The N word
When I lived in the little town in which I grew up, I was surrounded by folks who threw the N word around pretty regularly.
Until I was, say, nine, my parents were the only people I knew who didn’t, in fact.
I got so used to hearing it that I started tossing it around myself.
Until dad heard me.
Usually I got an asswhipping for fucking up, but this time hr reached across the kitchen table and slapped me upside the head, hard. Tears streamed down my face from the sheer pain- dad had a handshake that would break bones, so his hand was hard and strong. Mom said “He doesn’t understand, don’t be like that” but dad said “that’s no excuse, we raised him better”
Eventually, I did understand. I saw the way the ‘good old boy” network in my town worked, I saw the way my neighbors acted, I saw the racism and hatred.
There are a bucketload of people who are scum. Black, white, asian, mexican, whatever. Scum is scum. Using the N word is as unfair to the other scum as it is to black people it stereotypes.
The Internet is a wonderful place. It allows you to be hateful and intolerant of people you never met, regardless of their race, color or creed. You don’t need the N word, it’s rude and distasteful to anyone with class.
Keep this shit out of your vocabulary. Listening, Dog?
I’d be more impressed with the outrage over this if I didn’t hear the word just about anytime A-A “entertainers” open their mouths.
And the funny thing here is that Dog was on the phone to his son telling him that he(Dog) was worried that the son’s A-A girlfriend was trying to tape him(Dog) using that word so she could sell the tape to an expose mag..
“Why am I going to hate someone based solely on the color of their skin when if I get to know them I can find 1,000 other reasons to think they’re an asshole?”
-George Carlin
Gardena California, where I did most of my growing up, was a wildly mixed ethnic melting pot. (37% Americans of Japanese ancestry at my high school for example.)
There was one basic rule when it came to ethnic slurs. You had to be a member of that ethnic group in order to use the slur that referred to it.
It worked.
Even with this I still cringe when I hear a Black American use the N-word.
Unfortunately there has developed a trend to allow certain ethnicities to use slurs against Americans of European ancesrry as if it was OK for them to attack but not Ok for the reverse to be done.
I have been called “cracker” more than once by people who seem to think it’s perfectly OK. Yet if I returned the compliment they would call me racist.
I find the lable “cracker” for white Americans particularly stupid. It’s actually a reference to Americans from Georgia. Given that I am a Californian by birth and a Nevadan by preference, calling me a cracker is just plain stupid.
But then is that not a common trait of any ethnic insult?
yeah, EMD, I hear ANYONE using the N word, and fuck ’em I assume they’re a retard.
It’s a word. Don’t be afraid of it.
Not afraid, n5, just annoyed by those who use it.
I was raised in NC in the 60’s and heard it a lot. As a child in public school(now you know why my writing skills suck) going through integration, I learned that children are products of the home they come from. Some of us tried to get along with everybody, at least everyone that was willing. Others went to school and spouted the slurs that they were taught at home. Black and White, the road went both ways.
Cracker was not just for Georgia, I got that label plenty in eastern NC.
And like a lot of words, context and the tone make a world of difference. Not that I think its ok to use it, I have found that life is so much better if you treat everyone like you would like to be treated, I don’t like to be labeled with any slur. Hell, I have enough trouble with my real hangups and failings as it is.
I was raised on a tobacco farm and worked and played with lots of black folks, when I first went to school I asked my Mom why there were no black kids?, She told me to just wait that they will be there soon. She was a public school teacher and knew that things were going to change soon. She told me and my sister exactly what to expect and how to handle it. She was right on, we never got into trouble and made lots of new friends along the way.
The one thing my wife used to do that really pissed me off was to call black people “schwartzes”. Now, we’re Jewish, and I suppose that’s perfectly good Yiddish for “blacks”, and she’d grown up perfectly comfortable with using the word as shorthand for “African-American” or “black”.
I on the other hand had grown up listening to well-off Jewish adults of the previous generation using the word as a substitute for “n—-r”.
When Sally realized how upset her use of the word made me, she stopped using it. But it took a while.
I’m not having as much luck getting her to stop using “shiksa”, another word that I find exceedingly foul. She claims it just means “non-Jewish woman”, but what it really means (again in last-generation context) is “non-Jewish whore/bitch dating/marrying nice Jewish boy”.
So it goes.