Fag hag is not really the same, since it means a woman who hangs out with gay guys, not a woman who is like gay guys.
Suzanne Westenhoefer (“I’m femme. I’m too femme. I’m so femme, I’m fag.”) notwithstanding.
I have no problem with the word ‘wigger’ or the word ‘nigger’. They are just fucking words.
Homebrew, are you 5 fucking years old? ‘The n-word’? What the fuck is that? It is not ‘the n-word’, it is nigger. Depending on how it used, it may be an insult. But fuck you and fuck every person in the world who is too immature to actually say ‘nigger’ when discussing ‘nigger’. IT IS JUST A FUCKIG WORD. No magic power attached.
Hmmm - well I have a good friend who is a gay man & he uses this as a term of endearment. I have more straight friends than gay friends (AFAIK) 
so I wouldn’t say I “invariably choose homosexual men as friends” - I just choose cool people as friends, gay or straight. I am a straight female, the term “fag hag” doesn’t bother me personally because I see as similar to a woman calling herself a bitch - taking the sting out of the comment, taking the power of that word back. Ed (gay male friend) uses “cocksucker” “fag” etc for the same reasons.
As to the OP, I am of the opinion that calling someone else “wigger” is just as vile as using the “N-Word”. If someone chooses to call themselves by these terms that’s one thing, but using it as an insulting description is quite another. I know many people see a double standard in “You call yourself a [insert term] but if someone else calls you that, you get offended” and maybe it is a double standard but I sure as hell wouldn’t use a term I know to be inflammatory & then wonder why people get offended.
Brutus, although the powers attached to the word nigger aren’t magical, you’re being delusional if you think it doesn’t affect people.
To some, that’s a very hurtful word that conjurs up images they’d rather not have conjured up. It’s steeped in hatred and carries a lot of baggage with it.
I disagree. When you use it like that, it magically transforms you from a dipshit into an asshole. Presto!
It’s not just people using it as a term to describe other people, but many people seem to like using it in describing themselves.
Look at the LiveJournal Bio of this girl: glittergl0ss . If you’re able to wait through the loading of bazillions of images, she says:
If someone (and yes, I know you can’t take one person as an example of a large group of people, but for argument’s sake) likes and seems to take pride in this term… I don’t know, I can’t even finish that sentence. It just blows my mind, actually.
The “wigger” - a person who adopts a culture outside of his “native” ethnicity. But what impels a person to move from appreciation and acceptance of the “other” to a clearly absurd attempt to deny what is clear at first glance, i.e., one is white.
I think it comes down to this: it is much harder these days to shock your parents into cardiac arrest mode. Used to be a white girl could depend on acheiving such an effect by simply dating a black man. Ain’t that easy any more. Further, some people are drawn to a social image of someone outside any acceptance. Beyond “punk”, so to speak. A wigger who thinks he can erase the distinctions between himself and the culture he emulates is clearly delusional.
He wills himself a scorned outsider, both to the culture he embodies and the culture he covets. Quixotic, almost innocent, in a way.
A parallel can be drawn to “hippies”, who, somewhat reasonably, expected that black people would be sympathetic to thier goals, in solidarity against The Man. But many blacks resented thier willingness, even eagerness, to scorn the very opportunity and acceptance that they were struggling to achieve.
The “underclass” of blacks, the kind of people parodied with ruthless candor by Chris Rock, just saw a set of easy victims.
To oversimplify: you could volunteer to be a “hippy freak”, a simple act of will would accomplish that. But a white kid cannot truly become “black”, regardless of will, because that culture is as exclusionary as it is excluded.
So: shrug at the wigger phenom. As the barriers are undermined and broken down, necessarily the exclusivity, and the comforting sense of belonging, are broken down as well.
The price of progress. Well worth it, in my book. YMMV
I vehemently disagree with this.
First example:
When I was in middle school, there was a white girl named Wendy who rode my school bus. She lived in the projects and was bussed to the hoity-toity school just like us black kids. Where she lived, she was a minority. Everyone–her neighbors, her friends–were black. She spoke with “black” speech patterns, dressed in ghettofabulous styles, dated black guys, and all of it was 100% real. I didn’t view Wendy as a wannabe because to me, the girl was black. Period.
Second example:
I have a cousin in Indiana, a woman who was the product of my aunt (a black woman) and a white man. My cousin looks very white. For the longest time, I thought she was adopted. Anyone on the street would take her for a white person. And yet, if you talk to her, you know she’s lived her life as a black person. I have no reason to believe that if she had in fact been adopted she would have turned out any different.
Third example:
The vice-principal of my high school was a white woman, but if you just heard her voice, you’d think she was black. She had “black” mannerisms as well. She was married to a black man. If I had been her child, I could see myself viewing her as a black woman rather than a white woman.
Culture isn’t something that’s skin deep. Just as there are black people who are very much mainstream and culturally indistiguishable from white people, there are white people who are very much “black” and culturally indistinguishable from black people. If their inclinations are geniune and they aren’t trying to be something they aren’t, I have no problems with it. I think the term “wigger” is just as ugly as “twinkie” for Asians-trying-to-be-white or “oreo” for blacks-trying-to-be-white. But I don’t think the people the word refers to are bad and deserving of hate.
