I might need to think of a new name for my Black Lab.. I like to use pleasantries like "Retard", "Monkey Bastard", "Turkey" & "Snapper" etc A LOT, in fact if I call you by your first name we probably aren't friends.
You can't put this out and not apply it to all circumstances where anyone is being called out of their name. It reminds me of that scene in Snatch where Turkish says: "It's an unlicensed boxing match, Tommy. It's not a tickling competition. These lads are out to hurt each other." Come on son. You don't believe this shit. This is the equivalent of a sexy underwear picture - you're just playing to the crowd. If you did believe it you would never call someone out of their name. I suppose that it is possible to believe it however and be a complete hypocrite.
This is the equivalent of calling someone opposed to decapitation a hypocrite because they've been known to slap a person now and then. Also, there is a distinction being drawn here: when I call someone an idiot, I generally mean that they are substantively lacking in intelligence, because that's what the word means. Your logic only applies if, when uttering the word, you mean to call the person a subhuman savage who is beneath you and undeserving of human rights due to the color of his skin. Because that's what it means. But people dance around that by saying "it doesn't mean what it used to mean" or pretending "it isn't about race, it just means stupid people" because they don't want to own up to its meaning.
If you think I'm playing to the crowd by gently asking a group of mostly 20-something white guys to slightly alter their speech in the interest of not hurting somebody else, I think we're seeing different crowds here. Here's the difference between calling somebody a jerk and calling them a nigger -- "jerk" just hurts the person who I'm targeting. "Nigger" hurts a bunch of people who didn't even do anything wrong. It's offensive by its very nature. If you're boxing, hit the motherfucker in the ring with you. Don't wildly swing in the middle of the audience.
But if it's a word so bad, so horrible, so awful (and I think it is and I never use it just because...I can think of way more fun things to say about a person than their race) that its usage immediately makes you cringe, and incites rage and whatever other negative emotion... Why use it at all? Regardless of race of the speaker, why keep the word in use? I don't understand. I ask that question because of my own background. White girl, smalllllllll town (class of 26), walked across a Confederate flag to graduate high school (no shit), NEVER had any dealings with other races or cultures until I joined the army. All of my impressions of other races and cultures came as an adult. There were no black people in my school. We had some migrant Mexican workers' kids, but...that's it. So every cultural impression I have today has been made since I was 20 years old. Yay.
Couldn't you argue the same about cunt though? It's derogatory to all women, an entire gender on the planet, so wouldn't it be a fair statement to say that cunt is at least as bad, if not worse? I mean there are parts of the world were women are forced to cover their bodies or be stoned to death, where inserting a rifle into a woman's vagina and squeezing the trigger are acceptable forms of warfare, where gender preference at birth means girl babies are given up for adoption, where female babies and little girls are raped and killed for being female...there are horrific things happening to females in this world....so why would a word that demeans the entire gender be more acceptable?
I do think it can be applied to cunt; which is (one) reason why I shy away from that word. I'm only slightly more hesitant to generalize about it because I know it means different things in different countries. I also don't call people "faggots" or things "gay" for similar reasons. See also, "tranny." I don't think anybody should really be using it, but I don't really have an intellectual issue with people who have been hurt by a word attempting to reclaim it. Much in the same way that making fun of your friends is ok, but if a stranger said the same thing to you it would be wildly inappropriate.
That isn't what Nom said. He said There is no need to say that a person is an idiot by this logic. You don't get to call them an idiot. You can say "What you have said or done here demonstrates an inability to correctly process information in a manner that will produce the results that you apparently desire." However by Nom's definition of doing dickish things even this wouldn't be acceptable because it may indeed cause hurt to another person by the use of words. Come on. Come the fuck on. We are talking about words that carry some connotation of pain. It doesn't matter if you like the word or think its cool to say now or later or in the past. If it hurts someone, you don't get to say it based on Nom's logic. Or you can just say what the fuck you want and get punched in the mouth. That punch in the mouth won't matter if what caused it was the word Cunt or Nigger.
I'm going to have to use this one. Thanks! My favorite swear is jesus-titty-fucking-christ. Makes my wife cringe every time.
I think that's fair. I tend to be the person who insults actions. People can't help who or what they are. I'm female, so insulting me for being female is just a dick thing to do. Insulting me for being a neurotic spaz brained control freak who gets a little insecure sometimes so flips out over stupid shit? That's fair because those are actions I take and choices I make. I'd rather insult someone for their choices and actions than for being what they are, if I'm going to insult anyone at all.
If you read a little closer, it actually is what Nom was saying. He was specifically speaking to the people who use the word under the logic that it has no special connotation to them, and they use it wantonly without regard for its actual meaning because it's "just a word." The thing about people who use it with the intention of really using it is that at the end of the day, really racist folk are going to do really racist things. So sure, it'd be a nicer world if they kept their mouth shut, but at least their being honest about what they're up to. Lily whiter teenagers yelling it on XBox Live and then insisting they totally aren't racist bro are sort of another matter. It's an irritating desire to get all the emotional punch of the word and all the rebellious cred (because white people mistreating black people is totally unheard of and edgy, dude) without being willing to take on any of the responsibility for using it.
