[ SECRET POST #2343 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2343 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[not a repeat, was too big before]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 055 secrets from Secret Submission Post #335.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

Anon even tho some people will know who I am. :3 Apparently I am racist because I called M. Night Shyamalan, "Shamalamadingdong".

Other than the fact this is a fairly common humorous way to say his name (I was not the only one who called him Shamalamadingdong, just the only one attacked about it), Shamalamadingdong is also a play on a song of the same name (there is also a song called Ramalamadingdong and Ramalama Bang Bang [I sing his name the tune of this song]).

I am a bit miffed because now I am an ignorant, racist asshole and I didn't even know.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

It is pretty racist though.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

It's not, though.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

It seems like it's in the same family of mockery as the innumerable variations on 'Cumberbatch'. Saying it about your coworkers, neighbors, or classmates: not cool. Saying it about a public figure, not to them: meh.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

It's not really. Childish? Yes. Racist? No. OP probably does the same thing to Benedict Cumberbatch's name. You see an unusual name and if you are immature on any level, you can't help but make fun of it.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

Did anyone take the time to explain to you why they think it's racist?

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT. Because I was making fun of an ethnic sounding name. I explained that it seems to be no different than calling Benedict Cumberbatch the various names he is called just because his name sounds different. But it isn't the same apparently.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

This is not the right way to respond to being called out on using racist language/humor. You seem to completely ignore any possibility that you might have offended people and jump right to defensive anger.

Even if you don't believe what you did was racist, why not at least try and understand where the other people are coming from and why/where they found offense.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT. I did. And I tried to explain my POV (see above). But apparently only their view of the world counts.

(frozen comment)

[chardmonster]

The right way to respond to being called out is to immediately agree no matter what the source or the reasons they use.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

Well, not a lot of racist assholes know that they're racist assholes. So, hey, now you know! And you can move on, either changing your ways or not give a fuck and keep on keeping on.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

The fact that you use "but lots of people were doing it!" as a justification for why it's not wrong for you to do it speaks volumes, and you should maybe pause for a second and think about that. Bottom line is, goofing on "Shamalamadingdong" translates to: "Your foreign name sure sounds funny har har har!"

There's no nice way to say that, even if you don't mean it to sound not-nice.

The issue you seem to be having here is that people who saw/heard you say this now assume you're an ignorant, racist asshole. Maybe that's not true, I don't know you. But even if you're an amazing human being whose best friends are Indian and you love Indian culture and respect its history and people, you still said something that sounds pretty racist. This is because...

Nice people can sometimes say stupid racist things.

Unfortunately, people who hear or see them do it may then assume they're not very nice, because what they said isn't nice. See what I'm getting at here? You may not mean anything by it, but there are plenty of people who think making funny of "foreign" names is full of lulz because hahaha they're not like us. It's alienating and a little dehumanizing because the entire "joke" (I'm using that in quotes for a reason) is that someone else's culture is so alien that their names sound like nonsense words to you.

Remember when I said there was no nice way to say that? It's because there's no nice way to say that. So you can decide. Do you want to hang on to this amazeballs joke that's the quintessence of hilarity* at the expense of many Indian people, or do you want to just let it go, dust off your hands and not be mistaken for a racist asshole?



* Note: That's sarcasm. Because you're miffed about what is a pretty dumb "joke" and getting busted over this type of kindergarten type "humor" is embarrassing.

(frozen comment)

[lex_antonia]

You know, the fact that you don't understand how you could be racist out of ignorance without immediately being a raging asshole means you probably are a bit ignorant.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

I have no comment on whether your use of the name is racist, but you do come off as pretty immature and a bit ignorant in your defensive anger at being called racist.

There is also a way to acknowledge that you can see how people might see something as racist but also disagree with their POV while being respectful. You could work on that if nothing else.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

OP, if you have to protest "But I'm NOT racist!" so many times on the basis of one lame comment, I think it's time to reassess your life choices. You can choose not to do things that cause people to mistake you for an ignorant asshat, or you can choose to keep doing what you're doing. Getting miffed about it is pretty silly because... well, that's what you chose. If you don't like it, choose something else!


Hint: The way to convince people you're not racist is to avoid saying racist stuff.

(frozen comment) I want to get an idea about numbers on this

[(Anonymous)]

Being all anon it's kinda difficult to see who thinks what, so here's what I'd like: One post per person saying:

"Its racist / It's not racist" (Delete as appropriate)

No arguments because you're not going to convince anyone.
No sniping at each-other because that will not help.
No weak shit justifications one way or another no-one who doesn't already agree with you will care.
No double posting just because you're anon. One vote per person, you're on the honour system here.

(frozen comment) Let me get this straight...

[(Anonymous)]

You don't know how making fun of someone's ethnic last name makes people suspect you're a racist asshole? Wow. I hope for your own sake that you gain a little more self-awareness or the world is going to be a really uncomfortable, confusing place for you.

(frozen comment) op

[(Anonymous)]

So wow. This is the first time I have seen people assume that every anon responding is the OP. For the record I have only responded to like 3 comments and won't be able to respond until much later tonight.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

I don't understand either why this would be racist. My name is pretty easy to make fun of: you'd just need to change one letter to turn it into a lot more vulgar word. My name seems to also be a pretty common name in India (I'm not Indian or American).

Now, would making fun of my name be racist?

