might as well put a poster on the office wall saying "Never refer to a woman as a c***. They don't like that word." Well, yes, technically true, but in imparting the lesson you're just inviting ridicule. Ultimately, teaching sensitivity requires, yes, a high degree of sensitivity. It's like teaching human anatomy to 7th graders -- one misstep and you won't be able to get your audience to stop giggling.
nicho
· 7 months ago
You actually have to be very specific about behavior, if you are going to hold people to it later on.
In the old days of newspapers, a desk editor had a huge fight with the city editor. Finally, he jumped up on the city desk and peed on the city editor. They tried to fire him, but it was a union shop and, on further investigation, they realized there was nothing in the contract that made this a firing offense.
If they didn't spell this out for people, they couldn't use it against them if people indulged in this behavior.
SkippyFlipjack
· 7 months ago
I see what you mean, although I think you'd then need to split that off from the "here is why it's bad" section, since they have different aims and should be written differently.
I think the problem here is that much of it is so contextual. it's easy to offer a list of words that your employees should never use, but you'll never be able to list every cultural insensitive thing they could say. if your manual prohibits asking a Chinese person for Chinese food recommendations, someone might ask their Japanese coworker for a good karate dojo. You can only spell out certain types of prohibited behavior; with others you have no choice but to teach about the underlying rules.
scottinsf
· 7 months ago
Looking at this with the immeasurable cultural sensitivity that I possess, it looks as if this was written for people that "just got off the boat".
Phoenix_Rising
· 7 months ago
Scott FTW.
I once led a diversity training exercise in which one of the new employees, whose family immigrated from the Phillippines in the 1970s, demanded to know what the hell that expression even meant. Her take: I mean we came here in a PLANE, for god's sake!
She was mocking the training in exactly the fashion one is tempted to mock this worksheet.
Butch1
· 7 months ago
One could see they were trying to make a good effort in improving relations among their workers. Their choices for examples could have been thought out a bit more.
ShirleyGoodnessanMercy
· 7 months ago
Yes, these sheets are funny, but I congratulate the Delaware Dept. of Transportation on them! I have heard ALL of these things from clueless employees and they are exactly the kinds of things bigotted or ignorant employees need to be warned about.
The diversity training sessions we've had at my workplace were utterly useless, at best. I wish we had covered PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS like these!
If you gear your diversity training at enlightened people, you accomplish nothing. It must be geared towards the needs of the ignorant.
SkippyFlipjack
· 7 months ago
All of these things? Are you a black Asian gay disabled old person? ;)
KerrynowCampau
· 7 months ago
That was funny......now I feel bad for laughing
dacnova
· 7 months ago
I wouldn't elevate this to Onion level. I'd heard about this already and assumed it was much worse. While this wasn't well written, I think the main problem is lack of good editing. They were on the right track but just executed it very poorly. The references to "can you recommend a good (insert ethnicity) restaurant was just silly but not all of the rest is too far off the mark. Good intentions, poorly done.
nicho
· 7 months ago
The interesting thing is that I can ask a white person, a black person, or a Hispanic whether they know a good Chinese restaurant -- but I can't ask an Asian person. That seems rather silly. It assumes that if the person is not Chinese, he/she never eats in a Chinese restaurant, when other ethnicities do.
dacnova
· 7 months ago
Yet no one ever ask me about a good Irish restaurant. (Then again, they might ask about a pub...)
Eric on the Beach
· 7 months ago
Even on the "enlightened" city of LA, I hear these things all the time. I even admit that just a couple of years ago I might have fallen victim myself to such ignorance and stupidity. While I laughed at a few of these, bc I cannot imagine that people would say them, then I hear someone say it.
slappymagoo
· 7 months ago
I understand the original version was more concise but it was "improved" by a regional supervisor at Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company.
