Meta post I’ve decided to make. I enjoyed the unixporn subreddit a lot when I used reddit more. I enjoy customizing my linux de as much as the next nerd.

But you definitely shouldn’t use racist slang to refer to the process.

To be clear, I didn’t know the origin of the term ‘ricing’ until fairly recently. I was chattimg with my friend and used it to describe my de setup. They informed me that apparently it’s from car customization, and is a pejorative against generally asian men who customize their car to look like a racecar.

After learning this I was sad to realize just how engrained it is in linux de customization culture. I personally have stopped using the term, and I would ask everyone here stop as well.

    • KnilAdlez [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      It’s a term used to racially exclude people by calling Asian car enthusiasts tacky posers. Is that really the energy we want to bring (or rather keep) to the Linux community?

        • KnilAdlez [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Can you be sure of that? And if it did matter to the public image of the Linux community, would agree to stop using that term, or is using a word that to this day has racist connotations more important to you than ensuring that all members of the Linux community feel welcome?

            • KnilAdlez [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Ricing is a racist term. I am telling you right now that it is a racist term referring to a type of car modding that Asians are stereotyped as doing. It is explicitly used to deride and exclude Asians from the car enthusiast community. Anyone who’s into cars or around people who are has heard this term, but you can Google it if you want.

              What does it say about you that you’ll deny basic, well known facts to defend using such an exclusionary term in a tiny community with a large amount of Asians in it?

                • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  Asian American into car culture here. Ricing and ricers are still derogatory and racist terms to this day. Do not mistake your ignorance of something that no one would bother to tell you for knowledge that it’s not true.

            • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              As someone that was very into cars (still kind of am but not nearly so much) and tuner culture. Yes, “rice” in the context of customizing a machine to your specific performance needs has always had racist baggage and likely always will. This is a weird hill to die on bud, and it makes you look very sus.

      • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        I’m curious if we have a detailed historic analysis of the origin of the term.

        I always figured it came form the “rice burner” mocking for Japanese motorbikes and cars. I figured this was mostly a pick about their relatively low performance. Aside from the “Asians eat rice” source material, is that intended as an insult to Asians in general, or more directed to the design committees at Toyota and Honda-- that they couldn’t design a car capable of burning petrol?

        To try a parallel concept: If an x86-64 enthusiast made fun of an ARM chip by saying it was “manufactured on a crumpet substrate” would that be an insult against the British, or more using that it comes from a British firm to provide vocabulary for a product-related insult?

        OTOH, I never really saw the term widely used to describe a desktop configuration before here, and it feels weird because of that more than anything else. I’m trying to remember if it was seen in the “PC Case Mod” community circa 2000, because they actually used a fair number of techniques and ideas from the car tuning scene that also used the “ricing” term (lots of cold-cathode lighting and weird 12v accessories)

        • KnilAdlez [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I’m curious if we have a detailed historic analysis of the origin of the term.

          If you want to do the research be my guest, but I’m telling you right now, I’ve only ever heard the term used to mock an Asian person’s car mods.

          If an x86-64 enthusiast made fun of an ARM chip by saying it was “manufactured on a crumpet substrate” would that be an insult against the British

          made fun

          There’s you answer. It is disrespect based on ethnicity.

          I never really saw the term widely used to describe a desktop configuration before here

          Then you should be fine with not using the term, right? Why are you working so hard to defend a word you claim you don’t see much? You have put all this effort into justifying using a word you have been told several times is racist that apparently other people don’t use according to you.

      • eskimofry
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        1 year ago

        Would you agree that a word that was so racist is now being demolished of it’s original bad meaning and something inclusive is being built in it’s place is a good thing?

        A sort of reformation or curing? After all, racist words were not racist until racists started using those words to be racist.

        • Grownbravy [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I’m seeing a bunch of tacked on cosmetic bits made to give the look of performance to computers. According to another post, that one-for-one matches my last known definition to the term.

          Also nonracists using a racist term doesnt make the term stop being racist. Curing doesnt start by not meaning it when you keep using the racist term. You dont bandage a stab wound by continually stabbing the victim.

          • eskimofry
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            1 year ago

            Also nonracists using a racist term doesnt make the term stop being racist.

            It does though. Gay was used to mean happy. Now it means homosexuals. Inbetween, it used to be a slang… now it no longer is. There’s nothing in humanity as fluid as language.

            Curing doesnt start by not meaning it when you keep using the racist term. You dont bandage a stab wound by continually stabbing the victim.

            Teaching people who are not aware that it’s racist IS stabbing a wound that was healing (by other people who were making it mean something cool and inclusive).

              • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 year ago

                As an Asian American into both car and computer culture, I have not ever felt a desire to embrace and reclaim this word, that from its inception only ever had derogatory meaning. Any attempt to force this word upon me in the name of “reclaiming” it will only offend me.

                All these people saying we should reclaim this word have no fucking clue what it feels like.

            • Grownbravy [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              No. This framing is incredibly foolish. If a term is hurtful to a group of people, you stop using it in favor of other words, otherwise you demonstrate you dont care that it is hurtful to a group of people, hence “continually stabbing the victim”

    • triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      yes, using bigoted terminology throughout tech is a great example of the cyberpunk DYSTOPIA that fiction warned us about.

      meanwhile, in the political side of punk, we’re antiracist and finding new words is the least we can do