Vivian, I am also sorry to hear this has happened and I dream of a time when racism is dead. It’s so irrational and stupid and unnecessary.
I haven’t really experienced much racism personally (being white in a mostly white area) but I can relate by way of insults hurled at me for simply being female, or the inferior treatment I sometimes receive for being poor, and I know how shitty that is. I also know it’s not just once incident, or one drunken idiot. It’s a larger problem, and it’s insidious.
Unfortunately there are people who are bigoted, regardless of their outer demeanor or education. They will likely go through their entire lives denying themselves fascinating worlds simply due to their own ignorance. It’s a shame. It’s their shame.
vivian, my last post was incomplete (i.e., submitted instead of previewed, then I couldn’t get back on the board, then I couldn’t find the thread). It was meant to point out that in the OP it sounded like a group, like everyone waiting for the bus joined in.
I don’t mean to imply you don’t have the right to laugh, or that being called names by the drunk asshole was in any way your fault. BUT, based on the OP, it sounds to me like he was mounting a counter-offense at a perceived slight, and that to me says “retaliation” not racism. He grabbed at whatever combination of words was handy in his extremely limited vocabulary to make YOU feel bad, and succeeded. And he got stomped–didn’t he?
ooohhh…ok. Makes sense. Even when I went and reread my original post, I could see how you could get that impression. But i was so busy being pissed off…
I hate to start another “you can’t understand what it’s like because you’re not…” argument, but I really don’t think straight white folk realize what words like “nigger” or “faggot” actually mean to their respective ethnic or orientation groups when spoken by a stranger of another race or orientation.
They’re fear words. They’re words that are designed by decades or centuries of careful use to cause a visceral reaction of fear. Fear of violence, fear of exposure (for closeted gays), fear of extortion (again, for closeted gays), fear of ruin. I’m 5’11", 400 lbs, a big guy. But when I hear the word “faggot” shouted behind me by a stranger, I have to clamp down on a stomach flop because I’m scared shitless. I don’t know if that shout means that there’s a single 5’2" skinny little twerp following me or a gang of ten 6’ teenagers with pipes and chains.
“Nigger” and “faggot” aren’t frowned upon by the people they are used to describe because they’re rude. They’re frowned upon because they’re a personal form of terrorism.
I don’t think you give us “straight white folk” enough credit for our empathetic abilities jayjay. Most of us have experienced terrorism of one sort or another and quite adept at inflicting it on others if we choose to. That is why it is usually the most ignorant and lowlifes that hurl the fear epithets at those they want to hurt.
I have experienced myself a terror of duration that even you can’t match. From grade 1 to grade 8, I lived in fear of being beaten up by older kids mostly from the separate catholic school. Epithets particularly “Dutchie” and DP, refering to my ethnicity were constantly hurled at me. Rocks were thrown at me and I’ve been hit several times. The nature of my walk to and back from school which was 14 blocks from home but diagonally located, allowed me to peer around corners and determine if it was safe to continue. I ran and ran from the bullies and rarely got caught, feeling like a coward for not standing up. This was in the 50’s and early 60’s in a United Empire Loyalist town in southern Ontario many of whose citizens shunned me and my family for being foreigners. But for some reason that prejudice and terror disappeared by the time I was 16. I think it was the overwhelming influx of immigration into the town. So I may not be gay, and I may not be black, and I may not even be a woman, but I sure as hell have shared that oppressive experience of hate for what I was and couldn’t do anything about it.
Vivian, I am amazed at your restraint. I know that I wouldn’t have been able to take that kind of abuse (reguardless of the person’s state) and remain calm enough not to paste 'em.
Rest assured that this behavior is isolated to certain people who only loosely deserve the term. I am a native to the South and I don’t know even one person who would allow the phrase “fat bitch” to be applied to a lady, much less “fat nigger bitch.” That earns you a free ass-shiping down here in Dallas.
“Nigger” and “faggot” are not used to describe people.
They are used because they have the power you mention. To hurt and insult. They are hot words.
So . . . who gives them that power? And can it be nullified? I think that mincing around and calling it “the N word” actually gives it more power, in a “he whose name must not be mentioned” sort of way.
If it makes you feel any better, my best friends and I were having a sleepover(I am biracial/mixed, and my friends are white) She sometimes calls us “niggas” when we’re being stupid or just joking around. And that doesn’t really bother me. But one time, when I went off with my other friend into the bedroom because she’d asked me to, and my other friend told me to stay in the bathroom with her while she puts on make-up, I went with the other friend into the bedroom and the one in the bathroom was like, “Ugh, you stupid nigger.”
Not “nigga” she said “nigger”. At the moment, this didn’t really offend me but when I’d got home, I started to think about it and now that I’ve read your story, it really made me think about it. I act like I don’t care, but inside, it really hurts me and she could never understand because that’s just her personality. I really wish that she’d just stop with the name-calling altogether sometimes, but while we’re teenagers right now, she’s gonna do it all she wants and think nothing of it.
She abuses that word, throws it around like it’s some sort of play-toy. I don’t think she realizes how offensive and serious that word is to some people, especially to me. She’s not racist because, duh, obviously she wouldn’t be hanging out with me and asking me to come to her house every weekend. And besides, her grandfather is black.
One time, she made up a cross between a “cracker” as we all know is a rude thing to call a white person and a “nigger” and it was “crigger” This was kind of offensive too, because there was no good in either words and it was still as insulting as “nigger” would have been. And apparently, she doesn’t use these words around her mom because she’d probably get slapped into next week.
But I guess as long as she’s my friend, or at least in our teenage years, I’m just gonna have to suck it up and deal with it. After all, she is pretty awesome aside from all that other stuff.
Maybe he’s from Quebec. Seriously, that is the whitest town I’ve ever seen. We went there as part of French language immersion study. Our instructor was from Togo, and was openly challenged on at least two occasions by racist assholes during our two days there. I think if I hadn’t been standing with him on the one occasion, he might have been assaulted right there inside the store. Wabi laughed it off; I was mad as hell.
Vivian, I’m really late to this thread, and I suppose you will never see this, but your reaction was with class. We are all proud of you for it. Stay gold.
