Are We ALL Welcomed Here?

its not about race, gender, nationality or sexual identity or any of the labels and judgments people put on each other to create boundaries and walls. its about stupidity and lack of compassion. and some of the people who are speaking up against the injustice of racism, in this thread, are some of the most judgmental prejudice people i have ever had the misfortune of interacting with online.

You are joking, right? Just trying to do a little trolling to see who bites? Kind of like asking why ass raping your own mother is a crime. The only case you can make for your statement is that we don't AR other forms of stupidity. Yes, racial hatred (and other forms of xenophobia) is noting more than stupidity and insecurity and lets face it, we don't get angry with our neighbor just because he decided to stick a firecracker up his nose. Now if he soaked his clothes in alcohol and wanted to have a smoke in the ally we might do something about it. His stupidity is not longer a danger to himself, it is a danger to those around him.

Same with hate groups. Their stupidity is now a danger to normal people and the need to be AR'ed and banned to protect the populace as a whole.

-- edited to add --
/hug Jig
I'm sorry you ran into them, hon. The only way to protect the future is to act now. It is all of our duties to help the society as a whole. We must AR this behavior when it occurs. Much like Ghandi, we must refuse to cooperate with tyranny. Doing nothing is the worst thing we can do.

Jig, SL is populated by people, and not saints.
There are unpleasant morons in RL and they will be in SL.
In SL, they can behave even more badly because they feel safe and untouchable behind their keyboards.

I wouldn't feel sad for me if someone abused me in SL or RL.
I might feel irritated by the 'noise' or a bit sad in general that such people exist - but not sad on my own behalf.

That moron has problems.
Anyone who picks on others because of their colour, creed, nationality, hair, whatever is simply venting their own frustration at the state of their own sad little lives.

Don't let their problems become your problem.

I think there's a fair amount of fake racism displayed in SL. The people displaying it aren't racists so much as they are jerky troublemakers. They just want to aggravate people. In some cases this gets expressed by creating a thousand physical banana phones, in other cases displaying racist tendencies.

You see folks at the welcome area put on their Hitler avatars. I doubt they are Nazis. They just want to aggravate people and they try to use an efficient means to aggravate them.

Other factors in gross misbehavior in SL is drug abuse, not getting enough to eat, not getting enough sleep, and spending all one's waking hours sitting in a chair on the internet.

I'm not suggesting there aren't an ample supply of real racists, homophobes, etc. in SL, just that there are people who pretend to be such offensive types because they like to rile people up.

I've found that Second Life has done more to expose and break down my own prejudices than anything else in my life. In most cases prejudices I had no idea I even had. There are always going to be irredeemable asshats who cling to their prejudices and who take pleasure in displaying them, but I honestly believe they're the minority, in RL and especially in SL. Someone making themselves out to be a real racist jerk is likely to find themselves ostracized by most people in SL. I've met so many brilliant and wonderful people of all races, creeds, and nationalities in SL, and any notions I may have had from my upbringing about the superiority of any particular group have been revealed to me as the complete nonsense that they are. I'm sure I'm not alone in having that experience.

If someone expresses their opinion in the course of a debate, then it is simply expressing an opinion.

If someone just walks up to a person and abuses them, then it's harassment/intolerance/pain-in-the-ass/moronic/ARable

Welcome back Jig!

I was sorry to see you go and apologize for contributing to you feeling unwelcome. Glad to see you are back.

It's like my Grandma always said... F**K 'em!"

WB.

We ARE all welcome here. Unfortunately, this also applies to a**holes as well. The Linden gods gave us a mute button for this reason. Tolerance is a two way street.

i'm sorry to hear you met up with one of the nasty people in sl..it happens a lot in sl..
I'm native American myself.Chiricahua Apache Indian full blood and Proud of it..i use a dark skin in sl myself.
i have been called squaw more times than i can count..i used to feel like i had to prove to them that i was not a squaw or that i wanted to get back at them but learned fast just to laugh at them before i mute mute mute..just like the RL the nasty people show up thinking they are more than someone else if they are not like them.

i think to myself what idiots..this whole sl world is filled with more types of races than the RL.
are they that weak in their minds and so set full of hate that coming to a virtual world would make them any more right than the RL??

The fact is the advantage goes to the people that are different from them because now they are the out numbered jerks.Because they have exposed themselves to the whole world now and a whole lot more of the people that they hate..this makes them the minority in this world not us..They are the out of place not us sweetie *winks*

Jig, I missed your threads too.

I think the sensitive thoughtful people have to find some kind of armor against the insensitive thoughtless people, both in SL and in RL. I know muting, banning, and ARing aren't really enough. You're still left with a bad taste. You'd rather fix that person. I haven't figured out the answer yet, but I do know it's getting easier as I get older and I realize there really are more pleasant people than jerks. That's why the jerks, whether intentional or clueless, seem to stand out and have more impact.

Sorry you had this experience. The best way to get even is to refuse the bait and to rise above it.

"Hate speech" as the term is commonly understood in the US is prohibited under the TOS, and racist speech in particular is.

I don't think this is about thought control; I think this is about LL wanting to maintain civil order. I daresay someone pointing out US blacks as a group consistently score lower on IQ and SAT tests than whites as a group (an unfortunate fact, though a black friend of mine consistently has beat my ass off in chess O.O) would not be treated anything like someone calling Jig, to choose an example phrase, a "damn nigger." I hope that clarifies the distinction for you.

Interesting, this. There was another thread, in the SLX forums, that raised the issue of being called a "squaw." The etymology reported there by knowledgeable people was that the word originally was used in Iriquois and perhaps other eastern languages to mean a married Amerindian woman, and so was a perfectly honorable word at the start. It appears to have become increasingly pejorative in usage as it was carried westward - by white settlers, obviously. It seems to me an Amerindian word hijacked and perverted in use by the enemies of Amerindians, and I argued there that Amerindians should set about taking their word back. Unfortunately, the pejorative usage seems to deeply ingrained even among Amerindians today for them to do that; instead, they object to it. Alas. I live in the Northeast, and my understanding of the word always was the apparent original meaning: a married Amerindian woman. I am sorry to see it has gone so far downhill.

As for the jerks exposing their nature to the world, and sticking out like the sore thumbs they are in SL, you are absolutely right in my opinion.

Hi Jig ~ I am confused by the title of your post....it led me to believe that someone was nasty to you here in this forum. Then I read that it happened to you in world this morning. So I have to ask, why did you leave the forums in the first place? And because something happened to you inworld, why did you decide to come here and post about it if, as you said, you never planned on coming back here. This isn't a flame, I'm genuinely curious. Also, I'm sorry that there are ignorant and completely disrespectful asshats in SL - just as in RL. Usually I've noticed that they are very young and not very wised up to the real issues of life. If it were possible, it is these morons who should have their logins blocked when the grid takes a shit, and LL needs to cut down on resident usage.

Welcome back Jig... good to see you here again.

The best way to deal with jackasses like this is to just ignore them or laugh at them. Their goal is to make you uncomfortable and aggravated. If you let them get to you you let them win. Ignore them enjoy your sl and above all don't let them get to you...

.d

Jig left the forums after being mercilessly and in my opinion unfairly attacked for starting frivolous threads in Resident Answers. They were frivolous, but they were also amusing, and they did pertain to SL and they did raise questions that at least some people might find interesting or at least fun. She attributed her departure at the time to those attacks.

I hope this means she is back for good, and that she adopts the Middle Eastern saying: "The dogs bark; the caravan moves on."

Discrimination is discrimination, AR the clown, maybe we can get rid of him that way, if I had been in the same room I certainly would have told this pig what I thought of his racist attitude.
An persoanlly I think it's great to see people playing their skin colour, nothing wrong with deversity, the population is always going to be a majority of average shape caucasians, but no reason for other skin colors, shapes, furries, mechs & scaly's to have to hide themselves. (Excepting RP places where they don't fit the genre of course).
As a Kangaroo, I am happy to say I have only encountered 2 individuals in 18 months with a negative attitude to my avatar choice, and they still did not cross the line to be worthy of an AR. So I have no doubt worse people are out there and I have encountered them as my human alts at times and told them exactly what I thought and been backed up by other people around me to the point the individual will be forced to leave, I am yet to see one apologise unfortunately.

any form of out an out discrimination should be an automatic blanket ban, if the evidence is there to back the complaint up.

Sorry to hear this. Most people are nice in SL but with so many residents now it's inevitable that there will a few nasty ones.

well, if he is getting SHOT at, then he needs to file an absue report, thats harassment with physical objects

LL cannot police what it doesn't know about. They aren't mindreaders. AR them for intolerance. It is hard to believe in this day and age that people are still so backward, but they are.

Depends what she is getting shot with. Oh, it's a he, forget it.

What the hell does this mean?

it is a word that the old meaning is coverd over with the new meanings..and they would have to know me to actually know if i were married or not or a young woman hehehe
negro used to have a well used meaning before it was changed into what it is now also which is insulting..
Crackers used to be for soup but even that innocent word is thrown into the mix now..i always wonder why that word?where did the hateful meaning generate from a cracker i would eat with my soup? lol was some guy sitting there eating soup while in a debate at dinner and at a loss for words and it just came out as he held a cracker in his or her hand? lol
a word is just a sound without the meaning behind it..

the fact they use a word of anything else other than our actual name on a first meeting means they are not there to get to know us.
even walking up and saying hi redhead or tight jeans or anything but asking a name or saying the persons name would more times than not be insulting to anyone.

there is so much change in slang that most times if we are out of the loop we don't even know we are being insulted..
i gave up on trying to even care what words they use now..the term "that is so last week" is becoming last week lol

there is good in everyone and bad in everyone..i know i am bad and i am good and i hate people sometimes also..but i don't think i could hate a group of people because one decided to be a stand out ass..

i also think that just as in anything it is about where people were brought up and the people that surrounded them as they were..that if they ever really got to know the people they hated they would see that they are not as bad as they were told..
once they saw there was more to it than they were led to believe then an untrusting feeling would come over them and maybe they would drift from that group teaching the hate and they begin the fresh feeling of what is truly the real freedom they have been missing all this time.
that people are individuals and not all robots singing one song per group they were issued at birth.
one can hope i guess*winks*