guthmund

The Gold Standard stopped in '73 during the Nixon administration, which MrSelfDestruct has so studiously pointed out. Our money has value simply because our government has said it has value. It's called 'fiat money' and the only way you're going to trade it for gold at Fort Knox is to write a threatening letter on the back of your dollar, give it to a guard, and hope for the best.

So, she uses racial slang. What is the big deal. If it offends you or people you care about, kindly tell her to clear her lexicon of such language or keep her yap shut while she's around. Other than that, there's really not much you can do. She's a big girl; she has to make her own decisions.

All you can do is state your position and your opinion in a calm rational manner and hope she picks up on the seriousness of the topic. Eventually, she'll run into someone who won't be as calm and rational about her choice of words. While that is a terrifying thought, you can't worry of blame yourself.

If an idiot is willing to take a nap on the track, an idiot deserves to be run over by the train.

__________________
No signature. None. Seriously.

H12

There's my two cents.

__________________
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."
--Aristotle

yatzr

just go find a black friend to come over and "get mad" when she says it. I think she just has to realize that it would actually offend someone.

seriously though, i think the only people who have a right to be offended by this word are people who don't use it or any other racial slurs.

Another thing i just don't get (while we're on the topic) is how there are all these scholarships and stuff just for certain ethnicities. Then, the majority of kids who gets these scholarships grew up in nice places where they never even faced racism. I have a korean friend who's as white as the next girl (under the skin anyway) and she got huge freakin scholarships for being a minority. Never in her life did she face racism. If i (being a whitey) tried applying for an ethnic exclusive scholarship, they'd laugh at me. But if anyone ever tried making a white exclusive scholarship, they'd be racist. There's even ethnic exclusive clubs at universities, but of course there aren't any white exclusive clubs because that's obviously racist. Now i've never tried to join one of these ethnic exclusive clubs, but i'm pretty sure they wouldn't embrace it with open arms. My last point is about all of the 'prides'. I guess i don't know if they're really around too much anymore except maybe gay pride, but I seem to remember hearing alot of ethnic prides. once again, white pride just wouldn't go over well. It's the same for straight pride, except then i'd be a homophobe. all of these things say to me that i'm being oppressed because i can't be proud of who i am and i can't give back to just my people. In reality, i don't really care because my life has been good, but when i hear people talk about the "n" word, all I can think of is 'good lord, slavery ended a long time ago, you're the ones that kept the word alive anyway, let it go'.

__________________
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yatzr

oh yeah, i would never actually make a white or straight exclusive anything because i realize that it's just dumb (and racist), i was just trying to make a point

__________________
Mechanical Engineers build weapons. Civil Engineers build targets.

timalkin

What will happen in 20 years when white people are the minority in the United States? Do you honestly think white people will get their special clubs then?

Jeff

I don't get how people get offended so easily. It's gonna take more than a few racist words to piss me off. Just seems everybodys become sissified.

__________________
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
--Charles Bukowski

water_boy1999

Scout, in my humble opinion, you should go back to school and get an education. Focus on American History and the oppression that the African American community had to endure. It isn't just a "fuckin" word to them because of the hardships they faced in being recognized as human beings by many of our white forefathers. For your reading pleasure Scout, I have included a great article about the "N" word and the origins of it's use in pop culture.

Sorry for the length, but it really is a good article.

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/me...gger-9814.html

Article:
New Word Order


With the help of Quentin Tarantino and a decade of gangsta rap, the word 'nigger' has worked its way back as a staple of pop culture. But has enough healing occurred to make the word safe for humanity?

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor


I WENT TO SEE Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown a few weeks ago and heard actor Samuel L. Jackson use the word "nigger" to refer to half of Southern California, from black drug dealers to Pam Grier to Robert De Niro to all the folks on the streets of L.A.'s Koreatown.

"Look, I hate to be the kinda nigga does a nigga a favor, then--bam--hits a nigga up for a favor in return," Jackson tells another black character in the movie. "But I'm afraid I gotta be that kinda nigga."

