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Originally Posted by Axxon
So, since tuna boats catch the occasional dolphin or other fish, there's nothing intrinsically "tuna" related to their fishing? It's just one funky big random thing that the vast, vast majority of the fish they catch are tuna then??
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I think you are making the OP's point for him in a roundabout way...as the operative word in the analogy is "fishing"...not tuna. So when one speaks of "fishing"(or "lynching", i.e. an action), it does not lead everybody to necessarily associate tuna or dolphin(or "white or black person", i.e. a target of the action) as both can and have been "fished" (or "lynched"), regardless of which has been "fished"(or "lynched") more.
What you've termed as a "tuna boat" is more analagous to a "racist white person"...just as a "boat" is more analagous to a "person" or even "white person".
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I like that argument though. I'm gonna rob a bank but pick up a quarter on the street so I'll just say, 'hey, I picked up this quarter on the street so there's nothing intrinsically illegal with picking up money in your bank.
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Again...the analogy fails since "robbing" is an illegal activity. "picking up" & "robbing" are 2 different terms...just as "lynching" & "murdering" are 2 different terms. One can murder by lynching somebody...and one can rob by picking up money from a place which does not belong to them...but they are not the same thing.
I'm not trying to nitpick you (albeit I have a bit)...but pretending that everybody in the world should understand and automatically know every word that every other person in the world might find offensive is...well, unrealistic. We have all lived in different circumstances, cultures, ethnicities, & social status...and not everybody understands every implication of every term they have heard...especially when the term has no inherit meaning to race.
By that standard or expectation...we have a lot of dictionaries to rewrite.