In fairness, it could also be viewed within Sarnothi society (or at least the kids’ viewpoint) as playful banter rather than malicious taunting.
The same way saying “You’re such an asshole!” can be miles different depending on who it’s said to and in what tone it’s said.
“He’s not wrong” does not excuse it. It’s still terrible thing to do. Tehk sounds like one of those privileged kids who gets away with whatever. Te Fahn really needs to stop coming to his defense.
He’s an 8 year old kid raised in a society where division among the classes was the norm. Yes its wrong, but its not his fault he was raised that way. And Te Fahn isn’t defending him, she’s merely confirming what he said being true about how Sarnothi act. Again, he’s still doing the wrong thing and hopefully the fact that Wu and others are standing up to him will show him his wrong approach.
Trash talk is fine. Stereotypes used for comedy are fine. What is wrong is if people take them as excuses to dehumanize someone in their minds. That’s a fault with the listener, not the speaker. Intent, as always, is everything.
A good analogy would be blades. They’re OK when used to break the earth and sow seeds. Not OK when used to break a man.
Stereotypes unfortunately Dellis have more than a grain of truth to them. They are the general distillation of LONG TERM observable broad brush cultural norms.
I think you made a pretty serious typo here. “That’s a fault with the listener, not the speaker.” I assume you meant listener/speaker the other way around, since putting it as written it’s essentially blaming the victim.
There are those that purposefully say things they know will upset or hurt the person/people listening. You say it’s up to the listener to not be offended?
Should POC not be offended when someone calls them the “n” slur?
Should gay men not be offended when someone calls them the “f” slur?
Should I not be offended or upset if someone calls me a bunch of transgender slurs? Should I ignore and not be bothered when I hear people tell me I’m a disgusting freak of nature for being trans? Should I laugh it off if someone refuses to use the name and pronouns I tell people to call me, repeatedly, even though I’ve corrected them repeatedly?
You can control how you RESPOND to what has been said and done. But I can’t just turn off my feelings and emotions willynilly like Data from Star Trek. If someone says something hurtful and hateful, even on accident, it’s gonna bother me whether I will it or not. So if someone says nasty things to me, I can choose to try and correct them or educate them on why it’s wrong/bad, but it didn’t stop me from feeling upset when it was said.
Also, stereotypes don’t have a “grain of truth”; they’re an exaggeration of any given demographic which is often used for comedic/horror/propaganda purposes, and is generally overall harmful to the image of the people being portrayed, especially when it comes to POC, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous Tribal Natives, religious folk, or people from other countries. It’s possible to portray any kind of person imaginable without resorting to stereotypes, even if the person being portrayed isn’t a good/nice person (Nazis for example; you can easily stereotype a Nazi by drumming up their German/Austrian imagery and behaviors and that’s harnful to non-Nazi Germans and Austrians).
I don’t know what sort of upbringing you had, or how you think, or why you said what you’ve said here. But, I felt the need to speak up. Maybe you won’t react well. Maybe you’ll get upset and say something along the lines of “it’s just your opinion I shouldn’t get offended or upset.” But you don’t get to decide that.
If someone says you’ve hurt them with your actions and words, you don’t have the right to tell them they’re wrong.
Perhaps this is something for you to think about, joecrouse.
No. Taking offense is not the fault of the listener.
If someone says I’m going to hell because of my sexuality, or because I don’t believe in their specific god, they’ve chosen to say a trash thing and probably they are a trash human being. Maybe they don’t know any better. Maybe they think they’re right. Maybe they’ve never met anyone who is different from them.
I honestly don’t care.
I want them to stop saying hateful trash.
Also, if someone sends you a rape or a death threat, it’s not the listener/receiver’s fault for being offended. Some crappy little troll decided to deliberately try to cause offense and pain.
I’m sure you’ve had quite a nice life, if you’ve never encountered this crap. But trust me, black people and those of ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people, foreigners, and those who appear to be of a different religion than the majority in a country, have NEVER been so lucky.
You’re very, very, very wrong. You probably won’t listen, but let me tell you, I’ve been told I’m going to hell multiple times, I’ve been sent nasty hateful messages only because I’m female-bodied, and those people MEANT to cause offense. Similarly, if you use slur words, you MEANT to cause offense.
Seriously, who the hell was prepping these kids for human integration? Eat with a fork is drilled in but not “Humans are SUPER touchy about remarks made about skin colour and race” Like how is that the behaviour that’s just left be, the one behaviour that could actually lead to legitimate social turmoil and isolation.
Possible Reasoning: Humans are really, really bad about discussing things that are “taboo.” To the point where this becomes so ingrained that you don’t think about it as a factor at all.
Consider how many workarounds we use to avoid talking about money. Or how we use weird words to discuss genitals, or have multiple words for meat to avoid thinking of the animal it came from.
Or how we use “African-American” so commonly that we end up using it to describe Black people who are neither American nor of African descent (e.g. British citizen, Caribbean or other islander ancestry). Because we’re allergic to the word “black.” (I ain’t white, either, and I honestly don’t know how that color term got to be common usage for this peachy-beige skintone.)
Or how we tie ourselves in knots trying to avoid referring to disabilities, as if changing the words somehow changes the nature of the disability. Or avoid referring to old/elderly people in terms referencing their age. Or avoid discussing weight as a fact about a person (“how much do you weigh?” being one of the taboo questions). Or avoid saying that a person is ugly or weird-looking. George Carlin has a whole comedy routine discussing how crazy this all is.
When you grow up in a culture that routinely suppresses factual data about the world around you, making it shameful to mention these things aloud, then you might get to the point where you don’t think twice about them. So I could see a class of “things you need to know about humans” failing to include some of the big ones — because they seem so natural and obvious that you don’t think twice about how weird they are.
This is a pretty good reasoning,I can see humans not mentioning racism and all the other *political* topics. However if this kind of talk and bickering is as common as the kids claim you’d think a human instructor would have picked it up. I really hope the kids get pulled aside by the teacher soon and learn just how not ok this stuff is.
We had a mess miscommunication while visiting a foreign country. The students we were staying with spoke beautiful barely accented English, but didn’t have much exposure to Euphemisms. I had helped prepare some food, and excused myself to “just wash the hands.”
Six kids, together, “What!! You’ve been handling food!”
“No, I mean hit the can.”
Dull confused looks.
“Powder my nose? See a man about a dog. Drain the dragon, use the Gents’, talk to Mother Nature on the big white telephone, (signs the letter T, waving it around), freshen up, potty-break, toi-toi, go tinkle?”
I’ll always be a Seven in their eyes because I could not say, “you’re an eight.”
You also could have sidestepped with the, as far as I know, fact that one is supposed to wash one’s hands AFTER handling food in a professional context, too.
It’s not anything like the N-word. the N-Word is a slur that was seized and altered and made their own. This is the POLITE word for Selkie’s ‘race’ being co-opted as a slur to her ears.
Selkie wasn’t raised in the Sarnothi Culture at all, but if you listen to Tehk, she has turned out as a Prime example of the WORST her mother’s culture had to bear, and Selkie 1: can’t fire back because human social mores. 2: Can’t fire back because she has NO AMMO on how Tehk may or may not be being a “Tel’dora”.
The point was that humans telling sarnothi that their culture is wrong is in itself problematic – especially if the humans understanding of it is limited or being applied from a human centric viewpoint.
Which isn’t to say Wu is wrong either – just that this is a complex issue that needs to be aproached with finesse and undersanding, and the main drive for cultural reform would ideally also come from other sarnothi themselves rather than humans “forcing” them to.
1. Its not wrong to stand up for your friend when they are being mistreated. She’s made it perfectly clear she doesn’t like what he’s saying.
2. I disagree that it’s always wrong for an “outsider” to critique the culture of another.
3. Tehk is living in human society now, he may not like it (clearly) but he has to learn whats acceptable in this new society.
