Originally Posted by Hektore

I like where the video ring posted is going, and it illustrates kind of what I was thinking.

Let me use the (sort of) reverse word here: Cracker.

Now, As I understand it, cracker doesn't have a damn thing to do with saltines. It's an attempt to turn the bigotry and domination of slavery on it's head. It refers to the 'whip crackers' of slavery. It's an insult against the dominating, exploiting, power mongering WASPy types. I guess the idea is to call attention to our disgusting past, to show us for who we are, or at least how were and are viewed now.

There should be at least as much vitriol surrounding it as there is the word nigger, it grows out of the same hatred and intolerance and history. But us white folk don't really seem to care about it. As long as we don't care, as long as anyone doesn't care that the word is being used to describe them, to attack them then it doesn't have any power.

Why can't we just let it go?



So, you're saying that ethnic slurs attack the entire history of that ethnic group, but four-eyes only attack the particular individual you're saying it to? Ok, but what about the discrepency between the treatment of ethnic slurs for different groups, or say other slurs for blacks, lots of people would say nigger is the worst one, but take boogey or spearchucker, same thing - not as highly inflammatory, in my perception.

If you dropped all the words mentioned so far on a list and asked people to rate them in order from least offensive to most offensive, which is going to be at the top, which at the bottom? I would bet a our lists would all look very similar, it's an emotional response, but why is that so ruling. Really there isn't any difference so far as I can see but they're treated that way.