I was called a nigger once when walking home from a softball game as a kid, about 8 years old. I was ready to fight back but my mom was with me and assured me it wasn’t worth the effort. The kid who called me that was on a swingset at the time. It’s pretty ridiculous looking back on it. Would I have really stepped to a kid on a swing calling me a nigger? My mom was right to hold me back.
The next several times I can remember being called a nigger it was aa part of a group. Once on a choir field trip to another local high school. Our choir directors went to college together and thought it would be nice to meet up for a day. When we were on a lunch break, some students of the school not involved with the choir called several of us niggers. Other than that, it was an enjoyable experience.
The other times were with my high school basketball team. We would go to the aforementioned school or a couple other rural schools where the demographics are overwhelmingly white. Without fail we would get called niggers. Now, I’m not from a particularly diverse area. There would always be more white kids in these activities than black kids, but when we visited thoss schools it didn’t matter. This was like, 8-10 years ago, so pretty recent. One of the schools we played against was a private Christian school. I would hazard to guess that all the black girls they called niggers (except me) were Christian, too.
I think that experience I had as a child helped me not react in those instances as a teenager. The other black girls on my team or in choir (some of whom are relatives) would be right there engaging them, and I don’t fault them for that in the least, but I preferred to just shake my head at the racist idiots. It still sucked though.
While being called a nigger isn’t something I enjoyed, I never liked being called an “oreo” or people remarking that I don’t “act black”. I mean, in most cases it’s just code-switching. Who did these white kids think I spent most of my time with outside of school? I wouldn’t say oreo is a slur, but it cuts deep when you’re a kid and figuring out parts of your identity. And yes, black kids (some whom are relatives) would say the same things to me as well, which is really fucking dumb, but I get it. I’ve done the same thing. It’s not right.
This is probably the most I’ve ever used that word before. Ha. Thankfully, I haven’t had much of an issue yet as an adult. I’ve gotten some gender slurs and homophobia thrown my way though.
It wasn’t what I consented/asked for to be done with a bail out of a safe word. It was done to me for being black - not my choice and resisted as much as I could.
That’s exactly why I described “those people” as being a worse slur than “Paki”. I knew an African-American woman who told me that one of her best bosses was a Klansman who talked about “the niggers and the Jews” all the time. She said she knew where she stood with him; attacks from the front are a lot easier to defend against.
I was thinking about all this again last night, and I realized that the reason that white men like me can laugh off slurs is not really because they’re rare or silly-sounding; it’s because the power differentials are in our favor. I’ll never have to worry about being hassled for Driving While Black, or getting groped on a bus, or beaten up for looking like a “faggot”. So I can afford to ignore or laugh at being called a “whitey”.
Many years ago, I worked with a black woman who muttered “Miss Ann” under her breath, clearly aimed at me. I replied, “I know what that means” and she was rendered speechless.
In short, she called me a white bitch. :rolleyes:
She didn’t work there much longer, either, although for other reasons.
I’ve been the victim of a homophobic attack by the police . . . being locked up, verbally assaulted and slightly roughed-up. Even though I was totally out and self-accepting at the time, it nevertheless affected me to be so powerless.
It can be awfully menacing hearing slurs directed at you, white or black, in an unfamiliar rough neighborhood. “Institutional” power means absolutely nothing when you are alone on the streets.
Mostly the “n word” in relation to my family or with a hyphen. This occurred when I was young. So, I did not handle it well, and it was a component of broader harassment that made it difficult for me to attend school.
As far as anti-white stuff, “Who brought this white guy here?” and being told I looked like Christian Laettner on the basketball court were about as bad as that ever got. the
I was on a high school field trip. A bunch of us were hanging out on the beach in the evening, enjoying the stars and the waves. Another group of teenagers strolls up on us and starts calling us niggers–even though the group was 50% white. They beat up one of the black boys in the group. When we ran and told the orchestra teacher, he shrugged and did nothing.
Another time, I was giving an Indian guy a ride home. He casually dropped “nigger” on me, though I’m sure if you had asked him, he would have probably told you he meant all the other black people, not the nice one who was driving around his broke ass.
Growing up I was called all kinds of names. The kids made fun of me for being “retarded” and “crazy”. “Goofy” and “dingy”. Those names really did a number on my self esteem. But they didn’t scare me.
But “nigger” is a scary word. Someone who thinks you should be able to shrug it off obviously doesn’t understand the history behind that word.
In 2004, my wife and I were kicked out of a cafe in Rotarua, New Zealand for being American. My wife and I were there and speaking to each other so the owner heard our accent, then came up to us and said “Get the f*** out of my shop and go find yourselves some Iraqi prisoners to torture.”
I know what he means. I don’t think he means you should shrug it off…Just that when someone uses that kind of word they are showing you their colors. Plus I also think black people hear and see more overt racism directed toward them. Plus Paki and raghead, as you say, just don’t have the power of “nigger”. Nigger is a damn scary word. People have used that word while doing horrible things.
In my world I am much more subject to the sneaky racism.
Not that violence doesn’t happen. Does anyone here remember the Dot Busters? It was a hate group in Jersey city in the 1980s that seemed to be mostly comprised of young Latino men. They beat several Indian men and harassed Indian women. It got pretty bad for a while. I remember my parents talking about it. Sometimes I think things like this are what caused my parents to be so lax about me becoming Americanized (though they insisted I retain my language).
And in 1923, in United States vs Bhagat Singh Thind, Indians from the subcontinent were deemed “racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship in the United States”. FDR and President Truman, much later, were opposed to this idea, and in 1946 we were allowed to become citizens again - at the rate of 100 a year. :eek: In 1965, the quota was lifted, and Indians started coming here. Now we are something like 9 million people in the US.
For the most part I’ve never had a problem. Japanese have a term gaijin which means foreigner, and obviously is used in every sense from positive to negative. In the early 90s it was difficult to find places to rent as a foreigner, and here were a few real estate agents who used the term very much in the negative sense. That was the only real overt racism which I ever was on the receiving end.
Japanese can be quite racist, although mostly toward other Asians, blacks and browns. Not everyone and the younger generations are less so than the older ones.
What are you failing to understand? Slow Moving Vehicle’s comment about white privilege may apply in America, but there’s a whole world outside America.
The whole idea of laughing off a slur in a situation where you are at a physical disadvantage and in a threatening situation is ridiculous regardless of so called “privilege.” Now in a situation where it’s just a word and there is no other menace behind it anyone can casually disregard words. Context is important.
Quartz, your response to Slow Moving Vehicle sounded like a claim that white privilege only exists in the United States, that in other nations white people do not have benefits and advantages that accrue to them because of the color of their skin. I have a hard time believing that anyone could draw that conclusion–it certainly does not square with my understanding and observations regarding the situation in many other white-majority countries–so was trying to figure out some other way in which the statement might make sense. More directly, then: are you saying that white privilege only exists in the United States? If not, what are you saying?