Yeah, it seems retro-insensitive to me - attempting so hard to be sensitive that it reveals more about the author than it was probably intended. But then again, I'm always amazed at what people consider appropriate workplace conversation, so some people are probably stupid enough to need it spelled out like that.
bob915
· 7 months ago
John, I'll go you one further.....I have no pity for these folks. This is the 21st century people. We live in the best, most diverse, most modern country on this spinning globe. Get with it. Not only do you have neighbors and coworkers who are different from you in many/all ways, you most likely have lily white people amongst ya who sport the names of their spouses who are multicultural as well. So, wake up, rub your eyes, pick your ears, wash out your mouth, and if you cannot actually be tolerant, at least look the part
chowderSF
· 7 months ago
Wow, my first reaction is....what sort of people are working at the Delaware DoT in the first place, that would even need to be told these things? I mean, are there that many racist, ageist, homophobic, nativist workers there that called for such a letter to be written? Whoever made this thing up obviously has no training on real diversity education, given the archaic stereotyping of each 'group'. I want to laugh, but I am left shaking my head.....wow.
woodroad34
· 7 months ago
It's all about common sense and manners and after finding out that people preferred a bread spitting, inappropriate touching, drunken boob like Shrub as president, is it any wonder?
RainbowPhoenix
· 7 months ago
Actually, if I let slip something sexually explicit, and someone said "I didn't need to hear that," it wouldn't bother me. They'd get the same reaction from me if they said something explicit about straight sex.
mirth
· 7 months ago
The term Fag Hag should be eliminated from everyone's vocabulary.
John Aravosis
· 7 months ago
LOL I like that one :-) Too many gay friends mirth? ;-)
mirth
· 7 months ago
Never too many.
And I am the former wife of a Gay man so magnificent he would have had all of you bois on your knees weeping with want.
So there...
:)
TerryInIowa
· 7 months ago
Is Fruit Fly still okay then? (giggle)
mirth
· 7 months ago
No. Ditto, Queer Dear.
:)
Actually, I only object to the terms when they come from hets.
TerryInIowa
· 7 months ago
I really like it! Now, let me embarrass myself by relating my own failure to notice the obvious racism... From childhood, my parents used the term "joo" to mean "talk one down on his price" - my parents never wrote the work, this was just my interpretation of the word as they used it. When I was in my 30's, I worked for a Jewish man in a retail store. One day he was helping a customer when the customer asked him, "Is there any way I can joo you down on the price?" Obviously (but not to me at the time) this upset my boss. He excused himself and left the showroom and I completed the sale with his customer. After the incident, my boss was repeating (ranting) in the back office, "joo you down on the price? Doesn't he know I'm jewish?" - and the light went on.. it wasn't "joo" it was "jew" and I had learned this term without ever connecting the two. So, yeah, I think this "handout" might really help people.
nicho
· 7 months ago
I used to live in W. Mass. Back in my younger days, "Jew" was the term people used for any merchant -- whether Jewish or not. In one small city I lived in, there was a shoe store run by a Jewish man, and everyone referred to him and the store as "the Jew on Church Street" when discussing where they got their shoes. (This was before malls.)
One day, I was buying a pair of shoes and while the man was fitting me, I said, "Gee, what's your name. I come here all the time and I don't know your name."
He said "Why don't you just call me 'the Jew on Church Street' like everyone else does?"
chowderSF
· 7 months ago
Funny, reminds me of a time when I worked in a hotel, and every morning I would walk through a break room where a few African American maids would be. My usual greeting at the time was, "Hi Ho"....like the seven dwarfs....anyway, finally after a few weeks of me greeting the ladies with "Hi Ho", one said to me,"Honey, why you always callin' us Ho's???" We all laughed, but the first few times they said they thought I was calling them whores....and in some odd way trying to make it a joke.....anyway, your story made me laugh at your innocence.
kleverhanz
· 7 months ago
Am I missing something? Jews are totally left out here, which I guess must mean it is ok with Delaware to say insensitive things to Jewish people.
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
Okay, here goes. In the spirit of that diversity advice, I'm surprised those documents don't read:
"Don't call your coworkers a kike." It is stereotypical and offensive. Do not under any circumstances ask your Jewish friends for investment advice because you heard "your people are good with that sort of thing!" Again, stereotypical. Also, don't shout "Sieg Heil!" whenever your hear a name that sounds Jewish. Do not under any circumstances tell your Jewish friends "Hitler couldn't have been all bad..." Don't ask your Jewish friends if they have numbers tatooed on their forearms. When at lunch with your Jewish friends don't tell them, "Well, since your Jewish, I can just imagine I'm getting stuck with the check!" Don't ask your Jewish friends, "So tell me, why did your people murder Jesus?" Don't ask them, "Is it true you bury your dead within 24 hours or they turn into a vampire?" Don't tell them, "The reason you have big noses is the air is free." Don't ask them, "Was it a holocaust or just a big bonfire?"
