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What is racist about the word gorilla?
https://www.google.com/search?q=gorilla+black+people&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Even business insider mentions it in the first 10 results:
Google tags black people as "gorillas" - Business Insider
Basically, there's a certain history* behind comparing blacks to gorillas, and that history isn't all that far off from comparing Jews to hunched-over hook-nosed schemers. In other words, a "dog whistle."
Use of the comparison is not a claim that gorillas are ***hole animals that are dangerous. It's a reference to other sayings - therefore easily defended with obfuscation or simple claims of innocence - which actually are bad, whether motivated in a religiously, racially, sex(ually), gender("ually" ?) way. And so forth.
Massive caveat: I actually didn't listen to the thing yet, so I can't weigh in on whether it was a non-sensical reference to "guerilla" warfare or "gorilla" warfare (beating things into a pulp because gorilla), or gorilla (offensive).
Was it the lattermost? Seems unlikely even without audio. She ran forward and hit a ball with a tennis racket, yes? That's kind of what you do in tennis. On the other hand, wtf does "guerilla" OR "gorilla" have to do with running forward and hitting a ball with a tennis racket?
Possible interpretations:
1. Speaker drunk and had to say something.
2. Confusion about how gorillas behave in the wild.
3. Accidentally racist compliment: she moved forcefully in + accidental (how?) invocation of a slur I wasn't aware of until a couple years ago.
4. Deliberate attempt to lay down a racist insult, but completely bizarre given the timing and openness; usually, this happens off-camera or in a 4 am drunk tweet.
That was too many words for an irrelevant thread. Oy.
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* I left it at there so posters other than you, who may read this thread, don't stop at the word: racially. Basically it's a racist slur of sorts to compare blacks to gorillas. Honestly, I never heard of it myself. I know n----- because who doesn't.
All the same, I'm Jewish, and I probably wouldn't like it if I learned that "blarty" was intended to refer to some stereotype of Jews (which use has correlated with some bad things) and then, a bunch of people started acting like it was cool to call things "blarty behavior" or refer to putting "the blarty effect on" something.
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