What perfectly normal words/phrases have been ruined for you because of bigotry?
What perfectly normal words/phrases have been ruined for you because of bigotry?
I'll start: "Shoving x down our throats"
the amount of people who have told me i'm one of the good ones because "at least you don't shove gayness down our throats," or "i'm fine with it if they dont shove it down our throats" has made me cringe whenever i hear that phrase used in any context, even harmlessly. how about you guys?
88
I'm Chinese and we fucking love 8 since it rhymes with fortune in Mandarin. I'm also born roughly around 1988 so a lot of people in my generational cohort have 88 in their screen names.
Every time I see username_88 I gotta try to figure out if they're Chinese, my age, or a Nazi.
damn, that's a rough one. Nazis really took a whole ass number
I graduated in 2014 and for awhile my email address was "lastname14@whatever.com". My partner insists 14 isn't tainted enough that I needed to worry about it, and possibly he's right. Still, I did get a new email address, because I'd feel just awful if I'm giving my email to someone and they see the 14 and have to wonder if I mean it in the 14 words sense or not. Fucking internet nazis, ruining perfectly good numbers for the rest of us!
Expatriate/expat
Maybe it is not a popular opinion. And perhaps calling it "bigotry" is too far. But I work in a different country from where I was born, and I consider myself an immigrant. I have however seen this trend of referring to educated professionals as "expats" to distinguish us from people who immigrate to escape conflicts and/or poverty. I don't agree that this distinction is necessary or valuable, and I feel uncomfortable when I am described with that term. If I am called that, I usually chuckle and let people know that I'm an immigrant!!
yeah I feel like the use of expat borders on
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Expat emphasises where they came from (wealthy, 'first world') rather than where they've moved to. It's a way of keeping themselves seperate and unsullied with oblique reference to where they previously lived.
To me am "expat" is a person who's dispatched by their company or organization to work overseas and often has all their housing and expenses paid for. Almost always they'll be PMCs or PMC adjacent. The term used to imply a certain degree of prestige and wealth (imagine a PMC salary but you didn't have to pay for housing or transportation) so other people also latched onto it.
In Asia, where I'm from and live, it's mostly white western English "teacher" types who insist on being called Expats. For that reason, I make it a point to call them "migrant workers". Though if anything that's an insult to migrant workers since they work hard and perform socially valuable tasks, unlike most English "teachers" I know.
this for sure! this kind of bigotry doesn't apply to me as a
but this does always bother mePermanently Deleted
I always just thought that "expat" meant a person dispatched by a company or organization to do work in another country and with an expectation that the worker in question moves back to their country of origin when their contract is over. Whereas an immigrant tends to be a person who moves permanently / with an idea to settle in another country. Though i will agree with the other commenters here that my definition of "expat" is essentially a whites-only word for "migrant worker".
Spook, because it's actually a slur.
It used to be an innocent word when I was a kid or a phrase for people working in intelligence, now I can't say or see it without racism coming to mind thanks to chuds.
I still don't think this one is used enough as a slur to retire. Using it as a slur would make me think you're literally a boomer, it's not common. Using it to refer to feds is more common, and using it to mean "scare" is even more common than that, so it's basically just a normal word
The British tv series Spooks is called MI-5 in the US.
Have you had the pleasure of watching The Spook Who Sat by the Door yet? CW: Lots of N Words. But they get what's coming to them.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Logic, reason, realistic and idealist
Logic and Reason are dogwhistles for "I'm a massive shithead, don't listen to me".
"You're being too emotional/idealistic!" in reference to my beliefs regarding concepts like nature vs nurture, competition vs cooperation etc. Even though me, as an ecology undergrad, just used my scientific knowledge of ecosystems to justify my position.
And funny that this is always said to me by someone who has never studied anything to do with biology. But they have been taught to believe that anything that isn't vicious cruelty and domination is unrealistic and emotional.
There is also something to be said about emotion itself not necessarily being devoid of reason and logic too. But its something people just assume is unreasonable because of how "emotion vs logic" as two opposites is ingrained in our culture.
Sorry, I rambled a bit there.
The fascists that say "logic and reason" tend to be the most unreasonable, illogical and emotionally charged shitheads out there.
Anytime people say I'm not logical. I'm emotional
POC. Idk if this counts exactly since it started with bigotry then was reclaimed/euphemized
The part that bothers me is that it feels a little like I'm still being called a "colored person" just in a different phrasing, and later on, in abbreviation. I still call myself brown, white people as white, etc. without issue.
So I think it's more that brown people have always known ourselves to be brown, but not "colored" — that is a slur used by white people against us. Like in our native languages we have a concept of skin shade. But not "coloredness"
Also "POC" sounds a little weird to me, like how saying "people of brownness" or POB feels artificial and awkward.