4. They are 8, cultural finesse isn’t exactly the top of mind when your 8
“The point was that humans telling sarnothi that their culture is wrong is in itself problematic”
Sarnothi have been ousted from their homes because the Nazi’s took over… I don’t think it’s problematic to point this out to them.
If culture includes “those ones over there aren’t even people”, or “it’s okay to have sex with prepubescent children”, or “we have to sacrifice humans every year/month/week/day/hour”, then it’s okay to call them out for that.
joe, PC isn’t universally held, but taboos are – try talking about what goes on between a man and a woman in the bedroom in any context in public and see how far you get. If you can even manage to bring the topic up. Point being, there are some taboos so deeply ingrained in our cultures that I had to talk about one of them in an extremely roundabout way in this post, whereas if it wasn’t a taboo, I could have made this comment in a single, fourteen-word sentence.
Like joe Crouse said, not all humans. I’m reminded of a friend from India talking about how he and his friends always poked fun at each other over skin color, physique, etc., and didn’t think anything of it. Some related reading (warning: contains strong language): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dozens
So I’m more inclined to call this just cultural differences. Yes, it would’ve been a good thing to tell Tehk and company earlier. On the other hand, maybe they *did* tell them, “Humans are SUPER touchy about remarks made about skin colour and race,” but Tehk heard it as, “HUMANS are super touchy,” and assumed Selkie would play by the Sarnothi rules instead.
Notice Selkie’s face in the second-last panel. She’s just learned something about Sarnothi culture she didn’t know. Now she gets to decide whether to embrace this part of her heritage (which I can definitely see her doing–in fact, wasn’t she the one coaching Te Fahn on trash talk two pages ago?)… OR, to side with the (American) human culture that says trash talk based on ethnic origin is off-limits.
Sitting on the racer’s edge, far better than Standing on the razor’s edge. Ain’t English Grand!!
Wishing you all and each; a wonderful and fun filled post meal stupor, and may you each have a thanksgiving filled with jokes, joy, may you be in the company of family or friends, and to all of you Good Health.
And may the cook forget the Okra this year.
1) If the assumption was (as previously stated in comic) that Selkie’s above water experiences were being used to build knowledge around how the Sarnothi could integrate into our above-water society, the Class-ism/Species-ism/Racism issue would have never come up. Selike had no contact with any other Sarnothi until very recently in her life. “Don’t talk down about the other Clans,” just would not have hit the radar like, “Don’t talk down about skin color differences in your new human friends,” would have.
2) For all the Sarnothi kids, including Te Fan, English is a 2nd language. There are nuances in words and how they are spoken that are quite difficult to pick up to non-native speakers. “He’s not wrong,” isn’t necessarily her saying, “Tek is right.”
3) All the above points – YES, racism/discrimination used to belittle another is wrong – YES, this was a topic easily missed in building an integration curriculum around Taboos.
I would encourage a mass withholding of Judgement until Tek is given the opportunity to react to this expectation of his new culture. This could be the introduction of the lesson ALL Sarnothi have to learn to recover from the War (which was certainly exacerbated by the tension between the clans, on top of the Vacation Fishing Incident).
Also, I seem to remember Agent Brown (or his partner) saying that “the guppies” weren’t ready yet, but they had to start integrating them into human society early. They may have planned to talk about the clan-ism later, but the expulsion canceled that.
This could just as easily be her acknowledging how selkie gets her blows in as much as he does. “Each other” could mean the two kids instead of the two clans. Though, I’m sure it happens just as much between the clans.
Sarnothi racism isn’t a 1:1 match for American racism in history and tone, but it’s still not working out for them real well, is it? You know, what with the MASSIVE CIVIL WAR and all.
This! This this this! The whole ‘its ok to box people by race because that our culture’ is just as toxic as any other racism. Cast systems are a huge issues even with humans anyone looking at the cultural history of places like Japan and how to this day you get company’s firing people because they found out there ancestors were the cast that handled the dead. Yeah its a huge issues that breeds objectification and not a ‘respect our culture’ thing.