These things WILL NOT be tolerated! Anyone saying these things will be referred immediately to personnel OR they will be forced to move to rural southern Talibangelical Red States where these questions originated.
My ex is a Sephardic Jew, so I've heard a million of 'em.
Oh, here was one of his favorites: "Cordova? How can you be a Jew with a name like Cordova? Are you sure you aren't a mexican?"
AngelaChanning
· 7 months ago
I did a Danny Thomas spit with my Fresca. LOL
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
Yea, being gay I thought I had it bad and then I married a Jew. Poor guy, he was also a progressive Christian Jew so he took ALL KINDS of abuse and idiot questions from just about EVERYONE! Just goes to show ya when you start feeling sorry for yourself because you might be different there is ALWAYS someone else he has it tougher.
He is: Gay, Sephardic Jewish, Progressive Liberal Christian...
We used to just laugh at some of the ignorant comments from SO many people.
SkippyFlipjack
· 7 months ago
That's such a Jew thing to say
oh crap, am I not supposed to write that? let me check the manual...
nicho
· 7 months ago
As soon as they hire some, they'll add them to the manual.
woodroad34
· 7 months ago
I'm not sure about everyone else here, but this isn't all that bad. Most companies and at least the City governments I've worked for have diversity training, either as a powerpoint presentation, crt, or actual class that everyone must take on a yearly basis--it's a boring 2-hour waste of time that unfortunately needs to be done because of those few social dimwits (I'm talking to you GOP and especially you, Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions III. The situations they present are so obvious, and most employees mock them later.
AngelaChanning
· 7 months ago
Where I work, each department is supposed to have a "Diversity Activity" -- and it was left open as to what to do. Most departments are having a "bring an international dish potluck". Being the only openly gay guy in my department, it was suggested that I coordinate our "event". I politely declined and tactfully cited that it was a stereotype that the gays always have to organize the parties. (Well, I did this way before the layoffs. Had layoffs been on the table, I would have made Martha Stewart look like Edna Turnblad.) So anyway, our department awaits the efforts of whoever is in charge. LOL. Thank you for listening.
condew
· 7 months ago
I've been told I'm blocked from commenting? How did I offend?
threadmonitor
· 7 months ago
Hmmm. Well, whatever. You're not blocked now.
sherifffruitfly
· 7 months ago
(shrug) It's the foxes guarding the henhouse problem. Race issues will always be dumb in America as long as white folks are the ones defining the structure of the conversation.
AdmNaismith
· 7 months ago
This stuff is always a bit 'See Dick and Jane' simplistic, but they are trying and this isn't completely horrible.
I've said some really stupid things in my time (and I've been on both ends of friendly teasing), but the reaction is usually enough to know when you've crossed the line. It's the people who don't pick up on that who need these really rudimentary lessons.
Indigo
· 7 months ago
That's an okay list of foolish things people sometimes say. Besides, I do too look gay!
devlzadvocate
· 7 months ago
After conducting an interview for a potential applicant for an open position, the candidate had a few questions for me. She informed me that she was disabled. I didn't comment other than to nod and say okay. She went on to say that her disability was that she, " . . . couldn't control her anal sphincter muscle".
You can only imagine the things that ran through my mind that I wanted to say. Needless to say the a-hole didn't get the job.
PaulG
· 7 months ago
"Spring 2009 Edition."
I am intrigued by your newsletter and would like to receive further issues.
Charon
· 7 months ago
AHHH! I hate this document. But not because of stereotyping.
TWICE they say "all [] are not []" when they mean "not all [] are []". This doesn't mean the same thing at all! It's basic logic!
"All Asians are not IT professionals" means that NO Asians are IT professionals, which is nonsense of course.
