My son and his little friends

Discuss matters to do with anything football related
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rechitski kinzhal
Posts: 140
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 7:24 pm

I wonder if anyone can help me with the conundrum about my 3 year old son. You see I often call him a "cheeky little monkey" not realising I was committing a criminal offence. My son is "mixed race" .... fortunately both those "races" being white (that is, I think he is mixed race ....... no-one quite seems to know exactly what a "race" is - I wonder what happened to the concept of "colour prejudice"). Anyway, I digress. Worse, sometimes his little friends come round and I have been known to call them "cheeky little monkeys" also - again fortunately those children are white. But what can I do if his little black, or Asian friends come round and I get carried away and call one of them a "cheeky little monkey". Will I get that paragon of virtue, Peter Herbert, Chairman of the Black Lawyers Society (or whatever) coming round my house and dragging me to the local nick?
There was a problem with a golfer a while back who was told he was racist because he said something about inviting another paragon of virtue, Tiger Woods, round for fried chicken. Am I allowed to invite mixed race children who are white round for a chicken dinner, or does it only apply if they are black. And can I invite a black person for a lentil roast if I promise not to mention the word "jerk".
Now I also understand that it is a heinous crime to accuse people having a spat of acting like a "couple for schoolgirls" ....... but is it acceptable if they are indeed a couple of schoolgirls (although, of course, not black ones).
And given that Adrian Chiles was hauled over the coals for suggesting that his Polish builders may not turn up for work after the Wembley game, I suppose I may as well hold my hands up and plead guilty to stating "I bet the queue in Costa Coffee will be even longer than usual on Wednesday".
I am quite an old person really and all this is baffling me ...... I wonder, is there some kind of guide book published by those that decide these things that will tell me exactly what words are now unacceptable to say, and to explain if there are any subjects at all about which we may have a little wit and levity?
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Mikins
Posts: 294
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 7:45 pm

I assume no one has a sense of humour and everyone will get offended by something, then I realise I don't care and I carry on accordingly.

Anyway you can make all the monkey comments you like if they based in historical fact. A'la Hodgson. Then enjoy some faux furore in the papers and 6 weeks of forum arguing about PC GONE MAD!
Sorry about your damn luck!
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ARNU
Posts: 3746
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 4:43 pm

My dear old grandad used to use the word darkies for people of colour.Whilst the Pc crowd would nowadays pass a brick,I can honestly say no offence was ever meant by him.He fought the Nazis with his bare hands,bayonetted 2 of them in France but no doubt some goody goody would insult his memory and brand him a goose stepping racist. :roll:
Bollix to Shampoo, it's real poo we want !
rechitski kinzhal
Posts: 140
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 7:24 pm

"Darkies" (and perhaps "lighties") would seem to me to be a far more sensible descriptive word. Using "black and white" just reinforces the silly brainwashing that "these" people are somehow the complete opposite of "us" ..... and as long as we continue along this path then there is nil chance of there ever being any real progress against the nonsenses we have to put up with.
We must call "these" people black, but we daren't call them negro .... which is of course the Spanish word for black, and many of the places where "these" peoples ancestors came from were Spanish speaking. The same as we can't call people from Pakistan a "Paki" despite the fact the word in its original language (so I am informed by a Pakistani friend) means "pure person".
It is the same as not being allowed to call someone a spastic if they are a spastic....... it has to be some new name no-one ever remembers.
And it is the same with my original point about the word "monkey".
The bottom line is, we cannot continually stop the entire population from using words just because a number of bigots happen to use the words to insult people. The bigots will just find other words to insult people ..... and the rest of us will have more and more words we cannot say.

Anyway, enough said .... I only started this thread to get this forum off to a good start.
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Mikins
Posts: 294
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 7:45 pm

Its always going to be a hot button topic. things that were acceptable when i was a kid now arent (and we're only talking 2 decades or so) in some cases thats a good thing, in others not so. I can understand cutting out words that the people themselves find offensive, but when its the papers and other groups of people *assuming* people are going to be offended (like the daily mail constantly claiming there was an 'uproar' or 'outrage' about comments, when it turns out about 100 people complained of the 6 million watching a show and so on.)

My concern comes more from positive discrimination. because from my perspective it isnt really positive as it discriminates against one particular group of which i happen to be a part. ones legal, the other isnt. but thats another debate in itself.

- on the other topic, My brother lives out in a tiny village in cambridge and was walking with his son a while back when he started jumping up and down shouting "DAD, THAT MANS THE WRONG COLOUR! HES BLACK!" which apparently was embarrassing enough for my brother to want the ground to open up and swallow him. but thats because he lives somewhere with almost zero black, asian or any other types of people and his son had simply never seen anyone different before. and I think thats a difference maker, if you grow up somewhere without interacting with or even seeing anyone different to you, you dont know what you can and cant say. I've lived in the east end my entire life so I'm well aware of what words will get me arrested/attacked, and i've been racially abused a few times myself. it just makes me think that no matter what you do, you'll never win really, and you'll never stamp out racism or worse still *perceived* racism where someone interprets what you've said to make you seem like a hatemonger. if i want to insult someone i dont need to mention their skin colour or sexual orientation or anything like that. I have enough normal generic insults to use. but thats being raised in an area where if you call someone an arsehole its acceptable. add, white, black or any other word in front of it, and you're breaking the law. so the easiest option is just to call an arsehole an arsehole and leave it at that :D
Sorry about your damn luck!
Tranced
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 3:56 pm

Jason Roberts took offense and boy did he let Twitter know. funny, though, that the day before, he tweeted that he would be having banana cake - surely if reference to a space monkey is somehow racist towards black folk, so is eating banana cake? Because monkey's eat bananas.
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Mikins
Posts: 294
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 7:45 pm

I've read too many terry Pratchett novels. Now every time I see someone getting angry about use of the word monkey I mentally see the librarian (An orangutan) who gets extremely violent if anyone calls him a monkey ^_^
Sorry about your damn luck!
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