re: Survivor Season 39 - Return of Boston Rob and Sandra....Or Island of the idols

Can see the finale now. The do rag crap gets once again blown out of proportion by Jeff. "What a societal awakening Survivor has caused!" Just stupid. Probably be at least 5 minutes devoted to it. Idiots, not knowing a thing about the real world.

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I actually think he seems like a pretty good guy and certainly would have apologized for offending him, but only a modern day soy boy like Dean would have groveled and pled for forgiveness and enlightenment the way he did

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It was Jack, who is 20 or 21... I wouldn't have thought twice about calling it a do-rag.

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Love how he criticized the use of “do-rag” for it’s “subconscious” racial undertones but “wife-beater” rolled off his tongue in his explanation of why it was so hurtful without the slightest hint of irony or self awareness

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It fit perfectly in his ridiculous soliloquy.

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Holy shite I had zero clue that is where the term “do-rag” comes from

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The only reason I know it is my college roommate was a teammate on our BB team. We spent the first year teaching each other our culture. He would come home with me and we would hustle old white guys playing golf at the club and I would go home with him to Harlem and we would hustle young black guys playing basketball at the Rucker. Admittedly we had more luck on the links.

I think it was the 3rd or 4th night when we had the do-rag discussion. He explained white folks want to keep their hair dry and black folks want to keep their hair "wet". I haven't thought about RJ in years.

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I wouldn't have thought twice about calling it a do-rag.

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Yeah, and I think that was Jamal's overall point. That there is a privilege white people have to use offensive language without realizing it's offensive. I also never considered any racial connotations to durag, but I could at least appreciate his perspective on it. I doubt he has that reaction had Jack directed it towards a white tribe memver, but who knows. I thought it was a pretty great moment how they sat down and talked it out like adults and gained respect for each other as a result. That moment should be what is taken from the incident.

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I thought it was a pretty great moment how they sat down and talked it out like adults and gained respect for each other as a result. That moment should be what is taken from the incident.

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Had he said, “hey, man...do-rag is offensive.” I would’ve been fine with it. And I’ll bet Jack would’ve never said it again, always remembering that moment. He took it WAY too far by saying he was so offended that he needed time to process and space from Jack. Then turning it into hours of lectures and apologies. It was over the top, and ends up having the opposite effect—making people less tolerant because it was such an overreaction.

So at first I thought wow that’s all he took from and found response worthy in what I thought was a pretty fair and well thought out post?

But, being a terribly uncool middle aged family man, that would certainly be the “old guy” on a show like Survivor, that has mainly heard that term on this board and various tv shows or movies where I took it to be just kind of a harmless (although admittedly a more mean spirited) modernization of hippy (can I even say that anymore?? I’m honestly asking ) due mainly to the popularity of vegetarian/veganism, I figured I may need to read up on the term.


So to prevent unintentionally (some might say subconsciously ) using offensive language, I googled the word and see it has supposedly been appropriated by the “alt-right” (a totally justifiable label in the minds of left leaning people that in no way generalizes or stereotypes those that may simply lean more right of center instead of just the actual far right I suppose) as a pejorative meant to attack the masculinity of those that adopt certain ideologies or behaviors.


Again, I thought it was simply a play on rhyming words to update the hippy descriptor, I’ve already said I use descriptors because I never remember the names on these shows, including tubby bumpkin so I am an equal opportunity offender, and didn’t realize the politically charged nature the word had taken on.


As a completely apolitical poster on this site (and in life) that simply enjoys talking about TV shows, I’ll edit to Erik 2.0, which is the former player he most reminds me of


Hopefully you can take this as the teaching moment to an old uninformed man that it was, instead of a flogging for abuse of the privilege you seem to have presumed in my post, and we can go back to “talking things out like adults”


If this isn’t life, in the form of tigerdroppings at least, imitating art, in the form of Survivor at least, I don’t know what is

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If this isn’t life, in the form of tigerdroppings at least, imitating art, in the form of Survivor at least, I don’t know what is

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I find it hard to believe you've never picked up on the pejorative nature of "soy boy", but we'll move on.

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Well I acknowledged that I realized it was more “mean spirited” than hippy. But it was the political connotation and affiliation to the “alt-right” that I was unaware of and wanted to remove from my post, which I did.

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Who gets to set that limit?

But look at the responses in this thread criticizing Jamal for being offended. Are those people even willing to understand why he was offended, or do they just ignore his reasons so they can continue to hide behind their ignorance of it being offensive? "Well, I didn't know it was offensive" doesn't fly if people have tried to tell you it's offensive.

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I think that is the point that almost everyone is making, certainly no one ever tried to “tell me it was offensive”.

I just don’t think it’s a commonly known derivation of the word.

As someone else posted, the Survivor buff packaging itself uses the term “durag” in its presentation of different styles in which it can be worn.

It just isn’t commonly known as offensive.


I think that’s a pretty safe place to “set the limit”.

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At any rate, it comes down to how one reacts in the situation. If you say something offensive to someone else out of ignorance to it being offensive, do you get defensive and accuse the other of being easily triggered, or do you try to gain an understanding of why it was offensive to that person?

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I completely agree. And I thought Jack’s reaction was extremely mature, understanding, and productive.

I literally said that even though I don’t use the word, simply because for whatever reason I use bandana, not because I knew it was offensive, in that situation I would have absolutely apologized and not used it again.


But is Jamal’s reaction also not subject to some analysis?

My entire problem with the interaction was Jamal’s instant classification of the comment as “subconscious”.

You are right, it appears from Jack’s (thanks for including his name so I can use it at this point ) reaction that he at least understood that it was offensive, even if he didn’t know why, but I also think he could have just read Jamal’s immediate reaction. But regardless, Jamal wouldn’t have known that when he made the “subconscious” comment.


I’ve made it clear that if Jamal had simply said hey do you know where that term comes from? It is actually an offensive term that shouldn’t be used and here is why, I doubt there would have been much discussion about it other than maybe some people saying wow is that why it’s called a “durag”??


But his reaction and then saying he needs time before he can be ok with someone that was clearly his friend even after a sincere and heartfelt apology that then turns into a lengthy explanation (I won’t say lecture because I agree with you that it was mostly respectful) just doesn’t seem like the most reasonable “reaction” to me.

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Look at black face incidents. There are still people that claim they don't understand why it's offensive, when people have been explaining why it's offensive for at least 2 decades now.

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No offense, but this is just a ridiculous example to include in this discussion.

The use of the term “durag”, which apparently CBS and Survivor didn’t even realize was offensive based on their packaging of the product, is not even in the same universe as the use of “black face” on the spectrum of offensive and privileged behavior, but we’ll move on.

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I didn't realize the connotations to it either, but instead of getting defensive, I tried to understand where Jamal was coming from.

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Have I seemed defensive in this discussion? I’ve tried to address your points with respect and 100% would never even considering using the term, not that I did before anyway, now that I am aware of the perception from Jamal’s point of view.


But I would ask you, is Jamal’s use of “wife beater”, a clearly much more well known pejorative term, at all hypocritical in your opinion? Is there not a group of people from a multiple cultural or socioeconomic backgrounds (not limited to either white or black) that would find that offensive?

Would Jamal react as humbly as Jack did if he were accused of subconsciously demeaning and disrespecting those groups with the use of that term?

I honestly think he might. Like I said, he seems like a good guy.


I would just hope he’d be as open to teaching moments of self awareness as he would want others to be