You are a "Nigger" and I am a "Cracker"

I don't like these words to be posted, no matter the reason given. Please at least keep them out of the titles, so that I don't have to see them.

I have always thought cracker referred to the condition suffered by many caucasians also known as the dreaded Pancake Ass....

i agree with edgar and i'm laughing at who else?

If we pretend such words don't exist we lose touch with the painful lessons of history. If we don't remember history, we are doomed to repeat it.

It is not the WORD that is offensive... a row of letters in print harms no one. It is the meaning and intent behind the use of the word. "Niggers" were hung on trees and their homes burned. "Niggers" were not permitted to vote. Even in my own lifetime, "niggers" were prevented from buying homes in nice areas. I think we need to remember those past times and the damage that was done to our society as a whole. To avoid the words folks used then would be an incomplete history... essentially, a lie.

I don't think these words with their filthy meanings need to be tossed in our faces in order for us to know what harm they've done and that ugly meanings they have.

Maybe you would forget if you didn't see them, but trust me, I won't.

Yes, you and I won't. We remember when the N-word was common and what it implied. BUT, if the word disappears, how will our grandchildren learn the horrors of racism before Dr. King's movement? If we sugarcoat history, we give our kids a false sense that things were better than they were.

And the gist of this thread, I thought, was to say these words have no place in today's social intercourse... which is correct. But how can this be stated without including the offensive words? Would you substitute "the n-word" and invent the phrase "c-word" instead? Would that honestly reflect the history of our society? No, the words SHOULD be shocking... they SHOULD cause our skin to crawl. That's the whole point. We must be reminded of what our country approved of in the past if we are to work toward a more civilized future.

Why do I get the feeling you never lived during the Civil Rights movement?

BUT, if the word disappears, how will our grandchildren learn the horrors of racism before Dr. King's movement

The words are recorded.

I think it's up to us to make sure our children and other future generations realize what's taken place. I am specifically doing that, and i make sure that my girls know what's up.

The effect of them still exists, and the words themselves will never go away, so I don't think there's a real necessity to bring them up just to say at random we don't need them in our society.

If you think the N-word should be abolished, what do you think we should do with the F-word?

Do we still have freedom of speech, anywhere?

It's an odd thing.

When I hear a white person refer to a black person as a 'nigger', I think that white person is a low class dumbass.

When I hear a black person refer to a black person as a 'nigger' I don't know what to think.

Joe(It's confusing.)Nation

It is precisely because I am too painfully aware that they exist that I do not need to see them infinitum. We think we are being sophisticated and wise to toss words about so easily. Words of mass destruction must be handled with extreme care and sensitivity. Some need to be buried away, and only dug up in the distant future, when historians study the madness of the times.

I am including black persons in my diatribe.

Nobody here seriously proposes making any words illegal, just counseling restraint.

I think it's better to deprive the negative meaning of words than to bury them. For example: The word Jew doesn't, at lest not to me, have the same negative meaning that it did during Nazi Germany.

I'm not saying the words 'Jew' and 'Nigger' can compare, don't read too much into this post.

I was in college during that time and saw him speak at our school. What in my post would have given you that idea?

A few years later, when I was teaching I had a teacher friend who was forced to live in a crime ridden project where the "negroes" of the day lived. She had saved enough to buy a house elsewhere but no one would sell to her. I told her she could buy my house when I was moving out of state. My neighbor had a fit when I told her about the nice teacher who'd be living next door.

As a small girl, I remember when drinking fountains and restrooms were labeled Negro and White. Stores actually installed double restroom facilities! If that weren't silly enough, a park where we went swimming had two big swimming pools... yep, one for whites and one for "negroes." That word was on signs everywhere and was accepted by most folks as perfectly fine. Segregation itself was accepted as perfectly fine by most folks. The word "nigger" is as you must know just a poor pronunciation of "negro"... but for some reason was considered "not nice" to say while "negro" was correct. Of course "negro" means "black" and later African Americans asked to be called "blacks" instead of "negroes." Can't recall if that was before or after they asked to be called "Afro-Americans"... and now today's "correct" term is "African American"... which is long and clumsy to say.

So, the race has had many names, some of which are now considered offensive. But words change and meanings change. I will say it one more time: It is not the WORD that matters, it's the attiude behind your use of a word. To use the word "nigger" is perfectly appropriate when discussing the history of African slaves in the US south, then and in the years that followed freedom. To use that word, or ANY word, for the purpose of deliberately insulting or belittling anyone is NEVER appropriate, and says more about the user of the word that the one to whom it's directed.

Words only have the power we give them, and I'm against giving power to just anyone, and certainly NOT to a mere string of letters!



I've read history books printed 50 years ago and believe me they are very different from what passes as history in today's "feel good" history books, which are not so much factual as they are politically correct. Face it, history, fairly recent history, had very little political correctness in it! Textbooks are written with different emphases by different authors for different audiences in different times. We've lost a lot of the facts of history because some folks today find them offensive and would rather not talk about them. I challenge you to find the word "nigger" in any school history text written in the last ten or twenty years. It won't be there. The word and all the pain that it includes will be gone by the time the next few generations are "learning" history. That is not a good thing... it's a destructive and dangerous thing!

Case in point, though not in the USA, still very relevant. UK has decided that their history books will no longer include the names of Churchill or Hitler or even the word Nazi! Whaaaah??? Sounds absurd, yes, but it's true. They don't want to upset the dear children. They don't want to offend Germans. They don't want to glorify one leader who led UK in a life or death war because nowadays groups and teams get all the credit, never one person.

This is scary stuff. You should be much more afraid of future generations repeating the mistakes of history from lack of knowledge than you are about the appearance of six letters in a row appearing on your computer screen!

I'm younger than the Civil Rights Movement (if not civil rights in reality), and if I'm hanging out with my black friends, they can call themselves nigger and I can call myself cracker and all is good. It's a sign of trust, I suppose. But if I call them nigger or they call me cracker, it'd be uncomfortable. Not unforgivable, because we're friends, but definitely a moment.

Don't know about 20 years from now, but right now, for younger folks like us, the words serve to establish and to blur boundaries. The words don't mean as much as they did 30 years ago and, hopfully, they still mean more than they will 30 years from now.

Whether these particular words continue to be used or not, bigotry is here to stay in the forseeable future. Retiring them merely defuses some of the ill feelings. It removes some of the poison from the atmosphere.

I agree with edgarblythe - no need to shove it in our faces. We all know what's what and what's going on, and not discussing it doesn't mean it's forgotten -- it's just not upfront.

They are ugly words with ugly associations, for some people more than others, so while you may not be offended by them, others might. A little consideration goes a long way.