Comparing strings from the back?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 11:11 AM, alex23 <wuwei23 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 15, 1:10 pm, Dwight Hutto <dwightdhu... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Prasad, Ramit
>> > Since I was unsure myself if you were trying to be offensive or racist,
>> > I would disagree with "everyone can know it wasn't meant as racist".
>>
>> If you're unsure if it was racist, you should err on the side of
>> caution.
>
> If your comments are mistakable as racism, maybe *you* should be more
> cautious and *not make them*.

That applies to the most obvious examples (for instance, there's a
line in a 19th century opera that uses a six-letter word starting with
'n' to refer to a dark-skinned person - for obvious reasons, that line
is usually changed in modern performances, even though it was
descriptive and not offensive when the opera was written - like
referring to a Caucasian). However, there are many things which could
be misinterpreted as racist, and I would hate to see people leaned
hard on to make their speech entirely politically correct. Use common
sense, on both sides. Don't be offensive, and don't be offended.

ChrisA