Along with snappy pop-culture dialogue and fits of explosive violence, the use of the word "nigger" has become something of a trademark of Tarantino films. (Tarantino, by the way, is white.) When Tarantino himself finds a murdered black man in his garage in Pulp Fiction, he asks Samuel Jackson if there was a sign outside reading "Dead Nigger Storage." And when John Travolta questions the quality of a stash of drugs in Pulp Fiction, the white dealer asks him, "Am I a nigger? Is this Compton?"

When I first heard the white drug dealer's lines in Pulp Fiction, I remember thinking that at last somebody is admitting how commonly the term is used among many white people when there are no black people around. Casually and matter-of-factly for the most part, I'm sure, and without a lot of dissent. After all, while the Travolta character doesn't use the word himself in the movie, neither does he protest.

At the same time, Samuel L. Jackson's use of the N-word in Jackie Brown is especially noteworthy because he throws around the term while talking to a white character.

And it caused immediate controversy. In an interview with the Daily Variety newspaper, African American film director Spike Lee says that he counted the use of the word 38 times in Jackie Brown. "I'm not against the word," Lee said. "And some people speak that way. But Quentin is infatuated with that word. What does he want to be made--an honorary black man? ... I want Quentin to know that all African Americans do not think that word is trendy or slick."

Tarantino quickly defended his position. Early this year he told the Boston Phoenix newspaper that "[t]he word 'nigger' is probably the most volatile word in the English language. Should any word have that much power? I think it should be de-powered. But that's not my job. I don't have any political agenda in my work. I'm writing characters. The use of the word 'nigger' is true to [Samuel L. Jackson's character]. To not have him say that would be a lie."

And Jackson came out in support of Tarantino. "Black artists think they are the only ones allowed to use the word," he said. "Well, that's bull. ... Quentin sees something cool about the way we live our lives and deal with our problems. ... Quentin actually lived in a black lifestyle for a while." Whatever that is.

But OK, the secret is out, so we may as well fess up. African Americans have been calling each other "nigger" probably since the word was invented, not as a pejorative necessarily, but generally as a term of identification. "Bad nigger" is a term of respect within the black community. "Dumb-ass nigger" is not, but it is the "dumb-ass" that determines. And quite often the term is used as a sign of highest affection. Some years ago in a whoop-and-holler bar, I heard a woman say to her boyfriend that she was convinced he was going to eventually leave her for another girl. "Why, baby?" he asked. She broke into a sob. "Cause you think my legs is too skinny," she wailed. "Ain't so," he said, putting his arm around her slender shoulders and smearing a wet kiss on the bones of her cheek, "you'll be my nigger if you don't get no bigger." She was convinced.

But this was in a "Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement," a "colored town" with its "colored interests," as Zora Neale Hurston would say. Black people spoke such words only in private, hidden behind the dark veil of black life that, until this generation, most white folks never penetrated or even knew about.

All that is changing now.

Led by a cadre of mostly young entertainers, black people's use of the N-word in public is a growing trend. Black comics use the term extensively, and references to "nigga" and "niggaz" permeate many rap songs: "My niggas never change/They kicken it wit their gang and remain the same" (Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony, "Everyday Thang"); "Thug ass niggas that love to bust/It's strange to us" (Notorious B.I.G., "It's Strange to Us"); "Wanna grab a skinny nigga like Snoop Dogg/Cause you like it tall/and work it baby doll" (Snoop Doggy Dogg, "You Thought").

Like most rappers, the late Tupac Shakur used the term freely in interviews. In a 1996 interview with Vibe magazine, Shakur used it to refer to inmates he shared a prison cell with ("I don't have to talk about whether or not I got raped in jail. If I wouldn't lay down on the floor for two niggas with pistols, what the fuck make you think I would bend over for a nigga without weapons?"), to his fans ("Ain't no mystery ... niggas know what time it is"), to his rap rivals ("Biggie is a Brooklyn nigga's dream of being West Coast"), to himself. ("There's two niggas inside me. One wants to live in peace, and the other won't die unless he's free.")

The term is common in the acts of black comedians, an occurrence that is not even recent. Richard Pryor was using "nigger" onstage 20 years ago, and Dick Gregory (a staunch civil rights supporter) used the word as the title of his 1964 autobiography. (On the dedication page Gregory wrote, "Dear Mama, Wherever you are, if you ever hear the word 'nigger' again, remember they are advertising my book.")

