How many Pakis does it take to screw in a light bulb?
 

I didn't read the link, but assume it's the guy with a light bulb in his rectum I read about elsewhere today.

[Captain Obvious]I think he put it there himself to stimulate his prostate and experience some sexual pleasure. I think he's lying when he says he doesn't know how it got there.[/Captain Obvious] At least he isn't claiming he fell on it.

Years ago I stumbled across a medical website with x-ray images of things people got stuck in their butts. I still don't get it.

You just haven't met the right lamp yet.

At least you aren't claiming you fell on it. :-)

It's actually one of the oldest sites on the net...only slightly newer than my home page.

Well day and day out I hear people say, "Stick it up your ass".
I never took it literally but I suppose some people might. :rolleyes:

Damn it, Achmed...I said I wanted a *Bud* Light!

I have spent 16 years fighting against racism in my country. We have a strong neo-nazi political party, complete with its paramilitary wing ( known as Combat 18 .....1=a=Adolf. 8=H=Hitler. Used to be called Combat 88 for Heil Hitler)

One of the most commonly used terms of abuse we hear from both the fascists and racist sympathisers, is 'Paki'. We see it daubed on walls..."Paki's go home. If they're Brown, put them down, If theyre black, send them back" etc.

White girls who date or marry asian men ( Indian, pakistani, Sri Lankan, there is no distinction made) get shouts of 'paki lover' . The 'paki jokes' told by far right comedians are often stomach churning.
An example:

Whats black and brown and looks good on a paki?
Ans: A Rottweiler.

When talking about 'Pakis' , I have heard a right wing comedian say they can never be British even when born here. After all, he explains, if a dog is born in a stable, that doesn't mean he is a horse.

I have just fought an 8 month election campaign where my main opponents were the neo-nazi BNP (British National Party) and the amount of people on the doorsteps who said things like:

"Well, I wouldn't vote for the BNP, but some of the things they say are spot on. It's the pakis that are ruining this country. Us English are becoming second class citizens in our own land"

One lady told me, with no shame at all, that she had withdrawn her daughter from school (aged 12) because ONE 'paki' had joined her year. Not even her class, just her year. A year with over 100 kids in it, and she couldn't bear the idea of her child being amongst that 100 because a single asian child would be there.

In the UK, the word Paki is used with much the same tone and intent and as the word Nigger was in the USA twenty or thirty years ago. Since the recent war on terror it has had a disturbing resurgence. I see graffiti on 'paki shops' all the time now. Particularly in the ward I serve.

Imagine my shock to see that term used here, of all places. I am deeply offended. Sickened. When I read the thread title, I went cold. I just hope that the term is either being used ironically, or carries very different connotations over there. Either way, I feel like my haven has been sullied.

So...you're upset with me about racisim in your country? The thread title is in the context of a lightbulb joke; would you be as offended if it was "How many Polacks does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"?

Ass Bulb
 

Thomas Edison must be turning in his grave.

Turning in his grave? Would that be to cover, or expose, his butt? :lol:

I must say I (another Brit, like DanaC) was pretty surprised and mildly shocked to see the word "Paki" here myself. As to your question, I suppose I would not find that as offensive. How strong is anti-Polish feeling in the States? Are there political parties dedicated to repatriating Poles (or other immigrant populations)? Do Poles get beaten up on the street because of their nationality? Are their shops fire-bombed?

No I am upset by your use of clearly racist terminology. That does not mean I believe you are a racist however.

That would depend on how often and how widely that term was used in an abusive context.

How about how many Poles? that'd be fine. How many Pakistanis? That'd be fine.
Polacks? Not pleasant. How many Niggers? Really not good. How many Spicks? How many Kikes? How many Yids? How many Eggplants? How many Darkies? How many Spearchuckers?

Terms that have traditionally been used in an abusive tone by a dominant culture against a minority race are racist. It's that simple. The fact that it's a lightbulb joke does not stop it being a racist term of abuse.

As I said....You cuold have said, How many Pakistanis does it take to change a lightbulb? The use of racist language does not make it funnier imo.

Well said Limey.

I'd like to add another question to your list....Do other races who look a little similar to the Polish, also get called Polack, regardless of their actual nationality?

In the UK Paki is a universal term of hatred and abuse which is levelled at anyone with brown skin, regardless of their racial heritage.

Indians, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Sikhs, Gujeratis, Bengalis; Arabs, Iraqis and Iranians even are often referred to as Pakis by some of the more racist (and more stupid) members of our nation.

It really does equate more to the term Nigger than the term Polack.

That said, Maggie. I really don't want you to think this is an accusation of considered or deliberate racism. I don't for one second believe you actually are a racist. Nothing you have said on these boards would give any such indication. Using a racist term, does not automatically make someone a racist. If it were, we would have to brand most of the human race as such :P

[[edited out. Not really relevant, just me getting a little carried away on the whole 'Fascism in Britain Today' thing:P]]

Ok, I have gone on a little long there:P But the politics of race is something close to my heart. Have I ever mentioned that my dad is from India? What do you think he got called when he was bullied in an English schoolyard? Yah....Paki.

I don't think the term is interpreted as negatively over in the States, Dana. I read it and thought "Pakistani" with no pejorative overtones. As further examples of linguistic differences,

I don't know what either of these even are.

*Smiles* Thanks Clod. I was hoping that would be the case. I wuold hate to think that intentionally racist terminology was acceptable in the cellar. I also, kind of assumed that Maggie wasn't intending it to be racist. But for a Brit to see 'Paki' on here would be a little like you logging in to see a thread entitled, "How many Niggers does it take to change a lightbulb". I am guessing you would do a double-take if ya did. Spearchucker and Eggplant are both outmoded terms of abuse for people of African descent.

