• Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      Same, I’m not a native English speaker, so I only know it used for the food. Never heard it in an offensive or racial context.

      My guess is that it’s associated with Asia and as such used with an implied offensive meaning (maybe something along „you rice eater“)?

      • festnt@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        yeah i thought the same thing. nobody answered me yet tho so i guess we’ll never know

        edit: ok i’ve discovered it. apparently it initially meant something about modding cars that were imported from asia. i’m not sure if i got that part correctly. then people started using the term rice to mean modding cars in general, and the linux/unix community started using the word to mean editting/modding the computer’s UI.

        so basically it originally was racist, but now it just means modding, so i don’t see how it could be considered racist.