(frozen comment)

[ooh_mrdarcy]

mess

(frozen comment) OP, I've got a story to tell you.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm Chinese and grew up on a pretty homogenous white community. Quite a few of the kids I went to school with hadn't met any sort of Asian person before, and at the time, it was pretty new to them. Some were nice and curious about it. A lot of people were... hmmm. I'll tell you how they were. This is a sampling of things that happened on a regular basis. Daily, even.

* People making fun of my last name, which is a very common Chinese name but sounds funny to Americans
* People making slanty-eye faces at me and telling me that's what I looked like
* People yelling what they thought of as "Chinese" at me, mostly stuff like "Chingy ching chong Chinaman", etc.
* People asking me if I ate dogs and cats
* People making fun of the shape of my nose because it's small and doesn't stand out from my face much
* People doing all of the above, simultaneously


Now keep in mind that none of these kids truly hated me. They weren't always necessarily trying to be mean (although some of them certainly were), they just thought it was FUNNY. Kind of like you, thinking that you're just trying to be funny and that it's unfair to be called out on it because you weren't alone in doing it.

I suppose you could say they weren't making fun of my eyes because they're Chinese eyes but because they're slightly slanted and that's just funny to them. I guess you could say that they're not making fun of my language because it's foreign but because it just sounds unusual. (I should mention here that I don't speak Chinese and have never spoken it in their hearing.) No doubt what they'd heard of Chinese cuisine (namely other people making funny jokes about eating pets) was amusing to them, too. Nothing personal! And lots of people with "funny" noses get teased about their looks, too. Just some harmless fun and I'd be an SJW killjoy for wanting it to stop, right?

You could say all of that, but it'd be a weak attempt to ignore what it really was: kids being racist bullies. Nobody told them that they were being ignorant assholes and to knock that shit off, but somebody should have. Besides me, I mean. Maybe if the teachers had spoken up and stopped it, or if my fellow classmates had stepped up and said, "That's not funny, you racist asshole!", it might've helped.

But nobody did, because it was just harmless fun. Fun that lasted from about kindergarten until high school, where it eventually petered off because more and more people called out those kids for being ignorant racist assholes. Some of them realized it on their own, of course, and probably felt pretty uncomfortable for being such dicks. I never got any apologies from them, either way.

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is... have fun? But don't delude yourself about what you're doing or that it doesn't hurt anybody. It does. Much like how victim-blaming enables rape culture, making fun of other cultures only makes it our fault. We deserve the ridicule for being so weird and foreign, because being foreign is wrong and worthy of mockery.



P.S. For anyone who's worried, I'm fine and not too scarred by the experience. They were assholes, and I knew it from the start because they were kind enough to give me really obvious clues.

(frozen comment) M. Night SHAMALAMASHIT

[(Anonymous)]

Is what I call him. Or sometimes just M. Night Shamashit. Fuck him for ruining The Last Airbender.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm putting this at the end because I don't know what thread it should go in.

I had a classmate in middle school who was unfortunate enough to have the last name "Lovejoy". He never heard the end of it. I had another classmate named Obadiah who was constantly being called "Obi-Wan Kenobi". These jokes weren't ethnically based and the people making the jokes were familiar with the cultural context of the names. I still think it was inappropriate, because it was an asshole thing to do.

If you're classmates with M. Night Shyamalan or Benedict Cumberbatch or Horatio Throgmorton or Ima Hogg or Harry Cox or some kid whose parents decided to name them a more common name spelled backwards, you should shut up about it unless you're friends and they bring it up, because it's none of your business, any more than their hair or clothes or facial features or acne or whatever. If you absolutely can't shut up about it, then at least don't bring it up to them.

If you are reading a news story about M. Night Shyamalan or Benedict Cumberbatch or Horatio Throgmorton or Ima Hogg or Harry Cox or some kid whose parents decided to name them a more common name spelled backwards being a crime victim, you should shut up about it because it's tacky. If you absolutely can't shut up about it, at least have the decency not to do it in a public forum.

If you are looking at a film credit for M. Night Shyamalan or Benedict Cumberbatch or Horatio Throgmorton or Ima Hogg or Harry Cox or some kid whose parents decided to name them a more common name spelled backwards, then I think it's okay to giggle.

If you're meeting M. Night Shyamalan or Benedict Cumberbatch or Horatio Throgmorton or Ima Hogg or Harry Cox or some kid whose parents decided to name them a more common name spelled backwards at a convention and asking for their autograph, learn to say their name correctly and without giggling or you will embarrass yourself and everyone around you.

There are circumstances under which making fun of someone's name is inappropriate. I don't think the geographic origin of the name is the biggest factor in determining those circumstances.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

Even though I know it's meant to be disrespectful to Shyamalan himself, doing the "weird name I'm going to replace with english gibberish" thing is common and disrespectful in a more general sense and it would make me uncomfortable. I probably wouldn't get upset over it unless someone had a history of saying racist shit.

(frozen comment)

[(Anonymous)]

I need some help figuring this one out.

I'm pretty much as white as white can be but I have an ethnic name (I was born in a country in which the majority of the population are POC).
I've been teased and made fun of because of my name more times than I can count.
Were these people racist because of that or just stupid/assholes? Have I been a victim of racism?

Or were my parents racist/whatever because they named me an ethnic name when I'm of a different ethnicity? (There was a discussion about something like that a while ago.)

Or perhaps even both?