Am opening this thread because I am curious about black arguments for it.
Seems like a no brainer to me. Definitely a racist idea.
Why are so many whites consumed by the inappropriateness of their to use of the N word? Get over it. Don’t use it, and live your life. How difficult is that?
Social groups that have historically been discriminated against can say things about themselves that others should not. What’s so hard to understand about that principle?
I still don’t follow the rationale. The N word should be disgusting to everyone
An obscene word is obscene everywhere.
Walk up to a group of black men who are just hanging and talking among themselves. Use the word you are so fascinated with and see what happens. Do it soon and resolve your issues.
Not going to think about trying that. I value my health.
But isn’t this whole thing racist?
No, it’s not. Feel free to explain your rationale here, though.
Can you clarify the term, “racist”?
As with any word, context is everything.
A black man talking about a “nigger” is certainly a different context than a white man doing so, for reasons that don’t need much elaboration.
My personal viewpoint is that creating a particular hysteria over the use of any word gives it an unnecessarily significant power to injure.
In any refined company, inappropriate words define their user. I suggest that the use of the term “nigger” by almost anyone defines their user as coarse and rude, and given the particular sensitivities related to disadvantaged groups, the default assumption is going to be that a non-black using the term is racist by the ordinary definition of “racist.” For a black individual using the term, judgment might be reserved depending on the context.
Perhaps you should be asking if the difference in perception between white and black use of the word “nigger” is hypocritical. I don’t think it is, typically.
OK. I am white and can’t even think about of saying a word that a black man can use very casually, and can be used 100’s of times in movies and get a pass, a word that even newspapers and other media are scared shitless to use…
Then How is this not racism? At its worst?
What matters is the effect on the listeners. If a group of blacks use the word “nigger” among themselves and no one feels insulted or demeaned, what right do you have as a white man to come waltzing in and lecture them about it?
I heard the word from a redneck classmate & repeated it at home. My grandmother assured me that, if she ever heard me say it again, she’d wash my mouth out with soap. She was quite white.
Anybody white person younger than Mark Twain who uses the word has revealed themselves to be white trash. It’s just an etiquette thing for me.
The nut of the issue is this: You can’t use it without sounding bigoted or offensively clueless because you’re not in the in-group for the word.
You can call family members assholes and get away with it. But if a stranger at the grocery store calls your family member an asshole, they’ll get a very different reception from your sibling and from you. You’re the in-group; the stranger isn’t, and context matters.
Where racial epithets are concerned, the in-group is the victimized group. They use it with knowledge of the suffering and violence that’s attached to the word, of the consequences of being the literal target of the word. You don’t. You use it as an outsider, and just like calling a stranger an asshole, you can’t get away with it the way the guy’s wife can.
It doesn’t have to do with you being white. It has to do with you not being black. A Chinese person using it would likely be treated much the same way as you. They’re not black either.
Compaired to the type of racism that allowed humans to be owned and disposed of at will by other humans? Or that allowed them to be restricted from jobs and education or even family.
The fact that you can’t fling a racial slur at someone because you are of the race that historically and very recently used those same words to justify doing said things to another human is not “racism” or near “it’s worst”
I am guessing you are young and didn’t realize what would happen to a black person who dared even ‘commit’ the offence of being falsely accused of a dastardly crime like talking to a white woman.
Warning, graphic content.
It reminds me of things that black people could in no way refer or talk to white people.
Language was very important to the subservient. Say the wrong thing and you got whipped, or worse.
So why, in these modern times, do blacks expect whites to be VERY careful in what they say?
Seems inappropriate at the least.
Cite? All I’ve ever heard from the black community is “don’t be racist”.
:rolleyes:
You would also be well advised from walking up to Frank Kowalski and calling him “Polack,” to Joey Vittorio and calling him “Wop,” or Steve Szagy and calling him “Hunyock.” the difference is that the Poles, Italians, and Hungarians who have immigrated to the U.S. have pretty well escaped the ongoing discrimination directed toward blacks. Those immigrant groups each spent some period of time being marginalized and, occasionally, oppressed, but eventually became “white” and have been accepted by society. And none of those groups were imported or held as slaves for 300 years and then subjected to second class citizenship for an additional hundred.
Insults toward those groups have lost much, (not all), of their sting because anyone who would rely on such insults makes themselves appear boorish. Non-black people who insist on using nigger in their speech generally do it because they are surrounded by people who do not consider the word boorish, meaning that is has not lost its sting.
Whining that it is just not fair that any group is permitted to use insults, themselves, (in a manner that is actually documented in linguistic and anthropological studies), for which it is still taboo for outsiders to the group to use is silly. The terms Re-appropriation or Reclaiming Insults has been applied to the practice of any group to use an insult familiarly among themselves until such time as it falls out of use as an insult. Yankees managed to do that over 200 years ago, applying the British slur against the peoples of New York and New England to themselves until such time as it stopped being an insult, (at least North of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers).
As soon as nigger stops being an insult in general use in the U.S., you, too, will be free to use it whenever you want. Until then, it is not racism, but simple group social dynamics that would make you look like a boor in the U.S. if you used it, now.
Not at all young. Am 70. But aren’t black people doing the same type of stupid shit that whites used to do to blacks? Not as severe of course but of the same mind set.
Isn’t it all racist shit that we all should be done with by now?
No. Where do you get crap like this?
Racism gets “done with” when members of racial groups aren’t subject to it anymore on the basis of their race. Not by just declaring “okay, let’s all be done with racism now. Everyone, stop being racist please!”
As i have already pointed out, race has nothing to do with it, except as the identifying tag of the group.
It is simple group dynamics employed by all groups that, in this specific case, happens to be a group identified by perceived race. Years ago, when I could be denied a job or a loan for a house for being Catholic, I would have considered the use of the word papist to be a dire insult. Now that we have had major figures in U.S. politics who were Catholic, I cannot even be asked my faith on a loan form or job application, and I have to go to a tiny number of bible belt communities to even find someone who will openly insult me for my beliefs, calling me “papist” would get either a raised eyebrow or a heart laugh depending on whether I though the caller was hopelessly parochial or just stupid.
You are looking at the situation through the lens of race instead of the lens of language and group behavior and you are missing the actual point.
People are ignorant, they always will be no matter what shade their skin is in.
But without any real evidence of institutionalized broad “discrimination” against whites I am going to say you probably have a bit of confirmation bias going in with your world view on this point.
Your generation was actively doing evil things to people based on false concepts like “race” those are your peers in that photograph. It doesn’t matter that you personally weren’t an actor you gained from it just as I have.
As tommndebb pointed out this is a very very recent wound. But I will tell you that as a white man who is 40 I can say the word in an appropriate context.
But the equivalence you are making is so far out of line it is absurd. “Blacks” are still actively discriminated against and have to work far harder and be much lucker to make it up the ladder of success due to still existant racism.
If you lived your life in a way that people understood you, as an individual were using the word in jest to mock the whole flawed concept it is acceptable, but probably never for your generation as a whole.
But really there is no debate here. In what way is your life negatively effected because you can’t use a racial slur?