Quote:
Originally Posted by Halanna
It appears to me that it's only offensive depending on the ethnicity of the speaker.
African Americans (AA's cause I'm too lazy to type) call each other the N word all the time. I've overheard it in the Wal-Mart parking lot, in popular songs by AA artists, at the shop where my husband works and in movies where nary a protest is heard.
AA's can also call Hispanics or Latin Americans by the N word as a form of greeting.
Hispanics call each other Spic, can call AA's Spic as a form of greeting and for some odd reason call each other the N word.
AA's and Hispanics can call anyone not AA or Hispanic whitey, white boy, cracker, red neck and are somehow given a pass and it's ok.
The only people not allowed to call anyone any ethnic name is a person who is white. Then the protests start, the ACLU becomes involved, people lose their jobs, if anything happens in conjunction with an ethnic slur then it's a hate crime.
I never, whether in public or my husband's work environment hear white people use ethnic slurs. I only hear AA's and Hispanics and other minorities using them.
There is no denying that any ethnic slur is offensive and rude. But really, if it's so offensive and rude, then those very people who find it offensive and rude should stop using it in their everyday language and toward one another. It seems more a case of "do as I say, not as I do".
|
Devaluation through dilution. Some of my black friends and I refer to each other as "my nigga" because among my closest friends and our acquaintances, we're pretty much a microcosm of the colorblind society that's the supposed ideal. Between us, these words are just words and have lost their capacity to do harm. Among the black community and other minority groups, "nigger" has been devalued and is not harmful because members of the group understand the intention of the speaker. If, for example, I were to walk down the street with my friend Devin and I called a passerby a nigger, there is no history, no social contract between me and him, no evidence that I meant no harm by it, and he would have every right to be offended. If a random passerby called Devin a nigger with no prior evidence of a social contract and common understanding, Devin would have a right to be offended and suspicious of the perpetrator. If I, the giant white guy, went up to a friend and said "I'm Ian, this is my real-ass nigga Devin," and Devin shook his hand in greeting, I would be conveying the devaluation of the term between us and initiating a social contract between ourselves and the third party indicating that we hold each other as equals and use offensive colloquialisms in jest, or as a mockery of those who use such terms to dehumanize others, thereby devaluing the word's value to do harm and convey hate.