You are touchy.
You are also either failing to comprehend what I have posted or refusing to address what I have posted. However, when you accuse me of something I have not said, I will respond.
Your position was, originally, that the phrase should be considered hate speech because it is, in your view, clearly a racist expression.
I have responded with a couple of different points, some of which you have distorted in responding to what I have posted. (I am expanding some of my explanations, here, but the basic ideas have been present throughout.)
The phrase clearly originated as a racist expression. It identified whites who were so low on the social scale that their whiteness was their only salvation from being considered to be lower than blacks. (This is a point I have made to other people on this board who have claimed that it was never racist.)
The phrase moved up and out of the South (where it originated) with the industrial migration of the middle 20th century. When it did so, the phrase stayed in use by many of the people who moved North (black and white), but the social conditions changed for the speakers of that phrase. Particularly, since the North is actually more segregated than the South, many white speakers found themselves in situations where there was no day-to-day contact with blacks and there was no “need” to distinguish class based on color. At that time, for those speakers, the phrase lost its original distinguishing effect (black vs white). The phrase continued on, because people who had grown up where it was used continued to use the whole phrase as an identifier for a particular group of people (who were, indeed, white, but who were not being separated from other groups because there were no blacks against whom to compare them). Just as people use the phrase “steam shovel” to identify a particular piece of equipment that has not been built in over 50 years and few people alive have seen one because “steam shovel” was the word they heard from their parents, even though nearly all the shovels today are diesel powered, so too, people who heard their parents refer to people in a particular socio-economic situation with the phrase “white trash” continue to use the phrase without thinking of its origins or intending to make the distinction that some whites are saved from the lowest rung of society because they are, at least, not black.
I came to this conclusion not by idly speculating what people might think, but by talking to actual speakers of the language and by reading the actual posts of people who have argued that they do not see a racial connection to the phrase. In other words, beginning from an historically aware position that recognized the phrase as racist in origin, I have looked at the actual usage of the word and drawn the conclusion that for some large number of speakers it has lost its racial overtones.
Now, you continue to insist that the very presence of the word “white” in the phrase clearly indicates that any speaker of the phrase is indicating a racial comparison, despite their own testimony that this is not true. (And not the claim, “I’m not racist” but an actual explanation in their use in which race does not even enter their consideration–people, for example, from neighborhoods and even states where there are so few blacks (or any non-whites) that a racial component to the phrase has no meaning.) From this I can only conclude that you truly believe that a large number of people, looking at a construction site, really believe that there are some guys inside each of the digging machines, stoking boilers to make them run.
You can certainly reject my assertion, but you have provided no reason for me to believe that your examination of constituent words is a better indicator of meaning than my examination of actual usage.
Nope. His position was that IF certain other terms were to be considered racist hate speech, THEN there is no reason to exclude “white trash”. It is a conditional implication, not a categorical declaration. He has, in fact, advocated the elimination of hate speech rules precisely because drawing such lines are controversial and arbitrary.
Yes there is, from that conditional statement, because “white trash” has not been demonstrated to be racist in its current usage.
I’m not an advocate of the “hate speech” rule (which, as I mentioned, is why I prefer GD where I do not have to make quite as many hair-splitting deliberations about “acceptable” insults and I really preferred GQ where I could simply order all insults out of the Forum), but if we ban nigger “as racist hate speech,” then we need to establish that “white trash” is racist to include it in the same category.
Yep. There are laws against race bigotry but none on class bigotry. Not surprising, since a person’s class is even more difficult to define than his race and is fully mutable.
Suppose in a pit argument somebody says something like “You only think that way because you’re a stupid nigger!” or some such thing. Are the readers really hurt by that comment more than the person making the argument, and need to be shielded from it? I say the only person hurt is the one who typed the comment, who’s argument is now destroyed by his demonstration of bigotry. And I trust that most people reading the pit have the constitution to handle reading such language without getting a fatal case of the vapors.
Where he tells a story about Oprah "I also remember an incident when Oprah was hosting a show from Forsythe County, an all-white county in Georgia that was in the news for fighting integration attempts. One drawling local hoped to make a point about the use of “black people” v. the use of the word “nigger”. She starts out with “When a Southerner says nigger, we aren’t meaning it as a slur against all black people… it’s a particular type of person. A nigger can be any color… there are niggers in this room other than Oprah…”
The look on Oprah’s face was priceless, at once reading “You poor stupid cracker…” and “Oh. good. God.” and “Prosecution rests.”. At that particular moment I think I was in love with her. (And for what it’s worth, I grew up in the rural south and while it’s true that there are people who use the N word only to describe particularly sorry black people there are also many who use it interchangably with “black” and I have never once heard it used to refer to a white person.)"
Thus, “their own testimony” would seem to be either denial, self-serving, or ignorant.
