What racial slurs are okay to use in GD?

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1

Simple question.

Tomndebb in this thread is ruling that it’s okay to refer to African-Americans as “Uncle Toms” but seems to bristle at the idea of referring to them as “house niggers” and possibly “house negroes”.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=663356

Such an attitude strikes me as remarkably provincial and remarkably ignorant of the beliefs and attitudes of of minorities.

It is certainly true that white people as a whole seem to feel very comfortable using the racial slur “Uncle Tom” but aren’t so comfortable with the term “house nigger” but I’ve heard plenty of African-Americans regularly use the terms “Uncle Tom”, “house nigger” and “house negro” interchangeably.

In fact the term “house nigger” is almost exclusively used by non-whites and was popularized by Malcolm X, the most popular African-American political leader of the 20th Century other than Martin Luther King.

[QUOTE**]
Malcolm X**
"There was two kind of slaves. There was the house negro and the field negro. The house negro, they lived in the house, with master. They
dressed pretty good. They ate good, cause they ate his food, what he left.
They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near their
master, and they loved their master, more than their master loved
himself. They would give their life to save their masters house quicker
than their master would. The house negro, if the master said “we got a
good house here” the house negro say “yeah, we got a good house here”.
Whenever the master would said we, he’d say we. That’s how you can
tell a house negro. If the master’s house caught on fire, the house negro
would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the
master got sick, the house negro would say “What’s the matter, boss, we
sick?” We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than the
master identified with himself. And if you came to the house negro and
said “Let’s run away, Let’s escape, Let’s separate” the house negro would
look at you and say “Man, you crazy. What you mean separate? Where
is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than
this? Where can I eat better food than this?” There was that house
negro. In those days, he was called a house nigger. And that’s what we
call him today, because we still got some** house niggers** runnin around
here. This modern house negro loves his master. He wants to live near
him. He’ll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near
his master, and then brag about “I’m the only negro out here. I’m the
only one on my job. I’m the only one in this school.” "You’re nothing but
a house negro. And if someone come to you right now and say “Let’s
separate.”, you say the same thing that the house negro said on the
plantation. "What you mean separate? From America? This good white
land? Where you gonna get a better job than you get here? I mean, this
is what you say! “I di-I ain’t left nothing in Africa” That’s what you say.
“Why, you left your mind in Africa”. On that same plantation, there was
the field negro. The field negro, those were the masses. There was
always more negros in the field as there were negros in the house. There
negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house, they ate
high up on the hog. The negro in the field didn’t get nothing but what
was left in the insides of the hog. They call them chit’lins nowaday. In
those days, they called them what they were, guts! That’s what you
were, a guteater. And some of you are still guteaters. The field negro
was beaten, from morning til night. He lived in a shack, in a hut
[/QUOTE]

In fact, Malcolm X used the term to refer to Martin Luther King and other leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

So, if it’s ok to refer to Thomas Sowell as an “Uncle Tom” as Tomndebb feels, than shouldn’t it also be ok to refer to Barack Obama as a “House nigger”?

It would certainly seem arrogant and presumptuous for white people to say that Malcolm X was wrong to use the terms interchangeably and that “Uncle Tom” is kosher while “house nigger” is Harraam.

Beyond that, if it’s permissible to use racial slurs to refer to black public figures such as Thomas Sowell, then shouldn’t it also be permissible to use racial slurs to refer to Jewish public figures such as Benjamin Netanyahu, such as “Jewish pig” or “Jewish dog” which are terms that are, if anything, vastly more common in the Middle East than “Uncle Tom” is in the US?

2

Are you serious? For one thing Malcolm X isn’t a moderator here. And for another, if you really think that house nigger and Uncle Tom are on an equal footing impact-wise then you’re just plain wrong.

3

My recent inquiries have shown me plainly that it simply depends on

  1. the context of the words you chose
  2. the tone of the conversation to that point
  3. the mood of the moderator when he/she reads your post
  4. who you are
  5. shut up and stop whining about the modding, PRR. No one cares what you think.

Hope that helps.

4

Why on Earth do you feel obligated to call someone a house nigger just because a moderator isn’t enforcing a rule the way you want them to? That’s just silly.

Besides, I think you’d have to call him White House nigger.

5

Doesn’t this essentially go to the core precept, “Don’t be a jerk?”

6

He pulls an “Uncle Tom,” you pull a “nigger”! They send one of yours a warning, you send them another “rules clarification request” in ATMB! That’s the Chicago Reader way!

7

You made this argument in Great Debates and had a ruling on it already.

Taking this argument to another forum won’t make the outcome any different.

Stop it.

8

I thought that was the GD way? Start it in GD, restate in ATMB while pretending to make it about a rules clarification and then open a Pit thread. Maximum exposure.

9

I don’t like either term, have no desire to hurl them at people and especially don’t like it when non-blacks use them.

“Uncle Tom” and “House nigger”(as well as the variants “house negro” “house slave” etc.) mean the same thing.

In popular imagination the “Uncle Tom” was the obedient, self-hating, house slave who did whatever his white masters told him and sided with them over his own people.

If you read Malcolm X’s famous speech comparing the “house negro” to the “field negro” in which he portrayed himself as the “field negro” standing up to the white man while the Civil Rights establishment, including Martin Luther King were the “house negroes” or “house niggers” siding with the whites against their own people.

