Yes, not if it is a black man or women saying it.
Here is an idea - next time you are at a Jewish wedding make a toast and throw in the word Jewess and let us know how that works out for you. FTR, I am Jewish myself.
Already did, when I was a teen. I knew the bride from a long way back. I used the term once in the toast, just to sound antiquated, and had no negative reaction whatsoever at the time, or afterwards.
Lovecraft was a racist? Sure, it would explain a lot of what he wrote but I don’t think he was as limited as that. He simply didn’t like anybody and dreamt (literally) of the day when Cthulhu would rise from the depths and devour all humanity.
What? Are you serious? Are you really claiming that Ruth and Naomi were lesbian lovers? That has got to be the dumbest thing I have heard all month. Congratulations!
No, not in the least. What I am saying is that it can easily be read that way, just like how someone can easily read Lovecraft and think he was racist, or they can claim that that is how people spoke in those days, and elaborate further on the idea.
Whenever I hear the term “racist,” I think of somebody like J. B. Stoner, a white supremacist who ran for the Georgia governership for years by saying he was going to “take power away from the nigrahs and give it back to the white man where it belongs.” I think of Glen Miller, the former leader of the NC White Patriot Party who tried to organize anti-black, anti-latin, and anti-muslim rallies before he got run out of the state. I think of somebody who’s made it their life calling to hate other races that are different from their own.
When I see quaint references made to minority races in less than complimentary terms, I don’t see racism. I certainly see them as naive, ignorant and stupid. But they aren’t trying to publicly direct hatred towards minorities. They’re just being the products of their times and societies. They didn’t have the benefit of racial diversity courses and court mandated sensitivity training that we enjoy today.
HP Lovecraft had a cat he called Niggerman. He wrote one poem about niggers. Otherwise there’s no evidence that he purposely tried to incite hatred towards blacks. Tolkien made a one-line reference to a fantasy race that had black skin that otherwise didn’t figure into the story. He didn’t say what shade of black; black could have been solid jet black and not dark brown. How can you infer racism from that?
Yes, I do think Blake is coocoo, but don’t you people think you’re otherwise grasping at straws?
If we discarded every word that was used in an offensive context by some bigot, there wouldn’t be any words left. Coming out of some people’s mouths, Jew can sound bad. That’s why many people say “X is Jewish”, rather than “X is a Jew”. If you read enough Jewish literature, you will notice that Hebrew and Israelite were commonly used instead of Jew in many places and times.
Language is a fickle thing. What is considered polite or “politically correct” shifts over time. Words go in and out of favor. Sometimes words can be reclaimed from the bigots and returned to their proper place. If I refuse to allow a bigot to define my identity, why should I allow him to define my language?
But there are good choices and bad choices, even still. I guarantee if you use the N-word in mixed company, you will alienate everyone and probably get your ass kicked.
this OP should be mandatory reading for all members before they’re allowed to start a thread in the Pit. someone archive this. 
Because some of us don’t like being referred to using offensive terms. I’ve written before here about the effects of them; hearing someone yell the word “Faggot!” causes me a moment of terror while my reptilian brain tries to figure out if I’m about to get my ass kicked or worse. Words have power, and if you try to pretend otherwise, it’s at very least ignorant, and more likely, disingenuous or uncaring.
But feel free to crow about how you’re not “politically correct”. Congratulations, you’ve jumped on the very popular politically incorrect bandwagon. You’re a rebel. Go you.
Hi, Askia, we’ve met before here and gotten along. Let’s try to again.
I believe you’re right that HPL was a racist. For one thing, we have the evidence of what he wrote. For another, we know that the odds overwhelmingly favored him being a racist, given the place and time and population. Monsieur Blake’s contention that it isn’t racism if people don’t seem to mind it doesn’t impress me much. The only thing that is not clear is whether his racism was a product of his overarching mental illness or an early contributor to it, and I submit that since the man is long dead, it doesn’t much matter anymore. Casual racism occurs in American literature throughout the twenties, thirties and forties, even among authors whose politics favored equality: it took a while for an egalitarian vernacular to develop. Literature is couched in the language of its time, and racism lasted and still lasts almost as long as sexism in the background of English-language fiction, as it did and does in the culture.
So you’re right. But. I have to say that while I sympathize with anyone sensitive to racism who has to live in the shadow of Stone Mountain (World’s Largest Monument to a Bunch of Losers), I have zero sympathy for anyone who more than once addresses antagonists as “son” (and you have) and then complains about anyone being “condescending” or, as you do in the linked thread, cries foul about being addressed as “child.”
I’m pretty sure about this. ** Askia**, I’m all for you, so far as your argument goes, and most of the way so far as your sympathies lie. But if you really want my support, be less of a hypocrite than I am, and you’ll get it. Promise.
Yes Askia, you should use “nephew” like Snoop uses now. Much less offensive to The Soup King’s sensibilites. And you know that’s what it’s all about-- being sensitive to your pittee. And Soup. And Snoop Dog.
Hey, I love Jewish people, but I hates Jewesses!
…what?
Anyhoo, isn’t Blake some kind of law-talking guy? Doesn’t he face disbarrification for admitting error?
Wow. Askia, that was a wonderful pit-starter.
Have you been secretly soliciting **The King of Soup’s ** support? Shame on you.
