You are very gracious about it. Welcome to the board.
My understanding of what MrDribble (not McDribble, not McDribble) was saying was that the Khoi, while they were black Africans, did not have a lineage that ended up at slaves in the Americas, thus giving rise to the African American slave-descended population in America today.
I may be wrong and I hope someone will correct my facts if I am.
These threads have been incredibly enlightening. I guess I blurred the hottentots with hugenots in my brain- can you believe it!
When trying to decide on these issues (which terms are offensive enough that I would support their interdiction in a username, or forbidding their use outside of the BBQ Pit, if I were a moderator), one of the barometers I use is the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which I (perhaps mistakenly) believe has the pulse of modern american usage. Looking up a few common examples mentioned on the message board or in this thread, I see:
(racial terms)
kike: usually offensive
nigger: usually offensive
spic: usually offensive
Hottentot: often offensive
white trash - usually disparaging
Gypsy (synonymous with romany) - not described as offensive
(religious terms)
fundie: not found (fundamentalist is not described as offensive)
godbotherer: not found
atheist handstabber: not found
I would draw the line somewhere between offensive and disparaging. White Trash is on the borderline, I could go either way. Hottentot would be less offensive than nigger or spic in the USA, but still I think I would forbid it in a username, especially after learning of its connotation in another English-language country.
I would agree that if a term starts getting overused and its repetition is causing the derailing of too many threads (e.g. godbotherer or handstabber), then it would be a good idea to forbid its use in certain forums or even altogether.
It is not my intent to argue that certain terms are not more offensive than others: rather, I take issue with being told that “white trash” can *never *be offensive, via the rather tortured logic that, in that specific term, ‘white’ no longer means white, and ‘trash’ no longer means trash.
I am proud that I am Upper White Trash. thank you very much!
Nearly, but not quite 
Sure, “white trash” can be offensive (after all, with the proper internation, a husband can even make the expression “yes dear” sound demeaning to his wife), and so can “idiot” or “polack”. I would tell a person “don’t call another poster an idiot or a polack” in Great Debates, but I wouldn’t tell someone “you can’t use the words Idiot or Polack in a username.” That’s where my “degree of offensiveness” criterion comes in.
In any case, these difficult decisions, almost invariably spawning threads several pages in length, are ones that I am very glad I don’t have to make.
What? What? Are you saying that some of those words don’t mean what I think they mean?
On edit:
Oh, Lord. It’s MrDibble. Not McDibble. Not MrDribble. Definitely not McDribble. At least I never wrote MrDiddle. yet.
I think I’m done now. :smack:
MrDibble- if you’re out there- SORRY!
I never understood this actually. I don’t know who my people were. I know what ‘historians’ have told me, but you will understand if I am skeptical of what those who recorded those details of history at the time have written.
The Africans I have met have always made me feel that I am a sister to them. They know I don’t know where the hell I came from! Did I come from the town I was sold in? Or was I a prisoner of war from a different town than the western African town I was sold in? I don’t know, and neither do they, but it has been my experience that they call me sister.
I thought Sarah Baartman was my ‘sister’ too. But it wasn’t her Khoi -ness I identified with. So it doesn’t make sense to change my name to khoi venus, (but thanks for the suggestion, MrDibble).
I have asked the mods for time to think of another name, and I hope it is ok to post under this name for a couple hours, while I think of a new one.
I will refrain from posting till my name is changed, if MrDibble would like me to.
And I am still reeling from learning they weren’t black. I thought I was done learning the groups that I was taught were black as a child, that I have since learned are not.
How about “Cracker” or “Honky”? We’ve had members with both in their names, should that be banned a well? Where do we draw the line? Or does it move every time someone complains?
Let me add my voice to those who have been impressed with how you’ve handled this situation. You’re being very gracious - it’s very impressive. I do hope you’ll stick around.
(Which, I’d like to say, is not meant to be a slam on anyone else - what I’d read of Mr.Dibble’s criticism seemed very careful to be calm when dealing with an issue that he found very distressing. Kudos to him, too.)
Wait. I think the first sentence I wrote above could be read that I think I could be descended from the Khoi people. I do not think that, at all. I just mean, some of us black descendents of slaves in North America find it harder and harder to know which black African cultures we can ‘claim’.
Oh my heavens. No wonder I was so confused.
:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack:
(It’s not just you.)
Might I suggest: Butternuts Mc-FLAYVIN!
Going back to m-w.com, I see “cracker” and “honky” both as usually disparaging. I would treat it as “white trash”, of which expression I said before:
If you want to debate me on it, I will again quote myself, since I love hearing the sound of my own voice:
If a guy calls himself “Flibbertigibbet” and a group of posters say “Flibbertigibbet” is very offensive to them (CITE: see historical usage here) then at that point I will have to decide. I’ll either ask Flibbertigibbet to change his name or not. If Flibbertigibbet keeps her name but any time her username appears in a thread it becomes a 3-page discussion on whether or not Flibbertigibbet is an insult, I’ll either tell the dissenters to shut up about it once and for all or tell Flibbertigibbet that her name is too disruptive and she needs to change it. If I were a moderator, I would definitely be swayed by the amount of complaints I receive, and how much time I would have to devote to the issue.
I don’t wish to hijack this thread, but I am very curious as to why you used the term “I” here. We ARE talking about at least several generations back, no?
As I said above, the Khoi are not Black Africans. Genetically, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically they are very, very different from Black Africans as indeed they are from all other human societies. This is probably why they were treated as distinct under the South African system of racial categorization. They even look quite physically distinct from their Black neighbors in South Africa. The evidence suggests, at least, that the genetic split that separated Khoi from other human groups was one of the earlier ones, substantially earlier than that which separated, say, Black Africans from White Europeans. This is all drastically simplified, since people obviously mixed constantly and in general “Black African” and “White European” are very poorly definable terms (though the existence of a real genetic Khoisan group is, to my knowledge, fairly well established.)
As a White American, I am far, far more closely related to Venus here than either of us is to a pure Khoi person. The same is true of any White and Black person. I think there’s something to be said for Venus’ feeling of kinship with the Khoi people, as Black Africans and the Khoisan both have a shared history of suffering at the hands of Whites. But there’s not much in common beyond that, besides what is common to all of humanity.
Meaning I would be more inclined to make an official ruling if I get a ton of complaints on it (swayed in my sentence didn’t mean that if more people shouted “I believe that X is the right ruling” then I would automatically decide X). If no one seems to care then I probably will not bother making any additional rulings on the suitability of the word Flibbertigibbet in various threads, forums, thread titles, et cætera.
Sorry. My ancestors, I mean.
Can you clarify a fundemental point for me- I undestand the genetic disparity you are talking about (as a geneticist myself) but I was using “balck African” (too) loosely. So, did the Khoi have “black” skin? I thought they did from my (albeit brief) research I did and from that assumption I used “black africans”.
I really don’t mean to offend and am trying to phrase this in a culturally sensitive manner, so forgive me if I offend.
Thank you for clarification!