Racism at its worst? Consider possibly ethnic cleansing as being “racism at its worst.”
I wouldn’t like it if you called any of my female friends a bitch. The connotation of the word is entirely different when it’s used among friends. Is that sexist? No.
I had a somewhat slightly-built white high school administrator once who was very ill and absent from school a long time. My students (mostly African-American) decided to send him a huge get well card. One of my black students asked if he could write on the card: “You’re my nigger if you don’t get any bigger.” Knowing the sense of humor of the former Marine who would be receiving the card, I told the student to go for it.
The student and I both knew that the administrator would see the comment as a sign of good will under the circumstances.
When the N-word is used to put somebody down, that is an entirely different use and meaning of the word. When one of my lifetime friends used the N-word to describe Denzel Washington while she was in my home, we didn’t speak again for three years. I haven’t heard her use it since and I know that she likes his movies now.
If you take a semantics course, you will learn that Cow1 is not Cow2 and Cow2 is not Cow3 and so on. Context, content and connotation make all the difference in the world.
It can’t be a racial slur if blacks use it commonly. If it is a slur for me, it should be a slur for them. Equally.
If the N word disappeared from the English language as an anachronism, it would be fine with me. It it has to be distasteful for EVERYONE. Otherwise it is just a blatantly racist thing.
Do you mean that whites should be able to use the word in the same sense and way that blacks do, and that usage (if understood) shouldn’t be considered racist? Uh, I guess. Maybe. I’m not sure, but let’s assume that’s a reasonable position. It still requires a level of optimism I don’t possess to believe that this would be the likeliest inference. But give it a try if you have a more hopeful nature than I.
Is that your beef? What do you think the fair outcome here should be? You get to say, “nigger”? Or that blacks must stop because…because why? Why is it racist that blacks get to say the word, but you don’t? Are you arguing that they’re being racist to themselves? Or are you arguning that this is proof that the word isn’t really racist?
Or are you one of those “reverse discrimination” guys who thinks that anything that is not exactly the same between whites and blacks must be proof that we poor white guys are getting screwed again? :dubious:
Language always has context which evolves from common usage. In this case, the context the word is such that when used by members outside the group it is almost always offensive. When used by members in the group, it’s generally not.
It’s how the context and usage evolved. It’s not like some impartial third party made up the rules and imposed them. There are few, if any, objective rules. Usage generally defines the rules. Maybe in 50 years the usage will be different.
Indeed, the OP must have led quite a sheltered life if the contextualization of “nigger” strikes him as racism “at its worst”, as opposed to a more extreme circumstance like, for example, Auschwitz.
I’d be tempted to say “nigger, please”, if the OP was a friend of mine and the context was such that the meaning was obviously “you have said something foolish” as opposed to “the relative darkness of your skin indicates genetic inferiority”.
If the OP can’t grasp the significance of context, that’s his failing, not society’s.
We do, or at least decent people do. Not to suggest a complete equivalency here, but I’ll use my Italian heritage as an example. I went to the Italian parish school in Philadelphia. We could call each other dagos, and we sometimes did. If someone outside of the tribe used that term, it would not be received well, even if it did not at that point (40+ years ago) have the same weight and sting that the N word still does.
People within a given group often use the derogatory term amongst themselves, as something humorous or to take away its power. People outside of the group don’t get a pass. It works that way, equally, for everyone. Or it should. Seems self-evident to me.
I believe it’s absolutely racist. I don’t use the word, I don’t secretly wish I could use the word, and I don’t particularly appreciate hearing the word.
For someone to throw around what is arguably the most offensive word in the English language and believe it’s perfectly fine because of their race is racist. To believe you specifically can do anything at all *because of your race *is racist.
Why does racism have to have an “exact” definition? It’s not a scientific issue. At times, it may be a legal one, I guess, and if one finds oneself embroiled in some kind of civil-rights litigation, I suppose one could try to convince a judge that passing over the dark-skinned employee for a promotion was a matter of company efficiency and the colour of the employee’s skin was purely incidental.
What do you want? A checklist of conditions under which you can say “nigger”, or someone to crack down on everyone who says it because you feel you can’t?
Yes. Huge disagreement. I do not feel my rights or feelings have been impinged upon in any way by this scenario. I have not been harmed emotionally, financially, socially or in any possible way. It’s offensive to the concept of racism to try to place this under that umbrella.
As I taught my kids, fair doesn’t mean everyone is treated equally, fair means everyone gets what they need. So if black culture benefited in someway by taking back nigger for use within their culture only, and I’m not harmed by it, then it’s quite fair to me.
OK, here’s the real point. You hear some black people refer to themselves and their black friends as “niggers”, and you think that the equivalent for you is to be able to refer to them using the same word. But it’s not the same thing: for you, the equivalent would be to refer to yourself and your white friends by some insulting word, e.g., “honky” or “white trash”. Go ahead and do that if it makes you want to be more racially equal.
You’re not being prevented from using the word at all. In fact, you have a constitutional right to use it. And if you use it in public, and get punched out for doing so, then the person who punched you will go to jail for assault.
What you can’t do is use it without people thinking you’re either a bigot, a boor, or a clueless moron. And that’s because you’re not black. It’s not because you’re white, it’s because you’re not black. A Hispanic person is in the same boat you are. So is a South Asian, so is a Korean, so is a Maori.
And when I say “black” in the sentence above, I don’t mean “having dark skin” or “having genes that would tend to group you as African-American” or “visibly appearing as black”. I mean “a person who is the target of the word ‘nigger’.” That’s all.
You can’t use the word without people getting all sniffy about, because you’re not the target of the word. You’re not in the group to which the word refers in a derogatory way. You also can’t use the word “spic”, for the same reason; likewise, “chink”, “gook”, “kike”, “dago”, etc.
Here’s another parallel: If you use the word “bitch” to refer to a woman, you’re going to be treated differently than if you were female. You’ll be treated differently when using the word “faggot” than if you were gay.
When you’re the target of a particular slur, you get to use that slur in ways that non-targets don’t. This is driven by context and by usage and by history.