I guess we’ll need to establish exactly how much of a hypocrite he is, so you’ll have a standard.
I’m a little surprised I haven’t seen a pitting of Blake before this. (There may have been, but I missed it.) I’ve never Pitted anyone myself, but **Blake ** is the poster that’s come closest. I would have Pitted him on at least 3 previous occasions, but in every case I had to travel in a day or two and wouldn’t have been able to do it justice. However, it does seem to me that Blake has toned it down a fair bit over the last year or so, and I haven’t felt the need to do so recently.
Blake, you’re obviously a very knowledgeable guy on quite a few subjects. You often make a quite valuable contribution to threads in GQ. But you have two problems: 1) You frequently overstate your case, and then won’t back down when others provide solid evidence that contradicts it; 2) You often come off as arrogant and condescending. I think you’ve toned this down a bit since you first came on the board, but it still comes across more often than it should.
Y’know, you would gain more respect if you would just learn to admit it when you are wrong. Everybody makes mistakes (even me). You don’t look any smarter by insisting you are right even when the evidence is against you, you just look like you have ego problems. And it’s also better to come back and acknowledge that someone else may be right rather than leave a thread entirely when the argument is running against you. There really is no harm in admitting an error. You’ll look better for it, not worse.
Yeah, let me second what Colibri said. I actually thought Blake’s points about “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” were pretty compellling, namely, that the horror in the story was more allied to a fear over a sleeping degeneracy within – mental illness, that is, rather than any racial characteristic. So at this point, if I’m scoring at home, Blake is doing okay – he’s made a worthwhile point, disclaiming at least that “Shadow Over Innsmouth” is convincing evidence of racism. But then, somebody came up with better evidence – really compelling evidence, in fact – that Lovecraft was a racist. And Blake, after having slipped into full insult mode, disappears, instead of conceding (as he perfectly well could have without loss of face) that Lovecraft was both racist and worried about his mental health. At a minimum, Blake would have saved himself from a mind-destroying descent into the nameless, bottomless, phantasmagorical horror that is the Pit.
In case anyone is interested here is more info on cat jumping science than anyone would likely want in a lifetime.
Hola, greetings, salutations, cheerio.
Having read over the responses so far, I’m gratified by the people who liked the Pit, some by a few people I thought would never like ranting like this. I tried some really lame ass pittings in my day and this is the first that actually captured the mood I was in. So that part was cool.
But as with anything I write/type when I’m pissed, especially when something else other than the offense I’m going off on is really responsible for my piss-poor mood, I do have mixed feelings now that I’ve cooled off. But I only really regret one thing about this Pitting of Blake: calling him “Misspeller.” It was the cheapest shot of all my ranting and it’s a blind spot I have with my own writing: I frequently edit on a roll, and constantly misspell words, switch tenses and use odd subject/verb agreement make stupid grammatical errors and insert words in the wrong order, and don’t catch any of it until I hit “submit.” Cheap shots have a way of coming back on you, so I guess it’s only a matter of time before I get mine.
I’m know I’m condescending… very prideful, too. Using “son” when I’m feeling condescending is a very deliberate part of my posting style. So now, having reconsidered THAT, I promise to watch that much more carefully and maybe just reserve it for the Pit from now on.
But dammit, I’d like to think I rarely exhibit Blake’s unique mix of arrogance, rudeness, smugness and propensity to fucking Junior-Mod when he’s backed into a corner. I like to think I get along with my fellow Dopers better than that, and assess reactions from them and learn from my mistakes.
I was actually agreeing with some of Blake’s points until he started posting (what I felt was) misrepresented information regarding the usage of nigger, and later, his flat-out apologist reaction to Lovecraft’s writing.
Initially I was going for a hip, smartass flip response that ended up lecturing and too aggressive, and Blake picked up on that in his response.
By typing stuff like, “you obviously don’t understand,” “I’m amazed you couldn’t make that connection yourself,” he met my lecturing with his own brand of condescension… and in my opinion, he never let up. It’s one thing for me to do my schtick calling people “son,” it’s quite another to keep snidely implying how stupid and uninformed someone is when the present new information, all the smugly suggesting they have a hidden agenda. Once he began ignoring my other proofs of Lovecraft’s racist attitudes, I really went apeshit. Not necessarily the wrong reaction, but it was the wrong forum.
Sal Ammoniac. Yes. Precisely.
Colibri. I, too, noticed he’d turned down the superiority. I wish I had known about the cat thread where he admits out his own tendency to be arrogant, because I like to think I’d have been able to tactfully remind him he’s doing it again.
King of Soup. I was well aware of my own hypocrisy in being pissed at his condescension while I was also being condescending, which is why, in a moment of self-guarded clarity, I at least never called Blake a hypocrite. That “child” bit really got under my nose, that.
That said, I’m a free man with free will; I don’t have to live in the former Klan country that is Stone Mountain. But I appreciate the sentiment.
Biggirl. Ffttf. Who, Broadus? Maaaa-aaaan, I taught Calvin “nephew.”
Knowed Out. I’m not grasping at straws. I may be overstating the obvious.
World Eater. Yes.
Ahh, Askia, I see you have finally landed a job
as curmudgeon!!.. :p… :p… :p…