Re: inappropriate racist and other offensive material
"Kurt Lieber" <debian@kirpatrick.com> writes:
> Lazarus Long said:
> > Again, there is no excuse for racism in Debian. Other packages have
> > elided the inappropriate material in the past, as they should.
>
> No, they shouldn't. Debian is not about censorship. I personally find the
> quoted joke offensive, but I'm not about to say he doesn't have a right to
> include it if he so chooses to.
>
I'll probably regret getting involved in this discussion but,
personally and apropriateness of offensive material in Debian aside, I
think the "joke" (as I saw it, out of context, in the quoted text of
another message) is only offensive if you think that there's something
wrong with posessing that particular skin pigmentation. Being compared
to the luxurious item mentioned, to my knowledge, advocates no common
stereotypes and, if anything, could be taken as a compliment.
If I were to tell a person with red hair: "Wow, your hair is so red that
it looks like it's on fire" that person would probably only take offense
if having red hair were considered undesirable. The same goes for
comments on stature (height), eye color, country of origin, the
political party your mother's affiliated with... and the list goes on
and on.
As a final throught, it sounds like everyone's automatically assuming
certain things about the author of the program in question (namely
racial heritage and the intent of the text).
Just my $0.02.
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