actually... it's not just the racist jokes that are hurtful, but it's also that the community doesn't seem to mind that the racist jokes are written.

like if people spoke up and condemned that kind of thing, then it wouldn't bother me so much

let me go find the racist joke and quote it here....

i didn't even bother reporting it because i felt like nothing would be done

BTW, the poster was quite amenable to the name being changed, which has been done.

On a somewhat related note I've always been quite intrigued, and maybe somewhat puzzled, by the differences in the language used to refer to indigenous people in the US and Canada. "Native American" and especially "American Indian" seem so bizarrely out of touch, or worse. But then I see organizations like:

https://www.ncai.org/

And I'm left wondering - is this a matter of it truly being no big deal to (or even accepted by) indigenous people in the US, or is it more of a grudging acceptance because there are bigger battles to fight?

glad to hear the poster was amenable to the name change.


tldr: some people think it's a big deal, some don't.



also, thanks for the question. the answer is some people don't like being called indian, and some people prefer it lol. there is the whole spectrum.

in my personal experience it's fairly commonly used by people within the community, but less liked when people outside the community use it. but i think it's fairly rare that people feel that strongly about in one or the way other.

it's almost always best to use specific tribe if you know it, like apache, lakota, navajo, etc but even then you can still sometimes get into trouble because the names are often colonizer names. like navajo comes from spanish. "dine" pronounced din eh is what they call themselves in their own language.... i think.

i think indigenous is the safest, then native.

Very interesting - thanks!

The term that is being left behind here is aboriginal, in favour of indigenous. I think First Nations is also considered acceptable, and similarly to what you mentioned, the names of the actual nations. But that's just my white guy outsider understanding of it all.

Native is an interesting one. I'm a little surprised it hasn't been discouraged, as it feels like a real colonizer term, and patronizing, depending on its use. "The natives are getting restless" comes to mind. But again, that's from my limited outside perspective.

yeah, my guess is that aboriginal has been kinda taken by people indigenous to australia. i mean i don't even know what they're called! all i know is aborigine

if you're interested in the modern day indigenous experience, there is a podcast. i highly recommend just listening to season 2. it's about a cree family from Saskatchewan. the kids are taken, and one is missing

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcas...d-finding-cleo

skip season 1. it's a totally different story.

Will have a listen one day, thanks.

Those jokes aren't racist, they are racially insensitive at worst. If you won't respect that distinction you're just getting eye-rolls from people like me.

I won't be so arrogant as to tell you what you're allowed to find offensive but I find it difficult to understand why you're offended. Before you said anything I would have found those jokes completely innocuous. You can't expect people with completely different life experiences to understand your perspective without you talking about it.

I want to stress that I don't find your feelings invalid; I just want to give some reasons why I have a hard time relating to them, some of which are probably lol-obvious and some of which maybe not.

I've never experienced racism personally directed at me. (this is the lol-obvious one)

I don't grasp the feeling of having any connection or care regarding ancestors/heritage. I don't care about anything bad that happened to my ancestors or anything bad they did. They have as much relevance to my life as literal fictional characters. Best I can do is acknowledge that your ancestors being treated worse than **** still disadvantages you in some ways today.

I don't feel any type of group unity that a lot of minorities seem to have. I don't even have any national pride whatsoever or favorite sports teams. I think this is pretty uncommon though.

I don’t think filthy expects people to understand without it being explained, which is why he is talking about it.

Now you know someone else’s perspective and what you do with that information relies on what you choose to do and how you choose to respond to someone else’s emotions and experience.

appreciate the post.

it sounds like you don't get what i'm saying, but you are open to learning?

yeah, i'm not really all *that* concerned with what happened to people 500 years ago. but some people are, and i respect that.

but i am very concerned with what happens to people right now. and your post kind of exemplifies a big part of the problem. people just aren't aware.

ok so having your ancestors forced off their land and onto reservations disempowers them as a group, and impoverishes them. then you have the govt literally taking the kids at gunpoint to genocidal schools where they are taught being indigenous is bad. this isn't ancient history. these schools closed in the usa in the 1970s.

so this is my parents generation. and their parents and on and on for generations. these kids are abused physically and sexually. that makes it very difficult for them to be good parents. so the trauma is generational.

and people don't even know these things go on.

so jokes about reservations are really quite hurtful.

Right - not even close to ancient history, and I think that's something that those of us who have never had to endure such bullshit fail to appreciate sometimes. Here in Canada, I think they went even longer (they definitely did, but I'm just not sure if the truly abhorrent behaviour went on until the end, or if they had reformed somewhat by the end). So...~40 years ago, this was still happening. In other words, some people of my age (early 50s) went through this themselves. And if they were traumatized by this experience, there's a good chance their children would have been directly impacted as well - children that might still be in their teens now, or certainly their twenties. So this isn't all about our ancestors - it's also about many people who are here today.

This is all coming from a white man who is lucky enough to, as I said earlier, never had to endure such bullshit, so I'm not claiming any first hand knowledge of any of this. I've heard stories from those who have, but that's the extent of my knowledge - take the words of others like the OP over mine.

yeah the last "school" in canada closed in 1996 iirc. but like bobo fett said, maybe it wasn't as bad at the end. but they were mostly run by catholics who were still doing plenty of awful in the 90s and 80s. and there were still mass unmarked graves on the school grounds.

i didn't go to these schools myself. but i do have personal horror stories of close family who did. and it deeply affected my life.

and it wasn't just the schools. so many indigenous kids were put into white families. im sure well intentioned white families(at least mostly) but it didn't work out so well.

in the podcast i mentioned, the mom was born around 1950 and sent to one of these so called schools. it ruined her. she had 5 kids herself but wasn't able to be a mom to them, probably because of the trauma at the school, and the lack of good parenting she had because her parents were also traumatized. so social services took her kids away. the siblings(who were born in the 1970s) were split up and traumatized. most/all ended up in white families and ended up with all kinds of psychological problems.

I think anyone that's posted this disparaging term should be dealt with also. It's just not right. Context shouldn't matter either.

So I guess for your original post you should have some time off. I hope you don't get perma'ed. You went almost 55k posts without posting a racist word, that should merit some consideration. Maybe a week or two ban? Just please be considerate and think of others next time.

Oh my god I missed your copy and paste of an offensive joke the 1st time through..... yikes

Is there evidence that censoring things that people find offensive makes the world better? I can relate to wanting to protect people's feelings, but I always secretly (or not secretly) wonder if it actually helps - or maybe more importantly, if it is an efficient way of helping.

Of course, all we can do right now is what we think is correct, even if we acknowledge that we might be proven wrong in the future. I'm just wondering what historians or sociologists in 100 or 500 years will think of our efforts.

nope but it's never really been about that. Its about bleeding heart libs trying to make themselves feel better

Catering to the lowest common denominator is no way to run anything.

1 person's preferences shouldn't hold weight over everyone else

im sure you all know that it was united states(and canada) govt policy to kill native americans.

there was a governor of one state who signed a proclamation to void another governor's proclamation to "kill indians and take their property"

when did this happen in the history of the united states.....




https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle...e1c5429b64b886


saying "r*dskins" is not ok.