Is it ever appropriate to use a racial slur?

[Unorthodox]

German reporting in.
What exactly do you mean by squashing of historical unpleasantries?


There's a lot of stuff forbidden such as:
Use of Nazi Symbols.
Use of Nazi-greeting.
Denying the Holocaust.
And several other things.

However noone's going to bat an eye if there is a Nazi-Symbol somewhere in a picture of WW2 in a school-book, they just won't print the symbol right on a cover of a book about WW2.
If you discuss the Third Reich its also okayish to say they had to greet each other with the phrase "Heil Hitler" as long as you are clearly just discussing objectively not shouting it out or making the corresponding gesture.

This runs counter to my experience...I'll see if I can dig up the reference. 

[Buster's Uncle]

It sounds about right to me - the decent people don't like to think about it.

[Unorthodox]

Yeah, I had the same situation come up, though, where a teacher was disciplined for having some Nazi symbols in class based off a complaint from German exchange students. 

[Valka]

I realize that most people (referring to the Nazis) don't like to talk about it, but what about the attitude that "this happened a long time ago, they (the Jews) should just get over it"?

The text in quotes in the above paragraph are a paraphrase of something a German woman posted on TrekBBS. She promptly got told off by numerous posters, including some of the moderators. I find that an appalling thing to say... it's like telling a 70-year-old First Nations person in Canada that "the residential school you went to closed a long time ago, just get over it."

The generations that went through these things, plus the first generation after (whose lives were affected by how their parents dealt with their issues) are not going to "just get over it."

That's not to say that some haven't dealt with their situation and become productive citizens. But some others will never be able to "just get over it."

Public Holocaust denial is illegal in Canada, and there have been consequences for some people who get confused and think that we have freedom of speech here in the American sense.

[Lorizael]

So, I'm culturally Jewish but don't believe at all in the Jewish god (or any god or supernatural anything). I have always identified more strongly with the Jewish aspects of my heritage than the other parts, and the joking reason I give for this is that Hitler wouldn't have bothered to draw the distinction.

Now, I do celebrate Jewish holidays. And I'm a big fan of Passover Seder, where the Haggadah we use strongly emphasizes that the reason Jews are required to remember the Passover is to instill an opposition to oppression regardless of the form it takes or who the victim is (Jewish or otherwise). That is, Jews are supposed to use their own tragic history as a reminder not to allow similar tragedies to befall other peoples.

From that standpoint, I'm okay with the idea that we Jews should "get over" the Holocaust. Twelve million people were murdered, and that's terrible, but they're not coming back. Ideally, Jews should not look at the Holocaust as a reason to be angry, or to dwell on the past, or to get caught up in hatred, but as a reminder that humans can do terrible things and we must remain vigilant so as to ensure that similar terrible acts never happen again.

Remembering the Holocaust isn't about recalling that time the Germans did something terrible to the Jews, but about that time humans did something terrible to themselves. Which is to say, I don't think we should concern ourselves all that much with Holocaust denial specifically or people aping Nazi symbols. We should concern ourselves with oppression and hatred and bigotry in all the forms they take.

[Valka]

From that standpoint, I'm okay with the idea that we Jews should "get over" the Holocaust. Twelve million people were murdered, and that's terrible, but they're not coming back. Ideally, Jews should not look at the Holocaust as a reason to be angry, or to dwell on the past, or to get caught up in hatred, but as a reminder that humans can do terrible things and we must remain vigilant so as to ensure that similar terrible acts never happen again.

Remembering the Holocaust isn't about recalling that time the Germans did something terrible to the Jews, but about that time humans did something terrible to themselves. Which is to say, I don't think we should concern ourselves all that much with Holocaust denial specifically or people aping Nazi symbols. We should concern ourselves with oppression and hatred and bigotry in all the forms they take.

And this is exactly the reason why people got so angry with the person on TrekBBS. Her attitude was not only that they should "just get over it", but that everyone should stop talking about it - literally stop saying it had ever happened. She wasn't denying that it happened - but she was saying that it wouldn't bother her if her society underwent a kind of cultural amnesia about the whole thing.

That's sweeping the past under the rug and never acknowledging it again, and that's no way to teach people to be aware of the atrocities that humans can inflict on each other.

Canada has some shameful things in our past, and I do get that the current generation doesn't want to be blamed for the past - after all, I'm not one of the people responsible for the residential schools, and I refuse to accept blame or bigotry because of them. But I do think it's critical that we never allow such things to happen again.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay, this is all absolutely true.

But on the Germans not wanting to think about/talk about, well, I have a bad reputation worldwide for being born who I am where I was born - some unfortunateness that I strongly deplore went on in this quadrant many generations ago and some unpleasant settling out that I also deplore was going on around the time I was born - and we are cast as The Bad People forever.

I want none of it.

My first time on the road doing a renfair out of state, in Arizona, I got pulled into almost as many conversation about the American Civil War as the rest of my 32 years at the time.  I consider that very rude, frankly.  I didn't do it, I wasn't there, I've worked on my own heart - and do not ANYONE try to cast me as one of guilty absent better evidence than my complexion and my native speaking dialect.

