I was raised working-class by southern working-class people. I'm not White, *but*. The thing is? This makes perfect sense to me:
I think part of the reason I am having a hard time quantifying these nuances is that I have to switch registers to do it. There's the language I used when I was getting my master's degree, the language I use when I talk to my friends back home in West Virginia and Kentucky and Maryland, and the language I use to talk to friends here in California. They're not exactly the same and while the English words have all the same dictionary meanings, they're definitely taken in different ways by different groups of people and class is a factor there. There are things that I would be very offended by if a man said them to me at the university where I work, but not if a man said them to me at a barbecue in a relative's back yard, because they would just feel so different.
Absolutely yes. Just -- absolutely. The *difference* I'm seeing is that I have no problem saying to myself -- and to the people in question -- that the things being said *are* bigoted in one way or another, and that they should never be said at all. It doesn't matter that 'that's the way it's always been' if the way it's always been is *wrong*.
But I want to defend Dean because I empathise with his confusion about how to talk to people who aren't from the world he comes from and don't know the whole code for what he means--especially lately in fandom.
I can understand that, too... but honestly, I really wonder if the discussion would come up as much as it does if the *show* questioned Dean's vocabulary, if there were people who flat-out told him that he was speaking like an ass, and to explain himself for doing so. Instead, the show just lets him talk like that, and never questions it, and Dean's not allowed to *grow* as a character. Add that to the fact that he *didn't* talk like that in earlier seasons and you've got a real, *growing* problem.
I believe that a lot of things are fucked up in this country, and that a lot of well-meaning, otherwise intelligent people say stupid-ass things and need to be *corrected* for them. Ignorance is, after all, forgiveable -- right up until it stops being cluelessness and starts being a stubborn refusal to let go of the mistakes of the past and move forward. That's the lens *I'm* looking through, and yeah, it colors everything I do. And I'm okay with that, because I'm pretty sure I've got the right idea. ;-)
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Date: 2008-02-27 08:39 am (UTC)I think part of the reason I am having a hard time quantifying these nuances is that I have to switch registers to do it. There's the language I used when I was getting my master's degree, the language I use when I talk to my friends back home in West Virginia and Kentucky and Maryland, and the language I use to talk to friends here in California. They're not exactly the same and while the English words have all the same dictionary meanings, they're definitely taken in different ways by different groups of people and class is a factor there. There are things that I would be very offended by if a man said them to me at the university where I work, but not if a man said them to me at a barbecue in a relative's back yard, because they would just feel so different.
Absolutely yes. Just -- absolutely. The *difference* I'm seeing is that I have no problem saying to myself -- and to the people in question -- that the things being said *are* bigoted in one way or another, and that they should never be said at all. It doesn't matter that 'that's the way it's always been' if the way it's always been is *wrong*.
But I want to defend Dean because I empathise with his confusion about how to talk to people who aren't from the world he comes from and don't know the whole code for what he means--especially lately in fandom.
I can understand that, too... but honestly, I really wonder if the discussion would come up as much as it does if the *show* questioned Dean's vocabulary, if there were people who flat-out told him that he was speaking like an ass, and to explain himself for doing so. Instead, the show just lets him talk like that, and never questions it, and Dean's not allowed to *grow* as a character. Add that to the fact that he *didn't* talk like that in earlier seasons and you've got a real, *growing* problem.
I believe that a lot of things are fucked up in this country, and that a lot of well-meaning, otherwise intelligent people say stupid-ass things and need to be *corrected* for them. Ignorance is, after all, forgiveable -- right up until it stops being cluelessness and starts being a stubborn refusal to let go of the mistakes of the past and move forward. That's the lens *I'm* looking through, and yeah, it colors everything I do. And I'm okay with that, because I'm pretty sure I've got the right idea. ;-)