Wargamer said:
yeah_so_no said:
Weapon_Master_Jedi said:
HotShooter said:
I liked the level alot but your commentary was terrible. The whole perverted thing was okay but when you started on the racism I had to mute you. And you never ever say the N word unless your black, and you are not cool enough to be black.
Okay, forbidding anybody who isn't of a certain race from using a word, whether or not the word has been twisted out of its initial context into a racial epithet, is actually more racist than using the word itself.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA...oh, wait. You were serious.
My take on this is very, very simple; if ****** is offensive, it's offensive
whoever uses it. Since certain groups of Blacks don't seem to mind using it, those groups shouldn't be offended when other 'racial groups' use it as well.
Do some research on "reclaiming." And also recognize that all situations are not, in fact, equal.
To put it another way: it's ok for
you to call your little sister ugly, but when someone else does it, them's fightin' words. It's the same thing with racial slurs, in a way.
My gay male friends can call each other 'fag', as a straight person, because of the history of the word and the weight it has against gay men, and the hateful way it's been and continues to be used and the implicit threat and Othering (basically, "you are Not Like Me and are inferior/a deviation) with it, can not. Likewise, being Black, if my little brother was feeling brave, he could call me the n-word, and would at most get a "...Have finally lost what's left of your mind?" and rolled eyes (and for the record, I don't call anyone "******" because I don't like the word, or use it aside from academic discussions of it), but if one of my white friends called me that, I would be horrified and stunned, and we would no longer be friends. Why? Because there
is no implicit threat behind my little brother saying it as there is when a White person does. I would not be afraid if my little brother said it, whereas I would if a White person did because of this pesky "connotation" thing.
The n-word has a long history of racial hatred and threat behind it. A White person saying it will cause a much more visceral and threatened reaction than another Black person saying it precisely because of that history--a White person saying it invokes nothing but a feeling of being hated and looked down upon for being a Black person, along with the implicit threat of "this person may wish to do me harm because I am Black." It is a word that, because of its history of being used by Whites when they demean Blacks, threaten Blacks, and lynch Blacks, and used to show Blacks are subhuman and inferior to them, has a much, MUCH different connotation based on the race of the person using it. Like it or not,
that is how it is.
It's like if you call a woman ***** and then call another man *****--the
connotations are completely different. Same word, radically different connotations, and the reactions are not going to be the same because it will mean something radically different to the person being called it. If we are the same race, you can not be insulting me, belittling me, Othering me, and implying I am inherently inferior because of my race, precisely because we ARE the same race--it's nullified.
Ignoring the history of the word, how it's used, how it has been used (one word: LYNCHING, and lynching is still a powerful image in the consciousness of all Black Americans because they WERE so recent--there was a case about ten years ago in Texas of a Black man being dragged to death by racists Whites in Texas, and the last "lynching" as most people imagine it was in the late 70s) and even how White people using it will be perceived--as racist, ignorant, and hateful--and blanketly claiming that saying someone can't use the word is somehow
more racist than using it is naive and simplistc at
best.
You can not wipe away and ignore hundreds of years of a terrible history because the ramifications upset your delicate sensibilities and ideas of
fair. You can argue that is how things
should be, but it is not, I'm afraid,
how things are in reality, where "fair" and "simple takes" rarely, if ever, actually apply.