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I think one of the rules of being a minority is that you have to always be sensitive to the feelings of the majority. Outspoken, risk-taking minorities might try to fool around with boundaries, and get some laughs, but itâs dancing on thin ice. Youâre not allowed to be stupid https://t.co/E3EiW4oDOf
Are all race-directed jokes equally racist? No. Does that mean some race-directed jokes are acceptable? You better be really, really skilled at what youâre doing or youâre going to get burnt. âYouthful indiscretionsâ and âmoments of follyâ are acceptable excuses for some not all
Funnily Iâm reminded of marital jokes here. Should you jokingly insult your spouse? I extremely do not recommend it. âBut its an inside joke, we have a common understanding, we have a thing going!â Uhuh. Thatâs never gonna bite you in the ass ever. đ
Maybe the real crime was that her tweets werenât funny enough đ¤ she spoke too plainly, was too brazen - unacceptable for minorities, particularly unacceptable for women, god help you if youâre both and you arenât operating with surgical nuance and lvl 3 encoding
No I donât think thatâs it. Thatâs a thing, but not the main thing here. Reflecting on my own tweets from years ago - the problem is that she was tweeting to a smaller audience which had a common understanding of the context she operated in. Eg my old tweets are full of Singlish
Iâm guessing she wouldnât be so dumb as to tweet those things today in the present context - but contexts CHANGE, man. It wasnât that long ago that âthatâs so gayâ was an acceptable slight, that homosexuality was a punchline. This was everywhere in pop culture. Also: âr*tardedâ
To be clear I donât think Iâm trying to defend her or support her or say she should be forgiven or not-forgiven or anything of that sort. I donât know shit about that. This stuff is moral fashion, itâll be fashionable one week and out of date the next
I have a feeling when she tweeted âI get joy out of being cruel to old white menâ she was referring to a narrow subset of old white men and did not at the time expect that it would eventually be seen to mean all old white men everywhere. (Not defending here; trying to understand)
I think itâs plausible and maybe about 70% likely that she was taking calculated risks with those tweets. onesâs calculus is always imperfect because you canât foresee the future. Ultimately I think sheâll be ok https://t.co/Vu7pXO7O2o
All of that said generally I would discourage anybody from tweeting, even ironically or cleverly at some meta level, that they wish violence or harm or cruelty towards others. This is not about race; itâs just tacky tbh. If you want others to suffer, try to be classy about it
More extreme eg âHaha I was being ironic and clever when I tweeted about touching children inappropriatelyâ - why. Why is this the itch you need to scratch publicly. Then people gotta waste resources and goodwill defending your dumb ass from overreactions. I wouldnât, but still