Idiots.
cowboyneok
· 7 months ago
I still think this stuff is hysterically funny. Sorry, I know its not politically correct but I guess I've been on the other end of that kind of shit for so long; I really find it funny that stuff has to be taught in a CLASS! I think it should be a college major! "I've got my bachelor's in "Appropriate Diversity Communications" from the University of Texas!"
DAB
· 7 months ago
All of a sudden, Joe Biden's tenure in the Senate makes a lot of sense.
Scottsdalian
· 7 months ago
I have no problem with these two pages.
It's hard to challenge people to not say certain things to certain people...without saying what those certain things are.
I feel this is an earnest effort to address those certain things.
Clumsy? Perhaps, but it's addressing clumsy things that people say.
I say "let it go" on this issue...and be glad that Del. is at least trying to teach sensitivity/diversity issues in this detail.
sireasoning
· 7 months ago
I live in the south. As you go further in the country, the less opportunity one has to meet people outside of the core inhabitants. Most of the people could easily walk into any of these scenarios innocently and without malice. Having a handout like this at least prevents the obvious.
As for me, I learned how to play a conga from an elderly black man I used to hang out with in my early 20's. He was young at heart and I had an attitude about acting old, so I used to call him "boy" (as I did myself and anyone else I thought was cool.) He would keep encouraging me to call him "man" which I resisted since I thought it was corny. It was only later that I learned that it was a heavy put down word used by whites during his upbringing (he didn't tell me this and never took offense since he recognized my intentions.)
So, even though I was using a word with high emotional content, it was never taken as an offense because my intentions were positive and obvious. I think overall, intention makes all of the difference. You can say "I love you" in such a way that elicits anger or hurt.
Older_Wiser
· 7 months ago
So, will this blog stop using "trailer trash" to describe white people, too? I've never known a human being who was trash but I've known a lot who were treated that way.
BTW, having been around mostly white liberals for 30 years, I had the impression from listening to them that only poor white people lived in 50s-style broken down trailers. I'd never known anyone who lived in a trailer. Imagine my surprise when I moved into this rural county 10 years ago and found white, black and Hispanic folks all living in "trailers" which looked more like modular housing in many cases. Haven't found any Asians in trailers, though. : ()
paulbe
· 7 months ago
Wow! What great ideas! I've not seen such a useful compendium of insults on offer for ages. Wait 'till I get to work tomorrow. They'll be laughing till my sides split.
HeartlandLiberal
· 7 months ago
Actually, it is hard to fault their good intentions. I still marvel that we can be such a culturally diverse nation, yet each subculture within this nation can remain so isolated from the other subcultures so successfully and so blissfully ignorant of the power of words. Of course part of the problem that the uses of prejudicial slurs and epithets seems to be a built in part of human nature as we have evolved into races and subgroups and tribes. It sort of goes with the territory of standard human group behavior. One's own group is good, and the other is enemy, or at very least must be the butt of our jokes in order to build up and sustain our own groups sense of cohesiveness and identity. Human Group Behavior 101 revisited.
A few summers ago I was fishing up in the wilds of Ontario trophy country. My partner in the boat one day was a rich business man from Georgia I did not know. We fish two to a boat with an Indian guide, and rotate fishing partners every day, and this guy was friends with one of my friends I had flown in with.
All the guides at the camp are Ojibwa Indian.
About mid-morning this Georgia good old boy turns to the guide says something like "Can you hand me that net, Chief".
I thought the guide was going to throw him out of the boat. He let the guy know in no uncertain terms he was not to call him that.
Since I am originally from Alabama, I tried to sooth the ruffled feathers by explaining that in the South the term is used not with ethnic slur intent, but as part of the work group culture from the rural South.
Of course that did not matter to the guide, who had been insulted with what to him was obviously a racial insult targeting his ethnic identity.
We managed to get through the rest of the day OK, but it was a difficult moment.
Needless to say, we did not have any deep discussions on the rampant falling down drunk alcoholism every winter in the Ojibwa male population in Canada that day either, that is a topic for another thread and was certainly a topic for another time on that trip.
Sifu
· 7 months ago
The punch line to the original title is,
The bartender said, "I don't like where this joke is going." and left the bar.
