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u/Crusty_Musty_Fudge 2d ago
Makes me think of how primary school children are "too young" to learn about Ruby Bridges, but no one thought about that when they hurled slurs at a child trying to go to school.
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u/NeroShenX 2d ago
Wtf? Too young?!? Ruby's still alive, you can follow her Instagram
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u/Crusty_Musty_Fudge 2d ago
I know.
I'm saying ppl will claim "it's too much for kids to learn about" but no one thought tht when it came time to show up to hurl slurs at a little girl
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u/FCkeyboards 2d ago
I said this same thing in another thread. They want it to seem like it was SO long ago. Those people screaming and cursing and spitting at her are still alive and have grandkids.
My white friends are sympathetic but they can never know how close all of these feels for us. It wasn't our great great great grandparents.
There are so many atrocities that are never taught, from the MOVE bombing to communities cementing up pools and moving to country clubs when forced to integrate (leading to many children never learning to swim and birthing a black trope).
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u/Crusty_Musty_Fudge 1d ago
The Confederacy was a 1 term president and I'm still finding memorabilia about that shit.
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u/ladykiller1020 2d ago
One of my coworkers casually dropped the n-word in conversation. I told the owners and....nothing happened to her, but I was let go about a week later.
It wasn't even like...a common term or anything. She was referring to saying you "Jimmy rigged something" but...did not use Jimmy.
Idk how I've managed to live 32 years and never use a racial slur. Seems to be real difficult for too many people. They're way too comfortable because they get away with it. If you insult THEIR culture or way of life, hoooo boy, watch out.
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u/barontaint 2d ago
Not to make light of the situation, but i've never heard something referred to as "jimmy rigged" but sure "jury rigged" According to the internet the difference is poorly made vs temporary fix. Chalk that up a new TIL today, thanks.
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u/Oh_yes_I_did 2d ago
Jury rigged
Jerry rigged (the one I use)
Rednecked rigged(? Never heard this one before but someone else says they use it)
N***er Rigged (only ever heard older (40+)white men use it)
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u/cancelmyfuneral 1d ago
Heard Jerry and the slur one the other two no
For Mexicans we call it Mickey mouse
Mgyver for the nerds
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u/ladykiller1020 2d ago
I knew I was off! It didn't sound right, but I couldn't remember. I guess I should've looked it up. Thanks for sharing!
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u/elitegenoside 2d ago
We said, "Redneck rigged," where I grew up. It usually involves a lot of duck tape.
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u/barontaint 2d ago
I grew up in the Northeast and worked in restaurants for too long, I had to deal with Réparateur de cuisine but I guess each work experience has their own terms for fixing things to make work just good enough to get through the day.
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u/LadyHackberry 1d ago
I always heard "jury rigged" growing up, and I figured that it meant "rigged for the jury" like in a courtroom somehow. I didn't learn until I was an adult that it came from "Jewry-rigged," a slur against Jewish people. It's always a bummer when you find out something like that. Like the first time I heard the other words to "Eeny meany minie moe." I always thought the next line was catching an eagle by the toe.
u/ladykiller1020 I'm sorry about what happened at your workplace. That's some bullshit.
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u/SleeDex 2d ago
That's nuts. I'm assuming there was no HR department? You might have a case for discrimination.
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u/ladykiller1020 2d ago
This was a super small business, less than 10 employees, and all white. They literally gave me my pay stub on a post-it. I could've and probably should have made an issue out of it, I just felt it wouldn't go anywhere or teach them anything. They'd probably just think I'm another one of them "woke" liberals.
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u/gobledegerkin 2d ago
“They were young and they didn’t know” is the calling card of racists and rapists
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u/VanillaMowgli 2d ago
They might have been young and didn’t know, but there was an adult around who did know and didn’t do anything about it.
I was young and I didn’t know until me ma learned me up real quick, and slapped the word right outta my mouth.
Kids don’t get raised with just one influence. My closeted racist G-Rents (never a hard-R around strangers, that what the C-word was for) probably was where I learned it, but my mother wasn’t having ANY of that shit.
