Charlie Bernstein
Senior Member
You can call it racist. Its your keyboard. I just don't think racist is accurate. Urban Dictionary says it's fine, but my New World Dictionary doesn't. And since I haven't changed, I'd use words like:I can go along with that. So let's forget about the opening post and think about something else instead. Something inspired by this thread, but...
Not too long ago I heard a man refer to a Latino woman as "Miss Housekeeping." The woman was not a housekeeper, but in fact was a person of great accomplishment deserving of respect. The man called her "Miss Housekeeping" simply because she is Latino.
Latina is a race, so I think it's safe to say that the comment was racist. I suppose we could argue about whether or not it's bad, but we can't argue about whether or not it's racist. I think the comment meets everyone's definition of racist.
Now, suppose someone were to refer to a German man as "Mister Hitler." In fact, he shares virtually no similarities with Hitler, the comment was made simply because the guy is German.
What do you call that? If German is not a race, then we can't call the comment racist, but the act must have a name. Note that I'm not asking whether the comment was good or bad, politically correct or not; don't care about that. I just want to know what to call it if I can't call it racist.
- anti-German
- ethnocentric
- intolerant
- mean
- prejudiced
- snarky
- stereoyping
- unkind
- xenophobic
But since Germans and German Americans aren't an oppressed minority, I don't think the original post was any of those things. It was just funny.
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