All Comments
My previous jobs included journalist and editor. I'm black. Slang is one of my hobbies. I contributed so many words to the list that one meeting was taken up just explaining my contributions. First question at that meeting?
"What the f*** is a "porch monkey?!"
The memos are well-intentioned but hilarious. Best laugh I've had all day.
Partly for the laughs and partly because I have heard that expression ONLY in lists of every racial slur someone in the room can think of. Never has it been contributed by a white person, in my limited experiences (3 exposures). So I'm thinking everyone who thinks that's a racial slur they'd long to use is, how can I say this, dead of old age.
And no one can seem to explain what the F*** it's supposed to mean.
There's a vast ocean of ignorance out there. Even in places like Manhattan and San Francisco.
I've heard "I like you. You're a GOOD gay."
And I can't begin to tell you how often I've been asked to arrange flowers or do decorating even though I am a serious professional who has nothing to do with flowers or decorating.
Michael: "We need to be sensitive to diversity. For example, don't ask Stanley if he likes fried chicken, just because he's black. He doesn't."
Stanley: "Actually, I like fried chicken."
Michael: "No you don't, Stanley. That's racist."
The advice here is not as outlandish as you might think. It may seem intuitive to you not to say these things, but the level of ignorance and racism out there is astounding. In fact, I've heard people ask many of the things in this list.
People often think they're being supportive when they ask or say stupid things.
Sometimes, they're not being suportive. I'm doing some advanced study in Spanish conversation and you won't believe the number of people who say, "What the hell are you learning Spanish for? Let them learn English."
In the old days of newspapers, a desk editor had a huge fight with the city editor. Finally, he jumped up on the city desk and peed on the city editor. They tried to fire him, but it was a union shop and, on further investigation, they realized there was nothing in the contract that made this a firing offense.
If they didn't spell this out for people, they couldn't use it against them if people indulged in this behavior.
I think the problem here is that much of it is so contextual. it's easy to offer a list of words that your employees should never use, but you'll never be able to list every cultural insensitive thing they could say. if your manual prohibits asking a Chinese person for Chinese food recommendations, someone might ask their Japanese coworker for a good karate dojo. You can only spell out certain types of prohibited behavior; with others you have no choice but to teach about the underlying rules.
I once led a diversity training exercise in which one of the new employees, whose family immigrated from the Phillippines in the 1970s, demanded to know what the hell that expression even meant. Her take: I mean we came here in a PLANE, for god's sake!
She was mocking the training in exactly the fashion one is tempted to mock this worksheet.
The diversity training sessions we've had at my workplace were utterly useless, at best. I wish we had covered PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS like these!
If you gear your diversity training at enlightened people, you accomplish nothing. It must be geared towards the needs of the ignorant.
Yeah, it seems retro-insensitive to me - attempting so hard to be sensitive that it reveals more about the author than it was probably intended. But then again, I'm always amazed at what people consider appropriate workplace conversation, so some people are probably stupid enough to need it spelled out like that.
And I am the former wife of a Gay man so magnificent he would have had all of you bois on your knees weeping with want.
So there...
:)
:)
Actually, I only object to the terms when they come from hets.
From childhood, my parents used the term "joo" to mean "talk one down on his price" - my parents never wrote the work, this was just my interpretation of the word as they used it.
When I was in my 30's, I worked for a Jewish man in a retail store. One day he was helping a customer when the customer asked him, "Is there any way I can joo you down on the price?"
Obviously (but not to me at the time) this upset my boss. He excused himself and left the showroom and I completed the sale with his customer.
After the incident, my boss was repeating (ranting) in the back office, "joo you down on the price? Doesn't he know I'm jewish?" - and the light went on.. it wasn't "joo" it was "jew" and I had learned this term without ever connecting the two.
So, yeah, I think this "handout" might really help people.
One day, I was buying a pair of shoes and while the man was fitting me, I said, "Gee, what's your name. I come here all the time and I don't know your name."
He said "Why don't you just call me 'the Jew on Church Street' like everyone else does?"
"Don't call your coworkers a kike." It is stereotypical and offensive.
Do not under any circumstances ask your Jewish friends for investment advice because you heard "your people are good with that sort of thing!" Again, stereotypical.
