My students and I discussed this topic today and we compared and contrasted it to Don Imus' incident. Made for very interesting conversations.

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My only question is would any African-American or otherwise non-white performer, or public figure lose their livelihood if they were heard to utter the word "honky" or "whitey" or "cracker" or any other number of anti-White euphemisms?






















I DIDN'T THINK SO.

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"What you say in private and what you do in private IS private" is a very modern thought. Village life meant that everyone knew your business, worried when you missed your four o'clock fart, ran to your aid if you screamed and generally watched over your shoulder. The down side of this was there was bugger all escape from the watchful eye of the villiage busybodies and thus little crime or unsanctioned fornication.

A gallop through the web came up with some definitions,

"
The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others.
The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion: a person's right to privacy.
The state of being concealed; secrecy."

"The right of an individual to be secure from unauthorized disclosure of information about oneself "

"private (adj.)
c.1380, from L. privatus "set apart, belonging to oneself" (not to the state), used in contrast to publicus, communis; originally pp. stem of privare "to separate, deprive," from privus "one's own, individual," from Old L. pri "before."

What does it all mean?

The concept of privacy is an artificial thing, where the breach of privacy is defined by the circumstances. A police check to see if you have outstandings is a breach of your privacy, as is a tax audit or a Grand Jury examination.

It seems to be a case of "say something often enough and it will become fact".

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I don't think most white people find those words as offensive as anyone finds the N word. There was an interview on NPR the other day of an author who wrote a book on the power of words. The single most powerful word in the English language today is the N word, it out paces any curse word you can say in it's offensiveness. To compare it to words like whitey, and cracker is naive. I'm also tired of people complaining about the inequity of power between those words. We as a society give the words the power that they have, and that power is probably not going to wane in our life time.



You don't find disliking or hating someone solely based on skin color twisted? I think in reality you're more upset that someone you admired turned out to be a complete scum bag.

The point is not the power or lack of power in certain words. My point is the inequity in racism. It's okay for various groups to be anti-White, but let whites express anything that even hints of racism then they're all up in arms about it. Or is it that ONLY whites can be racist? We as a society have given one group too much power to censor what other groups say or do.

And as for the "N word" as we're forced to call it.......why is it alright for them to use it, if it's so distasteful and offensive? If they don't want it used, then it should apply equally.

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I TOTALLY agree!One of my BEST friends in Conn,where I'm from,also agrees
(We have discussed it MANY times)He is older than I(I'm 63)& he will tell you
racist things from the past,that make this look VERY mild! Irish
P.S.Different strokes for different folks!
P.P.S.I forgot to mention that he is also black!

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It's not "alright" for "them" to use.

As a person of color I — as well as MANY people of color —*abhor its prevalent, misguided use as a term of endearment or a lazy substitute for saying "person" or "friend," or whatever other delusion the younger racial-ironic hipster set or hip-hop generation has told themselves that its use is okay because of slangy phonetic respellings or re-appropriation or reverse-engineering of a slur.

You hear it being used by "them" because those people have bought into the lie. Because certain people pay others a LOT of money to sell their dignity out and unconsciously exemplify the very word they think means nothing. If you believe that "we" are okay with this, you couldn't be more mistaken, trust me on that. I hear this word being spoken nearly every day by schoolchildren on the subway to one another, out loud and in the presence of older, non-Black people who are visibly trying to ignore them and everytime I hear this, I feel depressed and ugly, as if my brain is being disintegrated by acid into a deep vat of stupidity and pieces of my soul are crumbling away, dying.

"We" don't want it used any more that you probably don't like hearing it being said. But I can assure you the impact of hearing it hurts me a thousand times more than it would hurt you (if you are speaking as a non-Black person), including the use of words such as "whitey" and "cracker" as epithets instead of comic effect, which the n-word has NO space or buffer to be taken as. Case in point, there used to be a sitcom in the 90s called "Cracker."

Why is it used so often? The power of old negative words have very, VERY deep roots and do not die easily. Add that onto future generations growing up with readymade, addictive meme-centric mentalities and being taught that words are just letters on a screen with no weight and certain things don't really matter in a disposable moral sense as long as they are practiced in private and not in public. And the leeway shine we give celebrities (or the concept of celebrity) over our own selves and our own values sometimes is disgusting.

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IK (hope you don't mind my abbreviating your nick),

I really appreciate your well reasoned, and clearly stated response. I can't really disagree with anything you said. It does disgust me, and angers me when I hear young, and not so young black people using that word when they talk to each other. It makes me cringe. And then you have the Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy types that pepper their comedy routines with it.

