BS: Using the N-word.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 21 May 06 - 11:18 AM

I've explained the following any number of times to people who have wanted want to police my language in a desire to feel better, somehow, about living in a divided world. Baggage (theirs, mine) always comes up. So I will say before saying anything further that I'm not describing this as a debate, an argument, a recommendation, or a complaint. What You See Is What You Get-- I'm intending to be descriptive, not pejorative.

In any matter concerning race, in today's society, IMO no matter what term is used, or what the intention, mis-speaking is likelier than accuracy, and misunderstanding is the likeliest outcome of all. Oh, I do think it's getting better in many respects, but it's a long way yet from being "good." It's messy.

Each of the racial/cultural referents and phrases people might use evoke certain truths and touch upon one or more painful aspects of the American experience in all its grandeur and ugliness. There is always baggage attached because, in my experience, we are such an unhealed people.

So in considering what words to choose myself, I do the best I can to be accurate to the situation and the topic being discussed.

For instance, if one is talking about color-based discrimination, I choose to speak in terms of "people of color" because I may or may not be discussing people with African heritage-- I might be talking about the whole spectrum of racism which is also aimed at people of Asian or Hispanic heritage. What's being discussed there is the reaction to people whose skin is darker than whoever is aiming the reaction, not other aspects like culture, place of origin, etc. So using a more "politically correct" term such as "African American" in such a situation would be inaccurate.

Similarly, if talking specifically about times when Black Pride was a huge part of the US cultural landscape, I will use the term "black" or "Black," the former being a generic adjective and the latter a proper name or part of one, depending on the situation.

When I am talking about culture springing from African roots, I usually choose the term "African."

And so forth.

What I purposely don't do is use terms that are removed from their accuracy in an effort not to offend, just for the sake of not disturbing a bunch of white/European-American/middle-class/guilt-ridden/nicey-nicey people who have never known someone of another culture deeply, in their lives, and who merely wish to conform to one another's sense of what's "OK."

I also don't apply one time period's sensibilities to words or phrases of another time used in ways I can't quite grasp, as if doing that can un-do wrongs that I know were done.

Still with me? I hope so. This matters to me.

I don't think there is any way to talk (or post) about any of these issues (or matters of cultural history) without things getting pretty complicated pretty fast. I am always interested in thinking more clearly about them, and being as accurate as I can, to the best of my ability.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Franz S.
Date: 21 May 06 - 01:17 PM

I'm old enough to remember the fight to get newspapers and magazines to capitalize the word "Negro".    The issue then and now was and is not so much what term is most accurate but what is polite and respectful (and of course what is not hurtful). I still use "Negro" and in my mind see the capital "N" every time I use it, because it was so important then. Seems pretty trivial now, but what was at stake then was claiming one's humanity. Still is.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: GUEST
Date: 21 May 06 - 01:43 PM

The epithets Ofay and honky don't carry near the negative charge the word nigger does, and any attempt to put them on equal footing is idiocy, not to mention (IMO) racist.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Wolfgang
Date: 21 May 06 - 01:46 PM

equivalent word which can be used as a racial epithet against white kids

I've heard in German the use of 'Quarkarsch' which can be translated as 'cottage cheese arse' but it sounds much better in German.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 May 06 - 08:38 PM

"Spook" is also used as a term of abuse by black against white. The reason such terms lack equivalency is that in England and to some extent in America there is still an unequal distribution of power, Coli Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Baroness Amos notwithstanding.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Azizi
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:38 PM

Richard, do I understand your 21 May 06 - 08:38 PM post to mean that [some]Black people where you live use "spook" as an abusive term for White people?

If so, with all due respect, in what country do you live?

In the United States, my experience has been that when it is not used to mean "a spy", the word "spook" is usually used as a derogatory term for Black people. This meaning seems to be confirmed by that word's listing in the Urban Dictionary

Your comment raises the possibility that offensive terms can have one referent population in one part of the world, and a different referent population in another part of the world.

Of course, neither practice is good. But still, that shift in targeted population would be interesting from a cultural point of view.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 22 May 06 - 03:09 AM

Yes - England - the derivation is from "as white as a ghost".

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Paul Burke
Date: 22 May 06 - 06:09 AM

To be sung in a heavy Mockney accent, from the singing of Rory Heap about 1972:

It's all for the love of a fair young maid
What in Camden Town did reside.
Meself, I lived in Clapham,
What was a one-and-fourpenny ride.
But there was a fly in the ointment,
As soon you will perceive,
For though I loved her oh-so-well,
She loved a Portuguese.

One day i saw them out together
And I opened my mouth to speak,
But what I saw before me eyes
Made me shut me gob right quick.
For there they was a cuddling
And a snogging and a holding-of-hands,
And there he was a-seducing of her
With pints of babycham.

Now he was a nasty piece of work,
Gonzales was his name,
And there he was a dabbling
With the honour of my dame.
So I resolved to do him in
Even though it was a sin,
Cos I don't like Portuguese in general,
And in particular I didn't like him.

So I follows him to his lodgings
Down in Millwall, thereabout,
And I takes him down this alleyway
And I turns him inside out.
And I muttered jealous oaths, and things,
As I punched him black and bluer,
Then I opens up this manhole cover
And I bungs him down a sewer.