I think it’s a bit unfair yo say an 8 year old should stop being an asshole when we’ve seen Selkie be one on more than one occassion and excuse her behavior as justified, but not Amanda who was clearly emotionally and even physically abused before.
Obviously it’s not so easy, because Selkie’s clan’s nature has proven aggressive and wanting things done their way. They wanted blood for blood, which the rest of their species argued against going to war with another race over a mistake. Was it a stupid mistake. Yes it was, but they wanted to murder someone in revenge and a large number of their species was in disagreement with that mindset. Like it or not, their actions hold a stigma in their species now and I’m sure even the ones who weren’t against them before have changed their tune once they were forced from their homes. That isn’t to say that their clan is solely to blame, but they certainly are responsible for the catalyst that started this to some degree.
We, as humans, often blame innocents for something their predecessors did. The Crusades? Ahhh organized religion is bad. Christians are murderers. Slavery? White people are awful bigots who have no business speaking out against any person of color because they’re ignorant and their ancestors were awful. The Germans? They all best stay quiet and be polite otherwise they’re clearly a Nazi.
In a perfect world, we would stop punishing people for things THEY never did, but sadly, we aren’t there yet. I’m not saying it’s right for him to lump her in with the rest of her clan, but her actions and hair trigger temper aren’t doing her any favors right now towards someone who clearly does not want to intermingle with humans, but was forced to leave the comfort of his own home. All he’s seeing is, “Pfft. Typical. Another one puffing out their chest and throwing a fit when they don’t get their way.” right now which is reinforcing the bad behavior entirely. It’s not Selkie’s fault either, no one has really cracked down on her to stop being a sarcastic ass to people she doesn’t agree with. That coupled with how they’re largely left unsupervised and aren’t corrected by adults properly leads to a lot of crap like this. Case in point, Amanda being abused and clearly needing more 1 on 1 therapy and not getting it at the orphanage because their was not enough staff and too many kids.
We need to stop blaming children and treating them as if they have the mental capacity of an adult. We need to hold the adults responsible for what’s happening. These children need guidance to correct their bad behaviors, this includes Selkie, which Todd has done off and on, so good for him.
1: Aggression is a typical way of handling being unwanted or unaccepted.
An ‘I don’t need you’ attitude.
Attributing that to her race is ridiculous.
2: The fisherman murdered a sarnothy. It was not a mistake, it was pretty cut and dry. Someone panicked and did a 3rd degree murder and he was let off because the victim was black. The sarnothy were correct in demanding justice, it was even a crime committed on their lands! It wasn’t 3 clans vs 1, And as there was a genicide, I dare say this was about a lot more than the boat incident. Saying they were responsible to some digress is the sort of apologetics I’d expect from a nazi sympathizer. We should EXPECT them to learn their history and not be horrible.
3: I think the most respectful thing you can do for a child is hold them responsible for their actions. They won’t develope that mental or emotional capacity if you coddle them.
By human standards yeah it’s wrong but we are talking about a different species of sentient life, we cannot force them to completely change that behavior without a complete examination of how they operate as a species.
“It’s okay because we’ve always done it” is one of the worst defenses of injustice, ever.
Also one of the most common. :/
In fairness, it could also be viewed within Sarnothi society (or at least the kids’ viewpoint) as playful banter rather than malicious taunting.
The same way saying “You’re such an asshole!” can be miles different depending on who it’s said to and in what tone it’s said.
Heck yeah Wu!
“He’s not wrong” does not excuse it. It’s still terrible thing to do. Tehk sounds like one of those privileged kids who gets away with whatever. Te Fahn really needs to stop coming to his defense.
He’s an 8 year old kid raised in a society where division among the classes was the norm. Yes its wrong, but its not his fault he was raised that way. And Te Fahn isn’t defending him, she’s merely confirming what he said being true about how Sarnothi act. Again, he’s still doing the wrong thing and hopefully the fact that Wu and others are standing up to him will show him his wrong approach.
