FSTDT Forums
Community => Society and History => Topic started by: Zygarde on November 08, 2012, 08:05:41 pm
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Kind of a iffy subject but I've always wanted to have a discussion about this what do you guys think of the use of the word 'nigger'? I personally don't care for it i don't use it nor really care if anyone else uses it so long as it's not in a racist of bigoted fashion like "Them niggers need to die" but yeah what do you guys think.
(This is also a question I've wanted to ask since I'm one of the few black members of the forum that i know of. )
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I've always thought the concept of the whole "thats our work" thing kinda stupid. But for some reason that bigoted fashion kind of rubs me the wrong way.
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Truth be told, I've had it ground into me early on that the word is terrible. It is one of the few words I do not feel comfortable saying even if it's a discussion about how bad it is.
Seeing people who use it non-ironically tends to fill me with a lot of anger. (That being said, I could stand to be less sensitive about it)
I will say, however, that if you shy away from using it in, say, historical fiction or modern fiction or such, then that's going too far the other direction. Whitewashing history for the sake of political correctness means that you make the actual offense of the word meaningless. In a story, it makes sense for a racist to use that word when they would use it in real life.
Gratuitous, over the top use, however, is just plain bad taste.
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That reminds me of one girl in TAFE, I'm not sure how we got to this point, but she started asking me to say the N word, just because I was so uncomfortable saying it. I thought she would go all militant black girl on me. She poked me enough to say it and she goes "see, now that wasnt so hard was it!"
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I think Tim Wise does a good job of dealing with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MnmmDiQSdA
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I'm uncomfortable saying it myself, but I certainly don't want to discourage its use if we're discussing history and that subject happens to come up (basically, I'm not going to freak out over my history teacher saying, "'Nigger' was used as a derogatory term. . .") It really pisses me off to see classic books being edited to remove the word, because it's often an important element in the story.
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Yeah. In historical context, it's perfectly fine. In common parlance? I have just as much trouble with it as I have with other slurs against other groups. I said it once when I was six, not knowing what it was, and my parents flipped shit at me and explained what it meant, so I have never used it again.
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Being a half-black man, I've not no problem using the word "nigga" in appropiate context (read: around other black people or in rapping).
"Nigger" is verboten to the max, though.
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That's something I never got whats the difference between "Nigga" and "Nigger" since they seem pretty much the same to me?
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"Nigger" is a slur, "nigga" is a reclaimed form of it much like some how feminists have reclaimed "slut" or LGBTQ people have reclaimed "queer".
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I didn't know what it was until the show... I think it was called 'Boston Public'... did an episode on it. I think I've used the word once in my entire life (I keep hearing it in a Maroon 5 song but am positive that it's not the right lyric, but have never looked it up), and I can barely bring myself to even type it most of the time. Hell, my roommate/guitarist is black and doesn't care if I use it, and I still won't let it slip.
The punchline here, if I have one at all, is that I don't think it's a word that should even be used, if only because of it's connotation. I'm not even sure how or why it got picked up in the black community after how long it was used as an insult against them.
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I should mention seeing or hearing ... "nigga" tends to make me feel... very uncomfortable still.
Hell, just typing it made my insides twist a bit. I've got issues.
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I should mention seeing or hearing ... "nigga" tends to make me feel... very uncomfortable still.
Hell, just typing it made my insides twist a bit. I've got issues.
That just makes me see the speaker about 5 IQ dumber than before they said it.
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I feel uncomfortable using either 'nigger' or 'nigga', as Zachski said, even in discussion about the word. I also agree though it shouldn't be not used if it will cover over historical prejudice. As for black people using, IDGAF.
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That's something I never got whats the difference between "Nigga" and "Nigger" since they seem pretty much the same to me?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBUJCCja4u4
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I don't use the word and immediately loose all respect for anyone using it outside of reading aloud a Mark Twain novel. Nigga, I don't use for personal reasons. Same with referring to a random woman as bitch. I had the privilege when I was young to have (retired?) civil rights activists in my neighborhood. So at a very young age I got a perspective that stuck with me, and a level of respect for people as people. And my nature as it is, I'm not going to stop anyone from saying what they want to say. But I'm not going to hang around and listen.
