N-Word Privileges: Real Life Section Cleanup

As it's been decided to keep the RL section of N-Word Privileges, now comes the cleanup. As I understand it, there are currently a bunch of issues to deal with when cleaning it up:

• Natter;
• Debate;
• Shoehorning;
• Generic examples; and
• A ZCE.

We need to get these offenders out of there and put in some notices at the top of the section for us Vigilante Taxonomists to read when editing that section in the future, so this sort of misuse doesn't happen there again.

Looking through the section, there are actual multiple ZC Es, where the example is "So-and so thinks they have these."

Obviously, just my opinion, but here's the examples I think can stay, once you remove the generic examples, the natter and disucssion and the shoehorned examples that are people using slurs that are not used as in-group slang.:

• Indian Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh was famously put in charge of a Chicago drug gang for a day. In his book, Gang Leader For A Day, he describes how his attempt to talk the part became awkward when he asked a man to "talk to me, nigger" who had just been perfectly okay with the real gang leader saying the exact same thing seconds previously. Needless to say everyone else involved was black. In fact the real leader drew a class distinction between Black, African-American and Nigger and had earlier refused to identify as black.

• Dan Savage's original name for his column was "Hey, Faggot!", partially because at the beginning he was mostly interested in giving straight people shitty dating/sex advice (much like how straight advice columnists gave gay people shitty dating advice), and partially to show his allegiance in a debate raging at the time in the LGBT community about whether or not to reclaim the words "faggot" and "fag" (Savage being on the reclaiming side of the argument) He eventually changed it to "Savage Love" when he got more serious about the advice giving game.

• Controversy ensued at the 2011 Slutwalk NYC after a white woman was photographed with a sign quoting the "Woman is the nigger of the world" lyric from John Lennon. The situation only got worse after other white feminists sided with the sign's creator rather than the offended women of color, claiming that her intent was valid even if it was badly mishandled.

• The English Premier League has a curious example involving Tottenham Hotspur FC. The club are from an area of London with a traditionally high Jewish population, and some of the supporters, and at times owners, have been Jewish. This has led supporters of other teams, often those with particularly strong extreme-right-wing tendencies, to insult Spurs and their supporters as "Yids". Some Spurs supporters embrace the name, whether they are Jewish or not, and call themselves the "Yid Army". As a result, there has been ongoing debate about whether it is OK for Jewish or non-Jewish Spurs supporters to call themselves "Yids" or whether it's an anti-Semitic slur that shouldn't even be used affectionately or as a self-definition. Even David Cameron found it necessary to weigh in on the subject.

The Mark Twain entry needs to be rewritten and moved to literature.

There are several entries that should be moved to the Standup folder, including Chris Rock, Mike Birbiglia, Bill Hicks, Lisa Lampanelli, the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, Tim Minchin, and Jeff Foxworthy.

edited 1st Oct '14 4:04:19 AM by Terrie

I am down with that plan.

What are we doing for the future, to keep removed entries from returning and new bad examples from being added? Something like the UI rule might keep down "thinks they have" nonexamples.

Been meaning to check the Real Life section out for a while. From what I can see, there are a lot of "this word is bad" which isn't really the trope. It's related, but at most belongs on a Useful Note page, since it's not about specific examples of the trope.

Examples about people getting into trouble for using words like these aren't really interesting either, since they're aversions (often mislabelled as inversions) that don't avert the trope in any notable way.

I'm not quite sure how the trope relate to comedians, since they often thrive on controversy, as edgy humour is often far better received than a similar word use would be more seriously. On the other hand, comedians as social commentators often discuss tropes with their jokes, which definitely has a place on the page.

Reclaiming words is related, but not this trope. That's about trying to force a word to gain a more positive connotation, and not specifically about privileges about who gets to use the words.

Related to that is also referring to yourself as any word you want (such as Obama referring to himself as a mutt). While that's sort of the same thing, it's about a single person rather than a group of people, which is what the trope is about.

