cracking the whip

I think this is a fantastic example of what you’re talking about.

On its face, “cracking the whip” doesn’t need to be seen as offensive. Humans have collectively spent far more time using whip cracks to motivate animals than fellow humans, I suspect.

However, the determination of offensive speech is not in the hands of the speaker, but rather in the reception by the listener. That is to say, you can have the purest of intentions but if someone is offended by what you say, no amount of explaining takes away the initial offense. And generally you don’t GET to do that explaining. Damage is done, and that person may then avoid you or already have a shifted opinion of you.

I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way. And fortunately have had friends who were willing to tell me that I had offended them when I thought what I said was completely benign.

You do realize you're asking for a racist-o-pedia, right?

Unfortunately there isn't really a full list because that shit changes so often. Previously accepted phrases become slurs and yesterday's slurs get reclaimed.

My grandfather, who passed away in the 90s, used to say "cotton pickers" for people that he meant as "jerks". It took me until the 2010s that he was taking about black people. 🤦‍♂️

Speaking of stupid and insensitive, I was in my 20s before someone explained to me that to reference "jewing someone down" on price was not a great thing to say. It seems absurd. I'd just never seen it in writing or thought about it--it was an idiom, that's it. You want to get a better price, so you jew them down. I guess I thought it was a homonym, if anything, but I didn't really think about it, at all. Big-time facepalm moment when it clicked for me. Likewise for, "I got gypped."

When I was younger, I thought the term "cracker" referred to white people being pale like a cracker that you'd eat. I did not realize until later that it was referring to whipping.

I remember in my 20s the phrase "indian giver" coming out of my mouth. I hadn't used that phrase since I was a kid of 10 years old or so.

I immediately realized that I should never say that shit again. Adult me realized it is a horrible thing to say but as a kid I just thought it meant you gave and asked for it back. I had much more context as an adult.

Most of the time I think before I speak, but not always.

The two that really make me wince are "Indian giver" and the related "Indian summer" and of course calling hooch "firewater" isn't great either.

Oof. At work we currently have a project for words deemed insensitive. For the most part I think it's worthy, but some things are overboard. The project group cast a very wide net, ignoring context and etymology. My biggest disagreement is over "black" and "white".

Take "black box" and "white box" for types of testing. These are based merely on the properties of light. I have serious doubts about anyone ever having felt excluded by their use. And yet, we're wasting time coming up with non-standard nomenclature to satisfy this supposed slight. There's a whole laundry list of words like this.

phrases that are stupid

We haven’t invented a storage big enough for that yet

About the others, there are some obvious ones but other than that it mostly depends on context and culture. Some pointed the ricing thing for Linux, but I don’t think anyone in the community, myself included, thought about Asian ppl when calling themselves a ricer; nor I think it’s racist, so again: aside for obvious insults or widely known slurs, it basically falls back to context

You're overthinking it. You didn't say anything insensitive or stupid. It will offend some people, but they are usually looking at how to be a victim and that gives them an opportunity. It's just words, don't worry about it so much.

Odds are that such a list won't ever exist. Insensitivity and bias depend on meaning, and meaning depends on context. As such, we [people in general] need to pay attention to what we're saying, and to whom, in to avoid both things. No easy way.

It's not quite what you're looking for, but there's this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs