It seems to me that those who assert the loudest about what is insulting are the ones most likely to go out of their way to be insulting.
Just goes to show you the difference in perception I guess.
JLNobody wrote:I seem to sense an increase in the efforts of people to get away with politically incorrect usages--it almost seems to be a challenge to do so. Being rude, as as Snood calls it, "caustic" is being lowly of nature and action, if you ask me. And trying to "get away with it" smacks of a kind of social adolescence, a lack of adult poise and manner.
I don't often agree with JLNobody, but I find this a very astute observation.
JLN--
I don't like people to be insulting, nor do I want to bring insulting words into use.
I do like to point out raging hypocrisy about these words, though--the Tarbaby incident is instructive...
And, also, I think the reason this issue gets my goat so much is because a certain template of words has replaced judging people on substance. If bigots avoid the right words, they fly under the radar and are reflexively approved by small-minded people. Conversely, if a someone who busts their ass to promote ...say, minority advancement...refuses to adhere to an imposed social vocabulary--the substance of who they are becomes moot.
It's false and lazy--and I hate it.
My main issue here is separating the intent from the actual word usage. Anyone who wants to claim that we all put great thought into every word we use is, frankly, full of ****. People say things. People mean things. Sometimes those two are the same and sometimes they are not. "Tarbaby" and "regard" are two in this thread that I think people got worked up about by focusing too much on the actual word to the detriment of the pretty clear intent of the person using it.
Nigger is in a class of its own. I fancied, when I was younger, that it was just a word and it would be ok to use it among my black friends. One absolute angel of a friend actually let me slide for using it, presumably because he knew I loved him and respected him. In the course of our friendship, however, I came to realize that it just wasn't necessary and that it did not harm our friendship at all when I just stopped using it. And today I refuse to say it. If it fell on the wrong ears, at the wrong time, it wouldn't have been good for either of us. Similarly, when two young girls that I used to babysit referred to themselves this way in the presence of my 3-year old son, I had to ask them to stop. You can imagine what it might have been like for us if he repeated that word in public when my girls were not with us. Where do you think people would have assumed he heard it? It's always the parents. Then I would be in that impossible place where one makes the impotent claim "I am not a racist", which always rings hollow against the n word.
But again, this whole thing, for me, comes down to the difference between what people say and what they mean. With those we know well, it is sometimes easier to discern intent than with those we don't know so well.
You police your milieu, snood. I can handle mine.
If the question is whether or not tarbaby is a racist term, i would not have thought so, and said as much in the thread on the subject which was started before this thread was. I also said in that thread that knowing that it was an offensive term to people who resented it because they said it had racist overtones was sufficient to convince me that it ought to be abandoned for other language which describes an intractable situation in which one sinks more deeply as one tries to escape.
As for a claim that one's race gives one special insight into how others regard one, i've made it plain that that is a stupid and indefensible claim, and why i say so.
When the subject becomes the word n*gger, the entire ground changes. Many black people, especially young people of the hip hop generation, have abused the term in terms of "we can say this word, but y'all can't." That is also a stupid and indefensible claim, and only perpetuates anger and frustration from both sides of the horrible racist divide in this nation.
However, there can be no doubt that n*gger is a special term. There is no "flip side" to that coin. There is no term for white people which black people can use which even approaches the viciousness of that word. If someone calls me whitey or cracker, it doesn't man anything to me, beyond the rancor of anyone who would attempt to hurt me with words--and if i had given no cause, then it would be meaningless to me.
But that word conjures associations which no comparable slur against whites carries. Calling me cracker does not conjure images of lynchings, of dogs and fire hoses turned on my people because they non-violently protest the conditions in which they live, it does not summon memories of leaders of my people being assassinated, it carries no baggage of centuries of willful and hateful prejudice carried into action each and every day of a man or woman's life.
The fact remains, as Freeduck has pointed out, that the word is in a class by itself, and is freighted with meaning that no comparable epithet in our language carries.
Lash wrote:You police your milieu, snood. I can handle mine.
I wasn't "policing" anyone's "milieu", whatever the pretentious f*ck you mean by that. I was responding affirmatively to Freeduck.
Yeah, you
are policing your milieu.
(You can't deny it if you don't know what it means...LOL...)
~signed,
Your good friend, Lash
Lash,
declare it all you like, you are not now, and have never been, my "friend" - "good" or otherwise.
You are someone I will never trust, and hope never to meet.
Aw. Give us a kiss, snood. C'mon. You know you want to...
(You just a widdle grumble-puss...)
So, basically, Lash, the focus of this thread, as far as you, the author, are concerned, has become an opportunity to vent your contempt for Snood, and to spark an angry response from him if possible, has it not?
That's pretty damned childish and pathetic.
I can't even figure out what the f*ck people are arguing about here
Cycloptichorn
Setanta, that was very appropriate. Thanks.