I graduated from a small high school and had about 5 black kids in my class. 3 of them were half black-half something else. One of them would hold up signs that said "lynch me" and other kids would take pictures and laugh. Another kid, who sat in the back of the class against the blackboard would be told, "Hey Chris, open your eyes and smile, because I can't see you!!" and no one one think twice. Personally, I thought the lynching pictures were a over the top, however, if no one's putting a stop to it, of course no one is going to think anything's wrong with it. That said, I believe "nigger" is the worse word here, for reasons that others have stated. It's degrading to a whole race of people. The word "cunt" on the other hand, well, I use it on a pretty much daily basis when I'm talking about another female's actions and how they have pissed me off. Such as, "She's being such a cunt" or "Stop being such a cunt!" I used to be offended by the word when I was younger, but like someone stated, it seems like it's being more widely used in the past years and I guess I've become numb to it. I like using it for how quick and to the point it is. One thing that does offend me as a female is when girls call other girls bitches and sluts, in a way that's supposed to be endearing. Nothing annoys me more than when I hear a girl say, "Those are my bitches!!!" or "Hi, sluts!!!" Really?? Is that really necessary?? Also, my husband uses "gay" all the time to describe things, which makes me cringe. Every time something doesn't go his way, it's "That's so gay." I just think it sounds ignorant.
Jesus. Look at all the shit you all have been getting up to. You won't catch me saying either one. I don't come from a tiny town in Idaho with a class of 7 people, I had seen black people by the age of a few months, and none of my best freinds are black - although one buddy of mine is Native American, Puerto Rican, black, dutch-jewish, and handicapped. There, now that I've established my credentials - Nigger, in my opinion is the most divisive. And now we have a thread that proves it.
Amen. Some of y'all need to check yourselves. "I've let go of my white guilt and I hear it in rap music, so it's like whatevs to me now." WHAT SORT OF FUCKERY DID I JUST READ HOLY SHIT. How are you not cringing as you type that out? I'm cringing just reading it. I want to talk about this. Truly. But I can't even be in a thread with the n-word typed out fully. It's making me more uncomfortable than my first episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I am trying my darnedest to skim past it, but my eye zooms in on that word and fixates on it...and then I marinate in a feeling of acute discomfort. I would hope that most people would feel that way, but I guess not. Focus: Racial slurs. Always worse than "cunt" or "fuck." Always.
One last thing, because this thread proves that DCC works in one of the worst places in the world for intellectual discussion. I actually meant to put "oppression" in italics not quotes. Yes women don't have equal footing in America, but they're not getting stoned to death. Yes a female CEO may make 1.1 million dollars a less than her male counterpart, but Jesus fucking Christ we're not Iran. There is no "Driving while female" or people pulling their purses closer when a woman sits next to them on the bus. Or even better, walking into a store and security starts shifting you way. I bet (non-black) women can walk around in hoodies in Florida and not get shot. There is shit so subtle that unless you're black or walking in with a black friend, you don't even know fucking happens. Hell the women who pull their purses close to them any time I walk by or sit next to them on the bus may not even fucking know they're doing it. Its ingrained into their system by their environment. That's the difference, that's the line. A lot of you are saying "I don't understand, I don't get it." Well here is the deal. You cannot, will not, and never will. We can say it, you can not. There is no logic here. There was no logic behind slavery, there was no logic behind separating people from their families, taking them from their cultures and forcing them to be work machines for no profit of their own. There was no logic when it came to killing blacks who escaped to try and be human. There was no logic to raping female blacks because they were property. There was no logic behind making people drink from separate water fountains, making them sit at the back of the bus, making them go to separate schools. Just last fucking month a school finally unsegregated their goddamn prom. Don't give me this bullshit about racism is gone we can all say nigger now. If you even think for one fucking second this can be rationalized, debated, or argued about in some way, you've already fucked up.
"Diet oppression, get the oppression taste without the calories!" This sort of oppression-Olympics logic causes more trouble than it's worth. "Oh, blacks in 1950s Alabama were only oppressed, because we let them drive and didn't stone them. It wasn't not Iran, after all." You're insisting (rightfully) that people recognize and respect the effects of one traditional of repression, while snidely dismissing another.
It's a legitimate argument, and I've witnessed it firsthand. I call the city of Memphis home. MLK was assassinated here and the city served as a venue for many pivotal events in the civil rights movement. Even today, racial tension is palpable and there are times where it's awkward. There are places where being the wrong race in the wrong place can get you hurt. This works both ways in Memphis. Actually, it's probably easier to be white and beaten in Memphis than it is to be black and beaten in Memphis, but that's a whole other thing that has little to do with race. Race is just the catalyst. That being said, I see more teenagers in mixed groups than I was accustomed to when I was growing up, and a whole bunch of these kids call each other niggers. I was floored the first time I heard a white teenager call a black teenager a nigger in conversational context. I'm sure they were talking about cheese fries or something because it was in a restaurant, but everybody seemed cool with it. Apparently, it's a thing though, because I hear it all over the place. I don't get it, personally. I do think it's a hurtful word that is representative of shameful, systematic oppression. And I think my synopsis applies to all people.
I'd like to weigh in on this. Things like "my nigga" and "nigga" used in the context of a quote/song etc. are generally fine around the black people I know personally. I would never use the word around a black person I didn't know, or anyone I didn't know, so as not to cause offense. You hear the "hard 'R'" argument a lot, and I agree with that. I'd bet that the kids you heard weren't saying "niggeR." To me, a lot of things change meaning depending on how they're said. If I call my buddy a bitch versus calling a stranger a bitch it's a whole different thing. Context is everything. Nigga/Nigger and fag/faggot are similar. "Nigger" and "faggot" are almost exclusively used in a situation where they are meant to cause harm. "Nigger" has the racial/slavery background, and "faggot" carries all the gay hate. However, "nigga" and "fag" (to a lesser extent) have shed a lot of of that baggage when they are used between young people. Again, context is everything. It's about knowing how the people around you will react, and whether or not the word is okay for the situation. Will I say "nigger," no, but "nigga," carries a different connotation and therefore can be acceptable when used in the right context. I will be more offended by anything said with a hateful attitude than something said in a lighthearted manner. The intent is what gives offense.