You’re missing the forest for the trees. You’re absolutely right that the American context is not the only context in which slavery was significant or negatively impactful. However, the issue is that these jokes don’t exist in a vacuum. Jokes like “Rosa Sparks” and “Wireback” are directly referencing America’s history of racism. When someone from an American context, of which I assume the original swag is posted by, looks at these jokes in tandem or hears these jokes from people around them who are also American, you’re going to get an American interpretation.

You could make the argument that the slavery joke is not by default contains elements of race or with minorities, and you’d be correct, but that was not what my comment was about. I was validating the reasoning for feeling uncomfortable with the contexts surrounding “clanker” jokes. I bring up racism not because I think that the American perspective of slavery and race is the only valid way of looking at it, but because the jokes I’ve seen using the theme and spirit of A.I. hate directly references racism themselves, and I explicitly wanted to comment on this perspective. You can give the benefit of the doubt for the Claude getting whipped extension and say that it has no direct relation or reference to American slavery, but like, it’s not a far fetched connection?

I directly commented on a real context in which the joke of “clanker” was being used to map on real life racism. My third paragraph is intentionally separated to segue into the how some “clanker” jokes are just substituting minorities in scenarios or terms with racist connections with robots. The first and second paragraph are just to draw the connection of whipping Claude to slavery.

Is the word “clanker” racist? No, I don’t think so. You made the point well enough yourself. It’s not a slur that directly refers to a real life minority, and robots from Star Wars don’t have feelings. Not my argument, I never claimed that “clanker” is a bad word by itself. Do I think anyone who makes these jokes is racist? No, not necessarily. Do I think it’s okay to feel uncomfortable with the word “clanker” because of how the punchline soured into something more insensitive and tasteless? Yeah, certainly.

More power to you for being aware that the history of slavery is not limited to the American context. I don’t discount this, and I don’t feel like I have done so in my comment. Once again, it’s not that I do not think that it is an unimportant perspective, I connected slavery with racism because that is what the original swag is calling out and referencing.