"The N Word"

I hear that shit everyday i go outside my house , it doesn't bother me at all

 

I find it hard to get offended by a word.

 

Terrible word. Some people don't realize how successful racism against blacks and "niggers" has worked. To this day, the black male is subliminally feared and questioned, not just in the US, but especially Asia and other parts of the world. It's pretty sad actually.

 

thats blaring out of every car nowadays..

 

Perhaps that's the truth, but I find it odd that the distinction even has to be made. We all affect the way the language grows and develops through the way we use and interpret it. I'm certainly not advocating use of the word. I don't advocate any kind of disrespect towards anyone. I think that as our language grows we can remove the power that words like this have to harm people, and the only way to do that is to treat the word as though it has no power.

 

Its a worthless word. Its carries the baggage of hate and repression. It's a word that has caused death, and harm for decades. What reason would anybody have for the word? The sound of it carries no beauty, it isn't poetic. It reflects poorly on any race who uses it.

I have no problem letting the word stand in literature like Twains Huckleberry Finn, there it carries a message of how the word was used. Beyond that it's useless. The English language has a great wealth of words, discarding this one will be no loss.

 

I find this "unique". Where I'm from a "******" is a person, no matter the race or color, that is considered the lowest scum. We're talking about someone that makes a child-molesting-lawyer look pretty good.

I have and will call people "N", but with one exception, every person that I have called that, to date, is either white or hispanic.

I have been threatened with arrest for using it before, with the claim that it's a hate crime. hate crime? yeah, I suppose. I ain't calling them that because I love them. Then I'm told it's racist. Racist? How so. "Because I'm not black! I'm white!"
Really? Uhh, like yo, DUDE- YOU put color to it. I didn't. Who's the racist now?
Not me, I just judge the SOB for their actions. I don't care about their color.

 

The word itself doesn't offend me, no, but I am not black, so I do not know what it feels like to hear that word and have it used against me. To me, it is just another word, but to some people, it's a painful reminder of an ugly history that should be put behind and moved on from. I'd like to say words are just words and only have the power you allow them to have, but there are words that are hurtful and offensive to even me. I hate hate hate the word "faggot" and get pretty mad when it is used.

 

i don't find the word ****** offensive.

i don't call people it

but that's because i don't fancy the ramification.

but if black people want to walk around calling each other a ******

it can't be that bad can it??

if i call anyone - regardless of colour

an asshole

they are offended

so that's an insult.

i don't agree with this "do as i say and not as i do" attitude.

the fact i'm excluded from the usage

i see as racist.

because i'm white i'm ostracised??

sounds a little familiar to me...

"do as i say... not as i do.."

but then - i'd rather not use the word anyways.

 

Would any white people on this forum be offended if they were called Whitey or Cracker or Honkey?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CmzT4OV-w0?t=2m7s

 

I could really care less.

I think one distinction that some people are not making in this thread is the difference between "******" in all its historical connotations, and "nigga," which is a common slang that some black people call each other and that is used in pretty much every rap song.

One time I went through a drive thru and the black guy taking my order was talking in a fake redneck voice. When I pulled around and saw that he was black, he started talking in his normal voice and I said jokingly "aw I knew you didn't really talk like that."

and he replied in an exagerated yessum masta old-school accent, "yeah i bet you thought I talked like a ****** didnt you?"

Thats the most offensive use of the word I've personally encountered. I was shocked, mainly that someone would be so paranoid of racism that they would take an innocent, jokey comment as a racist remark.

Thats really the only time I've personally heard "******" in real life, outside of television or books. I haven't really heard any white people use the word.

I have heard both whites and blacks use "nigga," without offense.

 

I am a Cracker, but I don't like being called one in most contexts. "White Trash" is more derisive than Cracker, but in general, it is not as offensive to most people in most situations as the "N" word.

I hear singers and rappers on urban radio use the "N" word and calling all women bitches and whores. I don't think that failure to self-censor this language is proof that the entire black community is fine with all these terms, even when used "in-house". The lack of respect for women is very obvious in most of these songs.

