Hmm. I find that some of the classiest people I ever met, I met in the ghetto. So it doesn’t seem odd to me.
I am always amazed when black folks say that they don’t know any black folks that say ‘nigga’. (I realize that you said no such thing, Montro).
Every black person I know either says the word occasionally, or is extremely tolerant of the word because they are desensitized from hearing it from family and friends and comedians their whole life.
They grew up with Richard Pryor Albums on their dad’s record player.
I love my ghetto folks. First and foremost. But my dad made sure I had the kind of broad horizons that I can hold my head up with princes or paupers. And I notice that all the black princes and black paupers I know, from ghetto to doctors to billionaire marketing geniuses (Oprah’s best friend Gayle let it slip that Oprah uses it) use the word.
I only say all that to say this. Some black folks don’t use the word. I have to take their word for that. That doesn’t mean that the ones who do have to not feel offended when someone hurls the word at them maliciously.
I have to ask those black people that don’t use the word, do they go to movies where the word is used? Listen to comedians that use the word?
Honestly, I find them generally either confusing or hilarious if I hear them from “normal” people, who don’t really have the power to do much damage to society with their goofy beliefs.
I’m offended when I hear racist comments from the wealthy or powerful, because they can really screww people if they want.
Sure. I enjoy the performances, and go back to being uptight in real life.
I might be made uncomfortable by characters saying and doing racist things in dramatic films, because I empathize with their victims, but I am not offended.
As for comedians and movie comedies, if they are any good, it is because their humor comes from real life, with a twist. I might again be uncomfortable, because good comedy often shows us things about ourselves that aren’t so nice. But, I’m not offended there either, because their use of slurs, like other profanity, has a point.
If they just pepper their routines with slurs and cuss words because they somehow think that makes any old thing they say funny, then I am offended. Not because they are using offensive words, but because they suck as comedians, and they are wasting my time.
There’s people who live in the ghetto and then there are “ghetto” people. You can live in a mansion in the suburbs and still be “ghetto”. I’m not disparaging poor people. I’m disparaging people with a poor mentality.
One can hear a word spoken all the time and rather than becoming desensitized, they can become allergic to it. Or they can be used to hearing it in one context (among friends and family) and then when they go somewhere else and hear it used in another way (among enemies), the word becomes tainted and they can’t bear it anymore. Richard Pryor, for instance, refused to use the word after he went to Africa and got a different perspective on blackness.
I don’t have feelings one way or the other towards people who live in the ghetto. But ghetto people work my last nerve.
Of course I do. Just as I watch movies and read books with profanity. But I don’t generally go around mimicking whatever I hear and read just because it’s cool or because a celebrity says it.
You should try being out of your element one day. I’ve noticed that when I’m out with my friends and they get a phone call asking what they are up to, they will answer along the lines of “Oh, I’m out shopping with Sandy, Judy, Rob and a white lady.”
How would you feel if even your closest friends still didn’t regularly use your name?
Just High school? No… My mom moved to Hawaii when I was 6. I was ridiculed by nearly everyone, everyday, anywhere I was for being white. The cultural diversity here in Hawaii (specifically Honolulu) is unimaginable anywhere else and there were barely any other white kids around while growing up. (oh ya, they were in some of the private schools) Try imagining about 30 or more different cultures and races from around the world who are flat out sick of whites for their hundreds of years of elongated arrogance, discrimination, and demand of power over others, and try putting me in the middle of that. You think it was pleasant by any means? Do you think that didn’t bother me?
In the long run from living here so long I began to really understand how people felt towards whites. I knew I wasn’t this person who everyone thought I was so I had to do something about it. If I kept taking offense to all of the discrimination people would continue to think I was really like this… Right? I mean, if someone’s taking offense to something it’s obviously because they have deep feelings over it. It took years for me to prove to others I wasn’t just this “typical” white man. I was probably 19 by the time I realized this though. But since then, everything has been so much better.
Sure, I still get the discrimination and the name calling, and it ain’t going away, but I don’t take offense to it like I used to. I don’t go hide in a corner when someone calls me stupid haole, Nazi, white devil, or trailer trash or complains that “I took over their land” just seeing that I’m white. I stand up and at least say something. I realized though, the demands like “Hey, don’t call me that, that’s not nice” were shit, and weren’t effecting anything but making me more prone to being hated. Being comfortable in my own skin seemed to be the only thing that mattered. Not comfortable with the color, but comfortable in my skin. Being me.