Also, don't shout "Sieg Heil!" whenever your hear a name that sounds Jewish.
Do not under any circumstances tell your Jewish friends "Hitler couldn't have been all bad..."
Don't ask your Jewish friends if they have numbers tatooed on their forearms.
When at lunch with your Jewish friends don't tell them, "Well, since your Jewish, I can just imagine I'm getting stuck with the check!"
Don't ask your Jewish friends, "So tell me, why did your people murder Jesus?"
Don't ask them, "Is it true you bury your dead within 24 hours or they turn into a vampire?"
Don't tell them, "The reason you have big noses is the air is free."
Don't ask them, "Was it a holocaust or just a big bonfire?"
These things WILL NOT be tolerated! Anyone saying these things will be referred immediately to personnel OR they will be forced to move to rural southern Talibangelical Red States where these questions originated.
My ex is a Sephardic Jew, so I've heard a million of 'em.
Oh, here was one of his favorites: "Cordova? How can you be a Jew with a name like Cordova? Are you sure you aren't a mexican?"
He is: Gay, Sephardic Jewish, Progressive Liberal Christian...
We used to just laugh at some of the ignorant comments from SO many people.
oh crap, am I not supposed to write that? let me check the manual...
I've said some really stupid things in my time (and I've been on both ends of friendly teasing), but the reaction is usually enough to know when you've crossed the line. It's the people who don't pick up on that who need these really rudimentary lessons.
You can only imagine the things that ran through my mind that I wanted to say. Needless to say the a-hole didn't get the job.
I am intrigued by your newsletter and would like to receive further issues.
TWICE they say "all [] are not []" when they mean "not all [] are []". This doesn't mean the same thing at all! It's basic logic!
"All Asians are not IT professionals" means that NO Asians are IT professionals, which is nonsense of course.
Idiots.
It's hard to challenge people to not say certain things to certain people...without saying what those certain things are.
I feel this is an earnest effort to address those certain things.
Clumsy? Perhaps, but it's addressing clumsy things that people say.
I say "let it go" on this issue...and be glad that Del. is at least trying to teach sensitivity/diversity issues in this detail.
As for me, I learned how to play a conga from an elderly black man I used to hang out with in my early 20's. He was young at heart and I had an attitude about acting old, so I used to call him "boy" (as I did myself and anyone else I thought was cool.) He would keep encouraging me to call him "man" which I resisted since I thought it was corny. It was only later that I learned that it was a heavy put down word used by whites during his upbringing (he didn't tell me this and never took offense since he recognized my intentions.)
So, even though I was using a word with high emotional content, it was never taken as an offense because my intentions were positive and obvious. I think overall, intention makes all of the difference. You can say "I love you" in such a way that elicits anger or hurt.
BTW, having been around mostly white liberals for 30 years, I had the impression from listening to them that only poor white people lived in 50s-style broken down trailers. I'd never known anyone who lived in a trailer. Imagine my surprise when I moved into this rural county 10 years ago and found white, black and Hispanic folks all living in "trailers" which looked more like modular housing in many cases. Haven't found any Asians in trailers, though. : ()
A few summers ago I was fishing up in the wilds of Ontario trophy country. My partner in the boat one day was a rich business man from Georgia I did not know. We fish two to a boat with an Indian guide, and rotate fishing partners every day, and this guy was friends with one of my friends I had flown in with.
All the guides at the camp are Ojibwa Indian.
About mid-morning this Georgia good old boy turns to the guide says something like "Can you hand me that net, Chief".
I thought the guide was going to throw him out of the boat. He let the guy know in no uncertain terms he was not to call him that.
Since I am originally from Alabama, I tried to sooth the ruffled feathers by explaining that in the South the term is used not with ethnic slur intent, but as part of the work group culture from the rural South.
Of course that did not matter to the guide, who had been insulted with what to him was obviously a racial insult targeting his ethnic identity.
We managed to get through the rest of the day OK, but it was a difficult moment.
Needless to say, we did not have any deep discussions on the rampant falling down drunk alcoholism every winter in the Ojibwa male population in Canada that day either, that is a topic for another thread and was certainly a topic for another time on that trip.
The bartender said, "I don't like where this joke is going." and left the bar.