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Apr 23, 2022·edited Apr 23, 2022Liked by Steve QJ

I just find the whole thing childish. The idea that you would be emotionally scarred by the mere sound of the syllables, even in a foreign language or an unrelated English word like “niggardly.” That it is utterly forbidden to pronounce the word even in reference, to say “‘nigger’ is an ugly word,” or “I would never call anyone a nigger.” That you, Steve, cannot mention the word *in an article about the word*. To ban schoolchildren from reading “Huckleberry Finn,” a book whose very message is exactly the opposite, of Huck’s transcending the prejudices of his time and discovering the humanity in a runaway slave. (For that matter, we’re not supposed to say “slave” anymore, either: they were “enslaved people.”)

Not too long ago, it was forbidden to utter the words “shit” or “fuck” in public; now they appear in respectable print publications and no one bats an eye. But now this one other word is enough to get you fired and socially shunned. As we’ve been discussing on another thread, all this language policing is not only not helpful but actively harmful to the cause it purports to serve.

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Ethnic slurs are a method of disparagement sometimes used for differing purpose. They seem to me to say more about the speaker than the target. An attempt to make something OK that isn't; It's OK for them to be slaves, they are less than human. It's OK to go off to war and kill them, they are less than human. This one came into play as I was staging to go to Vietnam. Interestingly, many black men had no problem with the use of the word gook. They used the word for the same reasons the white guys used it.

On a smaller scale, various forms of discrimination because they aren't one of us. The woman with a complaint becomes a bitch. The same theme is in play with dehumanizing political partisanship where the bad tribe is no longer about race but opposing views. All about making some behavior that is harmful OK in the mind of the speaker. The harm is not so much in the words but the attitudes and actions of the speaker that lead to their use. People using that language are telling you more about themselves than about the target of their scorn.

When my children encountered racial slurs, I told them my story of the turd. "If someone tries to give you a turd and you don't take it, they are the one with the dirty hand, not you."

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Apr 23, 2022·edited Apr 23, 2022Liked by Steve QJ

While I appreciate your sentiments and understand where you're coming from the term was, and still is sometimes, used to define not just a person but an attitude, a work ethic, a lifestyle, everything that embodies being a person, all of it negative. Having grown up around it being used in that fashion regularly, jokingly and seriously, I cannot stand to hear it and will object if I'm able.

I remember me and my sister singing a ditty we'd heard about "big fat........ smoking big fat cigars" and our Mom letting us know that that was a word that would get our mouths washed out with soap (literally). As my generation dies off our objections to the word might well die off as well but I hope it can be redefined to mean other than what it was used as short hand for in the past. There is a term that is reserved for white people that means the same thing: white trash. We don't use the term any more because defining someone as white trash means they're still a step above the "n"s of the world. Abandoning that thought process is a good thing.

There are other words used to define people that are offensive and verboten in polite company and writings. My Mom had a mantra: "If someone's cussing you out they're out of sensible words and thoughts and so you can feel free to leave the conversation and ignore any subsequent commentary from them until they return to their senses:". Some of the words she referred to are now used in casual conversations instead of being reserved for when someone had lost the ability to form coherent thoughts. Perhaps what is being lost is the ability to form coherent thoughts. :-)

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Having discussed this topic to death over decades I will limit my remarks to noting my pride that I have never used the word except in reference to it.

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Apr 23, 2022·edited Apr 23, 2022

I refuse to be censored when relating the incident concerning three rednecks with tire irons who threatened my boyfriend and me for bike riding together while a mixed couple. This was in the '70s in Chicago. Fortunately, we'd just arrived at a friend's storefront. Fred knew they kept a baseball bat behind the front door for just such an occasion. He came back out with such a fury that the good ol' boys backed off laughing, like they'd just been playing. We all started yelling at them to fuck off, me likely the loudest. As he piled onto the bed of that jalopy of a truck one shouted back at me, 'Shut up, you whore, fucking with niggers . . . God!" Seriously, you think I would break that narrative to insert a mealy mouthed capital N? Did he euphemize what he was saying to me? If I had to hear it, so do you.

