A Dialogue on the infamous “N” word

@argome321,

My old aunt hated japs. They were a threat, then, in west Los Angeles. She was born in 1900 and lived through a lot of stuff and her husband worked at Douglas. I heard her call people that when I was about seven, late '40's, and there was a japanese neighborhood nearby. Decimated by the removal to camps, which I learned later. We moved after that, not relevant, time went by, and we moved back.

I heard her call them that even later, when I had friends and co-workers who were of japanese decent, plenty still are alive. We didn't talk about it, except for me to explain I had these friends. Right around the time she died, my best teacher ever (elements of design) was from Japan.

So? she was not a woman open to a lot of change.

Certainty is like concrete.

3 Replies

@ossobuco,

People who lived through WWII absolutely HATED Japanese, and that didn't all just magically disappear in 1945.

Today, I think no more of calling Japanese "Japs" than I do calling british "brits." It's not an insult to me--it just saves typing. It's a diminutive name, that's all. Had there been no WWII, I don't think others would see the abbreviation as something "hateful." I didn't live through WWII, thank god.

Where I'm from, people refer to a Toyota as a "jap car." They don't mean anything the least bit derogatory when they say it. In fact, most of them think jap cars are far superior to most American cars.

I grew up with a kid named "Charles" that everybody called "Chuck," his parents included. Somewhere around his late teens, he suddenly decided that he wanted everybody to refer to him as "Charles." Nobody who always knew him ever did, though. He was still Chuck to us. We weren't trying to "disrespect" him, it's just that he was always "Chuck" to us.

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@layman,

I did, but I was busy in my play pen, right outside the army airforce base.
I liked pablum.

0 Replies

@layman,

I didn't know that that usage has changed, re japs. Good. I figure it will be a while to be accepted as not a neg.

Oh, and some of us have been told not to say brits.
no link
I still do.

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@ossobuco,

I didn't add that when my aunt said that, those times, she was near to spitting.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Quote:

I didn't add that when my aunt said that, those times, she was near to spitting.

Yeah, Jo, thanks the difference. It's not "what" is said, but more "how" it's said that matters to me.

I have been called an "asshole" (and much worse) by friends (and have done the same to them) and never blinked.

On the other had, if some belligerent S.O.B. calls me that in a bar, then there's likely to be a "problem."

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@argome321,

Quote:

Shall we discard every dictionary definition?

I was going to comment on this earlier, but didn't get around to it, then forgot. Not "every" dictionary says the same thing. Maybe it wasn't obvious, but the quote I provided from Webster's contains their commentary (re "queer"), not mine. They often have a "usage comment" which accompanies their pithy definitions. Here's (part of) their entry for "nigger."

Quote:

Definition of NIGGER

1. usually offensive; see usage paragraph below : a black person
2. usually offensive; see usage paragraph below : a member of any dark-skinned race
3: a member of a socially disadvantaged class of persons <it's time for somebody to lead all of America's niggers … all the people who feel left out of the political process — Ron Dellums>

Usage Discussion of NIGGER

Nigger in senses 1 and 2 can be found in the works of such writers of the past as Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens...Its use by and among blacks is not always intended or taken as offensive, but, except in sense 3, it is otherwise a word expressive of racial hatred and bigotry.

As you can see, the word was originally merely descriptive. It wasn't a "bad" word, any more than the phrase "of African descent" is "bad." How did it become "bad?"
Webster's also says: " it now ranks as perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nigger

But why "should" it be "bad?" Twain didn't mean anything negative when he referred to "nigger Jim." Well, we know "why" I guess, but, here again, I don't like the idea of hate groups like the KKK being models for how a word is used. Why should they become the standard for what was once a neutral word? To me, it's almost like saying they are "right."

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@argome321,

Quote:

Blacks are disproportionately incarcerated.

Do you think prison terms are democratically selected ? They do more crime, they do more time. Instead of wailing about the sky being blue, you might want to address the real issue of WHY blacks are committing more crimes.

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@layman,

Quote:

Chinese "chinks."

When asked where they came from, many of the railroad builders, laundry boys, and general hands (including cowboys), replied Chi'in. So they were called Chings. Another example of a insult starting out as a reasonable word but because of the hatred of a minority it seems the word is to blame and not the person using it derogatorily.

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@Ionus,

I'm just paraphrasing from memory, and I may be way off, but I recall reading some statistical study which found that the leading cause of death among young black males was homicide--overwhelmingly at the hands of other young black males.

When I was young, the idea of a "gang fight" was just a brawl by crowd, with fists being the "weapon." Now it's with automatic weapons. Back then, the thought of killing other gang members was never seriously considered. Things have changed, and not for the better.

Back then, someone hauling out a pistol to fight with would've been seen as a coward, not somebody to admire.

1 Reply

@layman,

I was 16 and in a gang and was deeply shocked when one of ours was killed by a little punk with a shotgun. We had always fought fair, stopping when the opponent was down or had enough. Something changed.

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

My old aunt hated japs.

My parents, 5 uncles and countless other more distance family members fought in WW2. They spat the word Jap out like it was horrible poison.
In Asia they still refer to Japs. At a memorial to the slave labour that built the Burma Railway, at Kanchanaburi (bridge over the river Kwai) a Jap tourist was complaining that the term Jap is insulting. It was on all the exhibits. He refused to believe the Japs had done anything wrong and had certainly never committed any war crimes. He also refused to believe the thriving trade in Philippine virgins to old Jap business men who wanted a virgin before they die. He did however, believe that Koreans working in Japan were filthy scum and blacks were inferiors, animals. The Japanese are not a people open to a lot of change.

1 Reply

@Ionus,

Quote:

He did however, believe that Koreans working in Japan were filthy scum and blacks were inferiors, animals.

I had to laugh at that, Ionus. Human nature can be just downright funny.

The japs have a long history, predating the advent of Hitler by countless centuries, of holding an ideological belief that they are the "master race," to whom everyone else is necessarily inferior.

1 Reply

@layman,

I admire your dignified response. Well I took great offense as I have been made a member of an Aborigine tribe. Quite an honour ! I told him I consider myself black and it confused him greatly. He has no idea how close him came to a damn good beating.
They have very little crime in Japan because of their racial commonality, people see their own genetics walking round and this dampers "their from a different tribe" mentality. It comes at a cost, however, with racial intolerance and high rates of suicide.

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

I leave others to wrestle with themselves over this. As for me, I knew as a teen that the word is far too ugly for me to ever use, even in these kinds of discussions. If the entire world suddenly decided it was an okay term, I still would not be saying it.

I can't say it any better than Walter did. The ugly words mentioned are always going to be ugly, off-limit words for me. Slurs were not allowed to be spoken when I was growing up in my parents home. You could refer to someone as an asshole, but not because of their skin color or religious belief. But asshole is an equal opportunity monitor.

I can say I've been bitterly disappointed with people who do indulge in slurs. I can't view them thru a rosy tint at all. And really, there is no real equivalent return slurs that are as offensive or ugly as the ones already mentioned. Perhaps for the next century, most of those ugly words are going to remain loaded. Luckily, my vocabulary allows me to communicate without using a dozen or so ugly slurs.

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Quote:

“He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.” (Samuel Johnson)

Quote:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” (Marcus Aurelius)

Perhaps worth a thought.

1 Reply

@layman,

Quote:

“He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.” (Samuel Johnson)

Quote:
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” (Marcus Aurelius)

The problem with these quotes is that they refer to external stimuli, but isn't that the subject? That why we have a Central nervous system so in some way to some degree we can be in touch with the eternal world. If there is a perceived threat, real or not, we want to know so our adrenaline kicks in to fight or take flight.

Nor does the quote take into account how that external threat has come to be legitimate.

Second they assume and imply that the person viewing the external stimuli doesn't possess the mental capability to adequately access the extent of the threat.

The Samuel John quote isn't as noble as it seems once analysed. The quote is hubris. The quote, if applied here, is offensive to those who were actually
offended by racial slurs.

Remember we are talking about the human condition which can be emotionally fickle, forever whimsical because that what it is to be human.

That quote reminds me of two things, Kipling and his poem "IF" and Nietzsche ideological Ubermensch.

They are similar in that they require man to reach a state of some type of perfection, something unobtainable, something unrealistic... Something utterly non-human.

2 Replies

@Ionus,

Quote:

Do you think prison terms are democratically selected ? They do more crime, they do more time. Instead of wailing about the sky being blue, you might want to address the real issue of WHY blacks are committing more crimes.

I know why Blacks commit the crimes that they do? Besides the normal reasons that all types of people who commit crimes...I ask you...

Do you really think that hundreds of years of being forced into slavery, hundreds of year of being dehumanized, hundreds of years of being ostracized, hundreds of years of being sold, denied education, families torn apart , denied a right to earn a living, whipped and lynched, not considered to be human, that that type of physical and psychological damage can be undone in less than 100 years?

Perhaps you need to get a clue

1 Reply

@argome321,

Quote:

The Samuel John quote isn't as noble as it seems once analysed. The quote is hubris. The quote, if applied here, is offensive to those who were actually offended by racial slurs

The quote applies just as much, even much more so, to those using hate speech than to the objects of that hate, as I see it, Arg.

Quote:

They are similar in that they require man to reach a state of some type of perfection, something unobtainable, something unrealistic... Something utterly non-human

I see your point here, Arg, and agree to some extent, but I think you are vastly overstating it. You come across as a very individualistic person. Quotes like this are more applicable to, and more easily comprehended by, your type, that's true. Just think about it, rather than conclude that you have somehow been insulted. I think the core assumptions underlying the difference in opinion we've had in this thread is elucidated by the quotes I posted.

Quote:

Second they assume and imply that the person viewing the external stimuli doesn't possess the mental capability to adequately access the extent of the threat.

I think they presume the opposite, which of course, is not an accurate presumption in all cases.

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@argome321,

Quote:

...the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it...

In the context of this thread, the "thing" is the word.

You have strong emotions associated with this word, for reasons which are completely legitimate and perfectly understandable.

The younger generation does not always have those same associations. You want them to have them, to share them with you. Of course, you could also share their feelings with them. But I think you are treating the issue as though the pain is due to the word itself, which is why you feel that they must adopt and assume your pain, rather than you undertaking to understand why they don't share it.

2 Replies

A Dialogue on the infamous “N” word

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