Maggie, I am so sorry for hijacking your thread! In my defense, I can only say...hey, I'm British, which means I am also a European...we have had the odd, teensy little problem with racism over here :P It's really scary, when you look into it, just how fast a country can progress from Paki jokes (in the UK context) and cartoons about dirty Jews, to something much, much uglier.

On a lighter note, the article itself was pretty funny :) And the intro joke would have been too, if the word wasn't so loaded over here.

Funny, I would hate to think terminology in the Cellar had to meet somebody's test of "acceptability".

"Paki" certainly isn't as loaded here as it apparently is in the UK...which I suspect has a lot more to do with your own situation concerning the unfortunate combination of largely unbridled immigration and a vastly more socialist government. Your personal situation must be interesting at the moment; descibing yourself as an "armchair socialist" while your party (you *are* Labor, right?) is tightening up immigration enforcement just as we're trying to do here while our liberals complain about how "racist" it all is.

I didn't think the point of the story had to do with the fact that the man was in a Pakistani jail but rather that he could have a light bulb up his ass and claim not to know how it got there. Comparable to the rash of men who got their dicks caught in vaccum cleaner hoses back when Penthouse Magazine was hyping them as a sex toys and claiming in the ER that it happened accidentally while housecleaning in the nude.

If it had happened in Afghanistan rather than Pakistan, the lede would have been "How many Afghanis does it take to screw in a light bulb?"...mainly because an "Afghan" here is as likely to be either a shawl or a hound.

If I have to tolerate the occasional "how gay is that?" (not to mention the incredible more caustic calumny in some other anti-gay threads of recent memory), I'm sure you can survive a "paki" here without getting all PC.

Not that I'm aware of. Nor does that happen to folks from Pakistan in recent memory...although right after 9/11 there was a case where a lunatic relative of a friend of mine living in a very rural area tried to set fire to a gas station run by Indians believing them to be Arabs. He went to prison for it.

Well...I can certainly appreciate that the combination of open borders and a socalist government doesn't always work out that well when there's deep poverty in nearby counties...and in the 21st century "nearby" is a lot further way than it used to be.

I do think just dismissing the resentment that causes amongst your constituents as "racism" is an incomplete response. I doubt your local Nazis would gain as much traction as they do if the constituents heard a more...dare I say "nuanced"? :-) view of the situation.

And the same thing very much applies here in the US, too...where we like to think we're less socialist, but are too often kidding ourselves.

I love the way you keep describing it as a socialist government. It very much isn't. It's authoritarian and centre right. I am in the party, not the government. The party was around long before Tony Blair. In my branch we're pretty left wing.

And, just to clarify. The immigration is not unbridled. The figures that get quoted are massively over-hyped. Asylum seekers find it very difficult to get leave to stay here, and the authorities have no compunction in putting them on a plane to somewhere dangerous if they can get away with it. If they can't trhey put them into a detention block. A lot of people aren't aware of just how awful it is in those places.

As we've seen mnay times before here on The Cellar, left and right are very much relative to where you sit. I surely won't dispute the "authoritarian" part...but than than doesn't have much to do with right or left.

Oligarchy.

It IS a term of abuse in the UK, and DanaC, Limey & I live in the UK. It makes sense that we would question the use of a word which is offensive over here.

It's not a "how right-on are you?" pissing contest, it's a question of different connotations for the same word in different parts of the world.

I asked Slang if Paki was deemed acceptable when he used it in reports on his trip to Pakistan. I accepted his response that it was simply a description of nationality to him, not an insult (which would have been odd as he chose to visit the country in the first place).

It still jars with me though. Shows how powerful social conditioning is sometimes.

Around here we usually just call them "Doctor."

They screwed the lightbulb into a socket right afterwards, and it still works.

Waste not, want not.

Pakis don't screw in light bulbs
 

they screw in council housing.

wtf is that supposed to mean?

I'd never heard the term "Paki" before, let alone known it was a slur. Then again, I thought the term "limey" was insulting to the British.

*smiles* If the British had been invaded; conquered and oppressed by an American empire and then when some of them moved to America they were given the worst jobs, spat at in the streets and seen as somehow diluting American racial heritage...then it probably would be insulting to call them limey :P
As it is its a little more like sibling rivalry. We often call the French 'frogs'. It's kind of racist but it's a different dynamic at play.
It's like the difference between your brother calling you a prick, and the bully at school calling you one.

You missed the opportunity to complain about another racial slur.

I agree with much of what DanaC says about the terminology 'Paki' , and I do not find the fact that someone has suffered from broken glass in the anus remotely amusing . It does not matter how the glass got there .

For those of you who read literature and who are interested in thinking in general , and thinking in particular about the complexity of being both British and linked to the Indian sub-continent , may I suggest the fine contemporary writer Hanif Kureishi . You could perhaps start with 'Buddha in Suburbia ' .

Hanif Kureishi is far more interesting and amusing than a broken light-bulb .

It wasn't broken.

You are right .

I take it that you work for Phillips , Ibram ?

Psh, I'm not old enough to wash dishes at Chili's.

You would be in Texas. :)

ah, texas.......

such a shining beacon, nay a pathfinder* even, in this world of racial and ethnic equality....












*lost your way in the dark? Hang on a second while I light up a niggah....

See, DanaC? That's what an offensive post looks like to Americans.

Says you.

During my sojourn overseas (the Middle East, to be precise), I had friends from many nations. The Pakistanis I met were generally warm, friendly, hardworking people. The same could not be said for the much wealthier Saudis.

By the way, you can read about another culture all you want, it won't make you an expert or even a novice on how they behave, think, feel or react. Go live with them, interact with them on a daily basis for a few years and then come tell us about it.

Stormie