My point is, when someone uses that word, they are denigrating an entire race, and not a subset of that race. You keep saying, it seems to me, that it CAN mean a subset of that race, and not the entire race, but you can’t point out the subset, or won’t, because it may make you look racist, which it does, whether or not you are actually racist.
I’ve never heard that term, but since it adds a gender component, it’s clearly referencing a black man, and not a women. But only because you added more words, which wasn’t the case initially. The word “buck” adds the information, and not the slur.
I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t understand why you think it is meaningful. I suspect others are having the same issue. I also suspect you feel otherwise. That is the controversy.
Why is it important to emphasize that a racial slur coveys information about the individual it’s applied to, if you agree that its usage is always racist? I haven’t yet figured this out from your posts.
I don’t see how I could possibly be any more clear than I have.
(a) Words can mean different things in different contexts. I think that plenty of racial slurs are in some contexts purely slurs, and in some contexts have connotations in which they differentiate between members of the racial group.
(b) I have multiple times provided examples of what I believe those connotations are, both for “uppity” (where I think they are fairly clear connotations) and “nigger” (where I think they are far more amorphous). I have no idea why you keep claiming I refuse to do so
Fine, he said “buck” alone. Which is, as one of its meanings, an incredibly offensive term meaning “black man”, dating back to the slave trade.
Honestly, imagine, for a moment, that I convinced you that there was a word or term that fit all of the following:
(1) An incredibly offensive term
(2) Exclusively used to refer to members of a single racial minority
(3) Recognized as racist, usage of this term is very strong evidence that the speaker is racist
(4) In some contexts, is also used to differentiate between members of the racial minority
Well, so what? Who cares? That doesn’t make the term non-racist. It doesn’t make you racist for accepting that the term has the above meanings. It doesn’t make members of some subgroup of that race “worse” than others. It doesn’t make it OK for people to use the term as long as they’re only in the information-providing sense. Honestly, what would bother you so much?
It isn’t at all… EXCEPT that manson1971 seems absolutely positively dead set on disagreeing with me about something, and I’m frankly not sure what, and I’m making my hypotheticals more and more ridiculously far-fetched in order to make it (in my opinion) more and more clear (a) what I’m trying to say and (b) how truly minor and unremarkable it actually is; and yet manson still disagrees with me, and frankly I’m a bit baffled.
And I disagree that the word “nigger” has any connotations beyond “black person that a racist doesn’t like”
And I didn’t read any post of yours that stated what these connotations would be. If I missed it, then I apologize. Perhaps you could link to one? Perhaps you could say what connotations Annie meant when she thought 2 people were niggers. Or hazard a guess as to what she meant. Because if you can’t, that’s because the word denigrates “black people” and not a subset of “black people”
I don’t believe that you know it is offensive BECAUSE you read it in a dictionary. I mean, it’s possible that you were unaware of the word’s existence at all, and then heard it used in an ambiguous context at a young age, and then precociously looked it up in a dictionary, and then saw that it was offensive, and then that became a fact that you knew, reinforced over the course of your life as you in fact saw it used only by racists, and saw it being referred to as “the n-word”, yada yada yada. But I find that very unlikely.
I’ve just traced our conversation, and the word under discussion could be one of three options. Apparently you meant uppity.
As far as I know, “uppity” means “black people who do things that racists don’t think they should be doing because they are black”
Of course, this only applies when someone is calling a black person “uppity”
I base my knowledge on the fact that I’ve heard and read about many people using the word “uppity” to describe a black person, and the wide range of behaviors, clothing, actions, and verbal skills involved would lead no one to one set of stereo-typical behaviors that would automatically be conjured by hearing the word “Uppity”
My initial post in this thread, #175
And then, expanding on the same theme, #326
Having thought a fairly ickifying amount about the word “nigger” over the course of this thread, I think there are three general use cases:
(1) A general descriptor for “black person”, used almost exclusively by racists, with a long history of degradation and dehumanization behind it. This is almost certainly the most common usage case.
(2) An insult aimed at hurting an individual black person. There are times when someone will want to call someone else as hurtful and hateful a name as possible… so if the target of their ire wears glasses, they would come up with “four-eyes”, and if their target is chubby they will call them “Fatty”, and if their target is black they will call them “nigger”. It’s still a horribly racist thing to say, but the distinction here is that it wasn’t a case of "hey, there’s a black person… oooh, I hate them, but yeah, I sure do love using this word because it makes me feel bigger than them, it’s “man, that person pissed me the fuck off. OK, how can I verbally hurt them as much as possible? Oh, hey, they’re black, ok, I’ve got it!”
(3) A descriptive term which, when applied to black people, means something like “particularly fulfilling negative stereotypes associated with black people”. This doesn’t come up very often, but it struck me as very clear that that’s what Annie meant in the post that kicked off this whole thread. And it’s also clear to me that this is what Chris Rock was talking about in the controversial routine that has been discussed several times.
In particular, if Annie was just using it in sense (1) or sense (2), then what she was saying just plain wouldn’t make sense.
And, honestly, there’s a similar phenomenon with many different words, some of them racial slurs and some not:
“I have 5 caucasian friends, but only one of them is a WHITE GUY” – I would take this to mean that only one of them fulfills generic middle class white person stereotypes. Think “stuff white people like”.
“I have 5 gay friends, but only one of them is a fag” – I would take this to mean that one of them is particularly flamboyant, or something along those lines.
