Woman's "outrage" over "nigger brown" couch.

[Grandor]

How does complaining about a couch label create a line between races? Why can't you speak up against something that you feel is wrong without people talking shit like "Oh god, another black person who can't get over race."

What has to happen before people say, "Damn that's not cool,"?

Whoever manufactures this couch in China, well they need to update their software or something because I don't care if it was the most innocent mistake in the world, the fact is that "nigger brown" has no business being on a couch in the 21st century. Two words: Quality Control!

Am I the only one who believes this?

Also, you've hit a big nerve with your last comment.

Having an (black) African friend does not make you unaccountable for what you say! That excuse is so tired and so common, I sigh and want to send all who say that to a race/diversity seminar.

No, your comment wasn't racist. It's reeking of privelege though, and I'm sure your African friend appreciates you trotting them out for show. (That was sarcasm by the way).

They've already said they will fix it. Along with a good apology. What more do you think she should get? Quality control wouldn't be able to check hundreds of different couches for one word that got misprinted.

 

[madmax_vii]

Spic tan they would be, but since the word 'cracker' is also a delicious snack that is often white-ish (not sure if you guys knew that), then no, that would not be offensive, most likely.

http://www.cepolina.com/freephoto/f/oth ... .bread.jpg[/img]

maybe cracker wouldn't be considered offensive, but honky probably would, and just for the record, the couch isn't brown or dark brown, it's black (unless of course I'm colourblind, then correct me so)

 

[Kuri$u]

Well...
The woman has got every right to complain.
The company is at fault.
I don't find this incident funny. I mean, it upsetted people.

Once you made a mistake, you learn from them and not to do it again..Ever.

Just put yourself in the woman's shoes, and you would feel the exact the same.

EmuMaster|Silverline: Not funny...

 

[Roman Candle]

Ok, the label itself is hillarious. I mean, if I got a couch that said "fag pink" on it, I would laugh, once I found out where the whole mistake came from, obviously.

What's not funny is people's reactions to her complaint in this thread. Damn right she complained. I would be fucking screaming my head off. Although I think not sitting on a sofa because the label said nigger-brown on it is a bit over the top. If the company's appologised, and has corrected the problem, then I think it's all tied up. There's no point in clamouring for "Better quality control" or something. What are you actually saying? That there should be someone checking every couch as it goes out, just in case the label says something offencive on it? If it had just said "Fuck-red" or "Shit-brown", it would just have been funny. All you have to do is take the label off.

Just because loads of PC people are against racism, it doesn't mean that anyone who says that anything is racist is being a PC idiot. Even PC is a way of being socially acceptable and racist, the opposite of PC is being just racist.

 

[Ceroscuro]

There's no point in clamouring for "Better quality control" or something. What are you actually saying? That there should be someone checking every couch as it goes out, just in case the label says something offencive on it?

Well no, but I highly doubt that there was only ONE couch that was labeled that; she was probably the only one who noticed and/or cared. The quality checking has to be done before the labels are printed... whenever they made the decision to call it "nigger brown" in the first place.

 

[Ellie]

I'm a bit shocked that even in a 10 year old translator the word "Dark" comes out as "Nigger", surely after 10 years somebody would have noticed.

This reminds me of my French teacher, who went to Japan and was speaking from a dictionary - instead of saying "It was really exciting, I'm looking forward to it" she said "You make me sexually aroused, I'm having an orgasm" - she lost the chance of a job because of a simple translation error.

 

[arrowone]

I agree with Silverline entirely. Whoever implied that he was trying to be funny...that's just ignorant. And no, I don't mean stupid, I mean just what I said, ignorant, in the proper sense of the word. He has a perfectly valid point. It's a friggin' couch. I don't care if a couch says (I'm a pretty strong Christian mind you. Baptised Lutheran, and I attend a Methodist church when I am able.) JESUS' BLOOD RED I'm not gonna make a three ring circus out of it. I'm going to attribute it to some one not being on the same intellectual level as the rest of society today, toss the tag, possibly be angry for a moment, and then put it behind me, like any strong minded and intelligent person should. It's a word. Taking this much offense to it only gives it augmented power. If only mankind could pay as much attention to this simple truth as they could this word.