Then, some years later my adorable bi-racial eight-year old son, and I do mean adorable, approached me and asked me very sweetly, "Momma, are you my nigga?" It was obvious he was asking me if I was his sweetheart, for which there was only one possible reply, "Always."

THAT's how you kill a slur, you misuse it, overuse it, use it like an inanimate pronoun till it has lost all its power. Censoring it preserves and amplifies that power. I say, beat the motherfucker to death. Use it to describe your pencil. The family dog. The weather. Get creative, like my child. Let those little children lead us. Always.

Oh, and wait till I tell you what the word 'Caucasian' originally signified -- high priced prostitutes. I kid you not. Ask Nell Painter. See, that's what you do. You flip the word. You don't censor it. You flip it.

Next thing you know, it's a hundred years later and people are mystified why anyone was ever offended at being called a sweetheart, sweetheart.

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founding

This is interesting. There have been times and places in my life when even a whispered: "Hey, Whitey" would elicit a sphincteral response, but you're right, I was not demeaned by it. I just prepared to die. Fortunately, that hasn't happened yet.

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I don't think that USC prof was fired for saying the Chinese word that sounds like the n-word-- it looks like he still teaches there but not that class. I have a hard time understanding the black students' level of upset and I think the administration's response and the over-the-top apology was out of proportion. It seems to me like, if you're taking a cross-cultural biz communication class, the purpose of the class is to learn about things that might otherwise take you by surprise -- better to encounter it in the classroom than in real life. I guess I'd want to talk with the students to understand their perspective on this.

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Apr 23, 2022Liked by Steve QJ

This article has me curious: What do you think of the conversation about Twain's books?

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Apr 23, 2022Liked by Steve QJ

Steve, this is a crucial insight: I’m saying that it’s very difficult to offend somebody over a trait they’re proud of.

Perhaps a slightly more accurate framing is to say it is very difficult to offend someone over something that they are not sensitive about. Because I think many AA/Blacks do have genuine pride in the skin grouping (I know you have pride, but not in that grouping) but I see many who genuinely do, but at the same time they are also very sensitive and defensive regarding it. They are defensive because they (correctly) feel it is attacked.

A more confident person would not be rattled. So I think it is correct to say such a person is not confident, but the still could have pride about their membership... they just know that others to not share that positive association, so they lack confidence.

thus I might edit your statement to say it is very difficult to offend someone over an attribute which they feel positive and confident about. Still this is a perceptive comment!

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I interpret many (not all) cases of "being offended", in the context of contemporary neo-progressivism, as mostly unconscious tactics for obtaining "power over", more like a "ha, gotcha, I'm gonna play this for all the benefit I can get" rather than honestly expressing hurt feelings.

And that includes being offended by hearing the syllables of the word in question when used as a reference or read from a book like Huck Finn, with no offensive intention or affect. If you are offended, then you have a grievance and the moral high ground, and something is owed you.

The absurdly high taboo on it is largely performative in my view (at least originally, see below). The more offended or outraged you are, the more power you get. That kind of dynamic allows for amplification untethered to actual harm caused or the degree of hostile intent (if any), because it's not about redressing harm or damping hostility, but about gaining power. Pretend you don't realize that it was just a reference, or pretend it hurts you just as much as an intentional slur anyway, milk it any way you can.

As a side helping, you can say the word but they can't, a kind of special privilege you have that they don't. Guard this asymmetry jealously, it's another kind of power (albeit a weak one).

One downside of this, shared with other facets of the victimhood narrative, is that people don't like to think of themselves as being fake and manipulative that way. So in accord with cognitive dissonance, there is a tendency to convince oneself that one really is just as exaggeratedly harmed as one is pretending to be, and thus not faking. If you pretend to be overly psychologically fragile often enough, it becomes hard to distinguish from the real thing, or it becomes the real thing, no longer just pretense. This dynamic is not specific to race or sex or any one domain, but a general principle of seeking power through performative exaggeration of victimhood.

