I actually think that this is the problem that some people have with black people using the word. It shows that the power the word used to have is not really there anymore. Maybe, as watch the First Black Family prepare to take their place in the white house, we are seeing a new day dawn that racists are going to have to accept that they can’t reach right to the heart of a black person and make them feel small by using a mere word. They just have to get used to it.
No, they’re lame attempts to create artificial slurs. They are not real slurs. Just epic fails to contrive slurs.
I don’t know why anybody’s getting so hung up on my word “attempted.” I see the anti-white stuff as nerf-slurs. I used the word “attempts” to figuratively illustrate their futility. The way shooting at somebody with a cap gun is “attempting to shoot” them.
This is really a nitpicky thing to quibble about.
Again, you’re making up your own definitions as you go along.
They’re not compliments, they’re not neutral, they’re insults.
Thus, they’re slurs.
I know that you’re a subscriber to the whole “white people are absurd for being insulted by racism directed at them” meme, but you shouldn’t have to invent a Parallel Universe English to make your case. Racial insults are slurs, just like any other insult. By definition.
I’d also point out that you’re the one quibbling and claiming that slurs are only “attempted” (again, making up your own definition). But never mind. I’d wager that most people are willing to agree that insults are insults even when directed at white folks.
I don’t get offended by racial slurs so much, but sometimes the attitude behind the slur can be offensive. Once a black guy called me a “cracker,” but it was really his self-entitled, self-righteous attitude which I found offensive.
They’re slurs like water balloons are “bombs.”
Let me explain the concept of the “ghetto pass.”
If you are close to some African-American folks and you are a cool person in their estimation, you might be granted a “ghetto pass.” Which means you might be given permission to do some stuff the average non-African-American person couldn’t do, i.e. drop the “nigga” bomb, even when not reciting lyrics, but actually in reference to someone, crack on someone’s nappy hair (or even use the word “nappy”), and so on.
This next part is very important. Ghetto passes are non-transferrable. So if Malik, Joe, and Quentin grant you a ghetto pass, you can only use it with those three dudes. If Herm rolls up and you’re kicking it with your ghetto pass-grantee boys, it is wise to tread with caution. Because Herm is a different dude, has a different take, etc. I see this all the time when someone gets heated because they got cussed out or almost got their ass kicked for yelling “Wassup nigga!” at a party, and they go, “I’m from X neighborhood and I use it all the time.” That might fly on your block but not so much anywhere else.
And can we kill this “All Black people use the word nigga and they’re cool with it” meme? It’s not even close to being true. I am Black, have a whole lot of Black friends and family, and I can only think of a handful that would not look at a Black person like they had a sewer mouth if they busted out with “nigga” out of the blue. It’s a very “gully” term and not something that all Black people are cool with. I consider myself a mellow guy and if you drop “nigga/nigger” in a conversation the first time I’ve met you, I’m taken aback somewhat (unless we’re on the hoops court or something like that).
Finally, I have a problem with any slur used to defame anybody. All of these words have a history with ugly connotations, and it’s presumptive to state that an individual can’t be deeply hurt or fearful when those words are used. As many wise commentators on the subject have opined, “There is no hierarchy of oppression.” Sure, some terms have long, horrific histories, but not knowing individual’s histories, personal experience with said words, and so forth, how does one gauge the harm of the word? Bottom line is that it’s incredibly dehumanizing to be reduced in a mocking manner to an aspect of one appearance, ethnicity, and so on.
I think that’s the case in America, and some other places, but not all over the world. There’s plenty of racist terminology for all sorts of people, including whites, in other places. There’s institutional racism in Japan against everyone who is not Japanese.
What I don’t grok is what difference it makes as to who the racism is directed against. Racism is racism, and while it may be more damaging (in certain contexts), it’s a very weird view that racism is somehow a laughable matter if it’s white people in America who are the target.
I mean, would anybody really feel comfortable teaching children “racism is absolutely wrong, foolish and immoral… unless you direct it at white people, then it’s laughable.”
It blows my mind that in this day and age, anybody could really feel comfortable with children being taught that it wasn’t a big deal to hate people based on their race, as long as they were the ‘right’ race to hate. I mean, if we accelerated time to 100 years from now and anti-black racism was as historically quaint as “no Irish need apply” signs, would that mean it was okay to call black people niggers again? I just can’t understand how someone can claim to be against racism, but only when it’s racism against certain groups. That’s not being against racism, that’s being against ill treatment of only protected-classes of people and condoning racism if it’s directed against non-protected classes of people.
Reminds me of a story my youngest brother has from a trip to alphabet city. He was in a bar with a mostly black group of patrons (and he’s got red hair). An older black man came up to him and started yelling in his face about how he was “the white devil” and then started telling the other men in the bar that they needed to “teach this white boy a lesson and show him that he’s not welcome”. After his tirade, the man left the bar and two Senegalese guys came up to my brother, and told him that they were very sorry and ashamed on behalf of the ranting guy due to his poor behavior. They bought my brother a drink and chatted with him a bit.
It seems odd that Senegalese immigrants can understand that treating someone poorly because of their race is shameful, even if it’s a white person in America… but some Americans can’t understand the same thing.
Blarg.
I never really understood discrimination until I became a distinct minority in a society with its share of racist members. I’m guessing that there is a world of difference between that and being a minority in high school, where the worst consequence would be that people are going to say bad things about you. Hell, I was a geek in high school and the jocks used to give us shit all the time.
Being a minority in high school lasts but a few years, and has no serious consequence. Being a minority in a society with racists does.
