Sure this is racist, but it’s also just teenagers doing stupid teenagers stuff. They probably thought this was incredibly edgy… They should just be punished accordingly, maybe a mandatory course on racism or something.
The racist rhetoric is definitely out there, I don’t know who is denying that. I don’t expect it will ever go away. It’s like when you break a bone at age 40, it will heal but will always remain a weak spot. However, I do think the current generation overall is doing a good effort to push the rhetoric away.
I read your comment thread this morning and it’s been bouncing around my head all day. I agree with you, and there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on about how everything online is so serious and black and white. If you do something wrong you’re evil incarnate and you deserve instant excommunication.
Your comment being so heavily downvoted is a good example. I think your stance is the most reasonable, and I think if this all played out in the real world you’d have a vast majority of people agreeing with you. But for some reason once it’s on the internet you’re unanimously wrong and it’s not up for discussion.
I’ve been on the wrong side of an “am I the asshole” post one time and it was bizarre seeing the anger of people on the internet compared to the relaxed opinions of real people that heard the story. I wish there was a term for this phenomenon because I see it everywhere. Terminally online people who can’t just see nuance and realise that we all do stupid shit.
I don’t really have a point but I thought I’d let you know you inspired some thought in a single person from the void.
There’s certain topics that seem to instigate this kind of polarisation. Racism being one of them. I posted my comment with the intention to not talk about racism, but talk about teenagers being stupid. That was my naivety, I see that now. Another topic I avoid most of the time are discussions about gender and sexuality and of course politics, but sometimes I can’t help myself and I mingle in these discussions against my better judgement. I try to thread carefully but often burn myself regardless.
I’m clearly a brutal racist, according to the downvotes. I’m also clearly a nazi and an American liberal. And I’m also a bad parent who’ll never speak to their children again when they grow old enough to leave the house. I think maybe the size of Lemmy makes the extremes more obvious, because there is no separate areas for different groups of people. They all come together in the same places. Also maybe it’s the kinds of people that get drawn to places like this, it’s not mainstream, so casual Internet users don’t find their way here, you’ll have to be a techy or a “terminally online” person, as you put it so nicely.
I don’t take all these people all to serious though. I’m fortunate enough to have an active life that gets me out into the real world a lot. I’ve learned a lot of life by just living it. There’s many parts of life I don’t get to experience or understand though, but it seems like this isn’t the place to get to know them.
Maybe it’s best if I just stick to the memes and the star trek and get my news feed from a different source.
I’m the same, I have an active life and don’t take it seriously. I find it easier on Lemmy because you can put it down to a crazy instance and you can’t see your overall upvotes so nothing matters! Me and my friends enjoy going back to my AITAH post to laugh at the insanity of online people, it makes a great party story. Keep posting sense!
Apologists like you are part of the problem and one big reason why it’s still there.
This is not an abstract problem of rhetoric. Shit like this is actively hurting people. It normalises hateful speech and behaviour against minorities.
Meanwhile my white daughter is being taunted at school by black children calling her the n-word (with hard R) and saying “you can’t say it but we can”. Soo what can we do about that? If it’s going to be an unspoken word it should be for all. Kids will do stupid shit.
Edit: so downvotes and no response is just as much an apologist as the other response. Why can kids taunt with words that are supposed to be off limits? It only perpetuates the issue by reminding kids that those words exist, their usage should be stopped by all so they can fade from the vocabulary.
Soo what can we do about that?
Talk to the school authorities? That’s what I would do if my kid were being bullied.
The bullying is the problem here, not the word being used.
Why can kids taunt with words that are supposed to be off limits?
They can’t? Bullying is wrong no matter what words you use.
Because it’s not your place to tell people from a marginalized group how they are allowed to interact with the slurs that have been used against them. Reclaiming words and for once holding the power around the word is their right if they so choose.
It’s your job as a parent to explain the historical and social context to your children. You have work to do if your child is bothered they can’t call other kids a slur that those children have reclaimed. It does nobody any good to bury our heads in the sand, say persecuted people can’t say it if my privileged child can’t say it, and pretend there’s no complex history there.
I’ve done some pretty stupid stuff as a teenager, because I thought it was funny to upset people. I thought I was being edgy. It never occurred to me that hurting people actually hurt people. I was a teenager, all I cared about was me and my friends.
I could’ve done this as a teenager, but I would see the error of my ways after it was pointed out to me by the entire school and the news papers and the whole world. I would not be thinking about the Co sequences of my actions before hand. That’s not what teenagers do. That’s what teenagers need to learn, some are just a bit slower in learning that.
I’m not an apologists. This a hurtful act, a disgrace and it should be punished. All I’m saying is that teenage boys can be stupid like this. If this was done by grown man, it would’ve been pure evil. Now it is a large part stupidity, not less hurtful, just a different origin. If these were grown men, they would be scum. I don’t know these boys, they might be scum already, but maybe they can still change and grow up to be normal, tolerable, non-racist people.
I’m sorry, nobody taught you that “that hurting people actually hurt people.”
But that’s just the point. We can’t excuse behaviour like this as “boys will be boys”. Behaviour like this needs to have consequences that actually hurt, not a slap on the wrist, so these kids have a chance to learn.
If they get away with this with just a “Hey, that’s not okay, don’t do it again. Teenagers haha”, what you actually teaching them, is that it’s not that bad. And they grow up into adults who think hateful language is not that bad.
Teenagers might have underdeveloped judgment, but thats not necessarily something they learn on their own. Moral judgment isn’t genetic and something that you grow into on your own. Moral standards and judgments are taught by your society and your environment.
So do me a favour and teach teenagers instead of excusing them with their age.