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@ Smurfette Principle: Me, too. I'm six years old, so this would be 1938. I'm sitting in a parked car with my mother on a street in downtown Buffalo. My dad has dashed into a store for whatever. I had never seen a black person, and a group walks by. Excited as hell, I shout, "Mother, look at the niggers." It was simply a word I'd heard applied to blacks, and I was absolutely unaware of any connotations. My mother -- this little, bitty, 5' 2", 105-pound woman -- whirls on me and says, "They're not niggers! That's a bad word, and it hurts their feelings. They are people just like you and me, and I don't ever want to hear you say that again." Scared the doo-doo out of me. Seventy four years later, and I still don't use the word. I can honestly say that growing up I never heard a prejudiced word from my parents against anyone's color, or ethnic background, or political convictions, or religious beliefs. I think my mother and father were unusual not only for that time in this country's history, but for any time in any country's history.
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I think Tim Wise does a good job of dealing with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MnmmDiQSdA
Wow, another "anti-racist" activist who is racist.
And his way of addressing the double standard without actually addressing it is quite the non-sequitur.
Edit: I went to the youtube page. Both comments and ratings are disabled.
Go figure.
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I... actually think most of that speech was pretty reasonable. I disagree with him about never vocalizing the word in any context (quoting from text or referencing it in discussions about racism are acceptable), but I think he makes a perfectly good point about connotations, and how they change depending on the speaker.
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I... actually think most of that speech was pretty reasonable. I disagree with him about never vocalizing the word in any context (quoting from text or referencing it in discussions about racism are acceptable), but I think he makes a perfectly good point about connotations, and how they change depending on the speaker.
Granted, I was turned off by the first half of the video and ignored the second half. Having viewed the second half, I will give him some points for consistency in his application of double standards, despite how ironic that in and of itself sounds.
However, I do regard any double standard in matters of race/ethnicity to be inherently bigoted, no matter what the standard is. For instance, he says that he would take exception to a Jewish individual using the word redneck or telling redneck jokes, but would not apply that standard to someone like Jeff Foxworthy. To me, that double standard is just as bigoted as the one involving the word nigger, as one standard is being applied to Jewish individuals and another is being applied to impoverish/working class rural whites, and the fact that the latter is being granted a special privilege in this situation doesn't change anything, and just because Tim Wise demonstrated such a situation where he thinks the latter should be given such a special privilege doesn't make him any less bigoted.
Now in regards to the ethics of using racist/bigoted slurs, and "connotations, and how they change depending on the speaker," yes, it is safe to assume that one is not using a slur in malice when they are a part of a demographic that said slur is directed towards, but (and this isn't directed against your argument) that doesn't mean there is inherent malice when one uses a slur and they are NOT a part of the demographic the word is directed towards. Such a situation where malice is probably not implied is when a slur is used in discussion where the slur itself is the topic at hand.
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It's a historically dangerous word that should never be employed in its original meaning. The word is the linguistic equivalent of a segregated bathroom.
Now, how you square that with the Wire's use of the word is a vexed question.
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It's a corruption of the spanish word for black.
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Personally I liked it and found it very reasonable.
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I think Tim Wise does a good job of dealing with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MnmmDiQSdA
Wow, another "anti-racist" activist who is racist.
And his way of addressing the double standard without actually addressing it is quite the non-sequitur.
Edit: I went to the youtube page. Both comments and ratings are disabled.
Go figure.
Yeah, he's really a well-known...um...racist. Whatever you say.
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Double standard in function and thought mostly comes from treating people different ways. Like how woman are generally regarded as progressive if they use man's stuff but men are regarded as sissies if they use women's stuff.
Though I understand reclaiming words, but it's like... gay means happy and queer means weird, beyond the homosexual stuff. That's fine. But the N word meant someone inferior before it was came to be racist. It was a curse word and then got turned into a slur, so it's not really something to reclaim. It's always been a crappy word. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/NIgger?s=t Both meanings of the word are terrible.