I’m sure you noticed that in Sam’s example “nigger” was being used in the same way as “white trash” would. One could assume that those people use “white nigger” in place of “white trash”–the Wikipedia article that was cited earlier lists them as snynonyms.
The problem with white trash is that it differentiates from other kinds of trash, namely black trash. Civilized people don’t refer to other human beings of any color or social background as trash. Ever. But this phrase says, “I expect blacks to be trash, but this person is actually “white” trash! They had their chance by being born white, but they’re behaving just like those trashy niggers.”
How do you delineate unacceptable behavior? You say that so-and-so is exhibiting unacceptable behavior. However, the behavior we’re talking about here is unpolished and crass, and socially unacceptable, but it’s victimless, so I don’t see what everyone’s hard-on is anyway. So they ain’t gonna appear on the social page of the Dog Patch Gazette. Big whoop. We can’t all be the Park Avenue types. But it certainly isn’t deserving of a name that describes something that can be discarded!!!
DrDeth, it is not “the same excuse.” We are not talking about people who, called to account for using a widely recognized slur, try to rationalize it. We are talking about people who have accepted a phrase without considering it in any way–just as my example of “steam shovel.” There are words and phrases that people grow up hearing and use without ever considering their constituent parts. The people I have encountered using “white trash” in that way are among them. They have (dating all the way back to the AOL board, where I had to defend one poster against charges that he was inventing new meanings for words), often included people who would never consider any racial slur, have fought for civil rights, have blasted other posters for unconscious racism. In fact, it was the presence of those sorts of posters in the earleir discussions who shaped my understanding of the term. It was not the subtly racist posters who were defending their usage as “acceptable,” but the firmly anti-racist posters who were shocked and surprised to be accused of racism and who had to have the original racism of the term pointed out to them.
Kalhoun, you are absolutely correct that the constituent parts of that phrase should call it into question, immediately. However, that is not how language seems to work in the human brain, and some collections of phonemes tend to get picked up and repeated without any consideration, at all.
If we choose to ban “white trash” because we should not be calling any group trash, I am fine with that. My point, here, has been that a direct linkage between usage and racism does not seem to be supported by the evidence of actual usage.
It may be, but I can tell you that if I was saying something offensive without knowing it (like the time I called my dad a “putz”, thinking at the time that it was the equivalent of calling him a dork :eek: ), I assure you I want to be corrected. Allowing something insulting to become casual is dangerous to a civilization.
But Tom, surely you will concede that the matter is not without controversy. I understand that you’ve done some research and whatnot, but I don’t know the details of it, you haven’t polled me, and the premise is so prima facie absurd that I have a very hard time accepting it. In your research, did you find examples of African-Americans or Indians being called “white trash”? If so, did you explain to them that the term “white” makes no sense in that context? And if not, did you explain that limiting the term to whites is de facto racist?
However, may I counter-example with the phrase “jew you down”? I have a friend who’s father uses it regularly and my friend used it until I pointed out that it was pretty anti-semitic. He was honestly shocked, once he thought about it: as you said, he’d never thought about the constituent parts–it had never occurred to him that ‘jew’=“Jewish people” somehow.
That he was using it without anti-semitic intent (and I suspect many people who use that phrase don’t have that intent) doesn’t make the phrase any more acceptable. For that matter, my friend’s father is of the opinion that it’s a kind of a compliment…after all, it’s just saying that Jews are good at business and shrewd negotiators, right? (He’s a nice guy outside of that and refrains from using the phrase in my presence, although I suspect he’s avoiding it simply because it bugs me, not because I’ve changed his opinion)
In any case, judging the poster’s intent seems to be a finer line than I’d guess most Mods want to walk. I believe that the phrase “jew you down” has been ruled as a no-no (I can’t find the thread to search–the word “jew” is too short), “nigger” is generally a no-no. If I referred to a black person who appeared on Springer as a ‘nigger’ and then said that I’m using the word in the “Not all black people, just the trashy ones” sense, I doubt that argument would convince many mods.
But (bang) that’s (bang) because (bang) “nigger” (bang) is (bang) still (bang) seen (bang) by (bang) one (bang) and (bang) all (bang) as (bang) a (bang) racist (bang) term (bang) while (bang) Tom (bang) and (bang) I (bang) keep (bang) saying (bang) that (bang) “white (bang) trash” (bang) lost (bang) its (bang) racist (bang) overtones (bang) decades (bang) ago (bang) for (bang) pretty (bang) much (bang) everybody (bang) in (bang) this (bang) country (bang) except (bang) a (bang) few (bang) people (bang) on (bang) this (bang) board!
:eek: ), I assure you I want to be corrected. Allowing something insulting to become casual is dangerous to a civilization.