I feel that I’ve gotten to that point now where I am so widely accepted among others that I feel I can literally walk into any group of people, mixed or same race, and get along with them perfectly. No, I’m not marked with acceptance, but it’s my attitude about the whole issue. Once people understand I’m not this typical white boy who wants all of the power over the world, people tend to treat me like their own. (I know I’m not alone, but that’s how most whites are, and were in the past) I’m just a human. The skin color has almost become irrelevant to how I make decisions or approach things. I’m by no means “proud to be white”… I am, however, proud to be human. Proud to have an existence and have the ability to have a free mind (as wacky as it is).
Think what you want about being white, that they aren’t discriminated against. People can’t stand whites. Honestly, I can’t stand most whites. I’ve had maybe a handful of good white friends. I can’t stand anyone who thinks they should be better than another simply because they outnumber another or think their skin color is of more importance or they have use of technology and well educated doctors. That doesn’t make you any better than the rest. We’re all human. If you want to go ahead and value yourselves based on what you have then so be it. With that idea discrimination will never end. But I guess that doesn’t matter and never will. So, discrimination in itself will never end (unless magically all money and our idea of value dissipates). And you know what that means? The whites are going to be in power for many years to come… and it pisses me off to no end knowing that because I’m going to continue to get shit from everyone else for the rest of my life because I’m stuck being white. (It’d sure be nice to just be transparent or wear a scramble suit)
Maybe I should just go live in Idaho in a town of 40 or something so I don’t have to worry about it and forget about cultural diversity, traveling abroad, world trends, foreign language, and just be proud for being plain ole white whilst living only among other whites and just watch as the whites continue striving for for a world controlled by whites. Man, that’d be really exciting. I couldn’t imagine. :rolleyes:
Note: When I’m speaking of whites I’m mostly referring to the Americans… You guy’s over in Canada, Europe, Australia, and so on have been pretty open. U.S. however, not so much. Sure, we’re open to it, but in a totally different sense. First the Indians, then the Africans, then the Hawaiians, now the Mexicans and the Iraqi’s… (I know, I’m forgetting some. My history is rusty) Who’s next?
And people think it’s easy being white. Ya, when you’re around other whites.
So you’re race may have been put through slavery, you’re country may have been taken over… Sucks. Really, I understand that. But now I have to live with the fact that my country’s ancestors were the ones who went through with it. And me be put through shit the rest of my life because of it?.. Fuck that. That’s not me. And I’m by no means “proud” of that.
Yes, they do offend me. I was on the train when a woman who reeked of perfume sat down next to me. As my asthma attack started, I jumped up to get away from her, but she had me pinned in and made a remark about my race and indicated that she felt that I was trying to escaper her because I was racist. I was offended. It was really hard to shove past her, and because she was adamant about not cooperating, she was nearly dumped in the floor. I just barely made it through the doors, tripping as I left the train. I was able to get my inhaler out and take it. I sat there on the platform wheezing and fuming for some time.
Oh, and my husband says that it offends him when people make racist comments to him. He was made fun of for his nose, which his classmates identified as being too flat, like a nose someone black would have. His great grand father being black is probably the reason his nose is like it is.
It may or not be racism from the white gaijin contingent. I am about as white as they come, and when I lived in Japan I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that for the most part other white gaijin didn’t want to have anything to do with me. I don’t mean they didn’t want to hang out or be friends or anything, I mean strangers on the street would avoid making eye contract with me.
This really irritated me. It wasn’t like I looked or behaved in a bizarre manner, I would be dressed in professional clothes and just walking on the sidewalk. And it didn’t take long for me to realize that it was ONLY white gaijin who did this, the few times I encountered black gaijin they always at least gave me a friendly nod and sometimes stopped to talk. I remember telling my mother on the phone that I was really beginning to dislike other white people, and was tempted to start shouting things like “I SEE YOU, WHITEY! DON’T PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE ME!” I always managed to restrain myself, though.
So it may be that the white gaijin you’ve encountered are actually treating you the same way they treat other white people in Japan. I’ve never heard an explanation for this behavior, but I strongly suspect that the people who do this are under the (badly mistaken) impression that they are so down with the Japanese way of doing things that they are totally passing for Japanese. But if they speak to, or even look too long at, another foreigner, it will blow their cover! Suddenly all the Japanese people in the area will realize that there are actually TWO gaijin present! Of course, what all the Japanese people in the area are probably thinking from the beginning was “Oh look, there are two foreigners. They must be related.”
I never had any real problems dealing with the Japanese themselves. People were curious about me and small children sometimes openly stared, but I didn’t mind that. The worst that ever happened was that an old man on the street said something that I suspect was dirty and/or racist to me once, but I didn’t understand a word of it so I’m not sure.
