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I agree with GR here - it's racist in context

Posted by LGsinmyheart on 2008-January-03 20:04:34 EST, Thursday
In reply to Umm... posted by GirlRobo on 2008-January-03 07:38:43 EST, Thursday
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While I do not really mind racist jokes, they are only funny if it is clear you are simply making fun of known stereotypes (drunken Irish, mobby Italians, stupid Poles...) and do not really mean to hurt or negatively describe a community. I'd add the same for religious, sexist or sexual orientational jokes - I can enjoy a good deal of "molester" jokes, even.

"Save it for someone who cares" is, no matter what exactly it was about, an extremely rude thing to say. Try saying it yourself in other places with other people and with no language barrier or ethnic variety involved if you don't believe me.

Then the language barrier added makes it be a racist comment. I wonder, if the comment had been not about Spanish, but about ghetto jargon and coming from a Black guy, if the reaction to her comment would've been so "positive". Or what about sign language??? Would you not consider it as a comment against the deaf???

"Save it for someone who cares" implies "I don't care", and given it came from the language spoken and not the content of the speaking it implies "I don't care for Spanish-speakers". That is where the racism comes from - and would come from with my Black and deaf analogies.

If she didn't understand and wanted to make clear she didn't want to be spoken in a language she doesn't understand, she could simply say that: "I don't understand and I'd thank you if you spoke to me in plain English" - that would NOT have been racist. But if a person, including a little girl, had replied me like that, I would certainly have been angry, in Spanish and not.

And, Febri-chan, while Spanish is a European language as much as English, Dalmatian and Czech, in an American context it is invariably associated with a specific range of ethnic communities (Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Salvadorian, etc) which are for the most part non-White. Yeah, Christina Aguilera and Cameron Diaz are blonde and Hispanic (and while I don't know about Cameron, at least Christina speaks Spanish well), same as many Spaniards and Latin Americans are, but that is not what Spanish in the USA is usually about. I would buy that Spanish is a White language if we were in Spain with African migrants, or in Latin America with monolingually Amerindian-speaking Native Americans. But I don't buy it in the USA.

So yes, I see it as very rude and uncalled for, and thus, in context, racist.





LGsinmyheart

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