What is, and what should be, the standard for determining racial insensitivity?

[BvBPL]

Yeah, if I make a silly "yo momma" joke to someone and it so happens that his mom died last year and I had no idea, I'll apologize profusely. But if someone gets offended because I don't like their hat or I don't agree with their politics, then no apology will be forthcoming.. maybe a diplomatic one if it's a girl I have a chance with or say .. you're with a group of friends and it's somebody's birthday and you don't want to ruin his day.

I used to have this view, that I would express my views in the manner I wanted regardless of how others felt about them. Then, a few years back, I got into a discussion with a friend online about a certain topic. My view offended him, and I did apologize when he expressed it, principally because I didn't understand just how offended he was. This whole thing alienated my friend and ended our friendship.

Today I would rather bite my tongue a thousand times than lose one friend because I was rude, but that was a hard lesson to learn. I now weigh my friendships against the importance of my views differently, and I recognize that too much candor can cost me not only friendships, but also other opportunities as well.

It is difficult to fully demonstrate the importance of hard lessons to another, but rest assured: "you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

 

[Perfection]

whatever the standard is we should express our results in microhitlers.

 

[Synobun]

I used to have this view, that I would express my views in the manner I wanted regardless of how others felt about them. Then, a few years back, I got into a discussion with a friend online about a certain topic. My view offended him, and I did apologize when he expressed it, principally because I didn't understand just how offended he was. This whole thing alienated my friend and ended our friendship.

Today I would rather bite my tongue a thousand times than lose one friend because I was rude, but that was a hard lesson to learn. I now weigh my friendships against the importance of my views differently, and I recognize that too much candor can cost me not only friendships, but also other opportunities as well.

It is difficult to fully demonstrate the importance of hard lessons to another, but rest assured: "you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

If your friends are so vehemently against things that you believe in, perhaps it is a wise decision to simply not be their friends. Censoring yourself for the sake of maintaining friendship is both illogical and silly.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

whatever the standard is we should express our results in microhitlers.

That reminds me of a suggested measure of beauty, the millihelen. 1 millihelen being a face beautiful enough to launch one ship.

 

[Mise]

You would change it, just because of a complaint? (let's keep good taste out of this)

I didn't expect that answer tbh. Seriously, you would let people dictate you that easily? I really doubt people who run big businesses can do it effectively if they have to change according to every complaint they receive.

I know you will think that I'm avoiding your question, but my answer absolutely wasn't about "good taste", if by that you mean that I simply don't like the Chop Suey font on an aesthetic level. I don't like it because I absolutely hate kitch racial stereotypes. As I said, I wouldn't dress the staff up in kimonos either, because I'm culturally sensitive enough to know how much that would annoy certain people. People that I've met in my life, people who've written things that resonate with me on an intellectual level, and my own experiences with kitch racial stereotypes have all taught me that using a font like Chop Suey to sell your product is probably a stupid idea.

When you ask "you would let people dictate you that easily?" my answer is "yes", because those people are usually right. I vehemently detest not only the idea of God but the religious structures that have been created around his worship, and think that Christians are literally ridiculous, but I wouldn't use a "winking Jesus" who claims that Phones4U's Easter deals are "miraculous" to advertise my company, because I'm not an arsehole. I realise that some things offend people, and even though pulling that ad probably cost Phones4U a lot of money (and certainly the fine from the regulators would have done, too), it was the right thing to do. They also wrote individual apology letters to each of the people complaining to them, which I'm sure would be difficult for a self-righteous blowhard to do, but for a good person it's not so hard.

People keep saying "oh well people get offended so easily these days! Let's ignore them." But I really haven't encountered many complaints that didn't have some merit. There are a tiny minority of people who literally complain about everything, but I've never met any of them, and I probably never will, so I doubt I will ever have to worry about where "the line" is. This is a problem for other people to worry about, because other people want to skirt the line and make offensive jokes and use kitch racial stereotypes to sell their product. I don't, so I don't have to worry about that.