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You said the majority of people from council estates who wear trackies turn out to be chavs.
That isn't a common idiom. That's you making absurd and unfounded generalisations. Now tell me how I've misinterpreted that.
:banghead:
Look, look really closely and what I wrote. Look especially at the bold parts, maybe even click the link if you're feeling fruity.
Honestly, reading comprehension these days:rolleyes:
What do you hope to achieve in using the word chav, what is your argument and how is it productive?
Relying heavilly on generalisations is lazy and narrowminded.
Statistics show that a disproportionate amount of knife, gun and other violent crime in London is commited by black youths. That does not make it acceptable to prejudge or assume the next black young londoner you meet is a criminal.
Your argument will be that the difference is blak people don't choose to be black where as chavs choose to dress the way they do. That's irrelevant.
The point is you're creating the negative sterotypes. Sterotypes are created by those doign the sterotyping. All a chav is choosing to do is to dress in a certain style. He/She isn't asking for you to assumre their scum.
Lying on their arse living off other people's income tax and 13 year olds expecting their 3rd kid much?
I don't rely on them. Just because I am aware of the chav stereotype, acknowledge its existence and recognise likely members does not mean I use it in any way. I would treat them in the same way as anybody else I come into contact with. I would treat anybody I didn't know with the respect I'd expect from them. If they don't return it however then the I may decide they're a chavvy moron. Having decided this I would STILL treat them with respect because I do my best not to lower myself to the levels of others.
I wouldn't make any judgement against black youths myself, no. But I think it would be unfair to expect the police to subsequently not watch this particular group of people more closely than others when they have been shown to be more likely to commit crime. It's common sense to pay attention to patterns like that and it doesn't at all suggest that the police would assume that ALL black youths are criminals. However, any stereotype has been created by the criminals themselves, not the public.
The chav has been labelled a chav from occasion after occasion of violence, teenage pregnancy and benefit scrounging all from a specific group of people. All it is is a trend people have picked up on. You can't expect people not to see a pattern in problems like that and start to associate it with certain people when the trend is blatently obvious. Again, this isn't an excuse for treating them any differently from anyone else but they can't blame you for making assumptions which are based on fact.
If anything, your argument is counterproductive. If society had no stereotypes and made no assumptions about people, crimes would be committed again and again because no steps would be taken ton eliminate recurring issues. For example (I know you're not very good with examples but please try and see my point without making some idiotic comment), a man owns a little corner shop on the edge of a council estate. Groups of teens come in every week, some distracting him while others steal things. They all wear hoodies so it's almost impossible to identify them. Is he wrong for putting signs on the door banning more than 2 under 18s from entering at the same time? Is his generalisation of young people to protect himself wrong?
But you don't treat them with the same respect, you sneered at teenage pregnancy in another post. It's not something to be derided and looked down on.
Why not make judgements against black youths? You do it against people who wear burberry.
Again, you mention trends without producing any evidence whatsoever that there's a correlation between people who wear trackies, live on council estates and violence, teenage pregnancy or benefit fraud. Where's your evidence?
Well, I don't really want to achieve anything; I barely use the word myself. But claiming words are inherently bad or anyone who uses a specific word automatically looks down on the poor is what I disagree with. It's just a word, a shorthand for something that'd probably take a few sentences to describe if the word wasn't there.
Words might not be 'inherently bad', but to neglect that words can hold social significance is at best naive and at worst wilfully ignorant.
You'll notice I've said many times in this thread that the idea and meanings behind the word 'chav' existed before the word and in some areas using an entirely different word. The word is not important; it's merely a means to communicate an idea. So yes 'chav' is just a word.
The merits of the idea behind the word are something different entirely and that's why this thread is so long. We ban anyone from saying the word? Some other arbitrary string of letters will take it's place; the idea will be the same.
Same as nigger, paki and pikey I suppose?
The idea that you can make negative assumptions about peoples behavior simply from their appearance.
And the root of the word isn't unimportant. Like 'gypo' and 'pikey' - words that have aslo been adopted to describe the 'undercalss - it has negative racial origins because Roamny Gypsies are often looked upon as memebers of the underclass.
No, and I've already explained why.
You really love your strawman arguments don't you?
No, the negative behaviour is contained in the meaning of the word.
Like I say; (over and over again) that's just one possible etymology and here are a good few more. No-one knows for certain the origins of the word, for all we know it could come from the Spanish 'Chavo'.
I don't need to produce evidence for something you KNOW is true. More crime is committed in council estate areas than anywhere else, more likely by unemployed people. If you're going to argue with a widely accepted fact of life then we're wasting our time.
EDIT: Illuminatus has just reminded me that he has posted a link repeatedly which actually does contain supportive evidence that you have chosen to ignore.
