Radio was playin', Desmond Dekker was singin'

[venta]

A quick question:



[Poll #1344729]

Edit: I don't mean "give me a list of names", I mean "which term would you naturally use in conversation if talking about such a thing".

If you're going to fill in an answer, please do so before reading on.

I would habitually refer to that sort of stereo (ie portable, speaker at either end, tape deck in the middle) as a ghetto-blaster. I seem to remember that that's what everyone was calling them in the 80s when I first started interacting with such things.

Problem is, I've no idea of the origin of the term. Which ghettos were being blasted exactly ? Is it possible that someone somewhere might find it an offensive term ?[*] Is it even in common enough usage now that I could expect someone to be sure what I meant - or am I just hopelessly outdated in my choice of name ?

What other words are there ? Apart from radio-cassette player, of course. I'm not very clear on what exactly a boombox might be - could it be one of those, or is it subtly different ? Can I still call it a ghetto blaster if it's got a CD player in it ? Does the choice of name depend on the kind of music player - could one still blast ghettos with Wagner, for example ?

[*] According to Wikipedia, yes. But it's a particularly shoddily written piece, plus I'm interested in what other people think.


_{That image is just quickly grabbed from google image search, so if you're in The Future, it's probably red-exed by now.}

Comments

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

Stereotypes pave the way for offensive speech and thoughts. In fact, leave out 'offensive', stereotypes pave the way for racist, classist and sexist behaviour. People rarely ascribe to sterotypes about their own culture, it's generally about someone or some group that is Other. And the sterotype creates sloppy ignorant thinking.

Look at the sterotype of "working-class single-mothers" and all the baggage that goes along with that, the assumptions about teenage girls deliberately getting knocked up to qualify for council accomodation. (I get to hear a lot of this in my office.) Or how about the stereotyped "fat person", the lazy glutton who never exercises. How about those "thieving Arab/Gypsies"?

Once you think of groups of people as ascribing to a common "template" you stop thinking of people as individuals. You internalise the ludicrous notions that all black people have natural rhythmn, all women can't read maps and feminists are all hairy-legged lesbian man-haters.

I think that all sterotyping is dangerous but it's especially dangerous when applies to a particular ethnic or class group to which you do not yourself belong. So while there are sterotypes of behaviour that I do not (at present) consider offensive such as "all English people drink buckets and buckets of tea", it's wise to treat these reductions with great caution. And to remember that people of colour (for example) come up against stereotypes all the time.

I don't think an archetype is quite the same thing as a stereotype but if you view the words as analogous then I'd say that changing the word doesn't help, it's the thought pattern that's the problem.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

People rarely ascribe to sterotypes about their own culture

While I agree with the rest of your comment, even the Torygraph would be happy to claim that the English like to talk about the weather while standing in queues, not grumbling. And drinking buckets and buckets of tea.

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I went for rarely rather than never. I think the English (not so much the British) may be particularly given to sterotyping themselves. Both the Paxman and Fox books about Englishness were positivity enthusiastic about certain stereotypes of their own culture.

Me, I don't drink tea. ;)

[venta.livejournal.com]

My thinking was that if you need to refer to "the typical Frenchman" (say) then there are probably things that "the typical Frenchman" does. They probably aren't riding a bike while wearing the stripey jumper and the onions, but they possibly are "stereotypical" French things.

Of course, there aren't really very many situations where you can justify needing to refer to "the typical Frenchman", which may be the point - once you start doing it, you may rapidly descend into the sort of sloppy thinking you're talking about.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Resorting to the dictionary, there are differences between "typical" and "stereotypical". "Stereotype" is often used specifically to indicate that the abstraction is over-simplified, prejudiced, or offensive. In which case the answer would be that if it's not offensive, it's probably not stereotyping, but rather a careful, informed, and accurate survey of notable traits of a particular group or culture.

Of course that does leave the statement "this is offensive because it's stereotyping" perilously close to circular. But it's probably reasonable to assume that over-simplification and prejudice regarding a racial or social group is at least liable to cause offence.