Not promoting hate speech but what happened to all the slights/slurs/vulgarity from like the 20s and 40s. There were so many. Now it seems well I can only think of three?
So legit, racism is the reason we don't have as many slurs.
There used to be so many because you could be racist against anything! Italians have big noses, greeks are sweaty, Catholics are cultists, etc.
The racists realized they were too divided, so they invented whiteness. That guy isn't German, he's white. Now he is on our team and he can help us hate Brown people. That guy isn't French, he's white! Here fellow white friend, hold this noose.
Ok so here's my plan: We pretend to be racists so we can tell other racists that brown and black people are also white now, so everybody in the world is on the same team.
You son of a bitch! It's genius!
They didn’t invent racism in the’50s
This is all head canon and I don't feel like looking it up, but they didn't invent racism, they just invented whiteness.
That's why Irish people were discriminated (and genocided) against until someone in the 20th century. Now Irish are white. People made a huge deal about JFK being a Catholic president because he wasn't "one of them." Now Catholics are indistinguishable from other white crowds. They speak with one voice (in their minds, not a real generalization).
Jews were on their way to whiteness and then Trump happened in 2016 and the old conspiracy theories became relevant again, and now they're back to being separate.
My family is pretty liberal. Despite that i had a couple of words that i grew up hearing and didn't realize that they meant until i was an adult. When you know better you do better.
To jew someone down when negotiating a price was one. It was just a word and i didn't understand it until i thought about spelling it and realized. Yes, I'm dumb.
I work with kids and i often call them squirrels, monkeys, octopus, big dog, etc. i mean it as endearing and didn't realize that it could be offensive, especially monkey racially.
My grandma worked at a convenience store in very racially mixed, very low income area. She referred to all of the kids as porch monkeys. I thought nothing of it but now realize it can be racially offensive. In her defense, it was a time when kids were sent outside morning to evening and often gathered on the porches of a free homes.
When getting ripped off or a bad deal, that's being gyped. Thats against gypsies. I learned that one way late in life.
A coworker got jipped/gyped by a gyp, and now he hates them with a passion. I told him it's his own fault. He wanted cheaper exchange rate than bank or currency exchange offered, so agreed to buy currency at a discount in an alley. They put a good bill on top and bottom and rest was paper cut to size. LOL
Edit: I don't say gyp normally, this is a relayed story. Romani are the people.
Wow, this is my first time learning this. I don't think I've ever seen it written so I assumed it was spelled "jipped" and never made the connection.
I've never heard "gyped" or "jipped". I'd say you were "duped".
But that could be because I speak a dialect which features strong yod-coalescence. So "dune" and "june" are pronounced the same. So perhaps I have heard it, but simply eggcorned it into "dupe".
I learnt recently that even the word g**** is a slur itself. Apparently it came from people thinking they came from Egypt. Their preferred name is Roma.
There are so many songs that refer to gypsy. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to sing along or not.
I never thought of it as lazy, just kids that gather and maybe cause a little mischief, especially during school breaks.
I didn't realize nigrig was (really fuckin obviously) racist until way late in life because the people I heard use it weren't outwardly racist and pronounced it like "ne-grigged"
Somewhere along the way that became southern engineering. My mom lived in Florida for awhile so it was a good dig at both the locals and the duct tape crowd -though i grew up repairing everything with duct tape and bailing wire. My husband is an engineer - right tool for the job guy. I'm like, "pass me that mallet and a wire hanger.)
My grandpa and grandma have one for every race/creed/color/nationality/religion and so on. I ask because it kind of seems like we are sliding backwards to everyone getting labeled a slur or slight.
People like that didn't disappear, they were rightfully shamed in to shutting up. They've become emboldened with one of their own "in charge".
But don't we have lots of insults for other categories of people? People call people soyboys, incels, tankies, fashy, bible thumper, nepo babies or basement dweller.
Aren't those just the modern version of "jocks" and "limeys" (I went for those because I'm Scottish and British, you can mentally fill in the alternatives...)
It's goal was what we see today. It mobilized the left to become the language police to everyday people since most never cared about this. They might say something was R worded but never had actual prejudice or ill will against someone that was mentally disabled. This create a huge wedge that let the right capitalize on to gain more power. The left has been led around by their collar for decades. It's effective
Which three?
My theory is that universal public education was less than a generation ago in most places, printing books was still expensive, and forget movie cameras and audio recording devices. You really had to be sure of the stuff you wanted to record before you recorded it in those days, in any medium, and you needed some money to be able to do it. As a result, a lot of the content we see nowadays that documents how average people talked and behaved was never written down or filmed or whatever.
So people probably didn't really say "what in the Sam Hill..???" they probably said "what the fuck!" You just don't know it because every ten year old didn't have a 4k video camera in their pocket ready to roll on every bullshit that everyone did.
Well i like this sight but you can google most of em. Stuff against mexicans, latinos, italians, jews, arabs, black people, some white people, women, gays, ....would you like me to continue?
Oh shit I thought you meant things like bunkum or balderdash lmao
Most people realized that terms they had been using were viewed as offensive to someone because of the wildly increased communication capacity of the internet. Aside from the majority not wanting to be a dick to someone else insulting someone tends to cause trouble for the offender as well. So in purely selfish terms it was easier to just not say the things that would get you in trouble.
I tried to stop using slurs, particularly the identity based ones.
I can think of quite a few. I presume I know the three you are talking about.
Also we're classifying slurs as words specifically used with the intent of attacking someone right.
Not just a word people are offended by no matter the intent historically.
Aren't all slurs attacking something or someone you disagree with?
Not really.
What I mean is what if I started calling all Lemmy users lemmos and meant no offense, the word caught on too.
But then Lemmy users hated it. So people stop using it.
Is that a slur or not.
Theres a lot of offensive words today that have a history like that. Where they were often descriptive words and not attacking words by intent of the user.
How else do we warn others about the assholes?
Check the young republicans (or whatever they’re called) chat that leaked yesterday. I’m sure you’ll find plenty in there.
That's different. That's just pure hatred. South park nailed it with the episode where the kids have a kangaroo court because they were saying a gay slur but had no clue it was derogatory to gay people.
Remind me of the old 4-Chan rule.
“Op is always f****t”
Which isn’t an attack on gay people. It’s fine to be gay, and the original poster is ALWAYS gay. It’s the rule.
And when they played superhero and Cartman was The Coon