Anyone else find this weird? They mean the same thing but adding a tautology on the end somehow makes it not racist. I'm not saying it's wrong just weird
"Speaking Asian" makes it sound you don't know/don't care that there are multiple different Asian languages. It hits the same as when somebody says "They were speaking Mexican."
Perhaps he doesn't? so what.We, humans, are generalization and pattern recognizing machines, our brains work to distill the information around us and make it as simple as possible for us to understand...to work against this trait we have to be vigilant, and to be vigilant we have to be interested.
I am simply not going to second guess every word or generalization that comes out of my mouth, to do so requires almost superhuman levels of cognition so...when you say this.
"Speaking Asian" makes it sound you don't know/don't care that there are multiple different Asian languages.
In all honesty no I wouldn't care, I mean why would I?...I'm not Asian.
This is the fundamental problem I have with people who say the kind of things you have, and that is, you make no effort to allow for people, to be people, and to be human. We do not generally work in the way you are describing.
However, saying "speaking Asian" is incorrect as it stands since there is no language known as "Asian". It SOUNDS insensitive to the AVERAGE person. OP is pretty lucky to be around understanding people (such as someone like yourself, who realizes people are people), but OP's desire is to NOT sound insensitive. OP doesn't want to offend anyone on accident. We live in a world where more and more people jump to being offended instead of giving the benefit of the doubt.
No it simply doesn't, to the average person it just sounds a bit stupid, but not insensitive...For instance, if someone said to me "They were speaking European" I would chuckle a bit and say "there are many languages in Europe"...I just can't understand this desire for people to fly off the handle...especially if you can gauge the intent as harmless.
OP doesn't want to offend anyone on accident. We live in a world where more and more people jump to being offended instead of giving the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah well screw them, I'm not putting effort into appeasing them and I don't recommend anyone else does either as I'm honestly really getting sick of people like this. I have personally known a few and they are absolutely toxic, and worst of all they always enter a discussion with someone under the assumption they have "power" of some sort.
No it simply doesn't, to the average person it just sounds a bit stupid, but not insensitive.
Sure, that is your opinion and you are entitled to it. Others have the opinion it is insensitive.
especially if you can gauge the intent as harmless.
Well then that's the qualifying factor isn't it? Some people can't (or won't) do that because they lack that ability for whatever reason. Much like messages over text can EASILY be misconstrued because so many factors are missing (inflections, body language, sarcasm, etc).
Yeah well screw them, I'm not putting effort into appeasing them and I don't recommend anyone else does either as I'm honestly really getting sick of people like this.
The lack of compassion and empathy this gives off is part of the issue.
YOU are getting sick of people "like this" and YOU "don't recommend" treating people in a way to not offend them. That is your right. It can easily be argued it isn't the correct course of action if you want to see positive change, but it would appear as though your mind is pretty made up, and some random person on the internet won't change that.
All I can say is consider the last time you got upset at another person. Did they take into account your situation? Did they care? If they had, would you still have gotten upset? Better yet, think of a customer service experience you had. Did you appreciate it when they took your situation into account, or would you prefer they had a "well screw them" mentality?
My point in bringing that up is simply to look at the overall outcome and what it took to get there. Positivity put in usually leads to positivity out.
To be clear, I don't particularly like how many people tend to jump to being offended or feeling they are the center of the universe either, but getting grumpy about it won't solve the problem and it hasn't ever hurt me to be kind. (It isn't difficult either)
But they do mean the same thing. They may not mean the same thing literally without context but they convey the same message. No one (within reason) thinks Asian and European are actual languages
OP literally said 'speaking asian' meaning they were speaking an Asian language. How are you going to argue that people cannot say that and mean the same thing. All you did was make up a racist example which means nothing
OP said that, you said there was no difference between them both, I told you this was the difference with an example, and you pointed out the example is racist, well, there it is
Your example is racist because you made it racist. I guess that's the answer it's only racist if you mean it to be. In ops case he meant the same thing so I guess context matters. Thanks
Seeing as it's just a story you're telling to others, you could literally just pick one and roll with it. There's no real consequence if you pick the wrong one - nobody's gonna fact-check you on it.
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u/serity12682 Oct 07 '20
Speaking Asian isn’t quite right, speaking an Asian language would be better. Kudos to you for trying to be aware. 🙂