To be FUMING that FiL has used racist language around ds.

[Stillhopingstillhere]

Ds is 4.4 and has been to see my PiL this afternoon (without me). Dh took him. PIL are in their 70s and are quite ignorant in a lot of ways IMO.

Dh told me that today ds was playing shops with FIL. Apparently ds said to FIL "that will be ten pounds please." To which FIL replied "that's expensive, that's more than the p**is charge."

Dh told FIL not to say that again and ds hasn't repeated it (yet) but I am fuming! Fuming! As well as it being totally disgusting and offensive language I do not want ds repeating it unwittingly at school and being branded a racist. Or them thinking it's something we have said. I am genuinely quite horrified. Am I overreacting to this? Should I say something to FIL next time I see him too? Apparently he wasn't very apologetic and actually didn't seem to think he'd said anything wrong. I suppose partly it's generational but seriously, has this every been acceptable as a phrase? I think not.

Allfor- it's been explained several times why the term is offensive and derogatory. But you still don't understand do you?

Never mind, hopefully one day a light bulb moment may occur in your tiny brain. Oh and I didn't mean that in a derogatory or offensive way. Just so you know.

If you can't understand that saying a word and being a racist are two different things then there really is no hope here.

It's really not worth engaging is it crazy? Not when someone is so utterly stupid.

Some people are throwing around the racist words a bit too enthusiastically IMO

If you are not a racist, why would you choose to call someone by a word which is commonly understood to be a racially focussed rude, derogatory term?

People shouldn't be banned from saying a word that should be a normal word, an abbreviation of a nationality. The word is not racist, people have made it racist by, as a scenario, shouting it at someone in the street in a derogitory way. Why not just change the stigma surrounding a word? Don't be embarassed or whatever to use the word anymore, people no longer see it as a bad thing

To stir I think

hy would you choose to call someone by a word which is commonly understood to be a racially focussed rude, derogatory term?

I don't

What disingenuous tripe

You are absolutely right not to accept this, but a BU to be angry.
His generation were brought up like that and its important to teach them that its unacceptable to society now and we just can't be like this.
Even when I was a child it was acceptable to call it the P* shop.
Nobody questioned that it could be racist.
My dhs gran rest her soul asked him once "You don't have any of them lot as friends do you" Dh was totally she was a sweet old thing who wouldn't harm a fly, she just didn't get it.
OP, just try to educate him and make him see the error of his ways.

An idealistic approach, allforone. It has partially worked for 'queer', has not, I think, worked for 'N', and the problem is that there will still be plenty of people using the word deliberately as a racist word.

Once racism has disappeared, then no word will carry racist currency because racism doesn't exist, or isn't a probelm to anyone.

But I don't think you can eradicate racism by pretending that some words are not of racist intent.

allfor, it is hard to assume that you are anything but a racist if you persist in using terms to describe people's ethnic origins that others have told you they find offensive.

However, I'm fascinated to know how you can distinguish so accurately between people of Pakistani origin and those from other South Asian backgrounds. Please do share your secrets so that I can properly enlighten the next person who calls my (not Pakistani) DH the p-word.

Junsei

It's quite simple, why dont you just ask?

I don't see it as any more racist that saying 'the woman with ginger hair' or 'the guy with dreadlocks'. It is just a description of physical appearance.

If you jump to the conclusion that describing someone as 'black' is an insult, I think it says more about you than it does about them

However, I'm fascinated to know how you can distinguish so accurately between people of Pakistani origin and those from other South Asian backgrounds

I never said i could, did i, no! I said sometimes you can tell or make an educated guess, and i'm not sure of the relevance of that anyway?

Wow, if mental gymnastics was an Olympic sport, you could get us gold. You apparently don't use these words, but yet you know your Pakistani acquaintances don't mind them!

I wonder if you're my old flatmate who insisted the local shop-owner didn't mind it, because he didn't ban her from his shop. (I think the huge amount she spent on cigarettes migh have had something to do with it.)

Jinsei we're all waiting

You know, I think any decision to ignore racist insults and reclaim the word(s) has to be taken by the victims.

As opposed to non-victims arrogantly telling them "to stop taking it so seriously", "it's only a joke", "it's not a big deal" and all those classic silencing strategies.

Simply using 'black' as a description of someone isn't racist.

It might be if you use the word uneccessarily and in a way you wouldn't use it about a white person.

For e.g the differnce between "The bastard in the fiesta cut me up"
"The black bastard in the fiesta cut me up".

But that was all explained on that thread allforone - in the few mins I looked at the thread, anyway. Did you find it hard to follow in some way? No one that I saw said that describing someone as black, per se, was racist.

TheBigJessie - you left "grow a thicker skin" of the list [wink}

I don't see it as any more racist that saying 'the woman with ginger hair' or 'the guy with dreadlocks'. It is just a description of physical appearance.

Sorry, but in what way is the p-word a description of physical appearance?

Oh, and by the way, nobody has ever stopped to ask my DH if he is Pakistani before calling him the p-word. Nor did anyone ask my friend's dd, who happens to have brown skin but isn't from an Asian background at all.

The woman with red hair, the guy with dreadlocks, the man from Pakistan - all fine.

The Paki - not fine.

Unless you found your own island where no racism exists and no-one has ever been called 'Paki' as a term of abuse, by thousands chanting int he streets, and where you and you alone (da da DAAA!) control the mening of language AND how other people react to it.

Have fun!

Well Yanbu to not like it and not want him to use language like that again.

I once had to gently tell an elderly relative that saying "p*ki" wasn't acceptable anymore. To be fair said relative listened I me explain and as far as I know no longer uses the term. They were quite that they might have terribly offended people, they really didn't mean it to be offensive. This was about 10 years ago now.

The thing with the older generation using outdated terms is that those who genuinely aren't racist will stop saying it, those who are will continue.

still just describing what the bastard that cut you up looked like IMO - Doesn't make you a racist - Like the other day i got into a bit of a spat in the supermarket and described the girl to my (black) DH as a skinny black stuck up bitch - And believe me, she was all of those things