As noted, calling Zack Kassian a thug or a monkey or ape, not offensive and actually very appropriate, accurate descriptors. Calling Wayne Simmonds or Ryan Reaves or Jarome Iginla such things, even in context to just their hockey play, no it's not okay.
This argument, treating people different based on their skin colour, seems like exact opposite of what we should be doing. It’s the “separate but equal” argument all over again.
Good lord man...its only because the guy didnt catch an artery...otherwise his wife is a widow today. Im sure the knife wound in his neck feels just great! What's next...he will be OK because he has insurance?
As I said, not a single policeman that I can find has been killed in N America with a knife, and yet thousands of suspects with knives have been shot dead, thousands.
Having someone threaten you with a knife is not pleasant, being attacked with a knife isn't nice either, I have had both happen but I don't have the luxury of a gun, a taser, a night stick, a Kevlar vest, a partner to assist me and a radio to bring back up in a seconds to minutes in most situations, I just had to retreat and deescalate things, something the cops can do just as easily.
Honestly, I thought thug was a compliment for a long time. I heard it quite often playing basketball. Thug move bro. But that was in the before time...in the long, long ago when things like basketball were good.
I think if you're calling someone a monkey they'd better be under 2 or an actual monkey. And I wouldn't use thug just cause I'm not a white guy trying to be black and because it does seem like I'd be referring to black people in a negative way.
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Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
As I said, not a single policeman that I can find has been killed in N America with a knife, and yet thousands of suspects with knives have been shot dead, thousands.
Having someone threaten you with a knife is not pleasant, being attacked with a knife isn't nice either, I have had both happen but I don't have the luxury of a gun, a taser, a night stick, a Kevlar vest, a partner to assist me and a radio to bring back up in a seconds to minutes in most situations, I just had to retreat and deescalate things, something the cops can do just as easily.
And i would suggest that the reason for this is.....because the cops shot them before getting stabbed.
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This argument, treating people different based on their skin colour, seems like exact opposite of what we should be doing. It’s the “separate but equal” argument all over again.
Did you happen to get the words in my post that say “purposefully obtuse”?
Do you mean someone in a car on a traffic stop that an officer is approaching, or someone flooring it towards an officer in a car?
...cause if someone's using their car as a weapon at you I understand shooting in that scenario, and if someone is trying to inflict fatal wounds on you I understand shooting in that scenario. Even with corrupt cops in the US they are typically not just walking up to people on traffic stops and opening fire. So what are we saying here?
I'm saying if you are 10 foot away from someone with a knife they are no more threat to you no matter what they are shouting than if you are 10 foot away from someone in a car that is stationary, there is a reason cops don't get stabbed to death, they are a close quarters weapon that most people don't know how to use effectively, are little use against more that one person at a time, there may be situations in some remote community where a policeman works on his own with no help for hours that I can see shooting someone with a knife but there are no circumstances where a policeman has a partner and back up a few minutes away at best where they need to shoot someone with a knife as their first option.
And i would suggest that the reason for this is.....because the cops shot them before getting stabbed.
I would suggest it’s due to North Americans nonexistent knife skills. Have you ever seen a North American knife fight? It’s like watching a weak armed baby try to stick a balloon with a toothpick. As long as we’re suggesting things.
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Coach, I’m sorry bud, but the take that it’s okay to use non-racial terms on a white person, but suddenly becomes a racial slur on an non-white, is pretty whack. That seems to fly in the face of looking beyond skin tone.
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No, no…I’m not sloppy, or lazy. This is a sign of the boredom.
I'm not sure if I have ever used the word thug. It seems like something an old man says about scary young people.
Haha, yep that about sums it up. Over hundreds of interactions over years I can't remember someone using the word thug to describe anyone.
But I know clearly from just following US news at even a glance that the word "thug" has been used pretty commonly south of the border to describe black people disparagingly. I guess transplant may not have heard it used that way as someone who's (assuming) lived in Canada his whole life.
This argument, treating people different based on their skin colour, seems like exact opposite of what we should be doing. It’s the “separate but equal” argument all over again.
This sort of ignores how the English language works, it’s worthwhile to recognise that not all offensive or derogatory words are offensive or derogatory in all contexts.
Examples:
- You can call your kid a “little monkey,” you should not call a Black person a monkey
- You can y’all about your oriental rug, you should not called an Asian person an oriental
- You can say something is “savage,” you should not call a First Nations person a savage
- You can talk about the Jewish ghettos from history, you should not call a person from a poor neighbourhood “ghetto”
- You can refer to a criminal or a bully as a thug, you should not call a Black person a thug
It might seem like the opposite of what we should be doing, but what it actually is, is considering context and being respectful of how words can mean different things and different contexts according to the people or group of people receiving them. That is something we SHOULD be doing. That’s part of being a human, is having empathy for others.
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I find it shocking that some of you guys still can't understand why using the word Thug in this thread is a bad idea.
If you want to try to understand why it's a bad idea, watch the news and pay attention to who is using it right now. More importantly pay attention to when they haven't used it (I'll give you a hint, remember all those white guys with guns storming the state capitol).
For a fairly large portion of society "Thug" especially in our current context, is 100% a dog whistle.
I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that some of you don't know/understand that, but arguing about it is totally missing the point of what is going on right now.
When a person of color tells you why that word is offensive in this context, you explaining why you don't mean it that way, or why it shouldn't, even if you are 100% sincere and on their side, it is similar to saying "All lives matter".