Trash talk is fine. Stereotypes used for comedy are fine. What is wrong is if people take them as excuses to dehumanize someone in their minds. That’s a fault with the listener, not the speaker. Intent, as always, is everything.
A good analogy would be blades. They’re OK when used to break the earth and sow seeds. Not OK when used to break a man.
I understand I am in the minority here, though.
Stereotypes unfortunately Dellis have more than a grain of truth to them. They are the general distillation of LONG TERM observable broad brush cultural norms.
I think you made a pretty serious typo here. “That’s a fault with the listener, not the speaker.” I assume you meant listener/speaker the other way around, since putting it as written it’s essentially blaming the victim.
Zorlond, taking offense is the fault of the listener, YOU control how you react to what is said to you.
Yeah, no, that’s how cults start. Letting someone say “go kill people” and then claiming innocence to whatever happens…
Ya do know how WWII started, right?
There are those that purposefully say things they know will upset or hurt the person/people listening. You say it’s up to the listener to not be offended?
Should POC not be offended when someone calls them the “n” slur?
Should gay men not be offended when someone calls them the “f” slur?
Should I not be offended or upset if someone calls me a bunch of transgender slurs? Should I ignore and not be bothered when I hear people tell me I’m a disgusting freak of nature for being trans? Should I laugh it off if someone refuses to use the name and pronouns I tell people to call me, repeatedly, even though I’ve corrected them repeatedly?
You can control how you RESPOND to what has been said and done. But I can’t just turn off my feelings and emotions willynilly like Data from Star Trek. If someone says something hurtful and hateful, even on accident, it’s gonna bother me whether I will it or not. So if someone says nasty things to me, I can choose to try and correct them or educate them on why it’s wrong/bad, but it didn’t stop me from feeling upset when it was said.
Also, stereotypes don’t have a “grain of truth”; they’re an exaggeration of any given demographic which is often used for comedic/horror/propaganda purposes, and is generally overall harmful to the image of the people being portrayed, especially when it comes to POC, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous Tribal Natives, religious folk, or people from other countries. It’s possible to portray any kind of person imaginable without resorting to stereotypes, even if the person being portrayed isn’t a good/nice person (Nazis for example; you can easily stereotype a Nazi by drumming up their German/Austrian imagery and behaviors and that’s harnful to non-Nazi Germans and Austrians).
I don’t know what sort of upbringing you had, or how you think, or why you said what you’ve said here. But, I felt the need to speak up. Maybe you won’t react well. Maybe you’ll get upset and say something along the lines of “it’s just your opinion I shouldn’t get offended or upset.” But you don’t get to decide that.
If someone says you’ve hurt them with your actions and words, you don’t have the right to tell them they’re wrong.
Perhaps this is something for you to think about, joecrouse.
No. Taking offense is not the fault of the listener.
If someone says I’m going to hell because of my sexuality, or because I don’t believe in their specific god, they’ve chosen to say a trash thing and probably they are a trash human being. Maybe they don’t know any better. Maybe they think they’re right. Maybe they’ve never met anyone who is different from them.
I honestly don’t care.
I want them to stop saying hateful trash.
Also, if someone sends you a rape or a death threat, it’s not the listener/receiver’s fault for being offended. Some crappy little troll decided to deliberately try to cause offense and pain.
I’m sure you’ve had quite a nice life, if you’ve never encountered this crap. But trust me, black people and those of ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people, foreigners, and those who appear to be of a different religion than the majority in a country, have NEVER been so lucky.
You’re very, very, very wrong. You probably won’t listen, but let me tell you, I’ve been told I’m going to hell multiple times, I’ve been sent nasty hateful messages only because I’m female-bodied, and those people MEANT to cause offense. Similarly, if you use slur words, you MEANT to cause offense.
That is not on the listener.
