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Post by showcase on Oct 23, 2006 14:28:18 GMT -5
somehow in your researched history of homeboy, you neglected one very salient fact...that it has been used as a pejorative for black guys...old and young. that colors (pun intended) the usage of the word. also, dude started in the 50's and 60s with black guys calling themselves that...not the surfer crowd. my grandmother calls people dudes..and ironically its not in a totally positive light. wikkepedia's rating system is irrelevant, as all demographics don't contribute equally.... my own personal experience, and that of other black people holds more weight imo. are you actually attempting to posit there is no negative and/or sterotypical usage assigned to homeboy? shows the shortcomings of internet research...hahahah And, as internet research is used to show the shortcomings of ron's own personal experience, the circle of life continues...
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Post by Coast2CoastHoya on Oct 23, 2006 20:43:50 GMT -5
don't forget my grandpa! but yes .... the circle of life, as they say, goes on and on. if anyone can go on at lenth about the nuances of words like "dude," "stoked," "agg," "crucial," "mello," etc. - just ask bando, drums, buffalo, and tables: i'm your man.
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Cambridge
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Post by Cambridge on Oct 25, 2006 16:57:02 GMT -5
Not sure if this is going to stir up the pot even more, but I've always understood homeboy to be an african-american co-option of latino/chicano slang. As I understand it, the word is derived from "hombre" and was used in the latino communities of the west coast before it was adopted by African-American youths in the 50s and 60s. So, if it is white boys stealing from black people stealing from spanish kids...where does that leave us?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2006 17:00:24 GMT -5
I'm proud to say:
'Bridge Is My Homeboy.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 26, 2006 14:02:34 GMT -5
Ok, with regard to the "Father, Son, and Hoya Spirit" thing...I really have a hard time believing there can be any sort of credible offense or outrage summoned here. As far as I can tell, most Christians seem to have no problem with their religion being used to market everything from hood ornaments to bracelets to what is essentially a snuff film (Mel Gibson tries to kill Jesus as gruesomely as humanly possible because nothing less will do for our Lord and savior!) to the Republican Party to anti-gay initiatives supported by a book in the Bible that no one actually follows anymore (even the Ultra-Orthodox Jews don't stone people to death for disrespecting their parents as Leviticus commands), etc. ad nauseum, yada yada. At a time when magazines print "The Ten Commandments of Great Sex" and the Left Behind series is butchering Christian theology to the tune of millions of dollars a year, I really can't believe that an innucuous play on words is going to offend anyone who's not looking for something to bitch about.
As for the other part of it...ron's example misses the mark and I think the refutation explains why this shirt should not in any way be a problem. Let's look at a coutnerexample: the term "boy" when used to refer to black males, especially older ones, was for a long time (hell, where I live, it still is) used to denigrate them, establishing a clear-cut racial hierarchy. You would never go up to JTIII and call him "boy." If, however, you say "JTIII is my boy" or perhaps more precisely "JTIII is My BOI!" then absolutely no one, of any race, would take that to be anything but a positive expression of closeness and support. Wearing a t-shirt that said the same thing would not, I don't think, cause anyone to bat an eyelash. Really, I think it woul be better to have many more whites, especially white males, willing to identify with a black man, show their unconditional support for him, etc. Call it the Barack Obama effect, maybe, but I really don't see how this could be taken the wrong way.
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EasyEd
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Post by EasyEd on Oct 26, 2006 18:36:51 GMT -5
Russky - reading your post I can understand why you don't see a problem with the Father, Son and Hoya Spirit T-shirt. The tone of your post is not exactly friendly to many Christians.
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Post by hilltopper2000 on Oct 26, 2006 20:51:19 GMT -5
Ed -- I hope you are joking. By ripping a few intellectually bankrupt expressions of Christianism, Russky was applying his Jesuit education.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 26, 2006 22:10:13 GMT -5
Ed -- I hope you are joking. By ripping a few intellectually bankrupt expressions of Christianism, Russky was applying his Jesuit education. Since when is someone "ripping a few intellectually bankrupt expressions of Christianism applying his "Jesuit education?" (I had originally made a reference to the Church Militant in this post, but that might fly over a few people's heads.) For a university which stresses students respect religious beliefs across the spectrum, it needs to also respect its core beliefs, too. This is a larger issue than a t-shirt, of course, but Georgetown's appearance of inconsistency with regards to faith-based issues often gets it in hot water.
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Post by hilltopper2000 on Oct 27, 2006 7:00:40 GMT -5
Well, I suppose I disagree with the notion that "religious beliefs across the spectrum" need to be respected and tolerated. I don't respect the beliefs of the Wahhabists or the Christianists. And, frankly, I don't see why we should. I believe that faith and reason can and must coexist for all of us to live in the same society. In any event, his comments struck me a intramural. Christians should oppose the use of obscure passages in the Old Testament to override the central tenants of the message of Christ. And we should all be concerned about the popularization of Passion Plays in the 21st Century. Anyone with any knowledge of European history should have been troubled by that. Indeed, in both instances, Russky was challenging those who use elements of Christianity to attack and dismiss the religious beliefs of others. Finally, Russky comments on the use of Christ's message--which is quite essentially anti-materialistic--as a capitalist vehicle. Are you taking issue with that? Yes, he did all of this in a jokular fashion (as is appropriate for a freakin' message board) but I think there is solid analysis underlying such expression. Blind, unchallenging acceptance of orthodoxy strikes me as antithetical to all I learned from the Jesuits.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 27, 2006 7:01:16 GMT -5
Russky - reading your post I can understand why you don't see a problem with the Father, Son and Hoya Spirit T-shirt. The tone of your post is not exactly friendly to many Christians. Well, I'm sure I could have been much friendlier in tone, but that would have been disingenuous. The critique remains, whether it is stated bluntly or comes with frosting and a cherry on top: given the variety of ways in which Christianity has been appropriated for commercial, political, sectarian, nationalist, discriminatory, and other causes, the notion that a play on words by supporters of a university basketball team should cause some sort of offense, while all the preceding issues apparently do not, strikes me as incomprehensible. All of this is aside from the fact that it is obviously meant to be a cutesy play on words and not any in any way blasphemous - presumably, when it comes to blasphemy, intent actually does matter. Surely there's plenty of actual blasphemy in the world, including the Protestant and Muslim variety that Georgetown is actively supporting by paying for a staff Protestant chaplain and imam. Really, though, unless any pun, play on words, or any non-religious reference to anything biblical is considered a priori blasphemous (i.e. the expressions "walking on water" and "his cross to bear" or the TV show Lazarus Man), I can't see anyone honestly being perturbed by this unless they're already looking to create an issue a la the Cardinal Newman Society.
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Post by hilltopper2000 on Oct 27, 2006 7:01:55 GMT -5
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 27, 2006 8:38:48 GMT -5
Acceptance of orthodoxy strikes me as antithetical to all I learned from the Jesuits. Strange, I learned that from Jesuits...
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Post by StPetersburgHoya (Inactive) on Oct 27, 2006 10:41:33 GMT -5
Be careful with your terms - if something is not orthodox then it is hetorodox. We're dealing with shades of orthodoxy here.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 27, 2006 12:39:51 GMT -5
Be careful with your terms - if something is not orthodox then it is hetorodox. We're dealing with shades of orthodoxy here. There are, indeed, many shades of orthodoxy, as you well know Styopa. There's Russian Orthodoxy, Ukrainian Orthodoxy, Georgian Orthodoxy, Armenian Orthodoxy...
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