Huh?
A) Who the hell are you to tell me that? (Italics extra for the other "you"s, insofar as this applies, to sympathetic Social Justice Warriors.)
B) I told you (the world) it was on a par exactly with “Nu, boychik?” and was immediately understood as such. (“Wassup, dog?”)
Are the minds of Jews and and their emotional responses to language that deep? You do have a way of knowing, if you weren’t walking on the eggshells of your moral sensitivity/superiority.
The circumstances in which that could be used pejoratively are so contrived that it is a perfect example of language “advice” as politics, and I don’t need someone to tell me that it’s a dog whistle that I didn’t catch. And yes I, representative unknowable Jew, actually do have a way of knowing if the person speaking to me “knows better” or not, i.e., as you say have knowledge of which would then let that speaker be assured that I know that you know and you know that I know that, so fire away.
My social and conversational habits tend to keep me clear of anti-Semites. It’s simple: why would you be into baiting me, or testing out your theories of social justice?
Yes, next time I meet Person A who, say, after hearing person B call to me “hey, bro,” Person A glances meaningfully at his neighbor, looks me in the eye through his rimless glasses, draws on his cigarette held cupped in his hand held by thumb and first finger, and says “Jah, I zee. A JEW bro,” and then curls his lip and tightens his eyes slowly as disgust turns to contempt.
You and your professor are correct. But you don’t know a damn thing about one of your ethnic stalking horses in this example. Does this not upset you? Yet perhaps it doesn’t matter, because the goal is just so good, so we all can just get along.
I can only think of one example of a Jew–and a fictional one, and a fictional Cohen Brothers one at that, “reclaiming” a pejorative: the insane film producer in Barton Fink, who says something about kikes; I can’t remember if he was referring to someone else (so was not reclaiming it, but using it) or for himself–in which case it would be “I’m your worst nightmare: a nigger with a badge” thing.
No secular Jew ever says “Yid” (or “yid”) unless he wants to be pejorative. People who speak Yiddish, a cohort not known for anti-Semitism, do use it all the time however.
I can go up to a Yiddish speaker and say *“Nu, vooz macht ah yeed?” Which means literally “so what’s a Jew do?” which in the real world means “Hi, what’s up.” No-one except anti-Semites use the word “Yid” pejoratively; in other languages, where “Yid” is the word for “Jew” they get double their money’s worth by when casting the word in the right tone; but then others have two words in their arsenal."
