I'm just curious about something. The net is a rather wonderful beast as it allows people from all over the world to connect up and talk about their favourite shit etc, get into flaming wars. There is a downside to that though and it pertains to racism. I guess this would mainly be for non Americans. See, I'm from New Zealand and I'm a maori, which is the indigenous people of lovely NZ. Most of you probably don't even know what that is. Would I be offended because you don't know the particular sensitivities of my culture? No way. But for some reason I find that people from America, blacks in particular, expect everyone else to know what is and isn't an insult? Not everyone out there is a racist, but I get offended when people expect me to know what's an insult to them when they don't know what's an insult to me. You could call me a coconut and I'd knock your block off, but you could call that to one of you and you would probably wonder why I'm calling you a strange food. You see what I mean? The N word is an obvious one, my grandfather used to be called that as his nickname, which was lovely as you can imagine, so I like to think I know the basics. But when you get jumped on for using innocuous terms, at least to where I come from, in general conversation, I get a bit ticked because I guarantee if the shoe were on the other foot, I doubt anyone would care if they said something I found offensive. I guess I'm just saying I wish people would stop thinking everyone was a racist automatically and maybe return some of that sensitivity they use for themselves with people from other parts of the world. This is just ranting, I suppose. Just curious if anyone else has come across this sort of thing.