Quote:
Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen
It wasn't all that long ago that our society was using blackface as a way to demean and insult black people, and by not that long ago I mean it still happens today. Who are we to decide what is and isn't still offensive to someone?
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Who are we? Hopefully, we are objective, logical and rational. The alternative is that anything that someone deems offensive is treated as improper, and that's clearly untenable as anyone can be offended by anything at any time. It's also quite insulting to suggest that third parties can't make sound justments about this sort of thing. You can even have empathy for how the offended feels and still fairly assess that their feelings are not justified.
If you were brought up having been taught that someone waving at you is offensive, you would consider yourself a victim when it happens. But you would be wrong, and the harm you felt would have been caused not by the person who made a harmless gesture but by the person who taught you to feel slighted by it.
In pushing the definition of racism beyond what is logical, we can actually create new victims who would otherwise not exist, because they are victims of the responses that we'd be conditioning.