Seriously, who the hell was prepping these kids for human integration? Eat with a fork is drilled in but not “Humans are SUPER touchy about remarks made about skin colour and race” Like how is that the behaviour that’s just left be, the one behaviour that could actually lead to legitimate social turmoil and isolation.
Possible Reasoning: Humans are really, really bad about discussing things that are “taboo.” To the point where this becomes so ingrained that you don’t think about it as a factor at all.
Consider how many workarounds we use to avoid talking about money. Or how we use weird words to discuss genitals, or have multiple words for meat to avoid thinking of the animal it came from.
Or how we use “African-American” so commonly that we end up using it to describe Black people who are neither American nor of African descent (e.g. British citizen, Caribbean or other islander ancestry). Because we’re allergic to the word “black.” (I ain’t white, either, and I honestly don’t know how that color term got to be common usage for this peachy-beige skintone.)
Or how we tie ourselves in knots trying to avoid referring to disabilities, as if changing the words somehow changes the nature of the disability. Or avoid referring to old/elderly people in terms referencing their age. Or avoid discussing weight as a fact about a person (“how much do you weigh?” being one of the taboo questions). Or avoid saying that a person is ugly or weird-looking. George Carlin has a whole comedy routine discussing how crazy this all is.
When you grow up in a culture that routinely suppresses factual data about the world around you, making it shameful to mention these things aloud, then you might get to the point where you don’t think twice about them. So I could see a class of “things you need to know about humans” failing to include some of the big ones — because they seem so natural and obvious that you don’t think twice about how weird they are.
This is a pretty good reasoning,I can see humans not mentioning racism and all the other *political* topics. However if this kind of talk and bickering is as common as the kids claim you’d think a human instructor would have picked it up. I really hope the kids get pulled aside by the teacher soon and learn just how not ok this stuff is.
We had a mess miscommunication while visiting a foreign country. The students we were staying with spoke beautiful barely accented English, but didn’t have much exposure to Euphemisms. I had helped prepare some food, and excused myself to “just wash the hands.”
Six kids, together, “What!! You’ve been handling food!”
“No, I mean hit the can.”
Dull confused looks.
“Powder my nose? See a man about a dog. Drain the dragon, use the Gents’, talk to Mother Nature on the big white telephone, (signs the letter T, waving it around), freshen up, potty-break, toi-toi, go tinkle?”
I’ll always be a Seven in their eyes because I could not say, “you’re an eight.”
P.S. Dave; hope yer doing well, and rested up.
You also could have sidestepped with the, as far as I know, fact that one is supposed to wash one’s hands AFTER handling food in a professional context, too.
C.I.A. graduate did confirm this, as standard operating procedure.
Would be kind of like whites telling blacks not to use the n- word.
‘cept in this case, Tehk is a ‘white’ using the n- word to refer to a ‘black’.
It’s a bit more like… “Becky, you can’t just ask someone why they’re ____!”
It’s not anything like the N-word. the N-Word is a slur that was seized and altered and made their own. This is the POLITE word for Selkie’s ‘race’ being co-opted as a slur to her ears.
Selkie wasn’t raised in the Sarnothi Culture at all, but if you listen to Tehk, she has turned out as a Prime example of the WORST her mother’s culture had to bear, and Selkie 1: can’t fire back because human social mores. 2: Can’t fire back because she has NO AMMO on how Tehk may or may not be being a “Tel’dora”.
The point was that humans telling sarnothi that their culture is wrong is in itself problematic – especially if the humans understanding of it is limited or being applied from a human centric viewpoint.
Which isn’t to say Wu is wrong either – just that this is a complex issue that needs to be aproached with finesse and undersanding, and the main drive for cultural reform would ideally also come from other sarnothi themselves rather than humans “forcing” them to.
1. Its not wrong to stand up for your friend when they are being mistreated. She’s made it perfectly clear she doesn’t like what he’s saying.
