I’d also suggest that ‘coonery’ when used by certain people to describe the actions of ‘zip coons’ also has a distinction with a difference.
(That distinction being that the phrase is not IMHO racist.)
I do get that drawing this line is incredibly difficult, and what’s said about other posters might get moderated differently than what’s said about non-posters.
CMC fnord!
Nobody told me there would be a test. 
I grew up with a cultural event called The Coon Carnival.
It’s not called that anymore.
‘Yankee’ can never be a slur because it’s attached to the greatest people and the greatest baseball team.
You’ve evidently never been to Alabama or to Boston.
Or Korea…
The very point of the post the OP is complaining about is the accusation that he holds the very set of attitudes that the term describes, whoever uses it. Complaining that it’s an ethnic slur and should be disallowed is an avoidance tactic, used to preempt a useful exploration of the point (and of the OP’s attitudes). If its use were gratuitous, then yes, it would be out of bounds, but it wasn’t. Again, it’s the very point. And sometimes using an emotionally laden term is simply what it takes to get through the shields of denial.
Please don’t gloss over because it’s long. I wrote in pyramid style, so just read as far as you like.
That’s dumb. Using an “emotionally laden term” is actually what preempts such a “useful exploration of the point” It grinds everything to a halt. It overshadows any argument you may have been trying to make. You’ve just pissed the other side off and guaranteed they won’t listen.
Did you look at the thread? There was no moderation. Yet that entire argument died. There is actually a valid argument where someone grows to identify so much with a culture that they forget about the struggles of their former culture. There is an argument for privilege blinding one to the problems that others of your ethnicity face.
But that argument was halted by the use of the slur. No one wants to go anywhere near that conversation, and people now suspect it came from a racist place.
Notice that a lot of us who have a lot of problems for Bricker are backing him up that such is unacceptable. Do you really think we are trying to shield him from criticism? No. We’re being consistent on not allowing slurs.
And, yes, I said slur. Because, no matter how you want to label it, it is a slur. The underlying concept is not the discussion I mentioned above. It is an ethnic purity marker, claiming that Mexicans who have assimilated into US culture are no longer truly Latino. It is a concept of racial purity. To quote Wiki, it “derives from the Spanish word, pocho, used to describe fruit that has become rotten or discolored.”
Yes, it has been reclaimed by actual Mexican-Americans. That doesn’t make it any less a slur, any more than the n-word.
So what you are arguing is that a slur can be useful to get people to listen to an argument. This is the opposite of the truth: it is a way to make sure that anyone who was willing to listen will no longer.
It may not be on the level of the n-word, but I imagine if someone used the term “oreo”, they’d get warned, wouldn’t they?
The term is not a distraction from the point. Its meaning and its applicability in the post in question IS the point.
Didn’t you just call that “dumb”? :dubious:
But not one that expresses hate out of sheer racism. While you do have to be Hispanic to be a pocho, being a pocho as well is a matter of attitude and conduct - it’s a choice, not a fact of birth. How is choice immune from criticism, in your philosophy? Don’t you yourself preempt exploration by labeling it a slur?
And labeling it a slur is useful for avoiding it, and instead retreating into dudgeon and self-righteousness. You need to show the openness to discussion that you claim to support. Unless you just think that’s “dumb”. :rolleyes: