I'm not going to tell them how to talk otherwise--they need to learn to sound like themselves, not like me (after all, I left and moved to California and all that).
I think there's a difference between not imposing your belief system on someone and simply not allowing bigoted speech to stand uncorrected. Then again, I'm one of those people who didn't let *my* grandmother get away with anything, no matter how old she was.
but I also thought the girl who said 'in a coon's age' had no idea how that would sound outside of places where nobody shortens the word 'raccoon' because they don't have them getting in their garbage all the time--although even in San Francisco I once lived across the street from one, and I had a certain amount of sympathy for her. I've heard that phrase many times and it never occurred to me that anyone who knew it well enough to use it would be referring to a person, although in the area where we grew up we usually said 'in a dog's age' instead--which may be why--I've always understood that in the construction 'in an X's age', X is always nonhuman.)
Well, frankly, 'X is always nonhuman' has been used as a reason to use that phrase to refer to Black people -- who have often been considered far, far less than human. I wasn't part of the discussion -- I was probably offline -- when it happened, but, well... I don't have to be polite to you -- general you -- when you say something offensive. I may *choose* to give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't *mean* to be offensive, or I may not. In the end, you're the one who did/said the problematic thing.
Re: part 1
I think there's a difference between not imposing your belief system on someone and simply not allowing bigoted speech to stand uncorrected. Then again, I'm one of those people who didn't let *my* grandmother get away with anything, no matter how old she was.
but I also thought the girl who said 'in a coon's age' had no idea how that would sound outside of places where nobody shortens the word 'raccoon' because they don't have them getting in their garbage all the time--although even in San Francisco I once lived across the street from one, and I had a certain amount of sympathy for her. I've heard that phrase many times and it never occurred to me that anyone who knew it well enough to use it would be referring to a person, although in the area where we grew up we usually said 'in a dog's age' instead--which may be why--I've always understood that in the construction 'in an X's age', X is always nonhuman.)
Well, frankly, 'X is always nonhuman' has been used as a reason to use that phrase to refer to Black people -- who have often been considered far, far less than human. I wasn't part of the discussion -- I was probably offline -- when it happened, but, well... I don't have to be polite to you -- general you -- when you say something offensive. I may *choose* to give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't *mean* to be offensive, or I may not. In the end, you're the one who did/said the problematic thing.