[Answered] The term oogabooga

Is this term racist or not? I understand according to the appeal Caution answered that the answer is no as they didn't even know what it was and that context matters entirely in that the person should clearly be being racist. Then yesterday or today, Montag was banned for the use of the term. This post is not meant to defend him, but talk about whether it is allowed.

Personally I think the terms current 2016-2018 rise to being a meme should make it racist and not allowed according to our strict stance, but I don't want myself or someone else to say a term and be banned for it. Personally I don't use that term, besides situations where I've spoken about its use/level of racism and in the past I warned someone who after the whole situation with an LG switched their name to "ooga booga" on TeamSpeak after prior warnings of racism mere days before. Regardless of all of the context behind that situation there was no actual punishment given but only a warning, so naturally I'm really confused as to where this term actually stands given these 3 incidents.

I personally think you guys have been warned one to many times about going around the race rule. I suggest taking this as a lesson to learn from we are no longer joking about the racism your group of friends tends to go about saying.

May not intend for it to be racism but it is, bending or going around the rule will not be tolerated.

I'm going to say that we should stay on the conservative side of issuing bans for "ooga booga" for a number of reasons:

a) Ooga Booga does not have "historical" references of being used in a racist sense like any of the other words on the racism list in the admin section

b) Ooga Booga is not currently present on the admin list for racist words

c) Ooga Booga is a term used in a number of other occasions, including games, movies, and referencing neanderthal speech.

I feel that it only makes sense to ban players if it can be clearly seen using derogatively or pointed towards other players. While I don't feel that someone should take advantage of a questionable term simply because it's recently been cleared as okay, the fact that it has been cleared as okay should protect players from bans when they don't fall into the categories above.

A similar situation occurred when someone on TTT (with many racist previous names) donned the name "Lynchables". This seemed like a clear cut case of racism, given the historical use of the word and the player's previous names, but it was later cleared by higher ups because there was no way to prove the term "lynch" as racist, given that it's dictionary definition simply means being hung without trial, usually by a mob.

On a different note, would anyone mind giving a concise summary of SG's stance on anti-semitism? When I first joined, I remember it being a grey area, which usually went unpunished. However, I thought I recalled a harsher stance being taken on it later, with several ban reasons being issued with the term "racism/anti-semitism". As of recently, I've heard many regs and admins quoting in Teamspeak that it's okay to make fun of Jews because "It's a religion like Islam".

For whatever it's worth to the situation: Jews are a protected race under the Civil Rights Act, however, following WWII, Jews specifically prefer to be referenced as an ethnicity and not a race.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/u-s-court-rules-jews-are-protected-race-under-civil-rights-act-1.6291921

http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm

The moral of the story here is generally to respect all peoples and players, but we can't just go about banning anyone that makes a "joke" targeted towards a certain group of people, or can we?

I personally think you guys have been warned one to many times about going around the race rule. I suggest taking this as a lesson to learn from we are no longer joking about the racism your group of friends tends to go about saying.

Okay great man, my question wasn't about my group of friends and if that does have anything to do with it why would we get differential treatment.

I understand you don't like x, y, z person on the forums but you continuously make salty and unneeded posts as perfect examples being this, Gumline's admin application, and suggestions by myself and Dominic. I even tried to reach out to you the other day to let you know that I don't care about the original situation that Montag and Dominic had with you regarding leaving and some comments you've made, but yet you continue to make false and defamatory statements with zero evidence.

I don't say racist shit on Steam-Gamers and I never have, so unless you have actual evidence of that you should probably stop saying things with no evidence to back it up. I'm the person who was going super hard, banned Pandapwnr for it when he was even slightly saying something racist, I give out longer bans for it than any admin probably in recent history and I was literally taking shit from my own friend group for enforcing that rule. Any warnings any of my friends have gotten for saying things on the edge of racism, they came from me. As for stance on racism currently is that SG should probably allow slang, but still be heavily against actual tangible racism.

As for your last part about skirting the rule, how is saying a word against the rules when that word is allowed and the context behind it provides zero racist narrative or context. If that's how it is then by default anyone/everyone saying it should be banned for doing so, and not what Caution originally said in a recent appeal.

So since I'm on of the only mg regs around here and it's just a thing that's happening, I'm just going to ask a question.