Well, when our Flo she heard the news
She made my poor life hell,
So just for the sake of some peace and quiet
I done her in as well.
And now I'm up before the beak
To pay for my crime.
He says "I don't like what you done first off, young man,
But I'll forgive you the second time."

Now, love and jealousy is dangerous passions
And I shouldn't have intermixed 'em,
But because I was not sensible
I'm languishing here in Brixton.
And it's all for the love of a fair young maid
What in camden Town did reside,
Yes, it's all for the love of that fickle young thing
I got fourteen years inside.

Nice to see it survived the Dun Laoghaire ferry.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 22 May 06 - 09:29 AM

If you'll tolerate a bit of thread drift, I'll admit I'm a bit annoyed by the word "Caucasian." It ought to be considered an obsolete anthropological term. Wikipedia says:

The term itself derives from measurements in craniology from the 19th century, and its name stems from the region of the Caucasus mountains, itself imagined to be the location from which Noah's son Japheth, traditional Biblical ancestor of the Europeans, established his tribe prior to its migration into Europe.

If you're going to call people African-American, Asian-American, Native American, etc., then obviously the equivalent term is European-American. Why not use it?

(People in other countries will have to work out their own terms, I suppose.)

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: artbrooks
Date: 22 May 06 - 10:18 AM

And, as another aside, in the American Southwest, just about everyone who isn't of Mexican (for lack of a better word) descent is referred to as an "Anglo"...including the Irish.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Paul Burke
Date: 22 May 06 - 10:29 AM

Cork Asian should be limited to those of Eastern ethnic origin and currently settled in that pleasant county in the south of Ireland.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:22 PM

Y'know, while I've heard the word nigger used by a small number of white racists, by far the most common occurrence of the word seems to be by black comedians.

I'd like to respectfully submit that the problem isn't with the word, unpleasant as it may be--it's with the attitude behind its usage. And I'm offended by the use of the terms "N-word" and "F-word" and typographic pussy-footings like "n****r, which I consider to be pure b******t.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:39 PM

For some folks, typographic pussy-footings like "n****r and b******t allow them to get past workplace firewalls to access the DT.

:~)

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Kim C
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:59 PM

I think someone beating another person with a baseball bat IS a hate crime regardless of what epithets were or weren't used.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: GUEST
Date: 22 May 06 - 02:02 PM

Blacks need to stop calling each other nigger. I never hear white people say this word. It's been trained out of them, for the most part, IMHO. I'm calling myself European American from now on.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Scoville
Date: 22 May 06 - 02:39 PM

I still don't understand why it matters WHY somebody beat somebody else to death--isn't the point that it was a stupid, senseless, murder and they ought to be locked up for a very long time? I don't care what color somebody is or what moronic, racist, ideas they have, I just want them off the street.

I live about two miles from the high school where a Latino student was beaten, sodomized with a piece of pipe, and left for 10 hours in a back yard by two white teenagers because he had allegedly kissed a younger white girl at a party. The white kids had violent records and had, at least at some point, white supremacist associations. Frankly, while I find white supremacists disgusting beyond words, what I mostly care about is getting anyone who would do such a thing put away so he can't do it to anyone else. If a Latino is "too different" now, sooner or later they're going to find a reason that somebody else is "too different" (even if they're white, Anglo, whatever the qualifications) to justify doing it again.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 May 06 - 02:50 PM

Kim C said:

I think someone beating another person with a baseball bat IS a hate crime regardless of what epithets were or weren't used.

Kim, I certainly see what you're saying in a human context, but in the context of the law a "hate crime" is a sort of term of art, with sociopolitical meaning.

If I beat up my ex-son-in-law (as in my mind I've often threatened to do), my crime isn't a "hate crime" as that expression is understood in the law. Reprehensible, surely, but not fitting into that legal category.

Burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American, on the other hand, is a hate crime even though no epithets are used.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: dianavan
Date: 22 May 06 - 04:29 PM

I, too, like the term European American. It provides a fair balance linguistically. I often refer to myself as a Canadian Hybrid (thats a little Asian, Aboriginal and European) because there doesn't seem to be a term for those of us who are the result of the melting pot.

The labels Yellow, Red, Black and White all denote stereotypes based on colour. I try to avoid colour references when talking about human beings. I mean, for Petes sake, we're all different colours.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Wolfgang
Date: 24 May 06 - 02:32 PM

I dislike the ....American words whatever comes before the 'American'. It is a parochial term of little use outside of a small (in comparison to the world) country (and don't tell me that this time just for a change you do mean a continent).

I nearly choked laughing when I once heard an American visitor to Germany comment that we also had African Americans in Germany when a couple of black students entered the pub.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Azizi
Date: 24 May 06 - 07:10 PM

For those who are "in to" this subject, in my opinion, this diary and the comments that were posted by those reading it, is an excellent read:





Everyone, and I really do mean everyone, needs to be able to talk to someone different from themselves if for no other reason than to gain a perspective they wouldn't otherwise have had.

It slays the stereotypes going both ways. But more than that, you find the things that are the same.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the N-word.
From: Azizi
Date: 24 May 06 - 07:20 PM

Sorry, here's that dailykos diary URL:

An experience of race from the 'whitest man in America' by wclathe
Wed May 24, 2006 at 01:15:07 PM PDT.

In the diary the writer shares his memories and multifaceted experiences with race and racism.

The comment that appears at the end of my inadvertently submitted last post was from that same diary, and should have been attributed to Chincoteague.