 

I hope for the day where that word and words like that, will lose their racist meanings, and just become a word.

It is already happening. I use nigga a lot thanks to rap music. I am not black, I do not hate black people, I use it interchangeably with "friend" or "homie". I say wat up nigga to a lot of my friends. Its just a convient saying.

The only time I see it used in racist fashion is with old people. Or if someone is really angry at a black person and uses it to make a derogatory statement against them. Really though its few a far between. There is not a lot of people left who are like, atleast around here, who are like "you aint taking that ****** boy to the prom with you are ya?"

 

Can the Confederate flag be seen the same way?
If enough people treat it as a part of history and love of region and not love for the worst aspects of it. The US flag once flew over slave plantations too and yet it has come to represent the aspirations of freedom for all, not misguided notions from the past.

I know that most of the rebel non-slave holding soldiers were not willing to die simply so their rich neighbors could keep their slaves.
Slower transportation and communication made the concept of national loyalty seem more obscure than loyalty to region, state and village. Most of our ancestors were duped into that war by the aristocracy, but they stayed in it because they were defending their homes from foreign (Yankee) soldiers.

Context is everything. I see that you don't deliberately seek a quarrel with strangers by calling them "N". Your friends don't mind (or at least tolerate it) because they are friends.

 

anyone suggesting that the term cracker is just as offensive is wrong... one word is associated with the enslavement of a race of people, the other with the people who owned the enslaved people...

 

Kindly look at my post. I suggested that Cracker is offensive, that White Trash is more offensive and that "N" is even more offensive.

Crackers generally did not own slaves. They were regarded as no more than one step above slaves by the aristocrats on plantations where both worked, but no arguing that slaves were treated the worst.

 

I'm interested in why everyone has to associate the N word with slavery. Yes black people we're called that during slavery, but they we're also called it after slavery and still today. The act of enslaving people was evil, there's no argument about that, so what does it matter what people called their slaves? If they had just called them black people or african americans would we consider that a racist term today? I understand that the two are related by history, but the N word in no way caused slavery. Slavery was caused by greed and hate and a very large misconception about human beings, not the N word. This is basically my point, that we should fight against greed and hate and for equality, but not against a silly word that need not hurt anyone.

 

"N" evolved into a hate word. It was originally a mispronunciation of the Spanish word "negro" literally meaning black. When several words developed to describe various dark-skinned people who originate south of the Sahara Desert, then some of the words became neutral, some positive and some negative.

Could changes in culture eventually put an end to all ethnically derisive terms? Not any time soon, but we press on toward such a day and such a mindset.

 

To further elaborate:

"This term was used to describe white Southerners, particularly those who were poorly educated and possessed little means.

Yet another theory suggests that the pejorative term came from the stereotype that poor white people often bought food stamps for cracked corn.

Historically the word suggested poor, white rural Americans with little formal education."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(pejorative)



"Honky is a racial slur for white people, predominantly heard in the United States. The first recorded use of honky in this context possibly dates to 1946 (although the use of Honky Tonk appeared in films well before that time), yet the exact origins of the word are generally unknown.

Honky may be a variant of hunky, which was a variant of Bohunk, a slur for Bohemian-Hungarian immigrants in the early 1900s. Honky may also derive from the term "xonq nopp" which, in the West African language Wolof means, literally, "red-eared person" or "white person". The term may have originated with Wolof-speaking slaves brought to the US.

Honky was adopted as a pejorative in 1967 by black militants within Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) seeking a rebuttal for the term ******. National Chairman of the SNCC, H. Rap Brown, on June 24, 1967, told an audience of blacks in Cambridge, "You should burn that school down and then go take over the honky's school." Brown went on to say: "If America don't come round, we got to burn it down. You better get some guns, brotha. The only thing the honky respects is a gun. You give me a gun and tell me to shoot my enemy, I might shoot Ladybird."

Honky has occasionally (if intentionally ironically) been used even for whites supportive of African-Americans, as seen in the 1968 trial of Black Panther Party member Huey Newton, when fellow Panther Eldridge Cleaver created pins for Newton's white supporters stating "Honkies for Huey."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honky