Rajbir said:
HarmanSingh said:
psoni1 said:
HarmanSingh said:
Oh the irony of people who use the N word and defend its use being offended by this facebook page. If you wanna be an ignorant bigot don't complain when someone is one to you...
i agree with the point youre making but its also important to note that theres a huge difference in casually using a somewhat ubiquitous, albeit inappropriate slur, and creating/joining a group whose sole purpose it is to hate on black people...i dont think anyone here has done that and if they have they def shouldnt be offended by these groups
A person who is not black and uses the N word is more than merely "inappropriate"...they are either intentionally using a word which is used to degrade black people and stir up a painful racial past or they are merely ignorant to the pain and anger the word evokes. Either way- it is more than inappropriate..it is downright disgraceful and disgusting.
People in this facebook group could easily say this group is a joke and that turban jokes are "somewhat ubiquitous".
black people use the word ***** all the time. notice that they have adopted it themselves as a term of endearment and have changed it form ****** to *****. if a minority chooses to accept a term on their own, and then allow others outside their racial group to call them as such is their choice. i grew up with a lot of black friends, i said it (once or twice), they didnt care. yea its not appropriate to say it often if your not black but .......
that is not relevant to these sites. we as a culture and religion that the turban seriously. if we were to joke about it and then others did thats one thing. but ive never heard a sikh, or punjabi person joke about their pagh/turban. no one walkes around making fun of Christians and their holy water like that, and so neither should anyone remark on our religion like that.
using the word ***** and demeanin a religion are not comparable things ...
1. You are not black- you have no business using the N word. Is their a double standard? Yes. That is life. History is a double standard and really, you need to get over it. There is no mixed history of the N word in the mouths of people who are not black. It means one thing throughout history. You have some friends who don't care if you use it? I can probably give you double who would find it offensive. So why use it? What do you hope to accomplish by using it? I can find you some Sikhs who wouldn't care if white people were clearly offensive to Sikhs...does that mean its cool for white people to be in such groups? There is no attributional ambiguity if a black person uses the word...there is if a person who is not black uses it. Come to Detroit and go up to a random person and say "wusup N"..see what happens 9/10 times. That should tell you what the word means. And if its no big deal, why not say it all the time? Why only saw it once or twice? Frankly, it comes down to respect. If you respect that the word has a particularly offensive and hate filled history which offends most blacks if used by non-blacks you would not use it.
2. It is relevant to these sites. If you are to claim this sort of ignorance should not be accepted, you should also claim ignorance towards other ethnic and racial groups should not be accepted. On this very forum you had an entire thread dedicated to Sardar jokes. On this forum you saw video of teams singing shabads in a way to mock Gurbani that were posted up on youtube. On this forum you had people defending both and saying those who found it offensive are taking things to seriously. And yes, Christians are mocked. As are Muslims. As are Hindus. As are Jews. If you don't think they are, you need to look a little closer at popular culture and search a little harder on facebook..you will find every group mocked and discriminated against...some by the very people who find the turban group offensive. We as a culture in North America DON'T take the turban seriously. And if we did, we would see what it truly represents and stand against discrimination, hatred and oppression against others even more than we fight against that for ourselves. A Sikh defends others before he/she defends his/herself. Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji gave his life to defend Hindus, not Sikhs. That is what the Pugh is about. We see the world as our community and all of humanity as our cause. If we didn't post about other facebook groups that are offensive and brushed over them, maybe even passively supported them we have no right to complain about this group.
3. To you it may not be comparable. To me and to most black people it is. That word has just as much if not more historical significance than persecution of the Pugh- and this is coming from a Sardar. It evokes just as much, if not more pain and anger than this group. It represents hatred of black culture, hatred of dark skin, hatred of cultural and ethnic groups, genocide of people of color, oppression of black people, colonization, slavery, Jim Crow. So yeah, I think the facebook group is comparable to the N word.
