If people are out looking to be offended, they will find an excuse to be offended.

Unless Chief Thunder's design was meant to purposely be racist, then it isn't. Not unlike the Confederate flag on the roof of the General Lee, it's a symbol that people are misinterpreting.

Stop banning words and symbols, and start understanding the meaning behind them. The more you try to hide and cover up supposedly "offensive" words, symbols, and the like, the more they're going to hurt when people bring them up to use as a weapon.

These kind of threads rarely if ever go well.

Well said.

The logic that something isn't racist if someone says it's not intended to be racist is so full of holes I don't even know where to start, so I won't.

I'll just address the whole "banning" idea, ie the usual panicked shrill of those that believe that our rights are being ripped right out from under us at every turn.

To me, this well worn media spawned refrain of the (not actually) oppressed is often misleading. The PC police are obviously not an actual police force and the government isn't outlawing the use of words.

So who is enforcing this "correctness" that some seem to feel helpless against? Mike at Double Helix said that they chose to modernize Thunder because they thought that the feather mohawk made him seem more like a caricature of a Native American and they wanted something more authentic.

It wasn't Ken Lobb or Microsoft or the PC police. But the dev themselves using their freedom to make their own decision. Still, some think they were forced, though by whom is certainly debateable.

The way I see it, as a society grows, evolves, progresses, etc, I think that there tends to be a growing realization with regards to inequalities, injustices and the many words, attitudes, colloquialisms and overall culture that these issues were rooted in and over time, I think that many shrug out of it themselves before eventually desiring that level of human respect, decency, evolution and modernity from others, and anything less than that is generally regarded as hatred and/or willfull ignorance.

To some, the stars and bars are a cultural symbol of the south, of strength and unity and recovery and pride. But to others, it's a symbol of separatism, and a war fought over a culture that embraced using forced servitude, the whip, chains, enslavement of families and children, a culture of acceptance of human trafficking, degradation, harassment and hangings, blood and tears. Who's right? It's all in the eye of the beholder.

I always find the whole PC police idea amusing because most people tend to talk out of one side of their mouth about freedom from oppression or persecution while talking out of the other side of their mouth about banning something or taking some freedom away from someone else.

For every liberal that want gay rights and to take your guns away, there's a conservative wants the right to arms and opposes gay rights. For every aethiest or agnostic that doesn't want a Christian agenda forced upon them, there's a Christian that doesn't want a secularist agenda forced upon them.

Pick your issue, there's enough persecution to go around. In this situation, for every person that wants to say what they feel without fear of persecution, there's a person being persecuted by what that first person says that doesn't want to be.

So yeah, the PC police don't rule our culture. There's a balance, and enough loud mouthed assholes on both sides to keep it that way. Of course, I could go in to the media and how they do such an expert job at making everyone feel like their rights, their "America" etc are being taken away. Firing up viewers, fanning the flames, fostering division and jingoism and fear to increase ratings, etc. But that's a different rant for a different day.

Long story short: You haven't lost any right to say or feel anything, even if the amount of people who think you're a jerk for saying something or feeling a certain way may or may not be on the rise (depending on who you ask). That's our anonymous, "me first," self-actualizing, self-absorbed internet culture for ya. Say whatever you want and prepare for others to do the same.

The meaning behind words will always be more powerful than the words themselves, lest someone look upon them at a superficial level only.

I personally grow tired of everyone trying to "ban" things as simple as words in a land that supposedly has freedom of speech.

"The logic that something isn't racist if someone says it's not intended to be racist is so full of holes I don't even know where to start, so I won't. "

If someone wants to warp something that isn't racist by origin into something racist by proxy, that's on them, not on the person who originated it. I'm not sure why this is even questioned.

I'm sorry that the face value of words is more important to you than actual meaning that lies behind the context. This is part of the problem.

Among other things, PC is the last resort of indignant people who cannot defend their position in a conversation.



Not to say that there are genuinely offensive things, but sugarcoating is a sin against intelligence itself.

The confederate flag is tainted, stop trying to defend it. It wasn't ALWAYS but you have history to thank for that. It's like trying to defend the swastika. No obviously symbols aren't inherently prejudice but when they're used as iconography to represent something oppressive, malicious, and horrific then you don't get to cherry pick the interpretation.

For example, the American Flag to most US citizens is a symbol of freedom, democracy, and equality. Ask someone from another country though that views America as oppressive and it means the OPPOSITE.

That's Baraka's point.

I'm trying to figure out why the Confederate flag is *suddenly* off-limits.

Examples like this show the flag is in no way representing racism. It's just a symbol of the South. Otherwise, The Dukes Of Hazzard would have been taken off the air the moment this car was shown.

People can't hack it anymore, on either side of the political aisle. Everyone gets offended by something, even if it's not offensive to them. How much sense does it make to be offended on another's behalf? This topic reminds me of "The Joy of Hate."

Pretty much word for word what I was trying to get at.

I'm not taking words or icons at face value. I'm saying there is culture and history and background that feed in to people's interpretation of everything. I'm trying to say that you can't just look at something like the confederate flag, the swastika etc in a vaccum and just say "well it's not this because it wasn't intended to be this."

This is why the whole PC police thing seems like such propaganda to me. Who is this ominous "they" that keeps trying to ban words and take your freedoms away? It's not the President. It's not the government. So if no one with the actual power to ban anything is banning anything, then who is this "they?"