Many regs in mg, mainly the dogshit ones, when they get mad at me most commonly not naming names but someone says "wow nesquik is such a monkey". Now calling someone a monkey in a serious way is racist, no doubt. But on mg many people say it and since the whole server says it it really doesn't bother me because I take it just as a joke. Also what about ape? Since ned and his fuckin ape escape happened, apes are basically just a different kind of monkey, like chimpanzee (another word used but less often). Many of the times people have been banned for racism for just saying the n word straight up or trying to avoid it with crappy versions of it. If ooga booga isn't allowed then shouldn't monkey or shit like that not be allowed?

Okay great man, my question wasn't about my group of friends and if that does have anything to do with it why would we get differential treatment.

 

I understand you don't like x, y, z person on the forums but you continuously make salty and unneeded posts as perfect examples being this, Gumline's admin application, and suggestions by myself and Dominic. I even tried to reach out to you the other day to let you know that I don't care about the original situation that Montag and Dominic had with you regarding leaving and some comments you've made, but yet you continue to make false and defamatory statements with zero evidence.

 

I don't say racist shit on Steam-Gamers and I never have, so unless you have actual evidence of that you should probably stop saying things with no evidence to back it up. I'm the person who was going super hard, banned Pandapwnr for it when he was even slightly saying something racist, I give out longer bans for it than any admin probably in recent history and I was literally taking shit from my own friend group for enforcing that rule. Any warnings any of my friends have gotten for saying things on the edge of racism, they came from me. As for stance on racism currently is that SG should probably allow slang, but still be heavily against actual tangible racism.

 

As for your last part about skirting the rule, how is saying a word against the rules when that word is allowed and the context behind it provides zero racist narrative or context. If that's how it is then by default anyone/everyone saying it should be banned for doing so, and not what Caution originally said in a recent appeal.

https://www.steam-gamers.net/forum/showthread.php?t=82106&highlight=context

I don't really care just memeing.

This is a slippery slope boys, banning words and labeling them as racist just opens every other word up to interpretation.

https://www.steam-gamers.net/forum/showthread.php?t=82106&highlight=context

 

I don't really care just memeing.

 

This is a slippery slope boys, banning words and labeling them as racist just opens every other word up to interpretation.

I agree, I feel we should either not have it or allow it cause I think it opens the door to personal bias.

I might be going on a tangent here, delete it if you feel like it's not adding to the topic.

I've been around on CS for a long time and I've stuck with SG on and off for like 6 years now. I can say that SG is probably the most strict community when it comes to enforcing rule racism, why I put racism in italics? It's the reason like ooga booga, me a person living in the EU. Our school education doesn't focus on topics like racism or past slavery as much as US education probably does. If I wasn't on the internet so much I wouldn't even connect ooga booga to racism. If someone asked what I would connect Ooga Booga to I would probably say some African tribe language words, me saying this is alreay what you consider racist, but that's just how the world is. Going back to the SG being very strict with racism rule, I feel like there should be a step back and focus on the N word and other similiar words, going off the road to words like ooga booga and monkey is bit absurd in my eyes. If I call someone a monkey it's because I think he has IQ of one, maybe acting like a retard, not because I'm being racist.

2 cents from Eu

I might be going on a tangent here, delete it if you feel like it's not adding to the topic.

 

I've been around on CS for a long time and I've stuck with SG on and off for like 6 years now. I can say that SG is probably the most strict community when it comes to enforcing rule racism, why I put racism in italics? It's the reason like ooga booga, me a person living in the EU. Our school education doesn't focus on topics like racism or past slavery as much as US education probably does. If I wasn't on the internet so much I wouldn't even connect ooga booga to racism. If someone asked what I would connect Ooga Booga to I would probably say some African tribe language words, me saying this is alreay what you consider racist, but that's just how the world is. Going back to the SG being very strict with racism rule, I feel like there should be a step back and focus on the N word and other similiar words, going off the road to words like ooga booga and monkey is bit absurd in my eyes. If I call someone a monkey it's because I think he has IQ of one, maybe acting like a retard, not because I'm being racist.

 

2 cents from Eu

On the other side of the coin though a rule like that would put us into a similar situation where people just use replacement words instead. They'll scream and holler that its not but at the end of the day they know that they're just using those words because they can't say the real deal.

This thread just feels like its inevitably going to devolve into what everyone thinks about specific words and what they perceive as racist or not. Obviously leaving this up to admin discretion will cause some issues here and there, and those cases will have to be dealt with at a higher up level of the community.

My personal opinion on this is that terms such as the one this thread was made about, being able to be used in a funny joking type style, or being able to used it in a racist, and offensive manner are a matter of your own risk. You can use the word, however in doing so you put the risk up for that word to be interpreted as racist and possibly be banned for it.

Just my thoughts about the topic without getting into my personal views on racism itself