Again, none of those are particularly rigorous or precise. But I do think that they convey information which would allow me to guess which of the 5 friends was being referred to with greater than 20% chance of success. Which is all I’ve been trying to say this entire thread.
Seriously? I have never heard “uppity White”, but I sure have heard “uppity n~/Black/(other slur for Black)/(other slur for other non-Whites)” quite often from racists, and I really don’t recall anyone other than a bigot* using the word “uppity”. It’s racist. So is that nonsense upthread about tbe difference between “Black and n~”. You know what else is a racist term disparaging all Blacks? The expression “White trash”. The implication, of course, is that the Whites so described are “no better than Blacks” and, of course a racist sees Blacks and other non-Whites as trash. Also, in my experience, there are plenty of bigots who think–and state–all non-Whites are “n~”.
*Do a search of these forums and you’ll see the word “uppity” in two of my posts: once when I mocked a now banned poster for calling me uppity, and another time stating what a group of bigots likely thought about the target of their prejudice. Neither of these instances shows my personal use of the term. Just in case that isn’t clear: I don’t have a personal use of that term.
Yes, you have repeated this point countless times but many people have said that the point is moot.
As you have acknowledged, the two terms you used here in these examples are so toxic that most people simply don’t go there. For many people, the idea of that sort of racism and discrimination itself is toxic.
Since we are off into analogy land, I’ll give an example as well.
The term “fuckable” conveys a meaning, right? If your friend is a third grade teacher and tells you about one of the mothers and uses that term you could get a general sense of what the mother may look like or dresses or whatever.
However, and related to my point of something being too toxic to think about, what if your friend used that word to discuss one of his eight-year-old students?
According to your argument, this usage of “fuckable” does convey some information about the student. What people are telling you is that the term conveys much more information about your friend.
It’s simply not acceptable for anyone to have sexual attraction to children. Period. I do not want to know what traits a child may have which someone finds alluring. The only thing I’m going to retain from that conversation is a desire to no longer be friends with this person.
When someone uses “nigger” or “fag” I simply don’t care anything about the information they are attempting to convey about that person. The only thing I’m going to retain from that conversation is a desire to no longer be friends with this person.
Sometimes we get caught up too much focusing on words because they are much more clearly defined than attitudes.
Many people just do not accept the previously openly expressed hatred for blacks or gays and as such. It’s no longer socially acceptable to express this hatred in these terms. Anyone who uses these terms understands that it’s taboo, but elects to disregard polite society anyway.
One reason would be a strong hatred, and anyone such an Annie-Xmas or Shodan who in 2017 chooses to still use the term “nigger” is well aware that they could be mistaken for a racist, and they don’t care. Which implies that they could very well be a racist, especially when they don’t bother explaining themselves.
Finally, there simply are no concepts which only the offensive terms could convey. In either of your examples, at the very least one would say “behaving in a stereotypical behavior” rather than use the offensive term. All appeals to a black comedian selling his material aside, there is no need to use the terms.
TLDR version:
The terms may convey information, but they are so toxic that the toxicity overwhelms any such information.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with your analogy… but it’s definitely a viewpoint I can appreciate, and I agree that this thread isn’t really accomplishing anything. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
First, thanks for pointing out your posts, not everybody always does that, so thanks.
Second, I think I finally figured out what the disconnect is. YOU think that racists that use the term have some sort of logical reasoning why they are using it. Here’s a hint - no they don’t. You may think they do, and you may think they have a set of stereotypical behaviors in mind. But why do you think that? Is it based on conversations with racists? Is it based on that Chris Rock bit? Or did you draw your own conclusions?
If it’s based on conversations with racists, then that information is suspect, because racists aren’t logical, nor will they tell you the truth about their racism.
If it’s based on that Chris Rock bit, then all I can say is that is one comedians view as stated in a comedy bit, not to be taken as a universal truth.
If you came to your own conclusion about what behaviors would be necessary to call someone that without meaning an entire race, then you should probably reflect on why you think that.
There are no stereotypical behaviors that need to be present for a racist to call a black person that word. It could be any behavior, style of dress, station in life, class, education level, whatever. Annie can say whatever she wants as a reason why those 2 people deserve to be thought of that way. But her information is unreliable, because she’s racist. She could just be making it up as a way to not look racist. Same for anyone who uses that word. If you automatically think you know what someone means when they call (or think) a black person that word, then you may have a problem as well.
You’ve listed 2 posts where you describe some behaviors that you think racists would use to justify their use of that word. But there are hundreds if not thousands of other things that just as easily may lead a racist to use that word. Because it is not based on logic, behaviors, mode of dress, or whatever. It is based on ignorance and hate. Because that is what using that word means. Ignorance and hate. Trying to temper that ignorance and hate with “Well, not ALL black people, just ‘those’ kind” is an illogical, uninformative hedge that racists try in order to not seem racist.
Yes, this is the most important takeaway from this bafflingly long thread.
I don’t think MaxTheVool sees his position as excusing or tempering racism, which is why he doesn’t understand why you’re arguing against him. But with the amount of text he’s devoted to dissecting nuances that are effectively meaningless on both a pragmatic level as well as linguistic one, it’s really really difficult not to infer from this a defense of sorts. Perhaps a defense of a racist person’s ability to be discerning with their language? As if to offer that they’re not so bigoted and so stupid as to apply their favorite epithets willy nilly?
If someone were to call me a nig and my response was, “But I’m not a thug, a crack head, or a welfare queen! I’m a well-read, highly productive member of society!” I should hope someone would curse me out for such stupidity. Because that response actually dignifies the slur, rather than negate it.
