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levite · 06-25-2009, 12:19 AM

For me, I think the difference between calling black people "niggers" or suchlike, versus, for example, people calling me a kike, or using other similar anti-Semitic language, is that while I might be rather offended, I am probably most likely to assume that the user of the slur is just ignorant; and based on my prior experience with such, I would be right a majority of the time. The majority of people in America who use anti-Semitic language or stereotypes don't even realize it's what they are: they're ignorant about Jews, and are usually very amenable to being corrected, and once educated, are generally ashamed at their own previous ignorance. You just don't find a large number of really hardcore, vitriolic, in-your-face anti-Semites in America these days, especially not in the cities.

On the other hand, racism is alive and well. Just because we have a black president doesn't mean that there aren't more racist fucks out there than we can imagine, who use the word "nigger" with casual indifference amongst their white friends, who are happy to laugh at the occasional "nigger" and "coon" jokes, who really, genuinely don't believe black people are equal to white people-- whatever the law may say-- and if you asked them, they would certainly not want their daughters to marry one of "them." These aren't people who would put on sheets and go out lynching, or even necessarily people who would snub a black co-worker at the office Christmas party. They are parlor racists, and they flourish the way that genteel anti-Semites flourished in 19th century Europe: which is to say, they infest the country like lice, bourgeoning everywhere.

But my point is this: I can feel free to take or leave being offended at anti-Semitic remarks in this country, because the US has little history of institutionalized anti-Semitism, and what exists today is far-flung and little tolerated. Most of us Jews have a certain remove from it.

But a black person in America lives at the ebb tide of a hideous history of institutionalized racism and subjugation, a tide that, if lessened, is nonetheless still washing around them. We white people can often little conceive this, because to us, it's history. It's something we read about in books, and watch documentaries about on the History channel. But to black folks, it's the stories they've heard growing up from their parents, grandparents, sometimes even great-grandparents. And it combines with the constant little annoying experiences of being given the eye by mall cops, or getting pulled over for DWB, losing out on jobs or opportunities to non-black people; or being presumed a drug user, or a thief, or a pursuer of white women; or being presumed good at sports, bad in the classroom, or presumed sexually exotic; or being treated condescendingly, patronizingly, or being told one should be "grateful." All of these things are routinely part of the lives of black people. They are wrong, and they are the little poison fruits that are borne on the ancient and hard-fought weed of racism. All that history, all that wrongness, all that poison is heard by black people in the utterance by non-blacks of the word "nigger."

Is it sensible that black people claim the word amongst themselves as a watchword? No. But what emerges from cultural trauma does not have to be rational. I don't pretend to understand the phenomenon, and I know my friends and I don't go around saying "Hey, what's up, kike?" On the other hand, I have a close friend in rabbinical school who tells shockingly offensive Holocaust jokes, and I laugh like hell at them, to just about the exact opposite degree that I would be furious if I ever heard a non-Jew crack those jokes.

I think this is one of those things about which we just have to respect each other's cultural peculiarities.

That said, I do think this discussion is a healthy thing!

06-25-2009, 12:19 AM	#43 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	For me, I think the difference between calling black people "niggers" or suchlike, versus, for example, people calling me a kike, or using other similar anti-Semitic language, is that while I might be rather offended, I am probably most likely to assume that the user of the slur is just ignorant; and based on my prior experience with such, I would be right a majority of the time. The majority of people in America who use anti-Semitic language or stereotypes don't even realize it's what they are: they're ignorant about Jews, and are usually very amenable to being corrected, and once educated, are generally ashamed at their own previous ignorance. You just don't find a large number of really hardcore, vitriolic, in-your-face anti-Semites in America these days, especially not in the cities. On the other hand, racism is alive and well. Just because we have a black president doesn't mean that there aren't more racist fucks out there than we can imagine, who use the word "nigger" with casual indifference amongst their white friends, who are happy to laugh at the occasional "nigger" and "coon" jokes, who really, genuinely don't believe black people are equal to white people-- whatever the law may say-- and if you asked them, they would certainly not want their daughters to marry one of "them." These aren't people who would put on sheets and go out lynching, or even necessarily people who would snub a black co-worker at the office Christmas party. They are parlor racists, and they flourish the way that genteel anti-Semites flourished in 19th century Europe: which is to say, they infest the country like lice, bourgeoning everywhere. But my point is this: I can feel free to take or leave being offended at anti-Semitic remarks in this country, because the US has little history of institutionalized anti-Semitism, and what exists today is far-flung and little tolerated. Most of us Jews have a certain remove from it. But a black person in America lives at the ebb tide of a hideous history of institutionalized racism and subjugation, a tide that, if lessened, is nonetheless still washing around them. We white people can often little conceive this, because to us, it's history. It's something we read about in books, and watch documentaries about on the History channel. But to black folks, it's the stories they've heard growing up from their parents, grandparents, sometimes even great-grandparents. And it combines with the constant little annoying experiences of being given the eye by mall cops, or getting pulled over for DWB, losing out on jobs or opportunities to non-black people; or being presumed a drug user, or a thief, or a pursuer of white women; or being presumed good at sports, bad in the classroom, or presumed sexually exotic; or being treated condescendingly, patronizingly, or being told one should be "grateful." All of these things are routinely part of the lives of black people. They are wrong, and they are the little poison fruits that are borne on the ancient and hard-fought weed of racism. All that history, all that wrongness, all that poison is heard by black people in the utterance by non-blacks of the word "nigger." Is it sensible that black people claim the word amongst themselves as a watchword? No. But what emerges from cultural trauma does not have to be rational. I don't pretend to understand the phenomenon, and I know my friends and I don't go around saying "Hey, what's up, kike?" On the other hand, I have a close friend in rabbinical school who tells shockingly offensive Holocaust jokes, and I laugh like hell at them, to just about the exact opposite degree that I would be furious if I ever heard a non-Jew crack those jokes. I think this is one of those things about which we just have to respect each other's cultural peculiarities. That said, I do think this discussion is a healthy thing! __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)