Such public flaunting of a derogatory word by the defamed group itself is not unusual. Many gays have taken on the word "queer," and many lesbians have taken on the word "dyke" as their own; because of it, both words have lost their pejorative sting.

At the same time it is becoming a staple item of pop culture, however, the word "nigger" still has a powerful bite. The O.J. Simpson prosecution began to derail, for example, precisely at the point where it was discovered that Detective Mark Furhman was a habitual user of the word. Black civil rights organizations such as the NAACP condemn its use in all forms. White people of good conscience, therefore, are probably understandably a bit confused and wondering, "Is it OK to say the N-word? In any of its spellings?"


Word of Mouth: Robert De Niro and Samuel L. Jackson batted the term 'nigger' around freely in 'Jackie Brown.' Jackson later defended Tarantino's ample use of the term, saying, 'Quentin actually lived in a black lifestyle for a while.'

TO START WITH, are "nigger" and "nigga" the same thing? The Totally Unofficial Rap Dictionary defines "nigga" as a "curseword used originally by white people, taken over by black people as a name to show their proudness, and take off the edge."

But all hip-hoppers don't agree. Late last year "The Beat Within," a weekly newsletter of writing and art from incarcerated youth published by Pacific News Service, asked detainees of the California Youth Authority to give their opinion of the word. "We asked people whether they saw any difference between 'nigga,' which is often used by young people as a term of affection for friends of all races, and the word 'nigger,' which has historically been used as a term of oppression," the newsletter stated. The answers were decidedly mixed.

"In the old days people used the word as an expression to put down and make fun of people," one inmate replied. "Nowadays people say the word 'nigger' to call yo name or say you have done good. The word 'nigger' is taking over the world; no matter what people do, this word is never gonna leave."

"I think a lot of people use the word 'nigga' because they can't remember their folks' name," said another. "Some people can take the word personally depending on who it's said by. But a young person doesn't usually take it personal if it's said by another young person." Another answered, "When it comes to the 'N' word, it makes me laugh just to see everybody using it, and most not even in the right term. They use it like it's a positive word like 'What's up, my N?' The word means ignorance. ... To me you sound like a slave owner when you be like, 'That my nigga.' "

And finally, as words to the wise: "To some Blacks 'nigga' means friend. And when other races hear us calling each other niggas, they think it's cool for them to use the word, but it ain't." And: "If you are a black person you can use these words, but if you are a different color and you use these words you will get yo ass beat."

I would be more impressed with the "nigga-not-nigger" argument, I think, if this was a generation of youth that had proven its worth in school, but was making a stand against standardized spellings on principle. Something like the late trumpeter Miles Davis or saxaphonist John Coltrane, having learned how to play all of the notes right in a classical fashion, turning around and playing some of them wrong in order to get the desired effect. Some of these young folk are doing that, I believe, and I respect them for that. But when I see them writing out things like "skanless" for "scandalous," I'm afraid that some of them just plain can't spell.

Shed the Word: Director Spike Lee says he counted use of the word 'nigger' 38 times in Quentin Tarantino's film Jackie Brown, and points out that not all African Americans find it 'trendy and slick.'







THE N-WORD SEEMS to have had a negative connotation from its birth, although the exact meaning has changed over time. The N-word comes from the Portuguese word "Negro." In The Name "Negro," Its Origins and Evil Use, Richard B. Moore wrote, "[T]he first use of the word 'negro' as a noun or name in relation to African people is to be traced back to the period after 1441, when the Portuguese explorers went down the African coast. ... [A]s soon as the area south of the Senegal River has been reached, where the modern slave trade was begun by the Portuguese, the designation of the native Africans is changed from Moors or Azenegues to 'negros.' "

By the 17th century, the use of the term "negro" as synonymous with "slave" was common in the British colonies in America, and remained that way through the end of the Civil War. In the same year that the American Revolution began, William Dunbar wrote of his Baton Rouge plantation that "[t]he Plantation Negroes are in Number 14. ... There are also 23 New Negroes for sale." And notices were posted in July 1769 in Charleston, S.C.: "To Be Sold, on Thursday the third Day of August a Cargo of Ninety-Four Prime, Healthy Negroes."

