What do you mean “intrinsically”? What is “intrinsically” racist about terms like “half-breed” or “mulatto” or “kike” or “nigger” or “faggot”? Those terms derive their offensiveness from their historical usage, from the attitudes of the people who have used them and the ways in which they have been deployed.
As i suggested previously, in an earlier response to you with the face, i’m not sure that Halfrican Hamerican is intrinsically racist.
If it were being used, to adopt ywtf’s definition, as merely a “cutesy way of calling someone biracial,” then i wouldn’t have a problem with it.
But, as John Mace noted, context is everything. And, in this case, it is at least partly to do with the way it was used. And, i admit, partly because it was used in such a way by someone i don’t respect (i’m talking, in this instance, about Rush Limbaugh, although Shodan is rapidly approaching the same level on my respect-o-meter).
The way Limbaugh used it, the derisive attitude of his overall argument when he used it, and the tone in which he made the reference, all combine with my prior suspicion of his motives and politics to make me hostile to the term. It probably doesn’t help that i had never heard the term before, and that Limbaugh is the first association i have with it.
But, even if we leave all that out, i still don’t like Shodan’s use of the term, again partly because of the way it was used, the apparent intent behind it, which was (it seemed to me) to ridicule Obama for something completely unconnected with his abilities. There was no good faith or even merely descriptive motive behind the term, as far as i could tell; it was being used simply as an epithet.
I think that the question of Obama’s experience (or lack thereof) is an important one, and i get just as annoyed with people who praise him unconditionally as i do with people who slur him pointlessly. Of course Shodan, dribbling into his beard as usual, continues to insist that his use of the term was an important part of a broader and more serious argument about Obama’s qualifications, and about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats more generally.
But he could have made those points in exactly the same way without using the term. The use of the term adds precisely nothing to his argument, and makes a deliberate choice to describe Obama’s race in a way that he himself would not choose, and would probably actively oppose. He could have made a point about race being a key determinant in Obama’s popularity (something i wouldn’t disagree with) without the use of such a stupid and pointless term. Like it or not, the term Halfrican American is recognized and has political weight in the US right now largely because of the way that Limbaugh used it; that bell can’t be unrung, and if someone seriously uses the term to describe Obama in the current political climate, a lot of people will probably assume that the usage and the political motivation behind it are similar to Limbaugh’s.
