Reply #12: The people who are oppressed [View All]

[noamnety]

get to decide if something is offensive to them.

Biden doesn't get to decide blacks shouldn't be offended if he thinks it's unique that one of them is articulate.
White men don't get to decide if a Black man should be offended that they have their own drinking fountain - even if it's just as good as the white one.
Christians don't get to decide if it's offensive to atheists that they aren't legally allowed to hold office in some states.
Men don't get to decide women shouldn't be offended if you call them a derogatory gender slur.


If someone in an oppressed group tells you they are offended, they are offended. That's not something to argue about.

The closest you could get to winning that argument is an acknowledgement that not everyone in that group was offended - and "not everyone was offended" isn't the standard most of us want to adhere to when it comes to civil rights and bigotry.

Either you care that something is offensive to an oppressed group of people, or you don't. To argue the position - as if you know better than them what they should be offended by - is offensive in and of itself. That's why it's not up for discussion, as far as I am concerned.

I haven't read most of the threads on this. But it seems to me if there were a commercial where a white guy accidentally kissed a black girl - let's say because it was dark - and then the lights came on, and his reaction in the commercial to realizing he'd kissed a black woman was to jam her head into a vehicle and slam the trunk on it, I would think we could all understand why that might possibly be offensive.