Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 10:53:44 -0000 From: "Paul Robinson" <paul@iconoplex.co.uk> To: "William Carrel" <william.a@carrel.org>, "FreeBSD Chat" <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: jive (was RE: was this really necessary?) Message-ID: <IPEDKJGCDFHOPEFKLIDHAEOBCCAA.paul@iconoplex.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <F34A6BC9-495D-11D7-8C79-003065D5E9A4@carrel.org>
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William Carrel wrote: > Think of all the poor Swedish who are stereotyped by The Muppets > Swedish Chef! And Google helps maintain this prejudice with their > ethnically insensitive Swedish Chef translation I just want to point something out here. People were stating that jive was harmless and was never intended to be specifically racist. I happened to know different, so pointed this fact out. Jive does owe it's existence to nothing more than the desire to be racist - nothing else - and therefore those people need to be corrected. If people find it funny, that's their choice. I don't particularly care for it, or that sense of humour. I prefer humour that involves cheese shops, dead parrots and silly walks. Hey, perhaps the British cheese federation, the RSPCA and various disabled charities will beat up on me one day because I mention those things on a mailing list in a humourous way. I'm sure if I started sending out mails to -chat about 'spazzos' though, it wouldn't do much good for me if a future employer found it, and I'd expect people to find it offensive. The Swedish chef owes it's existence to the desire of a bunch of Americans who had never met anybody from Sweden to entertain other Americans who had never met any Swedes. Whilst some Swedes may be offended, the key factor that prevents it from being completely abhorrent, is that thus far Americans have not oppressed Swedes for centuries, hung them from trees, set fire to crosses outside their homes, killed and tortured them and then had a jolly good laugh about it all. Unfortunately, in a country where local police forces composed of KKK members are considered less of a threat to civil liberty and personal safety to black people in that area, than some guy with a load of oil on the other side of the world, I think it might be prudent to not encourage racially offensive behaviour. You might call it PC-madness, but I call it being polite. > Pretty soon as a result of this oppressive stereotype, people will > start taking casual mailing lists far more seriously than they ought > to. You know, there are times when I wish that people would take FreeBSD as a whole more seriously than they do. There are times when I also agree it's time to lighten up. However, when a piece of software is an attempt to ingrain into a community a set of racial stereotypes, and people just think it's a "bit of fun", perhaps it is useful for it to be pointed out to them just what it is they are doing. That's all. Put it this way, at the moment jive is in ports. If it was in the base system or part of BSD games, however much I dislike penguin-orientated operating systems, I'd be jumping ship. Anyway, I think if this thread goes on any further, we'll just end up with a list of people who think taking the piss out of black people is OK, thereby making people wary of their political background and causing damage to the project. We will also end up with a list of people who love political correctness, which could also damage the project. Perhaps it might be a good idea to call a C&D on this topic and agree to disagree before it really gets out of hand. -- Paul Robinson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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