Scrabble under fire for racist words

Pepper said:
@Jeni
How do you play a record backwards?
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I have no idea .... but people has all kinds of conspiracy theory about secret things that were subliminal messages. many of the crazies said a lot were on old Beatles albums.
My point is they had people try to figure out how to etc........
 

Furryanimal said:
My avatar is a Maine Coon cat.I was asked on words with friends what it was and the name got censored!Maine C**n.!
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I find that Words With Friends is the most puritanical of the word games I play, whereas Grabby Words allows racial and ethnic slurs, curse words and sexist slang.

WWF even censors the chat function!
 
People who are called 'coon' don't like it. It hurts them. They asked us to stop. We can live with that, right?

Remember watching Whoopi Goldberg ask other races not to use the n-word. She was so sincere. I was thinking "of course, why is it so necessary to hurt people deeply under the guise of free speech?" It's not a word I used, so I was able to think about it unemotionally. Someone asks "Please stop." What is wrong with hearing that plea? Going along with it? Nuthin'.
 
Pepper said:
People who are called 'coon' don't like it. It hurts them. They asked us to stop. We can live with that, right?
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Certainly don't use it as a racial slur. But it has other meanings. Black people in the South use it the same way I do as an abbreviation of the word raccoon. Expunging a word with multiple meanings, all but one of which is not offensive is absurd.
 
I remember a person getting flack for using the word "niggardly", which means cheap
Niggardly (noun: niggard) is an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly". It is derived from the Middle English word nigard, which is probably derived from Old Norse nigla, meaning "to be poor", which itself is most likely derived from hnĆøggr ("stingy").
 
I could maybe see it if the Maine Coon were named after a black man or something. Then I could understand them being a little upset.
 
AnnieA said:
Certainly don't use it as a racial slur. But it has other meanings. Black people in the South use it the same way I do as an abbreviation of the word raccoon. Expunging a word with multiple meanings, all but one of which is not offensive is absurd.
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I agree.

My grandmother always told us that it's not the word it's how the word is used/said that makes it inappropriate. As an example, she used to scold us for saying things like Oh fudge! or Oh sugar!

I'm against banning any word or censoring/altering books, movies, etc...

IMO we should all be able to choose our words and muster the self-restraint to use them appropriately.
 
Context is everything. Problem is, where do you draw the line? Do we ban gender specific words like mother or father for fear of offending transgender people? Some people have suggested that words like ā€œboyā€ are racist. In a certain context, I suppose it could be But I called my school children boys and girls. I play Words with Friends on my phone, essentially Scrabble, and it has words it deems offensive. Squaw is off limits, for example. There are others which I canā€™t think of at the moment, because racial slurs dont feature in my thoughts or my vocabulary.

This lawsuit is ridiculous. Someone is just looking to be offended. And paid for it.
 
Iā€™ve played Scrabble a lot in younger days at college, and with family and friends, and as recently as a few years ago when I was in rehab for fractured femur, and I never knew there was an official dictionary for it. It was always based on consensus of the players whether a word was legit or not.
 
Geezerette said:
Iā€™ve played Scrabble a lot in younger days at college, and with family and friends, and as recently as a few years ago when I was in rehab for fractured femur, and I never knew there was an official dictionary for it. It was always based on consensus of the players whether a word was legit or not.
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We used a standard dictionary for challenges.
 
My Scrabble group (alas, back in the days when people gathered in "groups") used the official Scrabble dictionary for challenges. We also allowed people to browse through the dictionary when it was somebody else's turn, but not when their own turn came. That was our own rule, sort of a compromise, as some players wanted to have access to the dictionary all the time, which slows the game down enormously, and is really not the way it is meant to be be played.

One interesting thing is all the different editions of the official Scrabble dictionary. They seem to come out wtih a new one every year. So, if you have an older edition, words like Google, Blog, Skype, etc. are not in it. But they are in the newer ones.

One word that I tried and turned out to be not accepted is "twat." I always thought it just meant an annoying person, but it has another meaning. I always imagine a committee of prissy old biddies working for Scrabble, voting yes or no for some of these words. Words With Friends is even worse.
 
@Sunny, I'm always a little taken aback when people use that word in a casual way because the first definition I knew was extremely vulgar. NYers didn't pretty up their speech back in the early 60s... :eek:o_O
 
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