"Nigger" is almost certainly a phonetic spelling of the white Southern pronunciation of "Negro," and probably came into written use at a time when white America's spelling rules were about as lax as those of the hip-hop nation today.

The term "nigger," in fact, was often used by African captives to describe themselves, in many cases without attaching a stigma to the word. Former captive Annie Ruth Davis told an interviewer in 1937: "I remember just as good there been two long row of nigger house up in the quarter, and the Bethea niggers been stay in the row on one side, and the Davis niggers been stay on the row on the other side. And, honey, there been so much difference in the row on this side and the row on that side. ... All Old Missus' niggers had they brush pile side they house to sun they beds on and dry they washing, 'cause my missus would see to it herself that they never kept no nasty living."

But at the same time it was becoming synonymous with the word "slave," the word "nigger" was also, in some quarters, becoming synonymous with everything negative about the human race. Under attack by Northern abolitionists who were fighting against the institution of slavery on American soil, Southern slavers sought to justify themselves by arguing that the "niggers" were not capable of being anything but slaves. Calling captive Africans "dark and savage barbarians," South Carolina Judge Henry William Desaussure wrote in 1822, "Are the slaves, it is again asked, possessed of the qualities necessary to convert them with safety at once into freemen, with all political privileges? ... The answer must be in the negative. The body of them would either be the blind and violent instruments of some of their own cunning and base leaders ... or they would be a dead, inert mass, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water."

Gradually the N-word began to equate with ridicule in the English language. Ayto's Dictionary of Word Origins defines the word "denigrate" by stating that "[t]o denigrate people is literally to 'blacken' them. ... Denigrate originally meant 'physically turn something black' as well as the metaphorical 'defame, belittle.' "

Such teachings were pounded into the minds of the captives themselves, so that many began to believe their own inferiority and used "nigger" as a derogatory sign. So that Mississippi bluesman Sam Chatman could typically sing:


Say God made us all, he made some at night
That's why he didn't take time to make us all white
Let me tell you one thing that a Stumptown nigger will do
He'll pull up young cotton and he'll kill baby chickens, too
I'm bound to change my name, I have to paint my face
So I won't be kin to that Ethiopian race
The self-hatred of African Americans is even more succinctly apparent in this still-popular black ditty:


Niggers and flies, I do despise
The more I see niggers, the more I loves flies
Forty years after the abolition of slavery in America, the use of "nigger" and the public ridicule of African Americans were still very much in fashion. In 1902 Owen Wister, the acclaimed author of The Virginian, published a poem called "In a State of Sin" in Harper's, one of the most prominent and influential national magazines of that time:


Dar is a big Carolina nigger,
About de size of dis chile or p'raps a little bigger
By de name of Jim Crow.
...
Great big fool, he hasn't any knowledge.
Gosh! how could he, when he's never been to college?
Neither has I.
But I's come mighty nigh:
I peaked through de do' as I went by.

IT IS FASHIONABLE in these post-Prop. 187 days to say that all of this is in the past, that African Americans crossed the color barrier during the civil rights movement of the '60s and '70s, and that white racism ended as a factor in American politics and culture in that same period. So it ought to be OK to use the N-word now, loosed as it is from the past and all brightened up with a new definition and image. Shouldn't it?

Well, not just yet.

Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., reported that the number of hate groups is on the rise in this country, almost all of them anti-black. It cited such groups as Resistance Records, a Midwest-based company that publishes records with such lyrics as "Niggers just hit this side of town/Watch my property values go down/Bang, bang, watch them die/Watch those niggers drop like flies." And three years after the first neo-Nazi site appeared on the World Wide Web, the Law Center reported that the number of openly anti-black sites has risen to 120.

Gayle Tiller, vice president of the San Jose NAACP, says the use of the N-word is indicative of this trend. "It's a derogatory word, whether it's an 'er' or an 'a' spelling," she says. "I find it really offensive. Hearing it coming from a white person, the blood is going to be rising, and there's going to be a conflict."

