Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Sciatrix: Removed the nascent list of series with redheaded characters, since it was comprised entirely of Dexter and wasn't really germane to the page.

Also, what is with the enter spaces between some of the groups, but not others? It looks really random and it breaks up the page, especially when not all of the different categories are separated.

Annwyd: Can we try to cut down on the hand-wringing over seeing white dudes get made fun of? Yeah, it's annoying when done just to seem cool, but there are valid reasons why, for instance, seeing an all-white team humiliate an all-black team is much more offensive than the reverse. I run into enough white privilege on the rest of the internet, it'd be nice to try to keep it in check here.

bluepenguin: Yeah, I was just coming over here to say the same thing. There's a bit too much of white guys complaining about how oppressed they are for my tastes.

alighieri: So fucking what? Get the hell over yourselves and your white guilt. Either it's okay for someone to be made fun of because of his race or it isn't - and if it isn't, this goes for everyone. If some useless punk who never worked a whole day in his life comes and thinks he can call me a "cracker" or "white trash" or whatever, then I have the same goddamn right to be offended as anyone who gets called a nigger! I'm not even American and people still seem to think they can hold me responsible for everything from slavery to forest fires in China! White privilege my ass, like I get success shoved down my throat with a golden spoon.

^ XFD at the middle school surburban white bread freaking out.

Sciatrix: My, aren't we defensive.

Chocolatepot: I have to agree that the whole section is too whiny. I added to it (probably shouldn't have) because of that, but really ... someone ought to remove most of the additions to it and cut down the whole thing. Preferably someone who is not a white male.

Did it myself, plus removed the natter:
- In real life (and online), this troper has seen more than one person argue that it's impossible to be sexist or racist towards white males, as those terms supposedly imply privilege as well as prejudice; this is particularly common in academia, where it's actually the standard definition. Apparently prejudice is somehow lessened if you aim it at the people you see as oppressors, whether they're actually oppressing anybody or not.
  - This is no way the standard definition in academia, where entire books are written about, for example, the stresses of being a male in a massively patriarchal society and the anxiousness it can cause when trying to live up to the standard.
  - But there ARE many ways in which women are privileged: they live longer, do better at school, work fewer hours, get lighter prison sentences in better prisons for the same crime, etc.
  - ... get patronized, get raped more often, get abused by their partners more often, get objectified in the media more often. The list of ways women are worse off is much longer and more serious, which is exactly why men get made fun of. (Also, this isn't The Other Wiki, but citation plz?)
  - The above may refer to the idea of 'white race privilege', the idea that unspoken codes of conduct, communication and behaviour, coupled with generations of (Western) society being dominated by those of white skin (and, as feminists would argue, particularly men of white skin) work to ensure that those with white skin receive certain advantages (both overt and subtle) in Western society that are often denied to those of other ethnic groups, who are in turn subject to subtle and overt forms of disadvantage; for example, crime reports stressing the skin colour of non-Caucasian perpetrators whilst ignoring the skin colour of Caucasian perpetrators, or preferential treatment being given to Caucasian job applicants over non-Caucasian job applicants. It's hardly the 'standard' of academia or used to excuse prejudice against people of white skin, however; it's a theory used to explain how society works and, like most theories, is subject to a great deal of debate (although that said, it's difficult to argue convincingly that white people in general don't have it just a bit easier than many other ethnic groups in western society, relatively speaking).
- Oh, please. This section is a textbook example of exactly why it's considered okay to mock straight white men: there are mountains of historical injustices behind women and every other ethnicity in the West which are just not comparable to getting told off by feminists or made fun of by black comedians.

C Trombley: Sorry, misread the trope.

Meems: Albinos are not an ethnic group. Blondes are not an ethinic group. People with speech impediments are not an ethnic group.

Rann: People that don't read the actual definition the page is using when it's spelled out right at the top are not an ethnic group.

Emily: Could those perhaps be split off into something like Acceptable Appearance Targets, to avoid confusion? And speech impediments, and maybe albinos, could be Acceptable Hard Luck Targets.

GAC: I agree with Emily. The definition statement doesn't necessarily justify it, especially when quite non-ethnic things are at the beginning of it. "Not able to fix without plastic surgery"(paraphrase) doesn't fit either. People have a certain amount of self-determination in their ethnic identity (personal example, my grandmother was a second-generation Italian-American, but I identify much less with the Italian-American identity than my father or my sister do), and many popular ethnic/racial categories don't have the handy "racial" features to identify them (For example, Hispanics, while stereotypically "brown", actually incude members of Caucasian, African, and Amerindian populations — plus a lot of admixtures, depending on the source country)

Sciatrix: Putting myself down as agreeing. Since when was "redhead" an ethnic group? By that standard, my uncle is a different ethnic group from both of his brothers. Anyway, how does Ethnic differ from Nationality, which we also have?

