It’s just scientific fact that they love being slaves to corporations unlike us, the proudly independent and individualistic Westerners smuglord

Source: I was on a Discord with a Japanese dude

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    What? This is the stupidest shit ever lol. How is this racist? If referring to someone as “an American” or “a Kenyan” or “a French” is not racist, why would saying “a Japanese” be any different? Japanese is literally the noun and adjective depending on how you want to use it just like any other demonym

    • GinAndJuche@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      9 months ago

      It’s not inherently rascist, I should have took more care in my phrasing.

      What I meant was: people who who drop the person or personhood identifier in favor of national/racial/other sorts of identifiers are often those who engage in broad strokes judgements based on origin.

      A key part of English, at least based on my understanding of it, is the clear delineation between person and non-person. Removing that reference to personhood by simply using an adjective of origin is closer to calling them an “it” than otherwise.

      That’s just my read on the topic though, I’m welcome to hearing otherwise because this could be an interesting convo.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        23
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        it also just depends on the word for some reason, english is very vibes based and inconsistent in its rules and connotations.

        A Greek

        sounds decently normal

        A Kenyan

        seems fine

        An Egyptian

        commonly said

        A Chinese

        This sounds weird and bad. Couldn’t tell you why but it just sounds racist compared to the other ones.

        • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          Yeah, turns out the lingual patterns my grampa used to refer to Chinese and Japanese people is not great, in 2024.

          edit: To be clear, he used different slurs, he wasn’t so racist as to use the same slur for Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Laoceans, and island people.