I agree. Unless those words are no longer offensive. One of the original phrases mentioned was “Going Dutch”. I don’t know why that used to be offensive, but it is no longer offensive.
Faggot, Jew, and nigger are all still offensive terms. In 100 years they might not be used in the same way. If you said, “you are acting so Dutch” to someone I do not think they would even know what you are talking about. The same thing might happen with faggot, nigger, and jew. They are just words and their common usage can change. That is all I was saying. I don’t think people need to think about using the term “going dutch”, because it is no longer offensive to anyone.
The same thing could, and probably is, happening as we speak with words that we currently consider derogatory. They are just words though. If more people use the phrase “jew them down” without meaning it in a derogatory way, the phrase could end up not being derogatory…just like going dutch.
I don’t think it has to do with irony, rather than transgression. A teenager intuitively understands that standing against the established rules is cool. So do adults - but adults also realize that it’s not true for ALL rules, each one eventually making their minds about which rules are justified, which aren’t but are tolerable, and which cannot be and must be fought. By contrast, teenagers try hard to be against (or at least appear to be against) any convention or rule.
There’s also a sort of odd one-upmanship circle going on : it’s definitely not cool to be a racist. But then, it’s not cool to be against racism, since everyone is. So to be different, you have to be against anti-racists WHILE not being racist. The result of such neurotic thinking is using increasingly taboo terms even though you don’t subscribe to their underlying meaning.
That, or it’s just ignorant assholes acting like fuckwits and begging to be socked in the mouth. Either way, they get attention.
I grew up in the rural South, and until I went away to college I never heard any anti-Semitism voiced by anybody. At college I only heard it once, and it came from a kid from Connecticut.
Since moving to Atlanta, I’ve heard it a couple of times from black politicians (the McKinneys) but that’s about it.
Over the entire course of my life I could count the number of anti-Semitic remarks I’ve overheard on one hand. (And I’m a reasonably social creature, so it’s not like I’m not getting out.)
On the other hand, if I could count on one hand the number of anti-Semitic remarks I’ve read on the Internet and in various publications in recent years, I’d have a whole bunch of worn-out fingers.
I live on the other end of our state (but am white) and I’ve never been privy to any instances of blatant antisemitism.
Ah, I believe you have intuited the gist of the GIF Theory.
I think one needs to think about the underlying intent. Kids on X-Box live making Jewish slurs are not actively trying to offend Jews. My friends when I was a kid used terms like, “Nigger-knocking”, and, “Nigger-Rigged”. None of them as far as I know is really particularly racist.
Like if I had a friend who was a German or French and I said, “You are such a German or so French.”, they wouldn’t take it as an insult. So one has to think of the culture climate as it exists today to determine the seriousness of the offense. As far as I can tell in our culture being a Jew is no more shocking than being a German or being French.
Intent is a factor, but it’s not the only factor: you don’t get to tell people “I didn’t mean anything offensive, so you’re not allowed to object.”
It would depend on why you were calling them names in the first place, wouldn’t it? The stereotypes associated with Jews include being cheap and dishonest, so if somebody says “you’re such a Jew,” aside from imitating Cartman on South Park, that’s what they are commenting on. If it’s a joke, that can be a different thing, but I don’t see the effect of any cultural climate there.
They’re allowed to object, wasting your anti-racist vitriole against a non-racist is certainly your prerogative. shrugs
Well being cheap is the one I usually hear, and I have met a number of cheap Jews who fit the stereotype. I’ve also met some very generous ones, often both from the same family.
Also, Jews really ARE disproportionately represented in media and finance. 
The reality is that anti-semitism isn’t that strong of a current here in America.
Hmm…I think it may be self-sorting. Since you’re white, anti-semitic blacks are going to be less likely to be frank in your presence than they would be in mine. Particularly since a lot of the back anti-semites I know base their bigotry on religion and think that, since I grew up in an Pentecostal church, I share their bigotry.
(Note: I’m not saying all Pentecostals are anti-semites. Many are not.)
I haven’t spent any vitriol on anyone, and I also order mine by the gross, so I’m not worried about running out. I might not bother calling someone a racist for using an outdated word, but I think you’re forgetting that people often say prejudiced things unintentionally because they’re clueless. Is it okay because their intentions aren’t malign, or does it show unconscious prejudice that can rightly offend?
And you probably wouldn’t tell them about some guy who Jewed you out of ten bucks or say “you’re such a bunch of Jews!” if they were trying to figure out how to split a check. Am I right?