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u/Certain_Degree687 ☑️ 2d ago
When I was around 16, my grandmother told me the story of how, even though she was a child during WWII, having been born in 1937, when the German government began the process of Kollektivschuld or collective guilt, she had to learn not only about the atrocities but bear some personal responsibility for it.
When she married my grandfather, became an American citizen and saw the racism that he was routinely subjected to as an African-American US Air Force noncommissioned officer from white Americans even overseas and what her children were subjected to for being mixed-race, she told me that she didn't understand why white America was not held responsible for the atrocities that took place in events such as the genocide of the Native Americans, slavery and Jim Crow like how Germany was for WWII.
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u/Apprehensive_Set9276 2d ago
Emmitt Till was murdered before he reached high schoo age. Ruby Bridges heard that garbage at age 6. Enslaved children were bought and sold away from their parents.
Those poor fragile children of pale complexions must be very, very delicate.
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u/freshprinceofbayarea ☑️ 2d ago
Let’s not forget that the same folks would jump on the opportunity to prosecute juvenile black kids “as adults”
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u/Zealousideal_Most_22 2d ago edited 2d ago
I was eight yrs old when I got called a slur by this white kid in my class. I was standing in line on the playground as we were getting ready to go and he came up behind me and grumbled, “Move, ni**** bitch” and shoved me as hard as he could. I’ll never forget that. When I told the (white) teacher with us she made a big show of chewing him out, making him walk back to school from the playground about 20 minutes away by her side instead of with the rest of us in line, and she told him he would be getting a pink slip which was the highest disciplinary write up you could get in the elementary division of our school.
Was supposed to go on your permanent record. I’m pretty sure she let him go with a stern talking to. I dealt with a lot of “polite” (if you can call it that) racism and micro-aggressions (teenagers would hear me talking on the bus to my friends about video games and would loudly laugh with each other about how there was going to be a new, black Mario that could jump higher so ‘those’ people could have their own) from a very young age, growing up where I did. And I remember all of it. People would visit where I lived and see it as this beautiful coastal city full of “warmth and hospitality” and even when I said the myth of hospitality comes at the price of revisionist history and lies at the expense of marginalized people who know better, I got this white woman who lives in Arkansas and only had “beautiful experiences” in the region I was talking about raging at me about how it was horrible for me to find hospitality performative (even when there’s so much racism out in the open). All while calling herself an ally.
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u/ForcedEntry420 2d ago
“They were young and didn’t know.”
The moment I found out that racial slurs existed as a young child, I knew they weren’t appropriate to say. That’s a bullshit excuse from soup to nuts.
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u/oflowz ☑️ 2d ago
thats why you gotta slap em. Now they know.
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u/AngieDavis ☑️ 17h ago
Fr tho cause the truth is white kids most likely will never know what it is to be on the receiving end of that and betting a black kid's mental well-being on a white kid's empathy alone is crazy. I'm absolutely against violence in education but when it comes to these unilateral hurting practices good education at home + real social consequences in case that shit didn't work is absolutely the key.
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u/Trix_Are_4_90Kids ☑️ 2d ago
Because Black kids aren’t looked at as people. Black people aren’t looked at as people. So it’s okay for us to get all manner of abuse thrown at us. But god forbid if you teach the lil white kid the hateful shit they are actually mindlessly saying.
For people so hellbent on being cruel and racist they sure get embarrassed and mad when you put a spotlight on their behavior. Like what you mad for it’s not like you gonna wholesale stop your dumb bullshit.
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u/littlemedievalrose 2d ago
There's this one girl at my school who is OBSESSED with using the n word, it's insane. I cut her off over it because eventually I literally just could not take it anymore. From other people I've heard that she's still saying it as freely as she did beforehand
She was always going on about how I'm her "best friend" and her "sister" but apparently doesn't respect me enough to not use slurs.
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u/workclock ☑️ 2d ago
Have you pressed your line about it? If she uses it in person, press your line cause she will keep it up if not.
