I need to stop reading the Twitter threads about it. It’s just making me angry.

"Rape industrialists" is a helluvah phrase.

But yeah cya Steve.

Yeah it's a strange one, I feel like there needed to be a follow up question confirming if he was remorseful of being angry or being racist. It can be read either way.

Obviously he was clearly wrong on all levels at the time but as a reaction it isn't unheard of. Anger can bring out the worst in anyone, violence and racism included.

Generally I feel he has opened an important discussion though and whether he is apologetic on his anger or his racism or both I don't think shutting him down as a racist is helpful to the overall discussion.

It's a very brave move to say what he said, even if he is a racist I don't think it helps in this situation to point the finger and yell it.

The openness strikes me as more of an AA or drug rehab thing than banging the drum.
Exposing a weakness in yourself should be met with discussion not judgement.

Generation is definitely a point in this. Given his age it is much easier to latch onto those racist hand holds.
We ( I assume we are roughly the same age/generation I'm talking as a 32 year old here)
haven't ever been exposed to those clutches, it just isn't a place I would go mentally.

b0r1s wrote:

Is black bastard as a phrase common? I never hear it but then again I probably wouldn’t.

Black bastard is one of the laziest insults hurled at black people. It's receded in use, but was very common in the 70's and 80's.

I think it's important that these conversations happen. We all hold leanings, unconscious or otherwise, and suppressing how people really feel isn't the way forward.

There is an obnoxious "right on" environment now that seems to not only want to suppress any feelings now, and judge those who express them - but also believe that it can be applied retrospectively.

The fact is that you have to say something is broken before you can think about fixing it. And if anyone thinks that the human race doesn't need some repairs then they need their head examined.

Black bastard was a common phrase I heard for a long time. Black enamel bastard/pig was another.

I can remember N***** brown being a common shade for balls of wool.

"Is my face black?" was a common question heard when someone was getting poor service in a pub/shop etc. The world is a different place now.

It is odd that Leeson asked what colour the rapist was - some context is needed as to where he was and under what circumstances. A man of his age from Ballymena who was a working actor in Belfast simply would not have seen a black man for the first 20-odd years of his life. So that question he made must have been made in a certain context.

Out of context I'm not sure black bastard is much more offensive than fat bastard, ugly bastard, stupid bastard etc When we insult someone we tend to just latch on to whatever is in front of us. I don't think it's necessarily an indication of racism. I haven't read the thing about Neeson so I'm not really making a comment about that.

Oh, I'm sure it is offensive in many cases but I think it might be a bit much to expect people to be politically correct when they insult someone.

If a person is angry and wants to upset you they'll use whatever they can, whether you're black or not. I don't think that makes someone a racist.

I've never heard somebody call somebody else a black bastard without it being blatantly racist.

You think the word fat in the phrase fat bastard isn’t meant to be insulting?

I don't mean it's not racist, just that these insults are intended to hurt and I don't think using them necessarily makes you an actual racist. When we're angry we jump on the first thing we can sometimes, something we know will cause offense - that's kind of the purpose.

Yossarian wrote:

You think the word fat in the phrase fat bastard isn’t meant to be insulting?

I think it's part of it alright but in the same way that the below are meant as compliments

Black Adonis
Black Goddess 

as I said, I do think there is not doubt its a racist insult but I dont know if it is directly an indication of an overtly raciast mind. 

Someone might call me an Irish bastard lets say, but I dont know if that indicates that they have a low opinion of the Irish in general. 

It's splitting hairs really, and I think in the context of Liam Neesons story, I think its very much a case of a racist attitude (bearing in mind in the story when he asks his friend to describe the rapist, she cant but he then asks for colour and off he goes). 

I do think that Neeson is trying to indicate that his mindset has changed from then and thats something which needs to be allowed. I know my parents and grandparents would use phrases in the past which myself and my sisters would cringe at or worse, but they've grown with the  times and realized that these phrases weren't harmless. If we want people to change they have to be allowed to change. It's an issue we see more often with tweets from ten years ago popping up. I know if I had have been on twitter 15-20 years ago some form of insulting comments could be dragged up. Not racist, but certainly sexist, homophobic comments which at the time were meant as a joke but the younger me didn't realize that. I may have been ok with that humour (and known it was "just a joke") but that doesnt mean the humour was ok.

Fucking cow bastards.

Yeah I agree. Admitting to being a violent racist is the best thing Liam Neeson has ever done.