At 11:17 AM 9/11/97 -0700, Doug Henwood wrote: >Michael Eisenscher wrote: > >>I know this apology is sincere, but I am bothered by your choice of words. >>It is not just a matter of offending Buddhists or Asians, it is the >>principle of feeding off of racial or ethnic or religious stereotyping that >>is at issue. > >Can someone explain to me just how "Buddha can you spare a dime" is a slur? >Doesn't it point up the incongruence of a worldly creep like Al Gore and >his worthless Dem party using a religious organization as a cash laundry? >Doesn't it presume the virtue of the religious - quite the opposite of >making fun of them? > >Doug > Doug, I saw it as gratuitous stereotyping at the expense of followers of a major world religion who in this country are primarily Asians. If similar forms of humor were interjected which made Jews, women, gays, or African Americans the object, would folks be as forgiving or blind to the potential for offense? In a nation with such a rich tradition of bigotry, innocent remarks at another's expense only feed upon and feed into perpetuation of negative stereotypes. Let me also respond here to Jim Devine, who said: [SNIP] >I think the current mood of excessive sensitivity is piss-poor >progressiveness, a substitution of changing terminology and language for >changing social reality. I highly prefer the attitude of "you call us >freaks, so we'll use the term ironically to refer to ourselves" (as the >hippies did) to that of "how dare you call us freaks?" The latter is >moralistic garbage. Let's get beyond words to deal with the real problem. >(BTW, why is "people of color" superior to "colored people"?) Well, Jim, on that theory if kids in the Black community appropriate the slur "n-----r" as a term of derision or putdown in their conversations among themselves, does that mean you have license as a white man to use it freely without any sense of self-consciousness as to its racist origins and usage? "Get beyond words....."? As one of the more prolific intellectual contributors to this list, I am amazed you now depreciate the importance of words and their meaning. Aren't words weapons of both class oppression and liberation? [SNIP] >Also, excessive sensitivity encourages revolt. I thought that was what most of the folks on this list were working toward? :-) >I can't see how any >professor could favor the imposition of "speech codes" on adolescents, who >will turn the system around, using "correct" terms in racist or sexist >ways. (For example, I recently glanced at a note that someone had stuck >under the windshield wiper of a car next to mine in the parking lot: "John, >you are such a homosexual!" it said before I stopped reading. It was >clearly using "homosexual" as a slur.) Or it will encourage universities to >be even more authoritarian, to keep those adolescents in line. We don't need speech codes for those who recognize offensive and divisive speech to draw that fact to the attention of the speaker or to express disapproval when terms of hatred, derision, and prejudice are bantied about in casual speech by unthinking people or by those who harbor such bigotry themselves. I find it interesting the most of the responses from folks on the list who can't see what's offensive in the joke or who think that objections to it are over-sensitive or PC have come from white men (who also comprise the lion's share of participants on the list). If we take such speech to be innocent and acceptable, what message does that give to people of color, or others from groups historically or currently victimized about this list and the reception they will receive here? How do we eliminate bigotry by pandering to it? Michael