I want none of it.  Not to think about the ugly history, not to talk about it.  It is a stick to beat me unfairly with.  It is textbook prejudice, prejudgments because I happen to have been born a pale southeasterner.  I may not wear my identity as a proud, rather militantly so, North Carolinian, doing so being a huge "Kick Me" sign.  Screw the world.

-See also several incredibly TL;DR rants -but highly relevant- in Rusty's Military/Naval History thread, starting, ISTR, near the top of page 17.

[Eadee]

I for my part do not demand that anyone "gets over" something. People who experienced horrible things can't easily forget and forgive and I won't force anyone to.
However I find it only fair if they don't expand their hate or prejudice to the new generations that didn't take part in whatever has been done to them.

I am a good person, I did not kill anybody, I didn't torture anybody (except for BU with my puns), I help people in need, I'm a nice person in general and I just don't like to be the bad guy because of what two generations earlier happened.

On the other side one profits self the most, if he overcomes his own hatred and finally finds peace with himself and the world. So I really recommend everyone trying to get over things for their own mental well being.

[Buster's Uncle]

..That stuff's true about the east Germans, mind you, but my man Eadee's all with the lederhosen and the beer and the oom-pa-pah music.  He never marches in formation or salutes - Bavaria!  Woooo!

[Valka]

oom-pa-pah music

Now I've got that song from the "Oliver!" musical running through my head...

[Buster's Uncle]

ISTR some of that action in Chitty, Chitty Bang-Bang, too...

[Buster's Uncle]

Maybe, maybe not worth reading my two Tl;DR rants -w/ many run-ons and long paragraphs making it difficult to read- about prejudice against me due to the accident of my birth:
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=8552.msg72890#msg72890 -and there's a little more afterwards...


But Eadee's eventual response:

I'd love to discuss this with a German - I intuit with my enormous buncle powers that a German would get it for some mysterious reason.

Well, being a German, I indeed do feel with you on this.

I don't want to Hijack this topic so I'll try to keep it short.

In Germany we almost have no patriotism at all. Everytime you say "I'm proud to be a German" outside of a debate around Soccer, you're instantly a nazi. And I don't mean that foreign people call us nazis if we show patriotism. We do this ourselves. The German people doesn't seem to be able to let go and move on. Ok, just yesterday they found and defused another unexploded aircraft bomb from WW2 only 2.15 kilometers from my home. If this happens several times a year in your city, its hard to not think about that war.

My Grandfather was very young during WW2. He had to join the army of Germany and got into captivity pretty quickly. So his whole Life was heavily influenced by this war. I know he probably fought in this war at some point, and he might have killed some of the good guys in this time.
So, the connection I have to WW2 is pretty close, my grandfather still lives and he told me a lot of stories when I was young. Since almost everything he experienced in his youth was connected to WW2 there were a lot of stories that revolved around this war. But I was a child and he didn't tell me any stories about actual gunfights or any other combat situation. Instead they were about how they managed their life in the army, how they tricked their officers if they didn't want to polish the officers boots and stuff like that. So all I know about him is only these things and what he did after the war. He is an awesome grandfather since he teached me a lot of skills and encouraged my curiosity about everything. He never tried to influence me into thinking jews or other ethnic groups were less worthy or that Nazi-Germany wasn't bad at all.

I have no Idea if I can be proud of what he did in WW2. But I know I can be proud of him being a good person afterwards. However, even if I'm proud of him, I never managed to feel something similar for Germany as a whole. Even though we really DID well since the end of WW2 I just can't identify with this nation without my own mind telling me I'm going to become a nazi if I follow this road (what is ridiculous but thats the way we are teached to think).

Back to BU's post: I honestly must admit I do know about these preconceptions of the southern states because of this war. And I can imagine how it is difficult to show any sign of affiliation to what and who you are without being afraid of blamed by someone for crimes you never commited. And yes, if I'd travel to the southern states I'd too expect to see more racism and all that then in the northern ones since I'm only human and can't shrug these preconseptions off that easily. However I'd never talk bad about an individual person because of these preconceptions or even insult him. I know how senseless they are and every person gets its chance to prove 'em wrong and I'm quite happy if they're proven wrong often, this way I finally might get rid of them totally.

I had the luck to grow up in Bavaria since I was 3 years old. If you say you're proud of being a Bavarian noone calls you a nazi. And even though Germany surely has accomplished things I could be proud of too, I can only feel good about being a Bavarian (even though I wasn't born here). Bavaria might be best known for the beer, and cars but there's even something in WW2 you can be proud of as a Bavarian what suprised me very much when I learned about it (its a minor thing though):
In whole nazi-Germany you had to greet Hitler all the time and not doing so was punished. With one Exception. The Bavarians were very religious people and always used the greeting "Grüß Gott" wich means "greet God" and they refused to change this during the reign of Hitler. Finally it was allowed in whole Bavaria to say "Grüß Gott" instead of the usual nazi-greeting.

I really hope you too found something you can identify with and be proud of. If I had to guess Buster is someone you're proud of but I don't know you well enough to make any more educated guesses.

That wasn't short at all. I apologize.