No, it's a good comparison actually to prove that words aren't just words and have negative connotations associated with them. You associate the word chav with drink and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and unemployment as if it's something to be sneered upon. It's not funny.
And what does throwing the word chav about going to do about it?
Erm no he hasn't, the link said children from poorer areas were more likely to suffer abuse than children from rich areas, what has that got to do with dole scroungers and 13 year olds waiting on their 3rd kid?
u u u t h
o o o d c
come on turlough
So you're denying the fact that child abuse probably stems from drug/alcohol abuse at home and unemplyment? Think about the kind of environment the child is statistically more likely to be in. It has everything to do with it.
It's the mostly widely accepted.And I have seen the transition myself over the years. Chav comes from the Raomany word Chavi meaning young lad or mate, just as Charver comes from the Romany word for prostitute.
It has offensive roots and continues to be offensive.
Generalistions are wrong, you've admited it yourself, I don't know why your arguing that it's acceptable and it's those being sterotypes that are at fault.
And you beleive you can label people with this word by their appearance.
I'm not saying that chav is a racist term, but it has racist origins. It't no coincidence that the terms pikey and gypo are also often used in place of chav. They were adopted because it's considered an insult by many to imply somebody else is a gypsy.
And people are born into social groups wear trackies and burberry caps are social uniform. And you think they deserve to be called scum if they don't make an effort to avoid YOUR criteria of the appearance of the underclass.
They dress that way to fit in with there peers, they don;t dress that way so some jumped up little cunt can look down their nose at them ffs.
That you can predict somebodies behavior form where they live and how they dress is most certainly FALSE.
I havn't argued otherwise. You know why there's more crime on these estates? It's because crime levels are high in disadvantaged areas always have been.
But none of that is an argument for labling people scum unless you actually know them for behaving like scum.
And teenage moms aren't scum, neither are the unemployed, neither are those that wear trackies.
I think your attitudes are sad more than anything.
Might be to do with people calling them scum and chavs, and people thinkign they don't deserve any respect whatsoever.
Oh, those last two quote were me by the way, not Illuminatus. We do kind of blend into one though
And what is labelling not only these poor people, but anyone who happens to dress like them, as chavs going to do to their self-esteem? As I've already said, I happen to live in an area where a large number of people dress in this way and are from that sort of background, and something like a teenage pregnancy is still a pretty rare occurance. What you're doing is labelling what are more often than not young teenagers as losers before they've even got to the stage to figure out their own identity. In my experience, the word chav isn't generally used to refer to people like Skive and Yera who are big enough to defend themselves, it's aimed at young teenagers and even younger kids who are just dressing like their mates. They're written off as losers and treated like criminals by judgemental pricks before they've even had a chance to think about how the rest of society percieves them. Nobody is claiming that it should be illegal to use the word chav, or anything like it, but that it should be looked down on in exactly the same way as using sexist language or racist language is looked down on.
I've told you twice you have a stange habit of deliberately misinterpreting me. But now you're just crossed the line into outright trying to smear me by taking things from another post and quoting them as if I said them. Though if it was an accident, I'd appreciate it if you edited your post and attributed the quotes to the person who's actually said them.
Anyway, I will respond to the parts of your post that are actually responding to what I've said:
If you continue to repeat yourself then all I can do is repeat myself back:
Semantic drift. Possible etymology. etc. etc. etc.
It doesn't matter where the word came from, all that matters is it meaning now and in it's common and most widely accepted usage it has absolutely zero to do with Romany (if it even did in the first place). Much like when you call someone an 'imbecile' it has nothing to do with them being French, or that you're calling them a 'french idiot'. This is not hard to understand and you're purposefully refusing to.
It's pretty clear what I'm arguing, if you want to respond to some specfic fascet of my argument please quote the appropriate part of it with a direct reply underneath, because you've got a habit of quoting parts of my post them talking about something entirely different and saying something that implies I said something I did not earlier. Infact you've just done it again:
The above quote was in response to:
If I claim that the negative behaviour in part of the definition of the word, then it is logically impossible that I mean by appearance only.
From now on Skive, if you've got something new to talk to me about then please do so; I'll reply. But if you're going to keep repeating yourself then all I can do is repeat myself back and I'm starting to get bored of it. Especially when you constantly make an effort to deliberately misinterpret me like you did now and you did when I was talking about idioms.
I'm not sure about that, but it does seem to be going round in circles - with two clashes on perspective. May well have to close it shortly. :chin:
Whats the diffrence between someone using terms to derogate a class as to a race?
Or are they the same?
I suppose one has a chance of changing ones class and not ones race (except for MJ) yet I think a derogatory word agaisnt a group of people is still a derogatory term against a group of people despite who or what an individual is like whom belong to that group.
Its all bigotry I say and people who think bigotry is a virtuos behaviour should be ashamed of themselves.