Her opinion was shared by a number of black Bay Area writers.

Elsie B. Washington, a novelist, essayist and former editor of Essence, thinks that the word is acceptable for blacks to use, but not whites. "For older blacks, it's still considered an insult," Washington says. "It's our word to use as we want, but, no, white folks cannot use it, even if they're would-be hip-hoppers. It's too fiery ... too potent a word. Some young whites using it might have a good connotation in mind, but then other whites hearing it will think it's OK to use it in the traditional, negative sense of the word."

Opal Palmer Adisa, a poet, novelist and professor of literature and writing at the California College of Arts and Crafts, says she believes the use of "nigga" or "nigger" is "the same as young people's obsession with cursing. A lot of their use of such language is an internalization of negativity about themselves." And besides, she adds, "it's just an excuse when they say that it's a different word when you take the 'er' off. It sounds the same. It is the same. And these young people get just as upset as an older person if a white person calls them 'nigger.' "

Poet and novelist Devorah Major is more ambivalent, saying that, yes, it is possible for words to change their meaning over time. "The word 'fuck' was once an acceptable term for sex in the English language," she says. "Nobody saw any problem with it; that was just the term they used. And then the Romans came to Britain, and everything Latin was good and everything British was bad, and the word 'fuck' fell out of favor and became an obscenity. Now young people are reviving it and using it just as a word again. So there's an effort going on to defuse the meaning of these words. And I don't know how much of a legacy the older generation is carrying with these words that we need to let go. It's hard for me to say what someone can or can't say, because I work with language all the time, and I don't want to be limited." Still, Major says she has two minds on the subject. "Words have a meaning and a history. You can add to their meaning, but you can't subvert it. Nigger means nigger; I don't care about the spelling. And of course it's not OK, because it still hurts some people."

I was born only a year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball. I was born in a time when the lynching of black citizens was still a common and unpunished practice in the Southern states. I was born in a time when most African Americans were not allowed to vote. I was born into a world of segregation, where blacks in public positions were few and far between, where dark skins were the mark of clowns in the entertainment field, and where to be black was to be relegated to the back steps of America. The children of my generation sat down at lunch counters, risked death to register voters in the Mississippi back country, lobbed bottles through store windows, traded gunfire with police. In most cases, we had no earthly idea what we were doing. And yet, when we had exhausted our youth and were finished, many old barriers to black advancement had been broken down.

Because of this, it is tempting now to say that this new group of hip-hop kids is on to something about the N-word and other matters, and to let them have their way. But I am afraid that I am of a generation that has seen too much pain, too much of the backhand of America, and so I must resist the temptation. I wish I could live with my guard let down, I really do. But once slapped, one will always tend to duck. Always.

And in those times when I do forget, there's always someone around to write "nigger" on a school bathroom wall, or make fun of "ebonics," or ridicule African religion (voodoo), or post a "nigger joke" on the Internet. Reminders that though we have broken the canker of racism, it is doubtful that anyone alive today will still be living by the time the venom finally drains from this country's system.


New Word Order: Actor Harvey Keitel appears on screen with director Quentin Tarantino, who brought the N-word to the big screen in 'Pulp Fiction.'

ONCE, WHEN I WAS about 8 or 9, I believe, my father took me down to the Chinatown section of Oakland to pick up a bag of freshly boiled crabs. Somehow we ended up walking all the way through the store and into the back warehouse where the catch was prepared. Two men stood on slippery concrete slabs on either side of a huge pot, lowering a basket of blue crabs down into the boiling water. Oh, man! How they wriggled and clicked and snapped and scrambled onto each other's backs to avoid the hissing hell below. None escaped. A briny steam flowed all about the warehouse, covering my lips with wet salt. The crabs slowed, stilled and turned a bright orangey-red. I could not contain myself. When we got back home I grabbed the bag of crabs and ran in the house to tell my mother to "look at what the Chinaman did!"

My father would not let that pass. "No, not Chinaman," he said. "Don't ever say that. It's Chinese man."

