And if you aren’t personally offended why act offended? Saying something is offensive to a particular group without being involved or a part of that particular group isn’t really much of a favor to them. In fact, it’s a tad bit condescending, isn’t it? Figuring they can’t complain themselves, that you have to do it on their behalf – not even factoring in the group in question is made up of a bunch of individuals who don’t even agree completely!
So, a business is selling a potentially offensive t-shirt, I should just ignore it because it’s not my problem?
I prefer to show some empathy.
It’s not empathy, it’s coddling. Taking the moral high ground here is wrong, honestly I find people going out of their way to protect minorities from things that might hurt their feelings as if they’re children who can’t do it themselves patronizing, and I’m not alone there. When everything is potentially offensive, as offense is subjective by nature, where’s the line drawn? How far are we going to go to hide people from simple harsh realities?
Who asked for your empathy?
Well, it’s not as if these minorities don’t have a history of significant offenses against them. I mean that’s just a fact that you can’t get around. Instead of pretending that history never existed or pretending that there’s nothing wrong anymore, we should be working to make things right. We can’t just throw our hands up in the air and say “that’s life!” We should be better than that.
Where am I denying this? We’re looking at the wrong things.
I give up. Clearly I suck at explaining my mindset, and am not gaining any friends in the process.