I think he meant that there is a subset of the black population which acts in those stereotypical ways and that black people were more troubled by this than white people. Mostly (ISTM) because they were more frequently the victims, though possibly also because such behavior by that subset reinforced stereotypes which people then applied to all black people.
The humor has nothing at all to do with an “abnormal use of the term”. (Although the very usage itself had some shock value.)
So if I laughed for different reasons then I was doing it wrong?
Rock sets up his bit, too, and elaborates throughout it. By the same standards, could Rock not be walking the audience through an unconventional usage of terms before he starts hitting his jokes?
That doesn’t answer the question; whence comes the questioner’s confusion?
If a person acts like an asshole, they’re an asshole. Dividing black people into “the good ones” and “niggers” is just an excuse to use the word. Yeah, I type it out for the purpose of discussion, and I say some filthy things my grandma might swoon at while driving… but I don’t say *that *about people, because it’s not what I’m upset about. It doesn’t even occur to me to think that. If it’s what comes to your mind… that’s on you.
Why would I virtue signal? I barely ever post and I probably will shortly go back to full-time lurking. (And maybe some people will be happy about that, but they still won’t call me “nigger” for it unless it’s just to score imaginary message board points.)
I feel like so much nastiness is coming out in this thread that I want to contribute to the posts saying “Seriously… it’s not even an effort not to do this for lots of us. Not to say or even think it about people.” I grew up around plenty of racism, and I’m very grateful to my grandmother and mom for teaching me that it was wrong (despite my father and grandfather.) I had some conflicting viewpoints to choose from, and I choose the one that doesn’t dehumanize people who are scientifically part of humanity.
Saying “some people just are niggers” seems to me a way of saying “some portion of black people are inherently inferior.” And the way it is used IRL seems evidence that ‘some portion,’ for many people, means all of them. For some it’s just the ones who do horrible totally unacceptable things like wearing baggy pants (gasp) or speaking in African-American vernacular English (somehow it’s dumber even though it doesn’t take less intelligence to speak!) or listening that gosh-awful hippity hop sound that can’t be music because some white people don’t personally enjoy it.
I don’t know what set-up for the term “nigger” Rock did. To the contrary, ISTM that Rock assumed that once you knew he was differentiating between “black people” and “niggers” you would understand that “niggers” represented “everything white people don’t like about black people”.
I thought your point about third base and shortstop were that those terms would be very odd if used as names, which is true. But by the time the sketch got to those names, it was very evident that the theme of the sketch was common words being used as names and the use of those “names” was just taking the already developed theme and making it even more ridiculous.
[Conceptually, it’s like the famous Marx Brother mirror routine from Duck Soup, where the two “Grouchos” changed places but continued to pretend be a mirror. That wouldn’t have worked if it happened early in the sketch, since it would have undermined the whole mirror motif, but once the mirror theme was well established, this was just taking it to a ridiculous extreme.]
I must be missing your question, because as I understand it I already answered it.
If you don’t know what set-up he did, how do you know that he did not do any, or to what extent?
It’s not “to the contrary” to point out that Rock assumed people would know what he meant, if there’s set-up on his part to establish the point he’s making.
I’m asking about why the questioner reacts the way he does. Why is he confused? Your answer was about how the audience reacts, and would not apply to the questioner - he, after all, doesn’t grok the two separate understandings of the words being used.
I would have thought that a black person would understand that there is a distinction between thinking of someone as a black person and thinking of them as a “n*gger”.
I posted this -
To which you responded
So either you believe it is true, in which case there is no difference, or it is not true, in which case you agree with what I posted.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Circumlocution added to make sure there is no question of applying the term to you.
Because I’ve seen the sketch and didn’t see anything that I considered that type of setup.
The perspective of the questioner is 1) it’s more common for “who” to be used the way he did than as a person’s name, and 2) he already used it that way in his question and is biased by his own usage. (The anwerer knows that the guy’s name happens to be “Who” so he’s predisposed to interpret it that way.)
Good freakin’ lord.
Okay, I’m outtie.
I went and looked at it now, and at least in that cut-down format there did seem to be some set up to the monologue. Not to mention, as I said before, he elaborates on his point throughout the bit.
No, that doesn’t make sense. If you know there are two (or more) usages for a word, and you are confused and uncertain when someone uses it and you interpret it one way, you try interpreting it the other. Especially with how long the bit goes on for. The only reason why you wouldn’t is if the other usage doesn’t occur to you.
Well I disagree with you about both of these, but have nothing further to add.
Like many other threads recently, this thread is revealing, and most of what it’s revealing makes me sad.
But to racists, there isn’t such a distinction.
To non-black people who think they aren’t racist (like Annie-Xmas), they make up a distinction to make it seem like they are NOT racist, even though they are. They use the made-up distinction as a way to denigrate black people who are not conforming to what THEY think is normal behavior, in a way they wouldn’t to white people who are acting the same exact way.
I can’t speak for any distinction in the black community, although I have seen the Chris Rock special, but I know not to generalize the feelings of an entire race based on one comedy special.
To me, there is no difference in character between a black person and a nigger. The latter is simply a racist term for the former. If I use the latter, it reveals my bias. It says nothing about the character of the target.
He literally sets up the point you claim you think he “assumed… they would understand”.
And on the second; that seems like a very odd way to go about life, not applying alternatives to common word usage if the most common doesn’t fit. If I were to write, “I’m a poster on a message board”, the most common meaning of “poster” is a 2D piece of art on paper. But you know that isn’t what I mean, because you’re aware of another usage that fits better.
I’ve read this shit show and it makes me sad too. Sad that we still even have these sort of discussions.
Don’t say nigger. Don’t think of people as niggers. It’s really not that hard. And it’s still true even if you like hip hop or Chris Rock.
Me three, and I’m sure more. It’s always the same people, or what sounds like the same people. I can’t even keep them straight.
Trafalgar Laura, please come out of lurkdom more often.
Soooo virtuous.
The connotation of the word is the denigration of an entire race, regardless of which of your two categories of people happens to be uttering it. The use of a racial slur connotes a belief that the race in question is inferior to the race of the person using it. We both apparently agree that some folks who use the term believe some black people are better than others. But I disagree with the conclusion that the people in your second category must then think some blacks are equal to them. I’d argue that the use of a racial slur at all implies otherwise.
And to answer the Chris Rock question in a most unsatisfactory manner, I don’t think that the multiple ways any race or group appropriates a slur historically used against them can or should stand as direct parallels to how others use it against them.