Inyssius: I don't know, but it seems like these sub-pages need some serious trimming. Do we really need a full paragraph about the episode of Star Trek where they met an albino person who wasn't evil?

Rann: Wow. More and more justifying just keeps getting added to the WASP section. It's like actually watching the gradual acceptance of a target occurring.

Nornagest: Yanked natter:

This is probably based on a valid academic definition of sexism and racism—that they are a result of prejudice + power rather than simply prejudice. It generally isn't meant to excuse minorities who themselves show prejudice. The fact that it doesn't fall entirely into line with the popular definition of racism or sexism is a commentary on the detached and overanalytical nature of academia rather than evidence that those nasty minorities are trying to find excuses to hate white dudes.
Actually, it sounds a lot like a commentary on the fact that academics who, rather than being "just inventors", actually try to give their ideas a moral spin, still manage to wind up somebody''s useful idiot in the end.
This, of course, contradicts itself because it is based upon the assumption that all white males have power, which is in and of itself racist and sexist, making the whole definition circular. This leads the cynical observer to suspect that it precisely an excuse, albeit an intellectualized one, to hate white dudes.
The academic definition is actually prejudice and privilege, not power. White people of both genders have significant privilege, particularly in the United States and Europe, which may be why they are acceptable targets for jokes about ethnicity or racial stereotypes.
Which doesn't change the fact that lots of whites lead just as bad lives as your stereotypical African American. "White trash" or "trailer trash" isn't a particularly privileged way of life.

...and modified the example to encompass the salient points. I'm a little skeptical about keeping it in at all, given that it's such obvious flamebait, but it's a pretty good example of an acceptable target after all.

RA Kthe Undead: *** "But hey, go ahead and make alcoholism jokes; we'll just keep biting our tongues... "

This implies that the Irish are embarrassed about the whole high alcohol consumption. I don't think we are - hell, I jokingly consider teetotallers to be unpatriotic.

Man Without A Body: Removed all the natter underneath the bit about gingers.

Furrysmurf: Okay, the word "kitten" appears five times on this page, and I have no idea what it is supposed to mean in any of the contexts. Is this some meme or joke I don't get?

Buttle: In one of them it replaces "Spalding"; presumably it's random, though I remember the same (or related) vandal using "kitten" for every instance of "nigger" once

From the main entry:

Don't forget The Invisible Man. At least in his case his powers were attributable to his albinism; HG Wells didn't throw it in to make him weird.

What albinism? He was a scientist who developed an invisibility serum

From H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man (Project Gutenbeg):

"You know the red colouring matter of blood; it can be made white—colourless—and remain with all the functions it has now!"

Kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement.

The Invisible Man rose and began pacing the little study. "You may well exclaim. I remember that night. It was late at night—in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students—and I worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone. 'One could make an animal—a tissue—transparent! One could make it invisible! All except the pigments—I could be invisible!' I said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars. 'I could be invisible!' I repeated.

H.G. Wells even came up with a reason why the Invisible Man was not blind:

"I struggled up. At first I was as incapable as a swathed infant—stepping with limbs I could not see. I was weak and very hungry. I went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass, at nothing save where an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the table and press my forehead against the glass.

Chocolatepot: Removed some more natter from WASP Males:

You can more or less say anything about white people that, when said about another race or ethnicity, would be considered racist. This goes double for men, because sexism against men is just a whiny male who needs to grow up...and yet you get fired for saying Breast jokes while women regularly insult men and trade dumb male jokes and never get any retaliation.
- Deep South America? Apartheid South Africa? France?
- FRANCE? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Good one! France. There are people who yell racist stuff against White People all the time and never get in trouble. Meanwhile if you say something about Algerians and Moroccans? "OH MY GOD THEY'RE RACIST!!".
- SPANIARDS as the embodiment of colonial evils? What propaganda have you been smoking? Visit Mexico or something - brown skin, black hair, and noticeably mixed race to pure native-looking people are everywhere, white people are rare. Same with any other ex-Spanish colony. NOW - look north of the Mexican border. See many Indian-looking people, except for immigrants from ex-Spanish colonies? Oh, right, your 6th grade history books told you that North America was sparsely if at all populated starting exactly north of the current Mexican border. Suuuure...

Possibly this was too pick-and-choosy, but it seems like the same person with a bone to pick. I considered removing more, but contented myself with the most nattery. Also, I moved all of the albinism stuff to the listing in Acceptable Hard Luck Targets.

Archived Discussion Main / AcceptableEthnicTargets