Quote: JCW555Last time I'm posting in this thread to you UncleBob. You forget one word. Connotation. Do you think that two blacks saying the n word to each other as a greeting is offensive (e.g. What's up, my n****?). No. Is the darky awards on a site named darkspyro to give users fake awards offensive? No?
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Quote: UncleBobI understand that it wasn't intended to be offensive. That's why I simply posted a message to make sure OP was aware that he chose a terribly offensive racial slur for his thread title. If I had thougbt he meant to be offensive, we'd be having a totally different conversation.
Quote:Bottom line is that this is harmless fun, can we agree on that, please?
Yes... and no.
Let's say you're a younger individual of color. You grow up in a white bread (literally) community. You probably have to deal with racism (intentional, casual, accidental, systematic) every day. So, you find an escape. Video games are a good escape - they develop your thought processes and your hand-eye coordination. So you play video games. You get into Skylanders. It's pretty popular - and you want to try and fit in with the kids at school, right? So, you play Skylanders - and you still don't *quite* fit in with the rest of the kids at your school. So, you go online. The internet is an amazing place - and, here at DarkSpyro.net, we've got a pretty amazing crew of people that, generally, I'm proud to be one of. So, young kid of color comes to this site and starts hanging out. Maybe he/she lurks for a bit, posts once or twice. Who knows.
Then, one day, after a particularly bad day at school, he/she comes home, logs in, and is greeted with this:
Maybe he/she clicks into the thread and see what it's really about. They see that it's meant to be a play on the name of the site, with absolutely no malice or bad intentions - just a fun topic where users of the site can get along and make jabs at one another. (We'll leave out the part where a user says it's fun to use that other racial slur).
But maybe they don't click into the thread. All they see is a thread title, with a word known deeply to them as an intimate racial slur, created by a person of authority on the site.
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You know the most amazing part about this all is? This is the same site where, not once, but TWICE, I've gotten blasted by users because of the concept of "generic masculine" pronouns. Something that I didn't create and is just how grammar works - and, just as here, there's absolutely no bad intentions when myself or most normal people use "generic masculine" pronouns... but, it's like you've ran over someone's puppy when you dare use "he" to describe someone you know nothing about. Meanwhile, none of those users are bothering to say anything now - when there's the same idea, no bad intentions. Except, here, history is on the side of "darky" being a negative word, while the "generic masculine" is nothing but how grammar works.