 

[Fallofthetyrant]

Quality control in a country where employees are paid less than any other suffering black person in USA or Canada, how do you expect that to happen?
Well, if any afro American association willing to change this is ready to help with money in countries such as China then that would be great. No?
The typical comment of how we shouldn't be racist anymore makes me sick when it comes from black people when even between them (some) call themselves niggers.
No?
If you can't respect yourselves among yourselves it's clear too me you are expecting too much.
Blah Blah 21 century, I forgot that, and the sarcasm, never knew was one lol

 

[Untra]

The fact that it was entirely a mistake is what matters here! The only, truly, god-awful thing that women had to go through because of that mispelling was explaining the N-word to her daughter. Its not like someone was trying to offend anybody! It was a mistake. Now that problem is fixed, it should no longer be of much concern. She did the right thing, reporting that mistake, or we might have seen this same headline in the future when someone else orders a brown couch from the same supplier.

This reminds me of my French teacher, who went to Japan and was speaking from a dictionary - instead of saying "It was really exciting, I'm looking forward to it" she said "You make me sexually aroused, I'm having an orgasm" - she lost the chance of a job because of a simple translation error.

I dont mean to rag on you, Wyatt, but if your french teacher was trying to get a job in japan and had said that, I highly doubt that she would be hired anyway because she was that bad at speaking the native language, even though she had said something as explicit as that.':|

 

[Ceroscuro]

If you can't respect yourselves among yourselves it's clear too me you are expecting too much.

It's not like we all get together and have meetings every Thursday night so we all have the same stance on issues. Different people think differently. Just because (black) person A says 'nigga' when regarding his colleagues doesn't mean (black) person B thinks it's okay. This lady obviously does "respect herself" and her race so that's not the case here.

 

[Fallofthetyrant]

If you are a proud black person you are ok, if you are a proud white person that makes you a racist lol
Go figure
I smell some obsession with racial issues somewhere around here :p

 

[Ceroscuro]

No... you can be a proud white person as long as you don't go down the streets screaming "white power."

 

[arrowone]

But I hear Black Power in class, and no one lifts a finger?

 

[Fallofthetyrant]

Of course, that's acceptable since they've been suffering for almost 300 years :p

 

[arrowone]

But it represents seperatism, as far as I know...isn't the point to integrate and live peacefully with our peers?

 

[Andy6000]

Wow 4 pages already: hot topic.

Does it offend you that the Spanish word for black is 'niger'? It's a translation error. The guy that wrote the program probably didn't even know the word was offensive. I know this concept is far out and all, but that's it. It's a shame the little girl was shown a hateful word so young (though really, she could've been channel surfing and the same result could've happened), but it's not that big of a deal.

I mean, you can claim the people recieving these goods should've been looking for things like this, but who goes through and checks every godamn label? I don't know where on the line from manufacturer to retailer that there's a 'label checker'. Honest mistake: they should call around to who got this couch, make sure they know, maybe send a guy over to take it off and say 'whoops sorry'.

also before anybody gets angry, I read like 3 posts in this thread, so sorry if I copied your argument.

edit: upon reading some posts I am disgusted. There should be nobody running around yelling 'racial power'. Or if they are, they should at least be border-line failures at life rather than respected. But then again, we're still not past the phase of 'racism needs to be fought against'. Whether you believe it does or not is irrelevant, a lot of people still think racism, sexism, all sorts of isms need to be fought against. And then there's people in those groups that go too far, wanting more rights than the people that originally brought them down (how hypocritical), demanding extra rights, whatever. There's also people that jump on the bandwagon without even knowing the cause in depth, or believing in it a lot.

I don't even remember what I was talking about. Shame that.

Having an (black) African friend does not make you unaccountable for what you say! That excuse is so tired and so common, I sigh and want to send all who say that to a race/diversity seminar.

edit dos: reading more I found this comment! And it's so true! My best friend is a Christian, and that doesn't make me less of an asshole towards religions in general.