Does raise the question also of why do those formerlly oppressed by the n word use it, why don't the Chinese use the C word?
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I thought cunt meant vagina.
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... Chink. Sorry. Should have just said it.
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I'm of the view that it depends more on context, intent, and setting than anything else.
For example, I've mentioned on here that a close friend of mine is Native Peruvian. In explaining to me the difference between the racism in the USA and racism in Latin America, he said (and I'm quoting verbatim here) that "indigenous peoples are the niggers of Latin America".
Now, I can tell you that neither of us are racist people, at least not in the normal (i.e. non-Tumblr) definition of the word. This was a private conversation, and he was using the terminology to make a point. Obviously, he wouldn't have put it that way if he were giving a public speech, nor would he call a black person the "N word". He used the word to convey the idea that the indigenous peoples of that part of the world were socially and economically disadvantaged in a way that a typical non-indigenous person is not.
I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
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I'm of the view that it depends more on context, intent, and setting than anything else.
For example, I've mentioned on here that a close friend of mine is Native Peruvian. In explaining to me the difference between the racism in the USA and racism in Latin America, he said (and I'm quoting verbatim here) that "indigenous peoples are the niggers of Latin America".
Sometimes the word has been used to address inequality faced by other people, and the people who use the word in that context are not necessarily* racists. Case in point, John Lennon & Yoko Ono had a song--and a very good one at that--called "Woman is the Nigger of the World" (http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/133778-revolutionary-man-john-lennon-as-political-artist/P1). In that case, I understood perfectly the message he was attempting to get across, which is that no matter what nation you're in or what color you are, women have been placed in a position that was lower than that of a man's.
That being said, as a white male, yes I would still be uncomfortable saying it in any context.
*I have actually heard white supremacists use words like that on themselves to symbolize their supposed persecution or fall from grace as the most powerful group in society. And they do so without any hint of irony.
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Incidentally, a bunch of SJWs on Tumblr are whinging about John Lennon using the word in that context.
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Incidentally, a bunch of SJWs on Tumblr are whinging about John Lennon using the word in that context.
If SJW stands for what I think it does, I've officially stopped caring.
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Social Justice Warrior. I wish I could stop caring, but like any train wreck, it's full of bile fascination.
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The most I tend to use the word is when I'm discussing either history or language, usually on my own damn show, too. =P
...or when I'm quoting George Carlin (and even then, it's in the context of discussing language). ;)
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I noticed that many people proscribing against the use of the word "nigga" by black people are often white themselves. And yet they feel the need to control how us minorities speak. Does anyone else see the racist hypocrisy in this?
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I noticed that many people proscribing against the use of the word "nigga" by black people are often white themselves. And yet they feel the need to control how us minorities speak. Does anyone else see the racist hypocrisy in this?
Kind of has a white savior syndrome vibe to it.
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Exactly what I meant. It's the centuries-old White Man's Burden except it's perpetuated by supposed "anti-racists". Hm...
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I view it the same way as I view "faggot". When its used against gays, its terrible. But as a generic insult, its OK (though it makes them sound like a /b/tard).
Faggot has the historical connotation too. It refers to the "bundle of sticks used for firewood" definition. People who use it as a slur are basically saying gays are the faggots(the stick definition) of Hell.
This doesn't mean that someone saying "DO IT FAGGOT" is a total homophobic prick though.
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The use of the words "faggot" tomean "homosexual" actually comes from old british schools. Male students would be placed in pairs of one upperclassman and one lowerclassman. One of the jobs of the lowerclassman was to bring wood for the upperclassman, therefore he was known as the upperclassman's "faggot". And then "faggot" came to mean homosexual.
THE MORE YOU KNOW
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Well today whenever I hear any sort of justification they say its because gays go to hell.
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Well today whenever I hear any sort of justification they say its because gays go to hell.
Fundamentalists not bothering to research the origins of the word they used?
Color me shocked ;D