I have heard the same idea described by the less offesnsive “whack”. White + black, and it sounds a little funnier. My problem with people acting “whack” is that they perpetuate the myth that all black people are gangsters and thugs. They take the dress code of a minority of black people and make it seem like every black person dresses that way and is a hoodlum and ne’er-do-well. It makes the person look like a clown and a poseur, so I guess they don’t need any encouragement from me. But it’s their way to dress and their choice, so as long as they don’t “nine their ghetto thugs fo axin’ disrespectin”, then I have no problem with it. If they want to be laughed at, so be it.
Really? When I was in high school, the term “Whack” was used quite often, but never in the context you describe. Basically, it was the opposite of “phat”. It just was a generic negative term and was generally used to describe things like music, events, situations etc. not so much people.
I’ve never actually even HEARD the word wigger before. It’s kind of offensive I think.
Fag Hag, on the other hand, I’ve always heard used as a term of affection. Scott Evil has a Fag Hag appreciation thread in MPSIMS (or he did) in fact. One of my very good friends used to refer to me as his fag hag, before he moved away. 
From the context implied here, I don’t think the two words are similar at all.
Cervaise, I love you.
I’ve never heard the word “wigger”, which isn’t unusual since at my age I am “totally clueless”. However, why is it not “whigger”?
as in the above “whack”? 
kniz, I am as out of it as you claim to be. When I opened this thread, I thought it was about a poster named “wigger” who had posted something offensive. I could look at the word “whack” all day long and it would never occur to me that it combined white and black. I have seen the expression “fag hag” used on the SDMB, but I refuse to reveal what I thought it meant.
Is there a class I can take or a study group I might join?
what Larry Mudd says. You see a wigger, you know that he’s a wigger. It’s not just a white guy with an interest in black culture. it’s a squeaky clean white suburban guy who’s convinced he’s straight outta compton.
and also, i’m truly bemused by all the white american (not including stuffy for obvious reasons) posters crying foul at the epithet. since when has the word ‘wigger’ represented the forced repression of your culture by another? maybe you should all ask yourselves, what would you rather put up with, the word wigger or racial profiling?
and…
while brutus’ sentiment was expressed somewhat aggresively, he’s right. you only know that a red light means stop if it’s put into context, just like you only know that a word is offensive of it’s is put into context.
so, (for instance)
“nigger is a racist epithet” is no more offensive than “n*gger is a racist epithet”.
while
“that damn nigger colin powell” is just as offensive as “that damn n*gger colin powell” or “that damn n-word colin powell”.
But the thing is, gex gex, someone who would use “n*gger” rather than “nigger” is typically someone who wouldn’t be using the word in an offensive manner. The astericks connates “no offensive meant”.
Personally, “nigger” does not roll very well off of my tongue. I can say “fuck”, “shit”, “damn”, and “ass” with ease, but not “nigger”. If that makes me immature, then so be it.
I fail to see why your bemusement is limited to whites. Several decades ago, one of the worst insults you could hurl on a white person was “nigger-lover”. To me “wigger”–depending on the context it’s used in–is not too far off from that term. You don’t have to have a history oppression to appreciate that calling anyone a variant of “nigger”–whether they be black or white–is potentially offensive.
monstro - i get what you’re saying. i’m not going to start demanding that anyone typing “n*gger” or saying “the n word” should change. i’m just saying, i don’t really understand the impetus behind it, and that when i’m in the situation where is must use the word (which i believe is as detestable as i’m sure you do), i think that the context i speak it in is more important the sounds i make.
yup. i see what you’re saying. i guess that i fail to see the harm in calling someone ‘wigger’ when it is the sort of person i and larry mudd described - a wannabe.
then again, i’d be upset if someone were to call me a wigger just because i like hip hop. then again, i’d be more incensed if someone called a black guy a nigger. i guess in both of these situations, an intolerance of black culture is expressed, but i consider that i should let insults like that just roll off my back, considering that i’m a white guy aged 18-35, i.e, top dog in western society.
but the term wigger, in itself, i do not think is symbolic of racial oppression. whereas the word nigger, as a result of years of slavery and oppression, signifies racism and discrimination, the word wigger, as the white version of the hip hop “nigger” (i.e the way black rappers often refer to each other and their people as a whole in their lyrics) signifies an attempt to involve oneself in a culture that one has little understanding of or connection with, for purposes of status (i.e, it is cool). as such, to butcher my already limited knowledge of semiotics, the use of the word wigger is a connotative system.
not only is this a butchering of semiotic theory, it’s a butchering of the english language. i do well.
I use the word all the time in my and NHL7890’s website (which satirizes the “white rap scene.”) Like any other word, I think it depends on the spirit in which its meant. Even the dreaded “N-word” is used widely by blacks.
Just to be clear, despite using the word “wigger” I never use the word “nigger” (except for when I’m talking about the word, or when I’m quoting something.)
So what’s the problem with white people trying to act black? It seems as legitimate a social movement as any.