So basically, I agree with what's said in post 2. There might be one or a few examples that can be left I've missed, but overall it's sensible.

Should we just ban real-life examples from the page?

Anyone think Benigni's comment about the Tuscans using bestemmias regularly owing to their proximity to God is a good example? If not, please explain why.

Also, this thread wouldn't exist if the trope got NRLEP'd in the first place.

edited 4th Oct '14 5:46:46 PM by ryanasaurus0077

It needs a little more context. As it is it seems specific to a person rather than a group, so I'm not sure whether it fits or not.

I don't consider it specific to a person. Benigni said "I Toscani", the plural, and not "Il Toscano", the singular.

I meant specifically him, and no one else. Even if I'm generous and assume he's a Tuscan, the example excludes all other Italians, Tuscans or not.

I also wonder if the trope is wide enough to cover generally insulting a group of people, rather than using a specific slur that refers to said group. Since if it isn't, that's not an example, unless there's a slur in the Italian text that's not translated.

As a minor note, is what he said grammatically incorrect, or is it just a poor translation?

Another Duck brings up a good point about attempts to reclaim the word not really being this trope. Looking at the suggested "keep" examples" most of the are boarderline at best under that consideration. In which case, should we also cut the Dan Savage example? Likewise, the English Premier League is about if a word is even in-group slang, not in-group vs. out-group usage. Finally the Lennon example is really about the word, not about in-group vs. out-group, so it should probably go as well, unless there's more to the story that makes it fit. Which leaves us the the stand-up examples and Twain example to be moved, and one RL example:

• Indian Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh was famously put in charge of a Chicago drug gang for a day. In his book, Gang Leader For A Day, he describes how his attempt to talk the part became awkward when he asked a man to "talk to me, nigger" who had just been perfectly okay with the real gang leader saying the exact same thing seconds previously. Needless to say everyone else involved was black. In fact the real leader drew a class distinction between Black, African-American and Nigger and had earlier refused to identify as black.

We may also want to emphasis in the description that this is not just a trope about using slurs in order to prevent future misuse.

The thing about that is just because it is a reclaiming action doesn't mean it's not also this trope. There's an overlap between the two, since in particular the football example is about something that's considered a Jewish slur, in line with the trope.

^^^ For context, Benigni said it about Tuscans in general, saying they can get away with blasphemy and don't have to worry about offending the big guy upstairs because they're closer to Him. And if there are any slurs involved in using bestemmie, the Father, the Mother, and the Son would be more likely to be on the receiving end (e.g. "porco *io", or "***dammit" as we Anglophones would likely translate it), and, to my understanding, as Benigni's basically saying you have to be pretty close to Him to use such language openly.

Also: "sono" is both first person singular indicative and third person plural indicative for the Italian word "essere" (to be). Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only grammatically incorrect stuff I can see may involve sentence structure (I may know a lot of Italian, but I don't know if that's supposed to be a comma before "c'è più confidenza").

edited 5th Oct '14 12:25:31 PM by ryanasaurus0077

I don't think just blaspheming qualifies for the trope, since that's about general religious insults not relating to the Tuscans themselves. It doesn't sound like the right trope to me.

The grammar bit was two comma-separated independent clauses that don't make much sense taken without further context. In the English translation, not the Italian.

If the example was quote about how the Holy Trinity can blaspheme while others can not, it would be an example of the trope. As it stands, it's just one more shoehorning. It may piss people off in Italy to be called a blasphemer, but that makes it an insult, not a discriminatory slur.

Hmm. Good point. Take it to Lost And Found, then?

If you think it's something we absolutely need on the wiki, I suppose. Personally, I don't think it brings enough to the table to make it worth the effort.

Okay, went through and made all the agreed-upon changes.

Fixed some minor markup issues. Otherwise, it seems like this project is done, so I'll ask for closure.

Done.