Yes, it is true, but saying it is not helping, and it's missing the point entirely.
One way you can contribute in a positive way right now, is not to argue over semantics, or explain why someone shouldn't be offended, it is to listen to what they are saying, and think about the effect what your actions and words are having.
You want to call Zach Kassian a thug in a GDT, fine, go ahead, in that context you can pretty safely argue that there are no racial overtones, and yeah, that's an appropriate place to argue over whether or not it is a racially insensitive word.
Using it in a thread about BLM protests, and ongoing violence over the death of a black man, maybe not the best time or place.
I think it has something to do with this.
**Oh well, tom and jerry moving the mouse hole gif doesn't work for me, I'm to lazy to fix it**
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You are giving words credit for cultural biases, which is an attribution error. I think the connection works in the other direction, you can pick any word you want to substitute, eventually it will give you the same feeling the word thug does. Call gangs and mobs and bullies Apples, in ten years you be upset that I would use the word apple to describe a black guy (changes to structures and cultures need to happen, the meaning of words will just follow what people really think, regardless of what the word is).
I also worry that conversations descending into this, is exactly what Trump needs to demovitate centrists who believe they have changed with what someone wants to be called, but can literally not keep up with people running from their stereotypes.
Did you happen to get the words in my post that say “purposefully obtuse”?
Nah sorry, I gave up reading it when I realized you were advocating for racism.
Your argument is pretty much the exact belief Michael Scott had in The Office episode “Gay Witch Hunt” when he called Oscar gay for being “gay” until he was told that Oscar was actually homosexual and was horrified to learn that he called a gay person gay.
If you believe a word is offensive to call certain people but not others, and the only difference is their skin colour, then that’s racist.
Coach, I’m sorry bud, but the take that it’s okay to use non-racial terms on a white person, but suddenly becomes a racial slur on an non-white, is pretty whack. That seems to fly in the face of looking beyond skin tone.
This isn’t about “looking beyond skin tone”. It’s about recognizing the ways that people of a certain skin tone get systematically oppressed by others, even when it’s not done with intent or maliciousness or even insults any particular person of colour. If I’ve been learning one thing over the past few days it’s that this idea of seeing the world “colourblind” is one of the highest points of white privilege. The world is not colourblind and to decide that we ourselves are makes us blind to what we are doing that perpetuates disparity and oppression. Even if it’s just a word.
If you want to argue it’s not okay to call ANYONE a thug, because hurt feelings, fine. It’s a different discussion. To me, it’s like saying all lives matter. It’s true. But it’s missing the point.
I'm saying if you are 10 foot away from someone with a knife they are no more threat to you no matter what they are shouting than if you are 10 foot away from someone in a car that is stationary
How on God's green flat earth could this be possible. I'm assuming in both scenarios the suspect has only a knife - the person 10 feet away standing up can close the distance and kill you before you even unholster (in fact that distance is 21 feet). The person in the car has to open the door and get out.
I must not be understanding this correctly.
So we have no idea if she had the knife above her charging full speed at the officer, but we've seen videos in this country of what police do when men or women are holding knives in a non-threatening manner. Maybe he killed this woman Chauvin-style in cold blood, but my immediate reaction when reading this story is not that the police chief is lying.
How on God's green flat earth could this be possible. I'm assuming in both scenarios the suspect has only a knife - the person 10 feet away standing up can close the distance and kill you before you even unholster (in fact that distance is 21 feet) . You're done. The person in the car has to open the door and get out.
I must not be understanding this correctly.
No Acey, I'm not saying a car driver with a knife, just an angry guy in a car telling the cops to eff off and he aint getting out of the car, cops tell a guy with a knife to drop the knife, he doesn't and they shoot him, they tell a guy in a car to get out of the car and they don't shoot him, even thought the guy in the car is statistically the only one that poses a threat to actually kill the cops.
A policeman is at far greater risk from a guy in a car with no knife than a guy with a knife and no car and yet we don't see the police shooting drivers if they don't get out of the car the way we do when some poor drunk mentally ill or just stupid schmoe waves a kitchen knife around
Last edited by afc wimbledon; 06-04-2020 at 06:08 PM.
How on God's green flat earth could this be possible. I'm assuming in both scenarios the suspect has only a knife - the person 10 feet away standing up can close the distance and kill you before you even unholster (in fact that distance is 21 feet). The person in the car has to open the door and get out.
I must not be understanding this correctly.
Just back up and de-escalate the situation, its easy!
No Acey, I'm not saying a car driver with a knife, just an angry guy in a car telling the cops to eff off and he aint getting out of the car, cops tell a guy with a knife to drop the knife, he doesn't and they shoot him, they tell a guy in a car to get out of the car and they don't shoot him, even thought the guy in the car is statistically the only one that poses a threat to actually kill the cops.
A policeman is at far greater risk from a guy in a car with no knife than a guy with a knife and no car and yet we don't see the police shooting drivers if they don't get out of the car the way we do when some poor drunk mentally ill or just stupid schmoe waves a kitchen knife around
I think you're imagining the guy with a knife isn't really very aggressive. Did you watch the video I posted? That guy with a machete really wanted to kill a cop with it. 10 feet became 6 inches in about 5 seconds and it took four or five other cops to shoot him dead. The guy in the other machete video was sort of confused and not really trying very hard. Huge difference.
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