Re: [SLUG] Re: Insulting racial terms

Alan L Tyree <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.org.user-groups.slug.chat
Organization Sage Tutorial Systems Pty Ltd
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:16:07 +1100
Daniel Pittman <[email protected]> wrote:

<SNIP>

> 
> Because racism, like any other "someone else sucks because of some
> random attribute", is disruptive, discourages contributions, and
> generally makes a lot of people quite unhappy.
> 
<SNIP>

Daniel,
Take it easy. Sonia claimed that the term was used derisively. I don't
know that the claim is correct. Her web site reference only shows that
it is a Spanish word. I certainly have never heard before that it was
a term of racial derision.

The writer of the Lone Ranger, Fran Striker, claimed that he named Tonto
after the Tonto National Monument. His son claimed that Striker always
tried to use the relationship between the two men to promote tolerance.

Words change. Even if Sonia is right, the fact that some fool in the
1800s used a term derisively does not mean that everyone thereafter who
uses it is a racist. I doubt that the Spanish speakers of the world
would accept that.

Alan


>         Daniel
> -- 
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
> Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
> 


-- 
Alan L Tyree                    http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
Tel:  04 2748 6206              Fax: +61 2 4782 7092

-- 
SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.