I really did not understand. I had meant no harm by what I had said. I was in awe, really, of the men in the warehouse, with their black rubber boots and yellow rain jackets and their shocks of straight black hair, the tendons of their forearms undulating like roped snakes, their faces set and stern as they labored so close to the boiling pot. It was the most dangerous work I had ever myself seen. My words were meant to describe, not to disrespect. Chinese man. China man. I did not see the difference.

That was not the point, my father said. They did.

water_boy1999

And jeff, we are not becomming sissified, we are becomming more respectful of other cultures and races. When educated people realize that there is no room for racism in this world, we take offense to the ignorance we see when people throw around words they have no idea what they really mean, where they came from, or why it would offend other people.

Jim Kata

I'd like to see anyone who says "The N Word" is just a word to go to South East DC and say it to a black person. And then explain to them how it is just a word so they shouldn't be insulted.

taylorspl

People get too upset over racist remarks, they are only words. Nothing that anyone could say to me even in a derogatory manner could upset me to violence. Hell most of the funny jokes are ones that are sooo blatently screwed up you cannot believe you just heard someone say it. I just might not understand because I am not oppressed.

emphant

The idea of a race using derogatory slang amongst themslves is not exclusive to black people.

One of my best friends is Italian, and in his family they always are always saying dago this and dago that(on a side note, wtf does dago mean, or where does it come from?)

You always hear white people say "I'm so white" or my irish friends(two brothers) always make jokes about being drunks.

I think it's common sense, some words no one should say, regardless of their race.

inphaseneverb4

Its not what you say its how you say it. in the right context, and right spirit, you can get away with a lot.

jeenyus

*ULTIMATE SOLUTION*

Bring her to a mainly all black community and entice her to say nigg$r. Like say something like "look at those people" and point your finger at a black person and she will probbaly say nigg#r
and since it is a mainly black community someone will over hear her and probably shoot her in the face.


Problem solved. Now please send me 20.00 via paypal for giving you a solution. Thank you.

timalkin

I can't believe that many of you think that a black person would commit violence against somebody because of a word. You seem to be implying that blacks are prone to violence over trivial matters. Subconsciously racist, perhaps?

analog

Not sure where it came from, but it's basically "the n word" for italians. Highly insulting.

~springrain

sticking to the thread... is it okay to use that word?

NO. not for me... but i'm not the word police.

we have free speech, that doesn't mean it doesn't come without consequences.

irateplatypus

there ARE numerous sports teams that have groups of traditionally white people as their mascot.

College:
Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Purdue Boilermakers
Oklahoma Sooners
USC Trojans
Nebraska Cornhuskers
West Virginia Mountaineers

Professional:
Dallas Cowboys
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
New York Yankees
Boston Celtics

there AREN'T any protests against these names.

What baffles me most is that they are protesting against names like Braves, Warriors, Seminoles etc. These all have positive and courageous attachments to them. Were I to call someone a Brave or a Warrior, I would be giving them a compliment.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

GSRIDER

Tell her; whitey used up his 'nigger" priviledges back before the 60s ran out... plumb run out.

Or you could put her someplace where saying it means something. It's an easy word to use when you're in safe surroundings. Try it on a city bus.

__________________
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fik

My brother is the same way he says it a lot. Earlier today I said it is Martin Luther king Jr day, he replies, "you mean n*gger day?" geez

bender

I find the word repulsive and if you want her to quit using it let her know that its a sign of stagnat and stunted mind.
If you can't get your point across with out cursing and spewing that kind of trash then perhaps she should keep her mouth shut.

Prince

This isn't really on-topic, but I guess that doesn't matter much since the person who started the thread has been banned and won't be reading this anyway.

I'd like to hear some advice or opinions on this, nevertheless.

I moved to the States from a small European country, with a population of about 5 million, consisting of mostly Evangelist Lutheran white people. I lived in a city of about 200,000 people, making it one of the largest cities in the country. I only saw a "dark coloured individual" perhaps ten times a year.

Most of what I know about American history is based on books I've read, and movies and documentaries I've seen. And I think a lot of that information is correct for the most part. However, when it comes to modern day American culture, I am often painstakingly clueless or prejudiced, and I blame this on the television.