I’m certainly familiar with the word “nigga/er,” and quoting a favorite line from a movie or lyric, I think, is quite different from “what up, nigga?” or “I’m tired of those trifling-ass niggas at the DMV.” Like monstro said, I’m much more likely to say “negroes.”
I love Richard Pryor and I quote him all the time… but it’s unusual for me to use the word “nigga” with other people. Because it’s an inflammatory word and you have to really know people to know if they’re okay with it. Someone dropping “nigga” in a conversation with folks you’ve just met, Black or otherwise, shows a real lack of judgment. It’s like “fuck.” I use it, not infrequently, but I would not as a matter of course drop it in a conversation with folks I don’t know well.
But it’s not like I don’t use it. Just not often and it needs to be understood by non-Black folks that many of us don’t see it as the equivalent of saying, “Hey, buddy!” with no baggage. And it certainly conveys a lot about the speaker if he/she misjudges the audience and assumes that everyone’s cool with being called “nigga.”
(And why is it that people who tend to use the word “nigga” use it in lieu of every noun regarding people? Like: “Them niggas down at the DMV, they was giving me a hard time so I called up my nigga Jay to come pick me up. Then I was at Circuit City and you know them niggas never take anything back without a receipt, so I took it over to Best Buy and the nigga at the door said it was cool. I wish that nigga Jamie would give a nigga a present with a gift receipt!”
Of course, all or none or some of these people are Black.)
Depending on the definition of “offend,” oh hell yes!
Racist comments cause me to feel anger. Racist comments cause me to think less of the commenter. Racist comments cause me to say your lily-white ass isn’t good enough to patronize my business.
Your idea of what a typical white man is is sort of strange – and apparently applies only to Americans. Do you think that self-hatred might be causing these mood swings:
Use some of your power as a white person to work through it. You can survive your superiority if you work at it.
My reaction to racist comments has several components:
*shock, too often preventing me from coming up with anything apposite to say other than stammering;
*embarrassment - I become very worried that there will be people of the targeted group nearby who will be hurt by the racist comment and who will assume that I approve of it
*fury, and a loud upbraidal of the comment, as well as of the commenter’s assumption that because I’m white I would approve of it. Sometimes not especially coherent due to the first item.
It’s not "more Japanese than Japanese. It’s part of a complicated, but unconscious calculation of how many of “us” there are vs. “them.” This isn’t limited to whites in Japan, it’s a world-wide phenomenon where people who are in a similar group will greet each other, but strangers won’t
Take small towns vs. large cities, for example, and you can see that when a community gets to be a certain size, strangers stop saying hello to each other. My friend lives in NYC, and no one ever says hello. My sister lives in a relatively small subdivision in upper Georgia, and people they don’t know will still wave as they pass by.
When I was first in Japan, 27 years ago, and lived in tiny towns, the rule was that an encounter with another gaijin meant that you stopped, talked and found out why the hell they also were in the boondocks of Japan where no other foreigners ventured.
Today, walking around Tokyo, there are enough foreigners around that just being a fellow gaijin isn’t particularly significant. When you live in large cities, you don’t necessarily look for eye contact. It’s the same as the New York thing, not a “more Japanese than Japanese.”
The same people who don’t say hello will do so if there is some reason to bring them into a closer group. I work in a building where there are maybe 4 or 5 gaijin from various, unrelated companies (and a couple of hundred Japanese) and we’ll make eye contact, smile, chat or (in the case of one of them) become friends, based on the commonality of being part of a small community of gaijin in that building. As I go to lunch with this friend, in the heart of one of the business centers of Tokyo, we walk by dozens of other foreigners who don’t acknowledge us or we don’t acknowledge them because we’re back to the group being too large.
It could be that since there are significantly fewer blacks or browns in Japan, then it’s still part of the unconscious rule that the community is small enough that any encounter merits acknowledge.
Interesting. There are a few whites who I don’t like, a few Japanese, (including the real estate agents I mentioned in my previous post) and a few this and that, but I’ve never really just detested a whole race.
I had had a few questions concerning your reactions to racial insults but this is more fascinating. What is it about most whites which you can’t stand? What do most whites do or say? Or is it an attitude?
I’d guess that the vast(?) majority of Dopers are white Americans, and from my white, American eyes don’t seem extremely different than many of the other Americans I know, white, black or other. With this large of a sample, it should be fairly easy to point to some specifics on what is detestable.
Hmmm…I don’t know, TP. Even if the majority of Dopers are white, you’d be hard-pressed to label that group as representative of the general white populace.
