I watched the video in the Kotaku thread. Doesn't seem racist at all. As in, literally zero indication that this was racist. I didn't even twig to the fact that she was using "black" lingo until I read the tweets complaining about it, and even then, so what? What's racist about that?
bananafishtoday said:
Baron von Blitztank said:
Way I see it is that something is only racist if there was genuine hate behind it
No. Intent isn't important; what matters is the actual content. "It wasn't
meant to be racist" isn't a valid defense if the work ends up being racist anyway and is right up there with "But some of my best friends are X" in the "shit that don't matter" category of arguments.
I've never really been comfortable with that line of argument. I mean, if you remove the speaker's intention from the assessment of any offending phrase, you're just left with the recipient's perspective. There are a whole stack of problems with that.
Imagine I'm talking to you on the phone. I'm standing at a bank (as in the financial institution) and you're standing on a bank (as in the shore of a river). I say "I'll meet you at the bank," referring to the financial instution I'm standing in front of. The obvious ambiguity is that you don't know which bank I'm referring to. You don't know my location and I haven't elaborated.
The reason why discounting a speaker's intention is problematic is because if you say my
intent has no impact on the
meaning of the statement, you will always conclude (incorrectly) that I meant the riverbank, just because that's where you're currently standing and it makes the most sense from your perspective. It's not to say you're at fault if you get confused and assume that I was referring to the riverbank - that's because I wasn't specific enough over the phone. But it's incorrect to say that because you
thought I was referring to the riverbank, I
actually meant the riverbank.
That's what I think of whenever I see someone say "Intent isn't as important as content." You're basically holding the recipient's perspective over that of the sender. That doesn't work. Language is a two-way street. The sender has to send a clear message, and the recipient has to understand it. If you dismiss the sender's intent, you'll always assume I meant the riverbank, and we'll never actually
communicate.
When you look at it that way, the "content" of the message isn't actually as relevant as whether or not we both know what the content refers to. If I used a made-up code word, like "badonkadonk," to refer to riverbanks, and you knew that, then when I say "bank" you'd know I meant the financial institution, and when I say "badonkadonk" you'd know I meant the riverbank. The actual
content, as in the word "bank," doesn't matter. What matters is that you and I both know what the content
means.
Not to mention the fact that recipients can have a whole range of possible reactions to a phrase based on their personal perspective. I mean, you say the developer's intent doesn't matter. You don't think TT was racist, but there are people out there who do. If we've remove the developer's intent from the matter, why is your perspective valued more than that of those guys on Twitter? If whether or not something is racist is determined by how the recipient interprets the content, then its meaning actually depends on the
recipient, and we end up with TT being simultaneously racist and not racist depending on who's playing the game. That's absurd.
This turned into a bit of a spiel. Sorry. I'll understand if you don't respond! :/