Intent is irrelevant and academic past a certain point. The semantic content of saying “Don’t be such a Jew” is “You’re cheap and stingy, just like a Jew”.
Folks can try to pretend otherwise, or be ignorant (but I highly doubt that even 1% of the smacktards using that slur online are ignorant that “Jews are cheap” is an old slur) but without the stereotype of Jews being money grubbers, the comment “Don’t be such a Jew” would have no meaning.
It has to have both semantic content and pejorative semantic content in order for the injunction to have any meaning. That’s the reason why “Don’t be a such a podiatrist” has virtually no meaning but “Don’t be such a Jew”, does. That’s the reason why you’d look at someone quizzically if they said “Don’t be such an construction crew worker.” but people would know exactly what you meant if you said “Don’t be such a faggot.”
Even though, unfortunately, “faggot” and “Jew” have entered the common use in certain online communities.
So whether or not the people who are purposefully comparing cheap people to Jews really just don’t mean nuthin’ by that slur (:rolleyes:), they’re still slurs. And their use does indeed serve to ‘mainstream’ the semantic content behind the slurs.
They may not be racist but they’re ignorant and naive if they think those aren’t going to offend black people. Or that Jewish slur aren’t going to offend Jews.
Well if you really care, then by all means go for it say something, but I don’t think it will have the intended affect. I know a guy, not a Jew, a European businessman who works in the US, fired an employee because she said she got ‘Jewed’ on the purchase of a coat. I don’t know her, and I only heard his side of the story, but somehow I imagine that she remembered getting fired in the biggest recession of her entire life a lot more deeply than she remembered the object lesson he was intending to convey.
I wouldn’t say any of those things. I might’ve in a younger crasser iteration though. The thing is, I have been nickel and dimed on checks, and the person who immediately comes to mind when I think of niggardly behavior at a restaurant just happens to be Jewish. This person springs to mind not BECAUSE he is Jewish, his Brother is diametrically the opposite, likely to pick up your dinner tab just because, but because of the behavior I saw him display. So unfortunately that sort of behavior is in my mind most closely associated with someone who happens to be Jewish. If I think about it though I can think of Jewish friends of mine who were always the ones being stuck with the extra tab at the end of a meal and regularly picked it up. Then there are also a couple of people I’ve met who make a big production of being a cheap Jew, and that’s likely not helpful for the stereotype. One friend who when you owe him money or when he’s counting his particular portion of the bill precisely (but fairly) will ask to be excused because he’s a Jew.
Yes, there are lots of obnoxious aspects of mainstream society. If you really care about a particular aspect by all means speak up, say something about it, but you always have to do a cost-benefit analysis of whether it’s going to make a difference or just bring some extra hostility in your environment that wouldn’t have been there if you could’ve just let it go.
Well we were ignorant and naive back when we were teenagers in a small town. We slowly became cognizant of the idea that it wasn’t a nice thing to say. The term nigger-rig to me today has a positive connotation, it means a clever improvization in the absence of ideal conditions. Someone who can nigger-rig something is a person I like to have around. I don’t use the term certainly, but that was the impression that term left on me.
Yes, it happens.
Nice…but I should have gotten some credit for inspiring this equation, seeing as I previously posited:
Normal person + Election to school board + Audience = Complete Asshat.
They certainly are the British face of anti-Semitism, but I’ve spotted it elsewhere in the wild. Ye olde ‘Genteel’ anti-Semitism was spat in my face by someone (a beagler, incidentally) who didn’t know I was Jewish – she was sooo happy there weren’t any of ‘those people’ at her boarding school.
And then there is the appalling ignorance of what Judaism is amongst the very educated – many of them do equate Jew==Israel; and I have heard people say things casually about how ‘clannish’ Jews are and the like.
It’s not just the BNP.
And the Jewish students who protested (peacefully but ardently) at David Irving and BNP’s Nick Griffin being given a platform to speak at the Oxford Union were accused of trying to ‘stifle free speech’ and ‘suppress debate’ (about whether the Holocaust happened? Really?). Anti-Semitism? Maybe not exactly, but there was certainly an edge to the whole thing which unnerved me a lot.
You don’t have to explain all of this; nobody’s going to suggest you’re an anti-Semite because of anything of the sort.
I agree completely. But I wasn’t talking about speaking up. I was saying that remarks can be hurtful and prejudiced even if “he didn’t mean anything by it.”
I know this happened to my mom in my hometown once. Well, she’s not Jewish–we’re South Asian/Muslim, so the person talking to her assumed she was also an anti semite, and made some remark about “those people” or something to that effect. My mom wasn’t amused.