What really gets me though, is close friends will call each other by this epithet, but if I were in their circle of friends, no matter how close we were it would not be accepted for me to use it. I don't mean that I want to, I'm only pointing out the disparity.

One other point I'd like to make is again about the inequity in reprisals for using racial epithets. Some time back, Jesse Jackson was making a speech and in referring to a Jewish neighborhood called it "hymie-town." In my opinion it was equally wrong for him to say this. But what happened to him? Nothing. Not to mention all the hatred toward Jews and Whites spewed by Louis Farakhan(sp?). They are allowed their hatred, but let "Dog" Chapman, or Don Imus say something racial you have the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson wanting them fired, thereby taking away their livelihood. I'm not saying that the Dog or Imus were right......they most certainly weren't....but why does it seem that it's alright for people of color to hate and give public voice to that hatred and suffer no consequences?

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There is an even deeper problem here, the "vanillisation" of the language.

The people who scream that words need to be buried to somehow hide the toxin soaked in them do not take into account that those who forget (or have never been told) of the past are doomed to relive it's excesses.

Explaining to children the absolute sadness of the racism of Huck Finn gives perspective that history books don't. Robinson Crusoe is another. The flipside of the coin is that some people who have been racially, socially or religiously suppressed can't let go of the horror, using it to justify their own excesses.

We're stuck on a Moibus treadmill.

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Si à travers nos veines coule encore le sang...
Si dans les jeux d'enfants on entend encore l'accent...
Si nous sentons encore l'espoir de nos grands-parents...
Si dans les voiles du large souffle encore le vent...
Y'a jamais eu de Grand Dérangement.

First, I just have to say that the show "Cracker" was actually a detective type show (if it's the one I know of) which got it's name from a British mystery series that had been run on PBS channels and the nickname for the lead character "Cracker" had to do with the fact that he "cracked" cases that others didn't. So, if it's the same show I know of, I'm not sure it has any racial implications to it, though the name might sound as if it does.

I think it's sad that Dog Chapman made such a comment, but can I just say (even if it puts me in line to get my head slapped - lightly) ... sometimes in PRIVATE conversations that we have with people who are really close to us, we say things that are not so much an expression of our beliefs in general but may be about 1 person in particular OR are not really meant in to be a serious comment at all .. and we believe the other person knows it .... I believe that most of us have made comments in private conversations that if heard by someone else would make us feel shame. I have not listened to the tape, just as I never listened to IMUS's comments.

Racism is wrong. Having said that, we are in a strange time ... there are still those living that grew up in a time long before the civil rights movement(s) and many of us were raised by those people. I myself remember hearing what today would be considered to be extraordinarily racist comments from my parents, just in the general dinner table type conversations. I don't think either of my parents were actually racist, they were kind and giving to anyone who they could help and never chose friends, neighbors or associates by color of skin, etc. .... but they have been known to say some things that sound horrible.

I'm glad we are moving forward in our society!

We should ALSO do away with,the "M","H","S",etc words!I have been called a
"fn" Mick,"fn" Harp,"fn" ShamrockPicker(new one),etc.Notice that the descriptive word,"fn" remains the same,on ALL of the words!I just shrug it off & keep on with what I'm doing.If people want to speak ignorantly,thier petty
names aren't going to bother me! Irish
P.S.I even saw a(yrs ago)sign on a lawn that said-Dogs & Irishmen,keep off
the grass.( I think it was in Richmond VA).

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Sounds like a fine place for an Irish Wolfhound convention.

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I've never been called a nigger.

That's because I'm white.

But momma ALWAYS taught me to "try and walk a mile in another's shoes". I can honestly say I can't cross the finsh line of that quest when walking a mile as another's race is concerned. Especially if that race happens to be one of darker color. I can try and put myself in his/her's shoes...but I'll never fully grasp the impact of "the word".

BTW...doesn't saying "the N word" still say it? Geezzzzzzzzzzz...what year is this?

That being said..."The pen is mightier than the sword" means words hurt. Some words are less hurtful...some more...but none-the-less...they hurt. And really? What's the point? Words of hurt/hate will NEVER change the fact that we live in a diversified world and we are all different.


If it wasn't color it'd be something else because humans seem to need a reason to hate.

I want everyone to be like me...therefore I am??????????????????

I give up!

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So long as by concensus we give the word power, it will continue to hurt.

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