It’s a completely different situation when the system is gamed against you because of your race. When you are more likely to be put in jail, less likely to get a job or more likely to not be rented to. I remember the anger, the frustration and humiliation of trying to find apartments which would accept foreigners. Of the real estate agents who would look up from their morning paper, only to look down and dismiss me with a silent wave of a hand because either they didn’t like whites or knew it would be too hard to find a landlord who would accept one.
It really doesn’t surprise me that the OP was able to withstand the horrors of being called a whatever in high school and then expects that others should do so too. It also doesn’t surprise me that he isn’t able to see the fundamental difference between his situation and others, because I think most people can’t imagine how it feels to deal with this year after year after year.
Insults in high school are insults. Most of my D & D friend survived the labels we were given. Racial insults in the real world, where there stand as a reminder that you are not an equal member of society are not as easy to dismiss.
Well, I’m certainly not going to lose any sleep over it, but I don’t think we’re picking nits over some fine distinction. I think you’re flat-out wrong. If your analogy was that its like trying to shoot someone, but with marble from a slingshot, I’d buy the analogy. You’re trying to hit somebody, trying to hurt him, but it sure ain’t a Glock. But it’s not a “cap gun” if by that you mean something that looks like an insult, but it isn’t really. Racist insults directed at whites, no matter how inconsequential you may find them are, well, racial insults directed at whites.
I find the “racism against whites ain’t racism” crowd to be all but closed to any debate anyway. I think it’s stupid, but I can live with it. Sometimes I find myself responding to the notion in spite of my prior experience having not convinced a single one that something is, by definition, itself.
I can answer this one!
For two years, every time I walked out the door, I was greeted with the word “nassara.” I head this word dozens of times every day.
And yeah, it wears on you. I didn’t mind people yelling “nassara” when they were genuinely surprised to see a white lady walking down the street of an African village. It did upset me when people who knew my name used it instead of my name. Or when people talked about me, assuming I didn’t understand the local language. I head a lot of stuff like “Oh, we’ll let the nassara it on the broken seat” or “Are you going to sit next to the nassara?” I know it was a useful description of me, but what I really wanted was to be treated like a regular person. It sucked to be reminded every single day that I was pretty much a freak.
In South Cameroon they’d call me “la Blanche”, which pissed me off. Part of it was the tone. The other was that they were referring directly to my skin color instead of at least the fact that I’m a foreigner. My being foreign is at least relevant. But I don’t think I’m summed up by my skin color. Anyway, every time someone called me that (a daily thing) I felt a little diminished. As if I’d been summed up entirely in one word.
In Anglophone Cameroon they called me “white man”, which was hilarious.
Here in China I get my share of “laowei” and “weiguoren.” It doesn’t bug me when kids do it, but it does bug me when adults do it. Mostly because that means they are talking about me and I don’t know what they are saying. I’ll say again, it just wears on you being made aware that you are a freak everywhere you go.
Exactly. No one in my immediate family uses the word. If we’re being coy, we might say, “negroes”. As in, “Go tell the negroes upstairs that dinner’s ready.” But there would be major looks of disapproval if we ever said nigga. We consider it low-class.
On the other hand, my father’s side of the family uses “nigga” all the time. They use it so often that they don’t even know they’re using it. Once during a family reunion, one of my teenage cousins playfully shouted at his mother, “Hurry up, nigga!” loud enough for the whole cruiseship to hear. Though now I can laugh at it, I was so horrified at the time that I just wanted to leap into the ocean. What’s really odd is that these relatives aren’t “ghetto” at all. Overall they are classy people. My only guess is that they’re kind of provincial, being from small town Indiana where all the black folks know one another.
Yes.
I won’t explain or justify my feeling offended, EpicNonsense. Is my answer a good enough reason to never use racial slurs?
Yes, it does.
In Japan, I find that the japanese are quite accepting of me (I am brown), but there is a sinister undertone of racism from all the white gaijin here. I avoid them like the plague, but I cant help running into them now and then.
The white folk in Japan feel discriminated against, but I guess that it is only their reaction to being a minority.
Not to say that I havent faced any racism from the Japanese, but I find their take to be a bit more palatable.
Totally going off here, not exactly answering the question, but anyway.
Why is it that people with “history” get so easily offended (not all, but most) when it was hundreds of years ago. Granted, yes, some of the terms are less than lovely and sure, I could see how it’d be an awful thing to be heard directed towards you, but shouldn’t that be the reason? Not because someone was ignorant hundreds of years ago and it escalated into a series of bad decisions that carried over into the not so distant past? It seems to me childish and almost wrong. Sure, have pride for your culture and upbringing, be angry that it wasn’t right and things were done that we wouldn’t dream of doing ever again, but I mean, come on, it’s a little much to carry that without reason, just so there’s an argument.
(Let the stoning commence)
What, exactly, was hundreds of years ago? Racism is weaker, but not dead by any stretch of the imagination.
Towards whites?
I agree completely.
But if anyone else says anything else, about anyone else, it’s hellfire and brimstone.
This is where the problems lie, methinks. When hurtful things are done and STILL associated with certain terms and words, it’s hard to let those words fade away so easily.
If perhaps there were no hate crimes and everyone got along perfectly? Then, I’d subscribe to your viewpoints as well. But as long as there’s biasing, prejudice, and pain inflicted on others with certain slurs being cast against them as well, I don’t think it’s all in the past.
i don’t get offended myself nor feel the need to get offended for others. I can’t ever imagine getting offended by something someone has said. It probably stems from the fact that I don’t have any respect for other people’s opinions.