1,2 &3) SIL & hubby actually live in the city she’s talking about, you do not. While obviously equating skin colour to cleanliness is unfounded, there may be a specific cluster of cultural groups in her region that allow generalizations. If most blacks in her region are recent immigrants from some place in Africa where “wasting water” on more than a weekly shower is frowned upon. Maybe they have some diet that doesn’t end well in public bathrooms.
**4) **un-punch-up-able, maybe switch it to a taunt instead. “Did you notice that you were agreeing with the 12 year old??”
eta: I just liked the editing job on the devil’s advocacy. no need to answer.
Okay, here’s what you do. Borrow the child of a Person of Color, take him to Thanksgiving dinner in Kentucky and introduce him as your adopted child, your child by a former marriage, or perhaps the just discovered Love Child of your spouse.
KarnalK, I’m not going to say that condemnations of cultural traits must be based in racism. But the terms that one uses to describe such condemnations illustrate a lot behind the mindset making the condemnation. If you say, “I’ve noticed that local parks are cleaner before they start getting used by the local black population,” I’ll listen to your observation, and consider that you might have a valid point. The point is specific, limited, and presented in words that at least sound reasonable.
Say that the parks are clean because the “crackers,” “niglets,” or “spics,” aren’t there yet, and you’ve eviscerated your point. You’re more concerned about getting a useless, and vile, dig in on people who aren’t even a part of the conversation than you are in making a valid point.
Ergo I, and I believe most people who don’t share your bigoted view of race relations, am going to conclude that you’re a hateful racist who cares more about blaming those people (whomever they might be this time) than you are in doing anything about the problem.
Not to be a racist, but damn I hate Tyler Perry movies. (Whether or not that’s a racist statement depends on whether you say it around particularly ardent Tyler Perry fans.)
My sympathies to you today, jsgoddess. I hope your husband feels better. Family sure sucks sometimes, don’t they?
Right now everyone in my husband’s family is probably saying what a stuck up bitch I am for not going to Thanksgiving when I found out my BiL - who has recently sexually harassed me and threatened mine and my husband’s (his brother’s) life - was going to show up. I sent pie with my compliments (because I love my husband’s aunt and hate to renege on a promise) and stayed home today. Some people just cannot be reasoned with and are not worth the trouble of hanging out with. Accidents of birth do not a family make.
We’re allowed to be offended by the stuff that happens around us, even if it isn’t our problem. And since it’s her sister-in-law, presumably they have to interact fairly often.
Even if the argument were valid, it would still remain that the sentiment behind it was one of racial enmity, otherwise she wouldn’t have used the word ‘niglets.’
See 2. I’m not saying that we have to shout down everything even the slightest bit controversial to protect people’s feelings, but calling African-American children ‘niglets’ is neither a hypothesis nor data that supports that hypothesis, and has no place in any kind of rational argument.
If the kid makes the right choice, then in that context it appears that he is wiser.
Sour grapes, sour grapes. Why should your Thanksgiving have more food than mine? All I had today was two bowls of cereal . . .
“Niglet?” Seriously? What, is pickaninny out of fashion now in high-falutin’ racist circles?
jsgoddess, I don’t know what I’d do faced with someone calling other people “niglets,” either. I don’t know what the proper method of dealing with serious racists is. If you’ve tried everything you can think of, I think all you have left is just saying your piece for yourself, with no thought for how it affects them. You don’t have to worry about burning any bridges, anyway, since it sounds like you’d be better off without these people in your life.
I’ve never really gotten the racist people who constantly talk or bitch and moan about the target of their prejudice. Seriously do you have nothing better to talk about? I don’t constantly talk about the things that bother me. If you believed black people were say inferior, by constantly bitching about them you’re really just proving to everyone around you listening that you have an utter lack of personality and the only thing you have to say is about people you ostensibly hate but apparently love to talk about. When I hate something I don’t like to talk about it at every available opportunity, I want to forget it exists.
Nonsense. Using racial epitaphs may be just part of my upbringing. I don’t mean anything specific behind it, it’s just the words I learned to describe certain people. It certainly doesn’t “eviscerate” my point. It’s a rhetorical device, that may immediately poison some opinions, but is simply gilding to the point that black people in my region tend to make places messy. Hey, maybe I don’t know how it works in New York or Paris, all’s I know is my own neighborhood.
[sub]*If you don’t know I’m kidding, shame on you! Sounds like you handled a tough situation with grace, which is more than these racist bozos will probably ever be able to manage.[/sub]
Wow. I don’t care how you preface it, cushion it, or whatever-the-hell-they-thought-they-were-doing, I’m pretty sure that there is a law somewhere that any sentence using the phrase niglet would rank pretty freakin’ high on the racist scale.
Real high. I’m pretty sure there is a racist description of how high.
I’m feeling like the guy from the Hitchhiker’s books that understood everything and sat around in constant wonder. I just can’t fathom how people can wrap their heads around stuff like that and still be able to breathe.
I think you can use this phrase without being racist. For example, not to be racist, but spanish accents really annoy me, and not to be homophobia but people who act camp are irritating. This is true but isn’t discrimination in any sense, I don’t think any less of either as persons, I just find them irritating. I guess it’s like morbidly obese people, there’s nothing wrong with finding fat people upsetting so long as you don’t discriminate or act crassly. I would have thought black populations have different diseases to white people, so when they mix both are worse off for a bit until resistance is formed, or one population dies off. Anything else is thought police.
When those words are chosen to deny the recognition of the humanity of those persons that you’re describing, they reflect a set of mental blinders that brings any observations that you are presenting into doubt. In my personal experience the sort of person who will use such terms in debate, when presenting what they intend to be objective evidence will usually indulge in observational bias to such a degree as to make their observations completely unreliable.
I grant that I’m basing this whole argument on the assumption that the person or persons involved have been interacting with North American or Western European cultural norms for a period of time. I’m sure you can come up with many cultures where such casual use of racial epithets are the norm.
Even with that background, though, I can’t imagine is anyone who is that casual with the use of such epithets as being aware enough to preface such statements with the phrase, “not to be racist, but…” IMNSHO, that’s an acknowledgement that what the speaker recognizes that he or she is about to say may be considered racist. Which is not something I’d expect from your hypothetical person who has only offensive terms to describe certain groups. i.e. If they’ve been told that the terms are offensive, I’m sure they’ve been told, too, other words that could be substituted for the offensive ones.
Certainly, based on what jsgoddess has been saying it’s pretty clear she believes that her in-laws choose to use this terminology because it offends her. Which is not the behavior of someone who has only offensive terms to describe a given group.