Of course, just as with any deception, some part of oneself does know. This behavior does not generate self respect or confidence or earned pride, like accomplishment can.

And again, I'm talking about my understanding of the dynamics in SOME cases, not all cases, of excessive reactivity to non-insulting usage - like used as a reference or hearing a similar sounding word. I am NOT talking about the word being used as a slur or insult.

In the more general case, not specifically about this word or about race, I have chosen to mostly avoid using "offended" or "offensive". I look for another framing for my feelings or judgement, rather than use the shorthand of "I'm offended".

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"I’m saying that it’s very difficult to offend somebody over a trait they’re proud of."

Or at least not ashamed of being, anyway. I don't get 'skin pride'. I get 'black pride' from the 1970s when black people were beginning to feel and make their growing power known, and challenging white racism. But I think it's an idea, like the 'don't blame the victim' mantra for feminism, that's past its prime. Fact is, there's nothing to be 'proud' about with skin colour. It's an accident of birth (your soul, personality, consciousness, whatever) was born into this body or that body, and also genetics (my parents are Western European, so I lack the natural sun protection others have, but they're not 'better' than me). The 'white pride' movement struck me as equally stupid...'Pride' comes from something you've ACCOMPLISHED. I'm proud to be a good writer. I'm proud to have stopped picking so many political fights on Facebook. I'm proud of having had the labia to move to Canada, to uproot my entire life away from my family (who had nothing to do with my decision) and start a new life in a new country, albeit a next-door neighbour. I'm not 'proud' to be white, or female, or French (although I was a bit of a French nationalist in college, but it was a silly kid identity thing and I grew out of it). I am, however, proud that I've begun learning French again.

Skin colour really is a stupid thing to hierarchize, because there are *literally no significant differences* between anyone apart from a few evolutionary mutations to adapt to new environments. As opposed to say (Warning: Heretical statement alert!) males and females, between which there are demonstrable differences in body size, strength, and, to a lesser extent cognitive traits - neither gender is intellectually superior to the other, but there are brain differences that appear to partially account for the way we process information and what we're good at. Women have more developed language and emotional expression, men are better at visualizing spatial possibiltiies and math, but that doesn't mean one gender can't learn what the other is better at. Frankly, I think there'd be a much closer parity if men spent more time learning about emotions and how to communicate, and women spent more time on math and science. It's not *all* how we're socialized, and the left is positively phobic about biological differences. My feeling is let's all do what we're best at and stop applying value labels to which work is more important. That's where a lot of the prejudice comes from - males deciding that their work, and their skills, and their talents are more valuable than women's.

I'm with you on the emotion behind the 'n' word and I'd add the 'c' word for women. The c-word is the WORST POSSIBLE WORD EVER, arguably worse than the n-word because you can't even joke with it like black comedians can do with the n-word. No female comedian that I know of uses it, the only male I can think of who uses it is Ricky Gervais, whom I love, but he's cringey sometimes and I'm not keen on the c-word use.

But, for blacks and also women, you make a good point, one that I've thought about too, about how much power we grant words. I know I have more resilience than younger women when it comes to alleged misogyny....I don't lose my shit if a guy tells me I'm pretty (thank you, it's on purpose, so it would be insane of me to object) or says something rude. Ever since you wrote an article a few years ago about the Macedonian kid who called you the n-word and you chased him down, laughed, and challenged him on it, (rather than beating the snot out of him, lol) I thought, "Could I do that if someone called me the c-word? What kind of example would it set if other women, about to go nuclear, watched me laugh and ask him why he thinks that's an insult? After all, George Carlin claimed - and I agree with him! - that's it's actually a very friendly, inviting-sounding word - it's all warm and cuddly and cozy. Probably something the offender has spent a lifetime trying to get into :)

Both these words would cease to hurt if we stopped giving them, and their wielders, so much power.

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