Meta post I’ve decided to make. I enjoyed the unixporn subreddit a lot when I used reddit more. I enjoy customizing my linux de as much as the next nerd.
But you definitely shouldn’t use racist slang to refer to the process.
To be clear, I didn’t know the origin of the term ‘ricing’ until fairly recently. I was chattimg with my friend and used it to describe my de setup. They informed me that apparently it’s from car customization, and is a pejorative against generally asian men who customize their car to look like a racecar.
After learning this I was sad to realize just how engrained it is in linux de customization culture. I personally have stopped using the term, and I would ask everyone here stop as well.
That is actual bs. Rice doesn’t bother me - I don’t read rice with a racial connection, at all. Just doesn’t exist for me. It is food and something that’s been customized.
I say fuck it. Shatter the limitations of fraudulent history; don’t just go punk, go full cyberpunk.
The major culture is hung up in non issues; and why not? So go counter to the culture:
rice your desktop.
You do you however. I am not here to say how you should think and do.
It’s a term used to racially exclude people by calling Asian car enthusiasts tacky posers. Is that really the energy we want to bring (or rather keep) to the Linux community?
I don’t think it matters.
Can you be sure of that? And if it did matter to the public image of the Linux community, would agree to stop using that term, or is using a word that to this day has racist connotations more important to you than ensuring that all members of the Linux community feel welcome?
I see a lot of assumptions that rice, not a racist term, is a racist term. shrug
You go to the grocery store, grain aisle, and there is a bag of rice. What pops into your head?
Me, a tasty grain that complements many meals.
As someone that was very into cars (still kind of am but not nearly so much) and tuner culture. Yes, “rice” in the context of customizing a machine to your specific performance needs has always had racist baggage and likely always will. This is a weird hill to die on bud, and it makes you look very sus.
Ricing is a racist term. I am telling you right now that it is a racist term referring to a type of car modding that Asians are stereotyped as doing. It is explicitly used to deride and exclude Asians from the car enthusiast community. Anyone who’s into cars or around people who are has heard this term, but you can Google it if you want.
What does it say about you that you’ll deny basic, well known facts to defend using such an exclusionary term in a tiny community with a large amount of Asians in it?
I think you are making shit up.
I have been around a ton of cars and car people. Rice was never used to describe Asians.
A ford focus with a huge wing? Rice
A civic with a massive ground effects? Rice
A twin turbo Supra with nitro? Tuned.
The ethnicity of the driver or country of origin never came into it, East Coast, West Coast.
Is hoopty racist? No. Neither is rice.
Asian American into car culture here. Ricing and ricers are still derogatory and racist terms to this day. Do not mistake your ignorance of something that no one would bother to tell you for knowledge that it’s not true.
I’m curious if we have a detailed historic analysis of the origin of the term.
I always figured it came form the “rice burner” mocking for Japanese motorbikes and cars. I figured this was mostly a pick about their relatively low performance. Aside from the “Asians eat rice” source material, is that intended as an insult to Asians in general, or more directed to the design committees at Toyota and Honda-- that they couldn’t design a car capable of burning petrol?
To try a parallel concept: If an x86-64 enthusiast made fun of an ARM chip by saying it was “manufactured on a crumpet substrate” would that be an insult against the British, or more using that it comes from a British firm to provide vocabulary for a product-related insult?
OTOH, I never really saw the term widely used to describe a desktop configuration before here, and it feels weird because of that more than anything else. I’m trying to remember if it was seen in the “PC Case Mod” community circa 2000, because they actually used a fair number of techniques and ideas from the car tuning scene that also used the “ricing” term (lots of cold-cathode lighting and weird 12v accessories)
If you want to do the research be my guest, but I’m telling you right now, I’ve only ever heard the term used to mock an Asian person’s car mods.
There’s you answer. It is disrespect based on ethnicity.
Then you should be fine with not using the term, right? Why are you working so hard to defend a word you claim you don’t see much? You have put all this effort into justifying using a word you have been told several times is racist that apparently other people don’t use according to you.