2. I disagree that it’s always wrong for an “outsider” to critique the culture of another.
3. Tehk is living in human society now, he may not like it (clearly) but he has to learn whats acceptable in this new society.
4. They are 8, cultural finesse isn’t exactly the top of mind when your 8
“The point was that humans telling sarnothi that their culture is wrong is in itself problematic”
Sarnothi have been ousted from their homes because the Nazi’s took over… I don’t think it’s problematic to point this out to them.
If culture includes “those ones over there aren’t even people”, or “it’s okay to have sex with prepubescent children”, or “we have to sacrifice humans every year/month/week/day/hour”, then it’s okay to call them out for that.
What Tekh is doing could be like the sarnothi equivalent of packers vs seahawks, or IT vs Sales.
It comes off as racist to us and the human characters in the story because we have been predisposed to equate clan with race.
You beat me to it. Humans being bad at discussing “taboo” is one thing, but this is something that can REALLY hurt integration.
Only certain humans are, most are not. PC ism isn’t a universally held trait.
joe, PC isn’t universally held, but taboos are – try talking about what goes on between a man and a woman in the bedroom in any context in public and see how far you get. If you can even manage to bring the topic up. Point being, there are some taboos so deeply ingrained in our cultures that I had to talk about one of them in an extremely roundabout way in this post, whereas if it wasn’t a taboo, I could have made this comment in a single, fourteen-word sentence.
Like joe Crouse said, not all humans. I’m reminded of a friend from India talking about how he and his friends always poked fun at each other over skin color, physique, etc., and didn’t think anything of it. Some related reading (warning: contains strong language):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dozens
So I’m more inclined to call this just cultural differences. Yes, it would’ve been a good thing to tell Tehk and company earlier. On the other hand, maybe they *did* tell them, “Humans are SUPER touchy about remarks made about skin colour and race,” but Tehk heard it as, “HUMANS are super touchy,” and assumed Selkie would play by the Sarnothi rules instead.
Notice Selkie’s face in the second-last panel. She’s just learned something about Sarnothi culture she didn’t know. Now she gets to decide whether to embrace this part of her heritage (which I can definitely see her doing–in fact, wasn’t she the one coaching Te Fahn on trash talk two pages ago?)… OR, to side with the (American) human culture that says trash talk based on ethnic origin is off-limits.
He’s not incorrect, Te Fahn, but he is wrong- oh, is that what you mean?
Sitting on the racer’s edge, far better than Standing on the razor’s edge. Ain’t English Grand!!
Wishing you all and each; a wonderful and fun filled post meal stupor, and may you each have a thanksgiving filled with jokes, joy, may you be in the company of family or friends, and to all of you Good Health.
And may the cook forget the Okra this year.
I think she’s referring to Selke trash talking HIM
Registered just to comment on this:
1) If the assumption was (as previously stated in comic) that Selkie’s above water experiences were being used to build knowledge around how the Sarnothi could integrate into our above-water society, the Class-ism/Species-ism/Racism issue would have never come up. Selike had no contact with any other Sarnothi until very recently in her life. “Don’t talk down about the other Clans,” just would not have hit the radar like, “Don’t talk down about skin color differences in your new human friends,” would have.
2) For all the Sarnothi kids, including Te Fan, English is a 2nd language. There are nuances in words and how they are spoken that are quite difficult to pick up to non-native speakers. “He’s not wrong,” isn’t necessarily her saying, “Tek is right.”
3) All the above points – YES, racism/discrimination used to belittle another is wrong – YES, this was a topic easily missed in building an integration curriculum around Taboos.
I would encourage a mass withholding of Judgement until Tek is given the opportunity to react to this expectation of his new culture. This could be the introduction of the lesson ALL Sarnothi have to learn to recover from the War (which was certainly exacerbated by the tension between the clans, on top of the Vacation Fishing Incident).
Also, I seem to remember Agent Brown (or his partner) saying that “the guppies” weren’t ready yet, but they had to start integrating them into human society early. They may have planned to talk about the clan-ism later, but the expulsion canceled that.
That might be it. I would bet they were supposed to have a few more classes before joining the population, but that got interrupted.
This could just as easily be her acknowledging how selkie gets her blows in as much as he does. “Each other” could mean the two kids instead of the two clans. Though, I’m sure it happens just as much between the clans.
Sarnothi racism isn’t a 1:1 match for American racism in history and tone, but it’s still not working out for them real well, is it? You know, what with the MASSIVE CIVIL WAR and all.
This! This this this! The whole ‘its ok to box people by race because that our culture’ is just as toxic as any other racism. Cast systems are a huge issues even with humans anyone looking at the cultural history of places like Japan and how to this day you get company’s firing people because they found out there ancestors were the cast that handled the dead. Yeah its a huge issues that breeds objectification and not a ‘respect our culture’ thing.
It’ll be interesting for the Sarnothi children to learn that racism is a cultural human taboo.
I think it’s a bit unfair yo say an 8 year old should stop being an asshole when we’ve seen Selkie be one on more than one occassion and excuse her behavior as justified, but not Amanda who was clearly emotionally and even physically abused before.
Obviously it’s not so easy, because Selkie’s clan’s nature has proven aggressive and wanting things done their way. They wanted blood for blood, which the rest of their species argued against going to war with another race over a mistake. Was it a stupid mistake. Yes it was, but they wanted to murder someone in revenge and a large number of their species was in disagreement with that mindset. Like it or not, their actions hold a stigma in their species now and I’m sure even the ones who weren’t against them before have changed their tune once they were forced from their homes. That isn’t to say that their clan is solely to blame, but they certainly are responsible for the catalyst that started this to some degree.
We, as humans, often blame innocents for something their predecessors did. The Crusades? Ahhh organized religion is bad. Christians are murderers. Slavery? White people are awful bigots who have no business speaking out against any person of color because they’re ignorant and their ancestors were awful. The Germans? They all best stay quiet and be polite otherwise they’re clearly a Nazi.
In a perfect world, we would stop punishing people for things THEY never did, but sadly, we aren’t there yet. I’m not saying it’s right for him to lump her in with the rest of her clan, but her actions and hair trigger temper aren’t doing her any favors right now towards someone who clearly does not want to intermingle with humans, but was forced to leave the comfort of his own home. All he’s seeing is, “Pfft. Typical. Another one puffing out their chest and throwing a fit when they don’t get their way.” right now which is reinforcing the bad behavior entirely. It’s not Selkie’s fault either, no one has really cracked down on her to stop being a sarcastic ass to people she doesn’t agree with. That coupled with how they’re largely left unsupervised and aren’t corrected by adults properly leads to a lot of crap like this. Case in point, Amanda being abused and clearly needing more 1 on 1 therapy and not getting it at the orphanage because their was not enough staff and too many kids.
We need to stop blaming children and treating them as if they have the mental capacity of an adult. We need to hold the adults responsible for what’s happening. These children need guidance to correct their bad behaviors, this includes Selkie, which Todd has done off and on, so good for him.
1: Aggression is a typical way of handling being unwanted or unaccepted.
An ‘I don’t need you’ attitude.
Attributing that to her race is ridiculous.
2: The fisherman murdered a sarnothy. It was not a mistake, it was pretty cut and dry. Someone panicked and did a 3rd degree murder and he was let off because the victim was black. The sarnothy were correct in demanding justice, it was even a crime committed on their lands! It wasn’t 3 clans vs 1, And as there was a genicide, I dare say this was about a lot more than the boat incident. Saying they were responsible to some digress is the sort of apologetics I’d expect from a nazi sympathizer. We should EXPECT them to learn their history and not be horrible.
3: I think the most respectful thing you can do for a child is hold them responsible for their actions. They won’t develope that mental or emotional capacity if you coddle them.
By human standards yeah it’s wrong but we are talking about a different species of sentient life, we cannot force them to completely change that behavior without a complete examination of how they operate as a species.