Hey, we should all really stop using racist slang to refer to customozation
Meta post I've decided to make. I enjoyed the unixporn subreddit a lot when I used reddit more. I enjoy customizing my linux de as much as the next nerd.
But you definitely shouldn't use racist slang to refer to the process.
To be clear, I didn't know the origin of the term 'ricing' until fairly recently. I was chattimg with my friend and used it to describe my de setup. They informed me that apparently it's from car customization, and is a pejorative against generally asian men who customize their car to look like a racecar.
After learning this I was sad to realize just how engrained it is in linux de customization culture. I personally have stopped using the term, and I would ask everyone here stop as well.
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Nah, I like the term.
It refers to early 00s car culture, a race car had all go no show, a ricer had all show no go. It's just the next iteration of the term. And it's pejorative to anyone who does that shit, not asian men. I have no idea where y'all got that idea from.
It's also racist in car culture.
Okay, how? How does it discriminate based on race or ethnicity?
How does it NOT discriminate? Racial coding exists and if you don't believe it exists then you're a racist.
I mean it has clearly racist origins, but I've never actually heard it used in a racist manner in real life.
At least where I was, there were basically zero Asians, "ricers" were (typically but not exclusively) Japanese cars that were customized terribly, as someone else mentioned, all show and no go. You could have American ricers too.
The owners, the "rice boys", were pretty much all white guys.
"My white friends and I used a racist term for each other that implicitly compares their cars to Asian ones perjoratively" is not necessarily the win you think it is.
When I was in seventh grade a classmate offered me a pull off a cigarette which I took. He then told me I had N***** lipped it. Does that magically become not racist as shit because we were both white and he used it to make fun of me?
Well, that's not at all what I said. Japanese compact cars were generally pretty cool and affordable in a way most similar small American cars were not, so of course they get customized a ton more that their American equivilents.
The people who actually made their cars perform were the racers, those who did the truly terrible mods were the ricers.
Yes, racist due to stereotyping. But it was more wordplay for insulting the taste of the person in question in comparison to the racers, not their ethnicity or the origin of their car. Bad taste is pretty universal. And as with pretty much anything in language, people can and clearly have used it as a racial insult. I just don't think that was it's origin.
I am really amused it has morphed into a more positive connotation with the *nix crowd, while still meaning essentially the same thing. Language truly is a living thing.
okay, so what? i have. now your anecdote is cancelled out.
do you ever get tired of pretending, or are you legitimately this stupid?
So it's racist then. Good, I'm glad that's settled.
I just stumbled over this discussion. Where I live, we often use „rice cooker“ for Japanese cars regardless of customization. One reason might be that customized Japanese cars are kind or rare here.
The reason for using it is usually is that the cars are technologically very advanced but not great to drive so they are as if you were driving a piece of kitchen equipment.
Asian American in car culture. There are real racist undertones even in modern use of the term. Don't mistake your privilege of being ignorant of that for knowledge that it's not true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_burner
It also can refer to people using rice as a pejorative catch-all term for east Asian people. The next iteration of the term still continues its racist connotations. "Not just Asian men" is a deflection from its racist roots.
Have you ever heard it as a blanket for Asian people? Never in my life. It's always been about cars
Its a term invented to make fun of specifically Asian men customizing their cars. The implicit connotation is "your car is bad because it is customized for looks and not racing, like an Asian person would." It shares the same roots as incels calling Asian incels ricecels.
You're the only one using it for asian men
Oh no, you got me. I solo wrote the Wikipedia page describing the origins of the term and its racist roots and all the citations linked from there, especially the ones written before I was born. I'm also personally sock puppetting the dozen or so accounts telling you you're wrong.
Or, and I know this will be a big stretch, you could change your wordview a single iota in response to new information and put forth the negligible effort to not use it anymore.
Rice burner != ricer
Its unbelievably funny how little you read
Screencap
Japanese cars, yeah?
Some of us leave our rooms. Yes I've heard it a lot throughout my life. Not as much recently, but the newer generations seem to be more respectful. Not that the bar was very high for that.
Jesus fuck, where do you live where people are that racist?
I've spent time in almost all 50 US states and they're all pretty racist. So I don't know where you're spending time where racism isn't a thing. Judging by your comments on here you're most likely turning a blind eye to it.
A lot of goodhearted people also just seem to be completely ignorant of it too. Plenty of people will say something racist, say they're not racist when you point it out, and immediately express deeply rooted racist opinions afterwards. But they're nice to you right now, cause they're too nice to be racist.
Literally anywhere outside of major cities. I've experienced in your face racism in most places under at least half a million in population.
I swear these people spend more time learning ye olde slurs and making up new ones than actual racists.
All they want to do is change what we call stuff, its about having power and influence.
Getting people acclimated to obeying authority by starting with menial commands is a real thing. For it to work, the person doing it needs to have some authority and the commands actually have to be things that the other person won’t object to. Do these people have authority over you? Does changing how you talk about Unix desktops seems like a reasonable command to start that process?
Now, I have no problem with viewing random strangers as authority figures if that’s what you’re into, but it seems a lot more likely that you’ve used this idea of compelled-language-as-social-control as a thought-terminating cliche to justify not thinking about why someone might care about randos online using the word “ricing”. And to be fair, it seems like a weird use a mental energy if the point is to assert dominance, but at the same time, you’re the one engaging with it, so what does that say about you?
But they often have the ear of the authorities, (here its the mods), and thats nearly as good.
So you’re subjecting yourself to authority that you believe is acclimating you to do things against your will?
No, just complaining about people who try this stuff.
And tbh, I get sucked into internet arguments way too easily.
I do too, sometimes. It’s not a healthy habit. I hope you can find a balance that works better for you.
No, there are just a metric shit ton of English words and terms that hail from our very much more racist past, and we would like our speech to reflect our values and not the values of our KKK grandparents.
No, you're just both racists and you feel extremely threatened by it, you don't engage on good faith at all and instead on just preserving the status quo.
Never heard it being used that way
then it surely must never have happened!
I'm glad you had the privilege of never experiencing that.
Its not a TexMex taco, its a Beaner taco... Its not a race car, its a beaner car.... Substitute with any other racist name or description and its easy to see why its not ok.
The term is definitely for cars that have had all the money spent on bling, that are as you say, not capable. All show, no go.
A mate of mine had a sleeper. The only thing you could see that gave it away was a small sticker that said "eats rice".
It was a call to any rice to give him a try.
You can't say sleeper, because it's a pejorative for those with narcolepsy.
Actually it's from the 1970s. And yes you are right, it's pejorative, and implies a particular ethnicity. Which is why it's racist. You could say it's a clunker for example, no ethnicity implied.
Imagine that you are blue. And we start associating blueberries, they happen to be the national dish of the blue ethnic group, with shit. And people start calling things they think are shit or not good "blueberries", do you not think you would feel targeted? No one said "blue is shit", but the coding is obvious to anyone with more than a half neuron.
Clunker really doesn't come close to the cars it referenced though. Not trying to defend it's use, I understand what everyone is talking about here. There really is no good replacement word though, which is frustrating. Like, that entire era of car culture came and went before many of us involved knew the word was racist (or at least before we were mature enough to care).
I know clunker isn't sepcific enough, I was oversimplying for the sake of explaination. The crazy thing about language is that you can use multiple words together to describe complex concepts. Who'd have thunk!
That's true, but we are lazy Americans - if we can't describe something with two syllables or a 4 letter acronym, we give up (or apparently come up with something racist to refer to it instead...)
For the record, I'm not arguing against your points or trying to defend the words use.