Quote: bren2k "This stuff never bothers me, /because I'm not in the habit of 'accidentally' saying racist, sexist or misogynistic things; so I can speak to all those scary categories of people you mentioned, without fear of causing offence. It's much easier than this mythical "you have to watch what you say nowadays" outrage - which seems to come from people who want to preserve their right to say offensive and hurtful things, with no repercussions.
Just don't be a dick - it's pretty easy when you try.'"
No offense, but that's rubbish.
How can you be sure?
There are so many words, phrases, symbols, actions, etc that someone could deem offensive or racist that we don't know about based on culture, religion, geographical location, etc. It's impossible to know all of them, so very easy to accidentally offend someone. Someone who thinks they've offended no one is either ignorant or stupid. We've all offended someone at some point in ways we probably don't know because not everyone speaks up about it.
Context and intent are very important. The phrase "zero tolerance" is not always helpful because it makes things like this seem (for lack of a better term) "black or white". It's not. Not every comment about race is racist, and because some people cannot understand context and intent, the racist card or offence card gets thrown around too often. Everyone has the right to be offended, but not everyone that is offended is right.
The context of Argyle's comment was about race. That cannot be misconstrued. It was also derogatory (I took it more as a slur on the people of Swinton being less progressive then as a slur on black people). The intent wasn't to offend IMO, but be jocular. The fact it did and the fact that the context was racial and derogatory means he was very ignorant to do it and should certainly have apologised. Good on Kenga for bringing it up at the time. It's a shame wasn't sorted at the time. Maybe he'd had a few too many and couldn't comprehend how his joke was offensive? I don't believe for a second that Argyle is a racist person, just ignorant and certainly being unprofessional in his behaviour, and deserves the publicity it got.