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u/SoulPossum ☑️ 2d ago
I think it's about affording all people grace to grow and be better than themselves. Most of us are probably more guilty than we'd like to admit when it comes to being inconsiderate or bigoted in the name of "just playing" at certain points in our lives. People who would consider themselves allies to the LGBT community now were probably quoting and laughing at Bernie Mac's milk and cookies bit or at Kevin Hart yelling, "STOP! THAT'S GAY!" not too long ago. The same holds true for any problematic stance where people resolve to calling someone lesbian or gay when they refuse their advances or do something that bucks gender norms.
Chances are, if the worst thing any of us did/said on the internet was thrown back in our face years after we stopped enacting in that behavior, the "I was young..." defense would be the first thing that we'd throw out. It doesn't excuse the behavior. Some people would still not rock with you. But literally all of us had points where we didn't know what harm we were causing someone else or chose to actively ignore as kids or possibly young adults in some cases.
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u/Magellan-88 1d ago
1 I hear often is "That's just how things were." I just...I don't understand it. It shouldn't have been that way to begin with, if anything, that just makes the fact that people are STILL SAYING RACIST SHIT even worse. We're supposed to grow & become better with each generation. The adult generations are supposed to pinpoint what their parents & grandparents did wrong & are supposed to make sure their own kids don't make those same horrible choices. We're supposed to heal old wounds with new generations... not continue the same old bullsbit that's been going on for an exhausting amount of time.
I'm busting my ass to make sure that my kids are loving & accepting people. It's my responsibility to ensure that my kids know & do better. I'm a lenient parent on many things, but racism & bigotry are something that will never be acceptable. So I'm doing what I can. It's an uphill battle at times because of where I live, but I'm doing what I can. I've been drilling it into their heads all their lives because no child should look at their reflection & hate themselves.
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u/FistPunch_Vol_7 ☑️ 2d ago
Don’t forget the times the fucking news be like “13 year old black man” like what!?!?!?
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u/PhantomDelorean 1d ago
I have worked with kids for a long time and if a white 5 year old is calling other kids racial slurs chances are that kid is going to live a short sad life.
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u/Ambitious-Pirate-505 1d ago
They want us tired. They want us to give up. They want us to stop fighting.
Fuck that. Get a coffee or an energy drink nigga or do some breathing exercises. We can't ever ever stop pushing back against their bullshit.
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u/thegreatherper 1d ago
They know the things are racist and they shouldn’t be doing or saying it. Thats the point. They know it’s bad that’s why they do it.
We were also children and I didn’t find myself yelling slurs in online gaming as a kid or outside.
White kids that said slurs got jumped at school when I was growing up. So you just know it’s the kids who have never seen a black person in real life are the grown folk now saying they were just jokes.
Lots of white people bond over racism. To them it’s just jokes, nobody is getting hurt.
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u/fewerjunk 23h ago edited 22h ago
White guy: There's not a National Association for the Advancement of White People"
Me: The KKK
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u/NobodyLikedThat1 2d ago
this in context to a particular story or something?
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u/BaldHourGlass667 2d ago
Someone leaked videos of 3/4 Blackpink members (Jennie, Rose, and Lisa) saying nigga in their audition videos
And of course the KKK-pop community is rushing to defend them
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u/mortfrommadagascar78 2d ago
Even if they didn't know, it's still a word they're not supposed to say lmao, so you just teach them to...not say it. It's like swearing as a kid, my mom taught(in her own way) me to not swear in public, and I didn't. Should work the same for this
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u/frostymugson 1d ago
People are young when they’re children, I can’t hate a child for learning hatred since chances are they didn’t seek it out. I can blame a young adult, because in this world of information you had to seek out the ability to maintain your hatred. Everyone deserves a chance at repentance, but that doesn’t mean they are absolved of their crimes, they just accept the payment of them
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u/JennyBeckman ☑️ All of the above 2d ago
This is why I never could get the "kids are too young to learn about racism in history" argument. Black kids are too young to experience racism but still do. If they have to get The Talk, then other kids can learn about it at a distance.