In the age of the internet, cultures and their interpretations of things tend to collide. As Mojo said, some see the American flag as a symbol of freedom, some see it and see drones, bombs, guns, death, occupation etc.

To me, it seems like people with different experiences, different upbringings and/or cultural backgrounds are pushing against one another, usually oblivious or downright hostile toward the reasoning of the other side's viewpoint because there really isn't any sort of satisfactory compromise.

It's why I see so many Redskins fans looking all bumfuzzled and perplexed as to why native Americans want to "take the name away" when to them, it's not racist, it's tradition, it's football and it's not meant to be culturally insensitive.

From the other perspective, when you don't look at it in that context and you see the history of the word and how it was used, it's tradition with native Americans, you might start to see why it's a dictionary defined racial epithet and also why tribes have been fighting against the use of the name in America's most popular sport since the late 1950's.

There's two sides to every argument, and it's rarely as simple as " I want to take away your freedom of speech because reasons."

People will always be offended by something, doesn't matter which side you're on. And sadly, at times that gets really annoying.

Everyone has a line, and until you truly know someone, their experiences and their history etc, you don't know where their line is and why. The problem tends to come from the fact that when you have a ton of people on the internet, who don't know where anyone's line is (or usually care when it comes to complete strangers), who usually feel even more emboldened thanks to being anonymous and not standing in the same room as the person they're speaking with, respect and common human decency can go out the door rather quickly.

I think that this is where a lot of the conflict escalates. Someone makes a joke, a blogger or anyone else with an opinion somehow turns it in to a story, outrage ensues, apology is given and more outrage ensues from the people that hate the PC police and love America and free speech etc.

And so it goes.

To me, this is just the price of doing business in this age. You're free to speak your mind, just as others are free to take a verbal crap all over what you just said and then everyone that cares can argue about it on TV, on article comment sections and on message boards ad infanitum.

Yo niggah, that's some gay ass shit right there, bitch.

But yeah, people get offended too easily.

Totally agree. I commented on a photo earlier on Facebook of a foreign guy saying "He's handsome, I'm really surprised though he hasn't got a unibrow!" and immediately I was hit with the "racist" card.

In Dublin, there's a huge brazilian community believe it or not, and its common for a lot of guys to rock a bit of a unibrow believe it or not. It's not an insult in any way, it doesn't harm me if people have them, I was just making an observation and immediately people got "offended". Like seriously, piss off. I'm a full blown Dubliner and I even get the odd few hairs between the brows from time to time if they're not plucked. Racism has nothing to do with it.


Some people really do look for a reason to be offended. That's kinda why I love Joan Rivers so much, she takes the piss out of everything and finds humor in things that people are afraid to laugh at.

So let me see if I get the gist of this thread:

Having an opinion is totally cool, even if it might be a little antiquated or racist or sexist or homophobic or anything that might or might not be PC because free speech, America, it's just a joke, calm down.

Someone having an opinion about your opinion is what the hell, u mad bro, stop looking for reasons to get offended, PC police, butthurt, butthurt, butthurt.

Got it. Makes total sense.

Actually, it does. The take-away here is "everyone is defensive about something."

Political correctness is ridiculous.

You're probably just mad that you can't be openly bigoted, like your kind in the 50s could.

The more I read that, the funnier it gets.

Yes, everyone's defensive about something. Completely agree. Which is why I don't get the attitude where it's cool to have an opinion, but god forbid someone critique that opinion or view it negatively. To me, it's all free speech.

That's mainly what I was getting at. The sword cuts both ways, and the only real consequence to saying something stupid is the shame that comes with disapproval from those that disagree.

Yes, that disapproval can lead to lost jobs, money, etc. But that's always been the case. This is nothing new and I don't buy the propaganda that it is, not by any stretch of the imagination.

In general, I think that's where the whole PC police thing comes from. This idea of "hey, I can say whatever I want" without any respect for the fact that people are just as free to respond. Its not butthurt or white-knighting or anything if you simply just disagree with someone philosophically and I think that there tends to be a bit of disconnect when it comes to public discourse and maybe that's it. Who knows.

Either way, I don't think that political correctness is being forced down anyone's throats. Look at any comment board or forum or whatever. If anything, I think that people are more emboldened than ever to speak their minds and disagree with one another. It's not an "agenda," it's just people's views and from any perspective, there's always the feeling that others views are being forced on us. That's just the nature of the connected world that we live in.

Anybody remember #BanBossy?

As if being bossy is an actual leadership quality? I guffawed at the whole idea.

I hate it when people pull the racist card over something that has nothing to do with racism. Again, people are just offended over someone thinking differently than them which gets freaking annoying.

Political correctness and cursing is a byproduct of monotheistic religions. it is essentially another way of thought control, which every such religion advocates.

And thus needs to be eradicated because of it. Yes, until the religious thinking is around and faith/indignity over perceived insults towards your god seemingly constitutes an argument.... which does not, but the politics of the USA, and partially the nationalistic politics of Slovakia in particular seems to work in ass backwards ways, well, until this is removed we will have to put up with PC talk.



Funny how the concept of cursing is foreign to the oriental, non-monotheistic cultures such as Japan, China etc. While PC is STRONG in Japan, take a look at it, it is esxtremely different to what we have here in the western hemisphere.

I'm White
Male
Straight
Non-religious

So naturally I don't get offended much, I hate the nitpicky things but the knee jerk reaction to hating on people who get offended at things is just as bad.