Great to learn what you know about the usage of the term, but if anyone feels disrespected or offended by it, I will prefer to error on the side of caution/respect.
This is coming from the POV of one who is not white, and has experienced the harm that can be intended by the use of racial slurs, and not as a “boorish white person” who knows all the answers.
More to the point, I think is why is it so necessary to be able to use a word that you know offends people?
Yes figured you didn’t know, so was trying to head off the the necessity of having AK84 spell it out 
That’s perfectly understandable. But what really pisses me off (at the world and the forces of political correctness in general, not you) is that it is considered to be perfectly alright to let that particular intent/context be the dominant one. To the extent that an Indian using the term ‘Paki’ is suspected, even by our esteemed moderators, of using a racial slur. Er, what? All brown people this side of the world fellas. Can’t really go around slinging racial mud at Pakis without getting it all over ourselves too.
You don’t want me to use Paki, fine. But can you give me another way to ask whether someone’s placed Ecstasy into my suitcase?
Which slurs in the thread title is it “not the case” that they are terms with “multiple connatations”?
The other slurs listed in the thread title were “nigger” “spic” “homo” and “Jap”.
People have argued on this very thread that “Paki” is just a shortened version of Pakistani and that was truth seeker2’s rather unconvincing explanation for his use of the racial slur.
“Spic” is merely the shortened form of Hispanic and certainly is sometimes used non-pejoratively.
“Homo” is just a shortened form of homosexual and again is often use in a non-pejorative fashion.
“Jap” is obviously a shortened version of Japanese and is used by lots of people who proclaim they’re unaware it’s offensive.
Finally, a much stronger case could be built that the term “nigger” has “multiple connatations” than any of the terms mentioned so far. Millions of Americans both white and black use it every day in a non-pejorative fashion and thanks to the global success of hip-hop it’s used by tens of millions of people all over the world in a non-pejorative fashion.
In fact, there’s not really a way to measure it but I suspect vastly more people use the term “nigger” in a non-pejorative fashion than the term “Paki”.
Well, as has been noted by other posters, Trutherseeker2(who’s previous contributions to the board were discussion of the mental inferiority of certain races) was using it in a “dismissive and derogatory fashion”, since he was discussing crazy Muslims are in the post.
Based on the arguments you’ve made in this thread and your reasoning behind giving Truthseeker2 a pass for his racist comments, if a poster decided in one thread to complain about how Asian culture has crazy attitudes towards sex and then noted he’d seen a YouTube thread where a “Jap” fantasizes about fucking a 12-year-old girl and other posters complained followed by the poster refusing to apologize but merely claim, unconvingly that he was using the shortened term for Japanese not a racial slur, you would give the poster a pass and merely put a note on the thread declaring there were to be no more discussions as to whether or not “Jap” was a racial slur.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how you’d react.
Similarly, if some poster complained about gay rights advocates being “too blatant” and then mentioned seeing a “homo” prancing around in high heels, but who when called on the post insisted he was merely using the term as the shortened version of “homosexual” the proper response for a mod was to take the poster at his word that he didn’t mean “homo” as a slur and to declare that there were to be no further discussions in the thread about whether or not “homo” was a slur.
Again, I’d like to think that’s not how you’d respond but that would be the intellectually consistent response based on the reasoning you’ve used on this thread and the one in question.
Because dammit, the word shouldn’t (and as I’ve been trying to explain, in large parts of the world doesn’t) have offensiveness as its primary connotation. Pakistan means ‘Land of the pure’ in Urdu. Pak means pure. Paki is used as a very natural short hand notation for Pakistani. What gives anybody the right to decide that Paki should be taken off the table because racist assholes in the UK use it as their insult of choice for people with brown skin?
And that’s a perfectly valid individual stance to take, and I commend you for it. I do not see why that stance should be enforced as general policy.
I think you misunderstand me. “boorish white person” refers to those who used the term as a racist insult in the first place, not those who insist on it not being used.
For the same reason that once ‘nigger’ was thought of, and used, as mere badinage - whereas, we both know, that that is no longer the case. There are places in the world where people have never heard or used the word ‘cunt’ - following your reasoning, does that then make it OK for anyone to wander to said place and fling the word around with gay abandon?
If so - why?
So, in those parts of the world, use it with wild abandon. Here, however, there’s a good chance that you’ll run into someone who will be offended and in the interest of board harmony, most of us refrain from potentially explosive verbiage.
The same can be said for lots of slurs such as nigger, spic, homo and Jap.
Additionally, there’s nothing wrong with the term “Hebrew” and Heeb" is a natural short-hand for it but I suspect that most of the Jewish posters as well as quite a few gentile posters would not appreciate seeing it used.
The only one with more than one connotation (one offensive and one not) is “Jap,” which not coincidentally is a national descriptor like “Paki” and is also discouraged around here. I have never heard “Spic” or “homo” used in anything but a pejorative sense and we’ve had endless discussions about the difference between “nigger” as a racial slur and “nigga” as a non-slur (mostly) among black people. I’m not interested in rehashing those here, but a reclaimed word is not the same thing as a word with two distinct meanings.
So I reject your premise in the thread and I seriously question your judgment in listing a series of racial and other slurs in the thread title. At a minimum that was in awful taste, and I don’t think you posed this question in a particularly reasonable way. I will continue to moderate use of “Paki” and “Jap” when I think they’re being used in ways that are insulting and offensive (or even just ambiguous to readers). But since we gave truthseeker2 several other mod instructions, he said he didn’t intend offense, and since everyone had been instructed to drop the discussion, I didn’t feel it was also necessary to tell him not to say “Paki” because it’s offensive. After all, you already did that and you chose to do it the same way you did in this thread - by listing a series of racial slurs. Next time, think up a better tactic.
Your examples are getting ridiculous. We’re discussing what the words mean, not the process by which they were derived from longer words. “Heeb” is consistently used as an ethnic slur and it’s never used any other way, and that makes it a slur. “Paki” is often used as an insult, particularly by speakers of British English, but it’s not always an insult. That’s already been established in this thread. So I treated it a bit differently from something that is unambiguously a racial slur. I’ve moderated people for using the word in the past and I’ll do so in the future as the situation dictates.
Wrong. You’re either forgetting or are ignorant of its many military slang usages:
Pak Mail is a US company based in Colorado. I am unaware of any connection to Pakistan.
Here’s a thread from 2007 that discusses whether “Paki,” “Jap” and various other abbreviations are inoffensive shorthand or racist slurs.
At least it started out that way. The mods closed it when it degenerated into posters calling each other everything from clueless to insensitive to bigoted.
Poke around the SDMB a little and you’ll see, as John Mace notes, that we’ve done this before. Lots and lots of times before.:rolleyes:
Well, I don’t know about spic but homo can definitely be used in a non-pejorative sense. So, yes, actually it is a word with multiple connotations.
I was in the military, and I never heard the term until you brought it up today.
Same here. I served in two branches of the US military, not to mention I grew up in a military family (my dad retired as an Army Colonel), and I never hear or saw the term until seeing the post in this thread.
Do you think it’s at all possible that the UK military may have slang all its own?
Okay, then the connection is that the one I’ve seen is entirely staffed by Pakistanis. Good enough for me.