Here's a few examples. Around Christmas there was an event downtown that my wife and I went to. A young man, possibly of Puerto Rican heritage, came up and offered us a free taste of some sort of pasties they were selling. The first thing that popped into my mind was, "what if there's drugs in these?". I felt badly about it afterwards.

A couple of times that a black individual has made a delivery, tried to sell me something (door to door kind of thing) or something like that, I've felt quite reserved. There was this one time that one of our windows didn't latch, and I expressed my concern over it to my wife, saying, and I quote, "what if some negro crawls in through that in the middle of the night?". She was quite surprised that I said that, and I was too.

I guess this is largely because on television America is often portrayed as a dangerous place to live, and the local news seem to just re-enforce that mentality. And how many times did I see a white guy being busted for breaking and entering on NYPD Blue? Not very often at all.

I've always considered myself to be extremely open-minded, and definitely above racism. And I still don't consider myself racist, but I am obviously prejudiced, whether I like it or not. And I don't.

I am not used to ethnic "minorities", having lived among a chiefly white population for all my life, and I guess on some strange level I am afraid of them, to a degree, even though I consciously know that they are just people, like me. I guess only time will ease this fear out of me, at least I hope so. Meanwhile though, I fear that it will somehow show through and make me look worse a person than I really am...or prohibit me from becoming a better person, somehow.

Any thoughts?

__________________
Who is John Galt?

housedude

To me, it's a matter of our culture (hopefully) evolving into one that has respect for all people, and one measure of a society is the use of language. And language is powerful - it is the stuff of which wars are made! It reflects the thing we humans value so highly - our "evolved" consciousness.
Can't we see that painting an entire race with the broad brush of a negative term just hinders ourselves as well as members of that race? People do not choose to be black, Polish, white, Puerto Rican, etc. Therefore, you are bound to offend needlessly when you speak of that group with a derogatory term.
Yet I believe that societal change can only be accomplished one person at a time. It took me years to get the courage to ask an acquantance that was in my home to leave because of his use of the word nigger, but it has not been the last.

biznatch

So you're basicly saying since its a black community she'll get shot? That's a real bad stereotype.. im sure that's not that kind of input we need to get rid of racism.

Carno

cracka ass cracka

kramus

It's late so forgive me for not reading the complete thread as closely as it deserves.

My mother was born in 1930 and raised in Toronto. She (my whole family excepting my beautiful grandaughter) is white. Around the age of 10 she had a pure black cat. It could have been Inky, or Shadow, or Blacky. She called it Niggy, short for nigger - meaning black and nothing more. When she told me this I was rocked, because the language has evolved with my little bit of society that I exist in, and that word for me has freight attached to it big time. She mentioned that her mother (born 1906) had trouble seeing the black superstar entertainers on tv as being real people - they were more like performing creatures given special status. This double-rocked me, because that lady was the sweetest and most giving woman you can imagine.

Another thing - when I was a teenager I worked on a landscaping crew manned by petty thieves, the uneducated and a contingent of joyful Native American guys. One of a group of 3 brothers was the only blonde (yes, true blonde) Indian I've ever met. He said one day his mom must have jumped the fence. Big laugh. A few weeks later I repeated his joke in the same context. He was ready to take me out. What I guess I'm saying with thing #2 is what I've read in this thread already - i.e. if you are not on the inside of a situation that carries a history of pain and abuse you cannot carelessly make reference to things that the insiders deal with using their own language (by that I mean the language as they mean it, not you) or share their jokes from their side. I didn't have the right. I learned something important that hot summer day.

__________________
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Gilda

The use of any racial epithet is not tolerated in my home or my classroom for any reason outside the discussion of the word. Use it in my presense while in my home and you'll be told that kind of talk isn't permitted, do it again and you'll be leaving. Do in in my classroom, and you have a strike, a timeout with a call home, a period dentention, an after-school detention, and a behavior referral to the office in that order.

I can see no productive use for them.

la petite moi

Wow, why was this thread bumped?

For the record: I could give a rat's ass about what my sister does with her life, now, as callous as it may sound. She'll dig herself a huge hole, and soon she'll be the only one trying to crawl out of it.