Thing is, Hillbilly is pretty much custom-designed for people in my county. I can walk down the street to a furniture store totally staffed by hillbillies. Those guys down at the furniture shop? The hillbillies? From the little I’ve seen of them, awesome people. The guys from South Carolina who sell me peaches at the farmer’s market? Hillbillies through and through, and interacting with them brightens my day.
They may be horrible people for all I know: they may join the KKK, beat their wives, vote for Jesse Helms. But it’s not their hillbilliness that makes them bad. I love their hillbilliness, and not in some patronizing way, but because it’s got a certain laid-back panache to it that I dig.
I suspect if you asked a lot of them if they were hillbillies, they let out a raspy chuckle, think on it for a few long seconds, and say, “Yeh.”
Sorry I don’t like ‘the’ as it offends me and others who have some difficulty in pronouncing ‘th’ sound and somethimes make ‘vat’ and ‘that’ sound the same.
My point is that the word is sterotypically associated with whites. Glad we agree.
So even though people **in this thread ** have taken offense at these terms, that is overridden by what you think is offensive, and what you suspect about others. I assure you that those of us who are offended do not “share” your meaning.
Nice. You respond** to me** with an insinuation and then accuse me of being self-centered.
Absolutely not. Is that the gold standard now? Are words deemed not as offensive as nigger OK? Because I think ‘nigger’ is just about the nastiest word in the language, and am happy to learn that anything else goes. Miller–It’s offensive because it refers to white people almost exclusively.
T’aint all about me, Woody. Just ask Lefty. And not to carve too fine a point on it, I suspect you guys mean ‘equate’ rather than ‘compare.’ Surely any two words can be compared.
Are you asking me if Pryor speaks for me, or thinks for me? No. His thoughts on the subject are what opened my eyes, that’s all.
Right, your opinion on the use of nigger is based on Mr. Pryor’s evaluation of using the term in his act. His decision that it was inappropriate, no matter what the context and that he won’t use it anymore, shaped the way you view the term’s use. Is that a fair accessment?
So I ask again, if Mr. Pryor previous use of the term nigger, was ground-breaking and award winning; whose declaration that he would no longer use the term was equally ground-breaking enough to “open your eyes”; if he started using the term again, would you question your position or would you close your eyes and ignore the re-evaluation of Mr. Pryor; whose previous evaluation you valued?
Words acquire their meaning largely through popular usage. If we were to hold a formal vote amongst the membership of the Straight Dope Message Board, I bet a strong majority would say it’s not an epithet. A vocal minority of people taking offense where none is intended to be given doesn’t change the epithet status of the word.
Well the first time you asked whether I would agree; now you are asking if I would question my position. Two entirely different things, don’t you think? So you’re really not asking me anything again, are you?
As to the current version of your hypothetical, if Richard Pryor changes his position I would consider what he says with the same critical analysis I attempt to apply to every topic that I consider important.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to be implying that if I have ever supported a position espoused by Person X, I am forever bound to his philosophy, whether it changes or not.
What is your position on this issue if you – a minority of one – happen to be offended by a word that someone said, whether they intended offense or not?
Would you ask for a poll of SDMB before you reacted?
Would you then adjust your feelings of being offended based on that outcome?
Does your feeling count for anything in this process?
Not taking that bet, nosiree. I value my hard-earned money too much.
If we took a vote here, we might find that God doesn’t exist, Hillary isn’t a dick, and Kathy Bates is not one of the great villains in cinema. Some words indeed are universally inflammatory. Even Stormfront strictly forbids use of the word “nigger”, but not because it offends blacks; rather, because it offends whites whom they hope to recruit. Now, if the board membership is closed, and this community as presently constructed is not taking on new patients, then fine. Let’s call people fundies but not faggots, and ditchpigs but not nigglets. But if we are to be as open and tolerant as our poll would doubtless reveal us to be, let’s be mindful of people who pass by from time to time and might otherwise be inclined to pay up and join.
And yet, I’m white. And I’m not offended by it. Neither are any of my white friends or white family members. Seems to me, if it were a racial slur, it should offend people of the race it purportedly denigrates. So, is the term not actually denigrating towards white people? Or am I not really white?
Again, I’m not arguing that the terms are not offensive at all. Just that the offense is primarily economic/classist in origin, and not racist.
Are those my only two choices? If I could find ten black people not offended by ‘nigger’ would the word lose it’s sting? I’m white, and I’m offended. Why are my, and Liberal’s, and Hyperelastic’s sensibilities not worthy of consideration, yet yours and your friends’ are?
I’m familiar with that argument. I do not believe that I have asserted in this thread that redneck and hillbilly are racist; only that it is disingenuous to claim, as most do, that race is not a factor.
Your cite seems to back me up. While acknowleding other words as offensive, “hillbilly” isn’t considered to be a “suckerpunch to the gut and nothing more” like “raghead” would be.
Granted. The larger point, however, is that the meanings of certain words are not determined by general usage, but by fiat. That is what you requested the cite for.
You’re wrong. What I’m trying to do is find a line in sand. In this and other threads you keep tossing out Richard Pryor’s declaration as if that’s the line and you admit that it “opened your eyes.”
In fact your whole stance appears comes from THAT declaration, Mr. Pryor says nigger is inappropriate in any context, then white trash, hillbilly, MUST be too. Fair’s, fair.
The problem is of course, Mr. Pryor continued to use the term in his act, after his declaration. Therefor Mr. Pryor must believe in certain context, the term is appropriate and therefor to be fair, other epithets must be too.
Now of course you may disagree with Mr. Pryor’s continued usage; you may of course feel that Mr. Pryor was correct even though he still used the term in his act…I simply question whether or you should use Mr. Pryor as the poster child of appropriate speech, when he himself has different rules than you attribute to him. By reducing him to that one declaration, you diminish all the great social commentary he contributed when he did use the word and you have to ignore that he still used it.
Context is everything. THAT’s what you should have taken from Richard Pryor’s declaration and continued usage.
You don’t think that rap music has a negative connotation in this country? You don’t think that most people believe that that majority of rap musicians are of a certain ‘race’?
What, I have to post it first, before you acknowledge it exists?
The moderators certainly have the power to declare words to be unacceptable by fiat, but as far as I can tell they are using general usage as the yardstick here.