In short, my complaint wasn’t the lack of tolerance for the use of the term “house nigger” since I’d rather people in GD not hurl that around, but in tolerating the use of the term “Uncle Tom”.

It’s a racial slur and more importantly, using shows a similar attitude that D’Nesh D’Sousa’s bigoted rants about Barack Obama’s “anti-colonial” mentality do.

It’s saying that there is a certain way in which black people are supposed to behave and if they step out of that box then there’s something wrong with them and they should be punished.

I should finally add that I started this thread last night because I was a bit tired and upset and had I been in a better mood I wouldn’t have done so, or at least I’d have articulated it differently so I’m going to apologize for making the argument in such an inflammatory post and especially I’m going to apologize to Tom for being rather rude to him and thank him for being certainly more understanding than he needed to be.

I disagree with his ruling and would rather people be discouraged from using the term Uncle Tom or similar slurs in GD, but it’s hardly the end of the world.

10

“Uncle Tom” refers to someone’s behaviour, “house nigger” refers to their race. That’s why one is a racial slur, and the other isn’t.

Using Malcolm X as a cite for something not being racist is… odd, to put it mildly.

11

It certainly is true that white people feel more comfortable using the terms “Uncle Tom” and “Oreo” than “House Nigger” and “House negro” but I’m not sure that the latter terms are somehow different “impact-wise” on those targeted.

I’m not black so it’s not up to me to judge, but in my own experience most black people would be just as insulted by either term, particularly if the person hurling the slurs was white.

In both cases you’re calling a black person a race traitor who’s subservient to white people which is a pretty extreme insult.

12

My Uncle Tom is a white dude with a mullet and a bitchin’ Camaro.

My Uncle House N*gger does not have a Camaro.

13

Oh, please. If that was the case then there are some posters who should have been banned long ago but they are allowed to stay because of…?

14

How does the term “Uncle Tom” not refer to the person’s race?

Are white people referred to as “Uncle Toms”?

Besides, the term “House negro” and “House nigger” also refer to a person’s behavior.

Furthermore, I never said the term “House nigger” wasn’t racist, in fact just the opposite, so your last comment makes little sense. I referred to Malcolm X to show that the difference in the two terms is simply that white people are more comfortable with the term “Uncle Tom” and that traditionally “House nigger” and “house negro” have been used by blacks.

Once again, I’m pretty sure most black people would feel equally insulted being called either term, particularly if the person doing the calling was white.

15

Call an African-American an Uncle Tom and, yes, he would be insulted.

Call him a nigger of whatever sort and I think you’ll get a somewhat more vigorous reaction.

Go ahead, try it and see.

16

Except we’re talking about the term “house nigger” not “nigger”. They’re both offensive racial slurs but they have different meanings and are used diffferently.

To give a real life example, I don’t think Colin Powell was more offended when Harry Belafonte called him that, and even referenced Malcolm’s speech than he was when Spike Lee called him an Uncle Tom some years ago.

17

What was used by a polemicist 50 years ago tells us nothing about whether that term is offensive today.

18

First of all, Malcolm X was far more than just a “polemicist”. Second, I think it was offensive back then and that it’s still offensive today. My point was that it and it’s variants are more commonly used by African-Americans than by whites.

I remember actually be struck during the time I was watching the movie Malcolm X, by Spike Lee the reactions of different audience members to the scene where Malcolm, played by Denzel Washington does a variation on the speech during a TV debate with with a Civil Rights leader and starts accusing the man of being a house negro etc. and many of the blacks in the theatre were cheering and applauding while most of the whites in the audience were looking extremely uncomfortable.

One thing I will concede though that I should have made clearer is that there certainly is a difference depending on who uses the term. I certainly don’t like it when black bloggers refer to Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell as “plantation slaves” “house niggers” other variants but that’s dramatically diffferent from a white person calling Clarence Thomas an Uncle Tom.

Anyway the point of my argument, which I apologize for expressing it so badly in the OP was not that house negro and it’s variants aren’t offensive racial slurs, but that Uncle Tom is.

19

I think TubaDiva meant to say that Ibn Warraq already had this argument in ATMB all of a month ago. Link. Since I explained this to you in the previous thread, Ibn Warraq, I am going to have less patience this time: I am getting tired of your strategy of tossing out dozens of racial slurs to make a comparison of the offensiveness of various terms. I understand how the comparison works, but since you do it at such length and in such detail that I’m getting the impression that even though you’re not a racist yourself, you get a kick out of offending people by posting them over and over. I assure you that you do not want the staff to think you’re doing that on purpose. My advice to you is that if you think someone is using an offensive term in GD, you should report the post and also briefly tell the poster why you think the term is offensive or stupid without using a bunch of offensive terms yourself. (I say briefly because it makes a thread hijacking less likely.) This is exactly what happened in the “Paki” thread in July. Next time, please try a little harder to learn from your experiences.

20

Not an expert on this, but my understanding is that a “house nigger” is an African-American who has adopted “White” values and culture, and who tries to avoid making (racial) waves in order to preserve his standing in white society.

An Uncle Tom is an African-American who actively advocates for “White” positions and interests.

They are not the same thing.