> She drags the discussion down to one of racism because someone uses the word lynching in a completely different context.
If you're going to tell me that lynching does not have racist undertones, you need to qualify it.
If you're going to tell me that lynching does not have racist undertones, you need to qualify it.
This is truly getting out of hand … (I mean the lynching, not the jokes.)
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To which she bravely responded:
and I'm upset I had to listen to the stuff behind me yesterday. I'm Black. Has anyone in your family been ever encountered lynching?"
And
@smarx Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is
Definition of lynch verb [with object] (of a group of people) kill (someone) for an alleged offence without a legal trial, especially by hanging
While I do realize that there are certain connotations in America as it being aimed towards African Americans, as a non American my understanding of it has always been that it is not an act aimed at a specific race. Rather a group enacting their own law without trial usually because standard legal proceedings would be viewed as a forgone failure due to lack of evidence etc. which the group would not find satisfying.
This is one of those situations where a word was used with proper english definition and was taken completely out of context for the sake of argument. To trace that to a racist undertone is the fault of the reader and a lack of reading comprehension (taking tone and context is important).
If you want to see racial undertones when the word was used in a different context, that's your choice. It's no longer part of the meaning of the word, just like ghetto does not refer to the area of Germany where Jews were forced to live.