Tib, if it’s any consolation, just be glad you live in a place where you only have one co-worker who says things like that, and where your other co-workers are concerned enough to do something about it.
A couple months ago in our lunchroom - in a professional office in the centre of a Western European capital city - we were talking about the Government’s new budget. Here was one of my colleagues’ contribution to the discussion:
“Are they going to put any tax on f**king blackies coming into this country?”
No. You get the toaster for converting others. You may get it for your first conversion, or you may have to convert several others before you qualify for the incentive. It depends on the particular rules of your lesbian local.
It may be more effective, time-wise, to just go out and buy a toaster.
Velma - I’m glad you chimed in with knowing another person similar to this - one who isn’t necessarily evil or bad, just on the ignorant side of things. I didn’t want to get put on a stake and told that she was necessarily evil and bad because of her ignorance. Thank you.
jwhee - sleep with a woman.
And as lieu said, the responses have been great - thank you for the well thought-out, level-headed responses.
Tibs.
p.s. Raygun99 - I can kick your ass if you like. (totally kidding) heh.
Whether I loathe those people or pity them varies with the wind. Either way they shouldn’t be allowed to breed, but they always do.
I had a boss once at a Fortune 500 Company (middle aged, white, female) who told me, meaning absolutely no offense whatever, that I was the first “queer” she’d ever known. She had no idea it’s an offensive term. I showed her Halloween pictures from a party I went to with my boyfriend that year- he never does drag in “real life” (which she knew, because he worked for the same company and came in shirt and tie everyday) but, Halloween being “Gay Christmas”, he went as Jan Crouch (the campy purple haired televangelist on TBN) and I went as the Crocodile Hunter. She looked at them thoughtfully and said, absolutely serious, “well I guess this answers which one of you is the woman…”. (NEITHER IS THE WOMAN, THAT’S WHY WE’RE GAY!)
After I broke up with the fellow above, she wouldn’t accept that I was still friends with him because “you look at Jerry Springer all the time and the gays who break up are always so violent and trashy to each other” and asked me “is it just because you need the sex?”. (We’re not having sex… that’s why we say we’ve BROKEN UP BUT ARE STILL FRIENDS!)
THEN she started trying to fix me up… with women. “You just really need to settle down, have a family- there’s a lot more to life than sex with women and if you try it you might really like it…”. I tried telling her that I dated girls all through my teens and early twenties, had sex with some, and while I can even say I enjoyed it I don’t consider myself bisexual and even feel on some level that I still owe each of the ladies an apology. “Well, sounds to me like you just didn’t meet the right ladies…”
She also asked me if gays believed in Jesus (“the Christian ones do, the non-Christian ones not so much”), why were all gay men so promiscuous (I knew her for three years during which I dated one person), and a variety of questions about gay sex that were far more graphic than anything she’d ever ask a straight employee (I politely declined to answer and suggested she rent a gay porn tape if she was really that interested).
One of my co-workers was Laotian and like Hank Hill she could NEVER get it straight. “Lily, how do they do this back in China?” or “Lily, what’s the Vietnamese word for computer?” She once referred to the “colored” employees as such because “well they say ‘people of color’- what’s the difference?” and didn’t for the life of her understand why “it’s alright for blacks to call each other nigger or gays to call each other fags but they get all bent out of shape when other people do it”.
All I could keep thinking was “you’re in management and I’m not… you’re in management and I’m not… you’re in management and I’m not… I think I understand stock market crashes…”
Tibs, bring her to ChiDope! I could use someone sensible to talk to. One of my nieces and one of my nephews are half-black and I’m wondering if I should love them half as much as my other nieces and nephews.
“Niglets”. Oh my Gods. “Niglets”. Kinda reminds me of the time I heard a friend’s uncle use the word “coon” – I couldn’t even speak, I was so shocked that someone would use such a word in this day and age. Furthermore, he said it in front of my ex, whose step-dad is black.
She needs to be told politely but firmly that terms like that really offend people. If she’s just doing it because she doesn’t know any better, then I’m sure she wants to know better, and I’ll bet when you explain it to her she will be horrified that nobody told her sooner.
Hmm, one of my cats is bowlegged … but then she’s also hunchbacked. I wonder what that makes her?
May I suggest you be nothing but courteous with her? You can of course say to her, the next time she uses a racist term, that you don’t appreciate her using it around you. But don’t try to offend her. Or make fun of her.
Racism is not something that can be cured overnight. She grew up being taught that “those people” were different in a fundamental way. Since she said she tried to raise her son differently she is admitting that what she was taught was incorrect. This is also evident that she is treating you as an individual to confide in and discuss those beliefs with.
My being offensive you will only confirm what she was taught, that you just can’t talk to “those people.”
Re: toaster ovens, that joke may be used around here a lot, but it’s by no means restricted to this board. I’ve seen it referenced/used several times at GOLP (Gay, Out, Loud, Proud … a forum on the motley fool).
“coon” as in coon-skin hat? Or is there, yet again, another racist term I was completely unaware of…
It is too bad that “niglet” is associated with the “n” word, because it is a cute word, kind of a “Oh, you’re so cute, so niggly and wiggly. You’re a little niglet, a little piglet.” But thanks to the negative word “n” we lose out on another “cutesy wutesy” word.
In the end it is a small loss (not the least reason being we are inundated with “cutesy wutesy” words).
I, a member in good standing of probably the most Caucasian family to ever live in Indiana, was visiting my father-in-law down in the swamps of Louisiana, and was told by one of his buddies that I’d make a good coon. That really confused me and pissed me off, because the only definition I knew of coon was synonymous with the N word.
My father -in-law came to the rescue by explaining that in the bayou, coon and coon-ass were references to Cajuns, and the message was that if I wasn’t such a damned yankee, I’d fit right in down there.
Vunderbob, I don’t think there’s any possible analogy between between how “coon” was used on you and how Tib’s coworker used the term “niglet”.
Tibs, I think you simply MUST call her on the next offensive term she uses. “Do you understand the meaning of that term? Do you understand how offensive it is to many people, including ME?”
If she says no, explain it to her, and tell her that it’s completely unprofessional to use such terms in an office environment.
