Have you ever said something bigoted accidentally? When I say “accidentally”, the bigoted phrase just spills out of your mouth, because you aren’t thinking straight. Then, you feel ashamed of what you have said, because you realize that you are a member of the targeted social group, and being called a “bigot” makes you feel bad about yourself because it appears like you are against the group to which you belong (sort of like betrayal of your own people). Or are you a person who has just tolerated everybody’s differences right from the start?
Examples:
[ul]
[li]anti-Semitic Jew[/li][li]misogynistic woman[/li][li]homophobic homosexual[/li][li]racist black person[/li][/ul]
Sure have, and just a couple of days ago. I had no idea that the term “guido” was considered to be a cultural/racial slur. But according to some here, it is. And it is a term that I used freely up until that time.
I was on the way to a trade show with a bunch of friends. We were riding in the airport shuttle bus, and joking around, loudly. I made some wise-ass comment about us having out very own “Beaner” - because one of the guys’ last name was Bean. Only later did someone point out that that comment could be taken out of context - it being LA and all…
I actually didn’t even think of the racist nature of the word at the time.
I have a colleague at work that at one time use to regularly use the phrase “Broke as a coon” until someone pulled him aside and asked him what he thought it meant. He said, and I quote, “I dunno. I reckon someone who is broke as a coon is really broke. Just like a raccoon, cause they don’t have any pockets to carry money in.”. Once it was explained to him that ‘coon’ is a racial slur, he stopped using the phrase. The guy is a character and I don’t think he has a bigoted bone in his body, but there you go.
My dad once was canvassing the neighborhood looking for our pet raccoon, which had gone missing (she came back eventually). He went up to a neighbors door and asked if anyone had seen “our little black coon”. You guessed it - the neighbor was black.
I once dated a woman who said something about how her customers tried to “Chew her down” on the price of something she was selling. I looked at her in horror, and said that I didn’t think she should use that expression. She was surprised, and asked why not. So, I told her that it wasn’t chew, it was Jew, and it was pretty bigoted. She was shocked, because she had never realized that, and she was Jewish!
I spent a large portion of my life thinking “gypped” was just a normal word for “ripped off.” Luckily I don’t think I ever said it in front of any actual gypsies.
I’ve been guilty of that in the past. “I was gypped”. “What a gyp”. I had no idea it was a reference to Romanis or even that it was derived from “Gypsy”.
For years I also didn’t know that the term “Gypsy” itself is considered derogatory.
It makes me wonder what else I may be saying that I probably shouldn’t be.
I remember using that term when I was younger, and at some point being corrected for it. Emphatically. By my mother. There is Roma (gypsy) blood on her side of the family several generations back. Oops.
Way back when I lived in the U.K., I used the term “Paki shop” quite freely - most people I knew then did. As in, “I’m running down to the Paki shop, do you need anything?”
I didn’t mean it in an inoffensive way then, but it is now considered a racist term.
I’ve used the term myself, as have many: if not most people living in the U.K.whatever ethnicity they come from.
And we haven’t used it to be offensive about Pakistanis, just as we aren’t being offensive when we talk about going out for an Indian, or a Chinese.
Wiki is, excuse my French, full of shit, in this entry.
Another overreaction by the proffessional "P.C. Chip on the shoulder "brigade.
If an actual Pakistani doesn’t find the term offensive why do others take it upon themselves to be offended on their behalf, whether they want them to or not?
At one point in my Naval career, I somehow got into the bad habit of calling everyone by the nickname “Buckwheat”; not as a racial epithet but rather along the lines of calling someone a hayseed or a bumpkin as a joke. The inevitable happened, of course, and I used the word with a young black man who was new to the command. He had said something to me and I replied in an offhand manner, "you better believe it, buckwheat’. He stopped dead and stared at me in disbelief, then said “what did you call me, Chief?” I actually had to think for a moment to recall what I had said, and the sudden realization hit me that I had been using an offensive term for some six months. Apologies and explanations ensued, and I thanked him for calling it to my attention.
I still occasionally say “in a coon’s age” to refer to a long period of time.
Sort of like “Boy, I haven’t gone trap shooting in a coon’s age. Sounds like fun!”
Fortunately, if you type “coon’s age” in Google, the first hit points to this learned source, which indicates that the phrase is all about raccoons and not bigotry.
But I still catch myself and wonder just how many people heard me and think “well now… I never would have imagined he was a bigot,” with a sneer.
You repeat what you hear in your home. “Nigger toes” was what my father called them, so that’s what I called them until I was old enough to know better.