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"Blacks at Xbox" - Incredibly tone-deaf? (Update: Xbox Communication Manager explains)
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"Blacks" as a term for black people is a term often used by white people who don't care for black people and would rather use their skin color as a noun rather than an adjective to describe a human being. This goes back a long time in American history.
The Xbox tweeter made a (imo) forgivable mistake by being white and not knowing that "Our Blacks at Xbox" reads very differently than "Our 'Blacks at Xbox.'
Part of the misstep is that the lack of quotations that would have otherwise denoted referencing an already-established thing (made by black folks) turned into a big mean company implying that it owned black people.
As a more direct response, in common parlance, "black people" is the preferred term, as it does not define the subjects by their skin color, but instead just describes it.
The hell does this mean? Is this some new racism? I hope so because the "buy Jordans with welfare" is old.
ahfeiahogeag My GOD This thread is great.
I've been yelling "Oh yall thought yall wasn't gon see me? I'm the Osiris of this shit!" at people for years as they stare in disbelief. They think I'm clowning when I tell them researching Big Baby Jesus will give the answer.
User Banned (5 Days): Antagonizing users over a series of posts + Ignoring admin instructions. History of infractions.
O_o wut
Your nationality is Jamaican yes but you are of African decent. I can't believe i have to explain this.
I get if your're mixed with not a whole lot of African DNA. That's a whole nother story. Regardless, i'm talking about the history of where "black people" come from. It doesn't matter where you were born. Your DNA ties back to Africa. Call yourself whatever you want. "black Americans" Afro latino's, the whole Caribbean and African diaspora are all of African decent.
Again, you can call yourself whatever you want and feel a certain way about Africa if you want. The historical DNA of where you come from doesn't lie.
That's fine by me. I'm not even really bothered. It's just a little frustrating to see people still wanting to separate themselves from that continent. A very rich continent with history and many other things at that.
Eh.
Most black people who's family roots go back 100's of years in America are not 100% African...slavery will do that. It's not a whole "nother" story...
Yeah, I should say that statement was more of an oughta be kind of thing. It's just bullshit we require anyone darker than olive to qualify their citizenship with a hyphen.
What's your alternative? Most black people I know refer to themselves as black...
Wonder how many people here remember this guy
365Black
crushed blacks was an Xbone thing in the first year of its launch (and possibly still going? i aint heard about it in a long time)
First shit I thought of.
I;d rather they just not say shit if they can't figure out a way to do it without shit like this...
I'm assuming the name was decided from the members within the group itself and not just a group of black people sitting at a desk one day just talking when Major Nelson walks in the room saying "hey everyone, I have an idea.."
For some, maybe not. For others, maybe. If you block out the MS haters/lovers, it seems it's well worth discussion. It's this forums' strong point that this gets a good airing imo.
Y'all can be mad, BUT I WANT A RED BLACK AND GREEN XBOX CONTROLLER NOW
I don't eeven have an Xbox and I want this
Yup....
It's really clearly phrased. It would be the same as saying: "Check out our Women in Gaming panel" etc. It's not saying "Our women"; it's saying "Our Panel: Women in Gaming."
I guess it's vaguely kinda awkward, but I feel like you'd have to really be looking for that. Like, man people are gonna write things that seem fine to them, that they don't see another way of reading it. Instead of freaking out, a normal person would...probably just read it and go "oh right that's what they meant."
This. I assume we'd have heard about I by now if it was somehow some corporate decision of what to name the group.
Are you kidding me with this thread, and this reaction online in general? It kinda makes me extremely sad that the team felt the need to put out a statement on the name they fucking identified themselves as. Jesus Christ. I'm not black but fuck, just let people speak for themselves. What the fuck. And some phrasing?! What are we doing here?!
What if I am in the group? I'm Black but not African American...
The tweet is grammatically correct, the 'our' is referring to 'community' in the original tweet, "Blacks at Xbox" is a proper noun because it's the name of the group. I mean I guess they could've said "Our community here at Blacks at Xbox" instead of "Our Blacks at Xbox community" and people might not have reacted blindly to something they didn't understand...but maybe some responsibility lies with the reader to, idk, pay attention and do like a modicum of research and reading comprehension into what they are opening their mouth to offer a hot-take on.
I don't understand, if they are all black and chose the name themselves, why is there an issue?
Happens all the time here. People talking out of their asses falling over each other to be 'right' about things they have no knowledge of. Then they get called out and it's like "how was I supposed to know?". The issue isn't the lack of knowledge, it's speaking with a lack of knowledge. Makes the whole community look dumb and reactionary.
the community is dumb and reactionary, its why i dont delve into off topic much.
Eh now you're being a douche about this. The people still taking issue with this after the clarification by MS happen to be the black members of our community. They are speaking with the knowledge that using such a name was in very poor taste. I disagree it is in poor taste but I'm not going to pretend like you did that that these individuals are being reactionary without any personal history behind it.
Only problem I see here is I know a lot of people resent having their group being denoted with quotes. Doing so can make it sound illegitimate, since in common spoken language probably the most common use of quotes is to delegitimize and be sarcastic. Just something to consider. Plus I mean, we already have a system for grammatically indicating an organization or group with a name -- Capitalized main words -- which the guy writing the tweet did use.
Which of course makes a community managers job suck ass. So much to consider how someone might read what you're writing.
That's fine. I'm not saying what they should be called, I'm a white dude that's not involved in any way with this. I'm just saying it's weird to assume everyone is american. Or even African I suppose. There are other black people, Australian Aboriginal people come to mind. Who knows what the demographic of the group, but whatever it is they should be free to choose their name and not have a bunch of restera people get butthurt about it.
I'm mainly referring to the OP, who is not black (they are Pakistani) and clearly did not do the least bit of research to provide proper context as to the nature of the group in question, which should be the bare minimum expected of someone posting a thread.
Also, how could it possibly be in poor taste when this is a group of black people who work at Microsoft deciding what to call themselves? Individual posters here may not refer to themselves in that manner, that's their right, but they have no business telling other people how they can and cannot refer to themselves. It would have been obvious this was the case if the OP provided any context for who this group is, but it doesn't, so instead it encourages misinformed hot takes.
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OT: If the community wanted this to be called what it is, whats the big deal?
I don't think they were tone deaf at all. I thought that "Blacks at Xbox" was just the Employee Resource Group at Microsoft. Out of context it sounds bad, but as someone who works in a corporate setting I understood it immediately.
If that's the name they chose for themselves, more power to them. My old job I was a part of an Asian ERG, and we were called "Asians of [company]"
If that's the name they chose for themselves, more power to them. My old job I was a part of an Asian ERG, and we were called "Asians of [company]"
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Yes, I see that they think the group's name is tone deaf, despite the fact that they now know what the group is and who comprises it. They aren't part of the group nor are they someone who the group represents so...why is this thread-worthy exactly? Also they still haven't updated the OP explaining the group itself, despite putting the community manager's (quite good) response there.
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