You sure have a mature way of looking at complex social issues. As does practically everyone in this topic!

edit again!: don't try to take the moral high ground here! You're probably worse than everyone in here! (lesbian satan creepy face avatar!)

Also many people have made up funny names for furniture colors and that is amusing.

 

[Lene]

It's not like we all get together and have meetings every Thursday night so we all have the same stance on issues. Different people think differently. Just because (black) person A says 'nigga' when regarding his colleagues doesn't mean (black) person B thinks it's okay. This lady obviously does "respect herself" and her race so that's not the case here.

Co-signed! DZ is totally correct. It's completely mind-boggling seeing people talk like they know how all black people think and operate. A fellow poster at another community I post at had this to say and I think it's very appropriate:

Please, please don't make the mistake of believing that you know what people are and are not "vigilant" against, just because you don't see our internal struggles blown up on 50 channels...The struggle is going on. You just don't see it, becuase TV is accustomed to covering racial issues as black vs. white, and there's not enough black people in power in television to force coverage of black-on-black issues with sensitivity. The people who are in power just don't care, or they don't know, or worse yet, like FAR too many people in the majority, they *think* they know: black folk always give each other a pass and beat up on the occasional white person who dares to stray. It's just not true. It's a script we've all been fed. Don't believe the script just because it's been prewritten.

That's all I have to say regarding that matter.

Regarding this "Why isn't there White Power?" deal, I think the problem is that people are assuming the playing ground for everyone is equal and (unfortunately) it isn't. Here's the thing:

Gay Pride and Black Power are perfectly fine because they serve to fend off the effects of internalized racism/homophobia, aka self-hatred.

For example, when the word gay, for immature boys, has become the new code word for stupid and uncool, it has far reaching effects on people. Who wants to identify themselves with being stupid or uncool? Gay Pride is a way that gay people can reinforce their identity in a positive way. Heterosexuals are seen as the default, and therefore good. Anything else is abnormal and bad.

You don't see the "Straight Pride" parade because it's just not necessary. What kind of stigma do heterosexuals face?

When someone tells me "Black is Beautiful", it's not an attempt to separate blacks from everyone else, it's an attempt to help cast away the misconceptions and self-hatred created by the society that tells blacks otherwise.

The reason why White Power, White Pride or heck White Entertainment Television aren't needed is because those things already exist! People just don't pay attention to it because it's seen as business as usual!

How many white people will readily identify themselves as white if asked who they were? How many heterosexuals would do the same? Compare that to how many non-white, non-hetero people would define themselves as such.

The answer to those questions (and why it's like that) answer the question of why gay/minority pride is acceptable and needed today.

 

[Rhazdel]

I know this thread has moved away from the initial topic a little bit, but let's consult the Cambridge dictionary on the matter.

Racism:
the belief that people's qualities are influenced by their race and that the members of other races are not as good as the members of your own, or the resulting unfair treatment of members of other races

The company is not racist, because the error was unintentional. They weren't being racist, because racism is the belief your race is superior to another race. It was an honest mistake and an accident. The company should exchange the couch and possibly recall the remaining couches.

I think a lawsuit is totally uncalled for. It wasn't a malicious act, nor was it total negligence (remember, English is their second language!).

Negligence implies that what happened was a gross oversight by the company that proved a significantly dangerous or harmful situation to the consumer.

While it is terrible that this is how that poor little girl must learn about racism, I highly doubt she, or anyone else involved, will be 'mentally traumatized' by the incident.

 

[madmax_vii]

I just don't see the point in how people still get so worked up about racial slurs, I mean every single race on the face of this planet has few to several racial slurs against them, it's just the fact that even though we say we're mature we're still so offended by a simple word, I mean me and my friends must've been called every single word under the sun, I could list them all but I won't (for discretionary purposes), I just think we need to step above petty name-calling and discriminate violence and just get a fucking grip!

I don't know what weapons World War 3 will be fought with, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.

 

[Cruelty]

Overreaction to an accident. This bitch is an idiot. I don't complain about the crackers at Giant Eagle.