Not really against "POC" though since people use it broadly already.
irl I usually see POC or BIPOC used in three ways:
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Someone is pissed and wants to weaponize their or someone else's identity and not think any deeper than "you just did a racism becauss that person you criticized? Yeah they're BIPOC". That someone is almost always a liberal and the person in question is usually being validly criticized.
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HR types talking about their DEI program.
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The nicest and most empathetic lefty on the planet is trying their very best to be inclusive while organizing.
I also try to just say brown or black etc it's just so much less awkward.
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yeah, when POC started becoming more mainstream i did feel a little weird saying it.
I'm back to saying black and brown folx. If there's a group that refers to themselves as BIPoC I use that, but not really as a means to describe people. It's very vague as an acronym.
Speaking of, it's always been odd to me that race is a totally made up construct and yet black and brown are okay and yellow and red are racist.
I appreciate it tried to come from a supportive place, but I feel like any term that groups an entire range of people as being a single label is going to be inherently problematic. As opposed to just using an adjective to describe a human, it turns people into something else. It's an important but subtle lingual distinction between describing one part of you, and ascribing your entire existence as beholden to that one part of you.
If I'm a person who likes beans, I'm still a human being with many other complex dimensions to learn about. If I'm a "Beanlover" then people suddenly assume they know everything about me, and I can be separately thought of and judged from the rest of the population.
I mean I am a bean lover, but that's beside the point.
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"Shoving down our throats" just makes me think about foie gras. 🤷♀️
Just a PSA if anyone is curious to try it:
Like, I'll try anything once. I have a passion for culinary arts and food culture. But this was way over sold. I remember reading a description of it from Anthony Bordain where he basically said it would be his death row last meal. So my partner and I were out for a fine dining anniversary dinner at a celebrity chef's restaurant (it's hard to come by in the US, so I figure if I'm going to try it, do it right), and I ordered it. All that hype, all the abuse of the animals to produce it...
CW: gross animal product
It's like thick meaty snot.
The flavor was different from anything I've tried, but it was relatively bland. And that texture... Why would anyone want this?
"Piece of cake!" "Wow this is a cake walk!" or just the term "Cake Walk".
"Cake Walk".
TIL this has a racist af history, whew
Surprised I haven't seen "Gamer" yet. There was a time when I'd call myself that, now I actively avoid the label at all costs and if someone asks what I do for fun I list every hobby I have except gaming unless they bring it up first.
Goober. Not even joking.
I really enjoy language. Doesn't matter which one, doesn't matter what aspect of it. I just thoroughly enjoy learning about language. So it's not uncommon for me to encounter a word and ponder its etymology or whether it's related to another word, that sort of thing, and I'll be preoccupied with figuring out this little linguistic riddle that I have happened to encounter somewhere in my life. And of course this is exactly happens when I encounter the word "goober" one time.
I mean, wtf kind of a word is goober anyway? Seems like there's nothing like it in English. So I look up the etymology of the word.
Turns out that goober likely comes from the central & south African word for peanut - nguba. So immediately "goober" is associated with slavery. Very cool. What a start!
The word nguba makes it over to the US and then it develops racist and classist undertones because "goober" begins to refer to people, specifically backwards, uncultured, and largely black people. It's the uncultured and uncivilised people who call peanuts nguba, thus they themselves become goobers.
For such a seemingly benign word that's about as mild an insult as you could imagine, it carries the weight of slavery, the white man's burden, and largely institutionalised classism on its shoulders.
I think this one has gotten so far from its roots as to be unrecognizable - people call their own kids goober. language is wild
me with "reprobate"
Just recently I learned square dancing has roots in slavery. Not that I ever really enjoyed square dancing,
Don't forget that square dancing had a major revival when Henry Ford started a campaign to promote it in order to counter the growing popularity of Jazz, which of course he saw as a Jewish plot to corrupt the youth with Black culture
Ch*g when used to describe finishing a drink quickly
I'm not sure if it's a slur everywhere but here it's a slur for indigenous people
Fucking Chigs.
Yes I'm still salty about Space Above and Beyond getting cancelled.
Take a chance
Fuck that is a deep cut. I should go find that show, loved it when it came out. Probably hasn't aged well tho.
Colloquially we occasionally use the word "scull/skull" here as a verb to mean the same thing. The etymology is disputed but it likely traces its roots in the Scandinavian/Viking word skål (of approximately the same pronunciation), which means "cheers". I think this term is ripe for a bit of the good ol' cultural appropriation if you're up for it.
I remember 4 years ago when lefty sorta people would use "woke" unironically as a compliment.
I do whenever my annoying coworker begins complaining about "the woke", just as my way of fucking with him.
the potato variety, because i heard about the racist football team more often than i shopped for non-local potatoes
I was raised by two white supremacists and was surrounded by racism as a kid. Certain common names like Jesus or Latisha have been used in so many horrible racist ‘jokes’ around me growing up that I wince when I hear them.
They are fine names btw :)
"the final solution"
I just remembered a bunch more:
Cakewalk (and by extension takes the cake), peanut gallery, and stud.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk