There is utility in speaking precisely and using words as accurately as possible to avoid giving people the wrong impression. Choosing words too loosely leads to incorrect interpretations of intent and content, especially in written English where the audible tone of speech component that people rely on to convey meaning is no longer accessible by the audience.
A slur = an attempt to disparage
A bigoted slur = a bigoted attempt to disparage
A slurring bigot = my father after 6pm
Sometimes the difference is important but I grant you that in context of a discussion on bigotry that it’s not necessary to make the distinction as it should be understood. The distinction should only be made then when discussing a non bigoted slur.
I didn’t “make it up.” And if I had, that would be super impressive, because it’s a bog standard definition of “slur” used in psycholinguistics.
Slurring is a type of hate speech meant to harm individuals simply because of their group membership. It not only offends but also causes oppression. Slurs have some strange properties. Target groups can reclaim slurs, so as to express solidarity and pride. Slurs are noted for their “offensive autonomy” (they offend regardless of speakers’ intentions, attitudes, and beliefs) and for their “offensive persistence,” as well as for their resistance to cancellation (they offend across a range of contexts and utterances). They are also noted for their “offense variation” (not all slurs offend equally) and for the complicity they may induce in listeners. Slurs signal identity affiliations; they cue and re-entrench ideologies. They subordinate and silence target members and are sometimes used non-derogatorily.
So this is apparently what the picnic thing is about.
Considering that lynchings were attended as family outings, with the kids brought along and everything, I can see why people might find this plausible, even if it didn’t turn out to be true.
And so are mass murderers during their mass murder.
Jesus.
This kind of behavior is known as a dionysian revel for a reason. It is a complete disregard for sobriety and many people fall into its clutches. It’s a great exhalation of emotions for the engaged carousers but ugly to the sober minded. This same kind of thing has been happening since the dawn of time so much so that the Greeks based parables about Dionysus around them. Because to them it was excessive and filled with foolish behaviors like a big drunken party.
That’s how some people are. Simultaneously, it’s not uniform nor considered pleasant by all. Some of those people are smiling. Most of them are not.
Some came to be entertained by the suffering and violence and others came to bare witness and still others probably came out of a badly misguided sense of justice.
People do this kind of thing all time. Always have, always will. It does not mean the average man saw this as a good old time or a fine family experience.
Some people raise their children in brothels. Some dads leave their kids in the parking lot while they go into strip clubs and massage parlors.
Bad people do bad things. This was nobody’s idea of a picnic unless they were just crazy trash. Look at the expression on that little girl. Does she look happy to be there? Like this was fun and games? She looks like she understands more about what just happened than the POS that brought her there.
If this was where the origin of the word picnic came from I bet not a lot of people would ever have a picnic again.
Better yet. Look at the little boy next her. His face is obscured but you can see enough. Zoom in on it. He has both of his hands up covering his face with a wadded up handkerchief in one hand the other obscuring his face from the side. Looks a lot like he’s crying. (edit: doesn’t look like he wants to be photographed, does it? Like he doesn’t want to be there at all. Not a happy family outing. Not a good time.)
What kind of person takes their kid to that? The kind that wants them to grow up to be just as fucked up as they are. Like the kind of piece of shit that tosses a kid in the water and says “sink or swim.”
Edit: I wonder what the mother’s face looks like. I noticed that she’s not in the picture.
In Values for a New Millennium (one of the better books circulating in ninjer circles), Robert Humphrey noted that the vast majority of people on Earth shared the common value of generally wanting to be left alone and uninterested in offending their neighbors.
The trouble with that value is that as soon as you add more people you up the chance that one or a few of them are going to run the herd off a cliff. These are the so called “bad eggs” and they have an infectious effect on groups of humans (viral).
I don’t think you can look into any of these stills and get the real picture of what’s going on inside all these people’s consciences. Most likely a lot of them are afraid to speak up or do anything at all. The bad eggs are running the game.
So, two incidents that confirm bias. Not exactly the national passtime was it?
If the papers had a different opinion, I bet the majority of people who read about it in the paper had a different opinion too, didn’t they?
I bet those articles didn’t read like “Roasted Darkie. A good time was had by all!”
Church of the Fiery Cross paper maybe but that wasn’t exactly a mainstream periodical.
People in the late 19th century understood the concept of vigilante violence and why it was wrong. It’s the people in the middle of violence that don’t seem to understand so well.
What bias? For the third time, I never said or implied it was a national pastime, and providing two incidents says nothing about the number of incidents there were in total.
Generally speaking it does seem trivial to recognize that humans often enjoy inflicting cruelty on each other, and this includes children. So I’m not sure why you’re putting so much effort into suggesting otherwise, especially to the point of making the same straw man accusation over and over again.
