this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
22 points (100.0% liked)
United States | News & Politics
3072 readers
1125 users here now
Welcome to !usa@midwest.social, where you can share and converse about the different things happening all over/about the United States.
If you’re interested in participating, please subscribe.
Rules
Be respectful and civil. No racism/bigotry/hateful speech.
Post anything related to the United States.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Your username is a racial slur and your host instance’s name contains a racial pejorative. What other varieties of bigotry do you partake in?
Nanook is not inherently a racial slur. It means polar bear or “the master spirit of bear.”
Their instance is on Eskimo.com, which could be considered insensitive.
Just don’t watch “Nanook of the North” (1922), although it was some pretty interesting filmmaking for the time, it’s very racist.
If you feel strongly, the website has a phone number 😅
“Nanook” is a slur for northern indigenous people in the same way “Chan” is a slur for Chinese people. Sure, there might be some members of that demographic with that name, but using the term as a generalization for that demographic is derogatory in intent.
Using the term “Eskimo” in the instance name is problematic for at least two reasons.
The term itself is considered problematic and derogatory for reasons I don't have time to go into here, but feel free to research why it’s under fire.
I haven’t checked, but the admins are probably not part of the demographics that the term would refer to, so they’re not “reclaiming a slur” so to speak
The comparison between “Nanook” and “Chan” is misleading and not linguistically equivalent. “Nanook” originates from Inuit mythology and is not inherently a slur, while “Chan” has been used in explicitly mocking or derogatory ways. It’s important to recognize the context and history behind each term rather than assume they carry the same weight.
You're right, but also taking together their comment history, we can reasonably assume that they chose their username with the intent to slur rather than as a more benign meaning.
I actually think they are the owner of Eskimo.com, as that person uses seems to use that username. And so, I don’t think you’re right about the username being specific to hate… I don’t dare look at their comment history, and will take your word for that.
https://friendica.eskimo.com/friendica
edit: also, haha
https://www.eskimo.com/~nanook/
If you look at their comment history you'll see they also seem to think vaccines are a Jewish conspiracy. So the answer to your question may be "all of them."