Scribblenauts Caught Being Accidentally Racist
- Thread starter Keane Ng
- Start date
Ha, I love how fast that Kanye West meme took off. That whole incident took place on what, this Sunday?
And I'm pretty sure it was on accident. There's so many words to keep track of in the game that stuff can be easily forgotten. Heck, even I didn't know that sambo was a racist term until today.
And I'm pretty sure it was on accident. There's so many words to keep track of in the game that stuff can be easily forgotten. Heck, even I didn't know that sambo was a racist term until today.
I'm not gonna lie, I live in the states and had no clue that was a racial slur. I guess you really do learn something horrible every day. Really though, I couldn't blame the developers if I myself had no clue it was a slur.
I will say, the giant coincidence is rather funny though.
I will say, the giant coincidence is rather funny though.
You know I live in the states, and I have heard alot of differant racial slurs for many races, and honestly I have never even hear the word sambo before.
Funny thing that relates to this. We just reciently had a new minor league baseball team started up in my town, which was call the Iron Pigs since my area was a major iron producer. About a year ago there was contriversy about naming the mascot. The mascot was obviously a pig due to the name of the team. They had decided to call the Mascot pork chop. This caused a big contrivercy because aparently Pork Chop was aparently a racial slur for hispanics.
Now seriously the mascot was a pig which they called pork chop... yeah that's trying to be raciest...
I bring this story up because I think it parallels this article that people will look anywhere to find something raciest even when there is no intent. In fact it is my opinion that people who go looking for racism and find it, even when there is obviously no real intent, alot of the time tend to be racist them selves.
As for the word sambo being a well established raciest word it the U.S. I'll bet it's really more localized word then people realise, either that or it's an old word that relaly not many people actualy use any more.
Funny thing that relates to this. We just reciently had a new minor league baseball team started up in my town, which was call the Iron Pigs since my area was a major iron producer. About a year ago there was contriversy about naming the mascot. The mascot was obviously a pig due to the name of the team. They had decided to call the Mascot pork chop. This caused a big contrivercy because aparently Pork Chop was aparently a racial slur for hispanics.
Now seriously the mascot was a pig which they called pork chop... yeah that's trying to be raciest...
I bring this story up because I think it parallels this article that people will look anywhere to find something raciest even when there is no intent. In fact it is my opinion that people who go looking for racism and find it, even when there is obviously no real intent, alot of the time tend to be racist them selves.
As for the word sambo being a well established raciest word it the U.S. I'll bet it's really more localized word then people realise, either that or it's an old word that relaly not many people actualy use any more.
In my mind, "insensitive" was synonymous with "ignorant" in this context. The reason why I applied the term like this was that it WAS an accident.Keane Ng said:
As I always understood it:
"Racially Insensitive"=An accidental racial stereotype or image is used out of ignorance of the offensive connotations of a word/phrase/image, or a word/phrase/image is used in a bad context without knowledge/thought of alternate meanings/interpretations of the word/phrase/image (Example: After I watched an episode of the twilight zone when I was 14, an African American friend was messing around with me, I jokingly threatened that if he didn't "be nice to me" I'd "Make (him) go in the cornfield." He took it as "Make you go out in the field." He called me out on it, I was confused and explained that it was a reference to the twilight zone, I got an "Oh" and an explanation of what he'd understood it as, he apologized and so did I).
"Racism"=A stereotype or other offensive image/word is used on purpose, with active intent to do harm (Insulting someone using a racial slur, saying/writing/posting/wearing deliberate, racist things like "I hate Niggers," "Hymies are the Devil," "Crackers got no Culture," etc.) Because it's deliberate, "accidental" racism is impossible.
Also, by no means did I or do I think that they should have known better, I didn't even know what "sambo" meant until I read this article, but it's still racial insensitivity, not accidental racism.
The book is out of print. I know because my mom used to read it to my brother when he was a kid. I had never heard of the story at 24 years old. It's likely one of those things that has died off the past few decades.Susan Arendt said:
Still, I can only imagine that people made an irrational correlation because it's a children's book about not-black people. It's a story about an Indian kid who wanders into the jungle, and in order to keep the Tigers from eating him he gives them his things. In the end they are all trying to be the most magnificent Tiger, start clawing and biting at each other, and in the whole mess Sambo gets his stuff back. Even if he's called Little Black Sambo (his mom is Black Mumbo and his father Black Jumbo), none of the characters are drawn black. They are all clearly of Indian decent. What with taking place in India.
I don't mean to sound like a prick, though I realize my tone must sound as such, but I'm trying to figure out ...y'know what? Nevermind. It's a time long past. It's like how me and most of my friends had never even heard of the term Porch Monkey until Clerks 2 (and then I realized why when I watched Dumbo with my niece. Now THAT is some interesting look back into American culture).
Point is, people that are entering their 30's don't even know a bunch of these terms. We're past when this stuff was a big deal. What we have now is a nation of bleeding-heart liberal white people that are too damned afraid to poke fun at any other color, even if they do it to each other. It's fine for my friends to call me a whop-dego and I can call them krauts, but the second I make foul comments to a black or hispanic? Now that's just too far.
What I'd be more concerned with is who put the word sambo in there with the intentions of seeing something related to black people. If they claimed it as racist then clearly they were intentionally looking for some sort of correlation, one that no one saw until they were educated.
To cut a long story short, read it all here! [http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/09/13/kanye-west-storms-the-vmas-stage-during-taylor-swifts-speech/]Ariosona said:
Apparently he's apologised to Ms. Swift according to the local fishrag.
Not as well as one would think. The only reason I know about is is because I read Fahrenheit 451, and paid attention during history class.Susan Arendt said:
I'm pretty sure most people nowadays would think the Martial Art beforehand. It's mostly because Sambo is a pretty archaic slur these days.
It's a bit surprising that the developers of a game with such a focus on words wouldn't have a better vocabulary.