If words hurt you, you are soft and in for rude awakenings in life. I personally want nothing to do with people like this in any form.
Controlling, changing, manipulating, and weaponizing language is some really fascist shit.
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Itâs not always about hurt feelings. You can call me every slur in the book and it wonât hurt my feelings. There was a time, when I was much younger, when being called those slurs, and I was called those slurs, did hurt me.
With that said, if I were to be called those words at work for example, even though my feelings wouldnât be hurt I would still make sure the perpetrator faced consequences because I should have the expectation to not hear those words in that environment.
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This points out the detachment between the woke college elite blacks and young black people who arenât in that vacuum. They make a distinction between the two ways of saying that word and may be ok with non blacks using the softer version.
The elites are confused as on the one hand they defend the use of the softer version as they recognize a distinction as well but at the same time they lose their minds if a non black uses the softer version. But woke ideology revolves around contradiction and hypocrisy.
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I agree certain words should not be used in certain situations, but I would not ever go after someone for using them. I just do not care. Direct whatever you want at me. I will just laugh and go about my business. I donât have the time or energy to worry about it.
Continuing to win in life while acting like they donât exist does more to make them mad than anything else.
I see a lot of posts describing why the word is bad and the vast majority categorically agree, but what about the element of juxtaposition posed in the original post?
The current events in Gaza and the massacre leading up to them were met with mixed responses where actions included torturing and even allegedly raping infants among other things occurred, yet you have people in support of the aggressors who likely would not dare say the N word in public.
Why is a word universally worse, even if derogatory? Societal pressure and group think? Norms and mores? Tortured babies are simply too horrific to comprehend?
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What I donât get is why many people completely ignore context for a word they donât like. Uttering the N word while singing along to a rap song is much different than someone calling a black person the N word as an insult. I am a big Tupac fan. I often listen to his music while on the treadmill. In an unconscious manner, I will sing along quietly to the music I am listening to. I am not going to censor myself in this context. It hurts nobody. Even if they overhear it, are they going to assume I am a racist because I sang a lyric that was a bad word from a black artist I like. If I was racist, like actually racist, would I even be listening to Tupac? If they assume I am, I really donât care, because why should I care what such a silly person who for some reason canât consider context thinks.
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Iâll sing along, too, working out. In a gym? Maybe not.
I guess I just think itâs nice to be respectful until it is determined that someone is not deserving of respect. I donât balance âwho has it worseâ I just try to be kind insofar as I can identify what that is.
If a black person did not meet my âworthy of respect barâ I wouldnât call him a nigger, I would simply allow my disdain to show. I donât need insult words to do that, I can use mild language to insult very easily.
So I donât know that I think the words have TOO MUCH POWER so much as that theyâre merely words. Like, is it such a big deal to use them? If so, why?
I have to both like and respect someone for their insults to matter to me. Only people who strike me as decent people have any power over my feelings.
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Because most people have no context on what actually matters or what true suffering is.
When you have to manufacture outrage and hurt over something that is meaningless and actually hurts nobody, you are an out-of-touch fool.
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Agreed. We live in a very nonexistential time.
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I was going to jokingly tell you to shut up and call you a slur, but this being the internet, that might come back to bite me some day.
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Hahahaha I would have enjoyed that.
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Exactly my point. Iâm not trying to defend using the word. Just trying to understand why this is the unforgivable sin.
For me to not sing along, I would have to be consistently reminding myself not to (and I am a terrible singer). Itâs just something I do automatically when listening to music. I am sure there are some people that have thought there was something wrong with me in the past haha. Iâve been self consciousness about it in the past (especially while listening to music in the university computer lab).
Youâd like Minnesota lol. It is very rare for someone to actually insult someone else. It is more passive back handed type shit here. The frustrating thing about it for me, is that this type of pettiness is tough to call out. Someone can be quite nasty to someone without actually saying anything insulting.
Because no matter what someone else says, you can reply with, âyou live in Minnesota.â
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Because success and happiness are the best revenge. If you are a failure and miserable, you need to find something or someone to demonize. Successful people are too busy to stop and cry.
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I would again suggest group think, overlayed with fear of retribution.
Itâs universally accepted as a âno-noâ when even a decade or two ago it was still fairly casually used (not defending it, but it was).
Today you throw the word out and itâs cancel-culture time baby!
So you may feel like itâs worse to rape and torture infants to death than it is to say the N word, but by God you want to keep your job and you can just run with the whole âoccupationâ thing for extra woke brownie points anyways.
Group think.
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Its also a convenient opportunity to attack someone, whether through cancel culture or fighting.
And an easy way to start a fight. Borh the person saying it and the person hearing it often know the intention of the use of the word.
So when you individualists (non-group-thinkers) use the word, or would if not for the cancel culture, how is it used? What is it for?
It doesnât have much use. But youâre missing the point, I feel. Itâs not that we need the word. Itâs a question of why the language is so tightly regulated in this particular case.
Itâs not like language would fall apart if we werenât allowed to say âfuck.â Itâs a mostly vulgar word that generally doesnât get used in mixed company. It doesnât convey some meaning that canât be conveyed any other way. But when someone uses it people generally just consider the context and decide what to do from there. Itâs not a one way trip to exile for just pronouncing those syllables. Because itâs still just a word.
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lol well I donât think the propriety of slurs comes down to ethnicity as much as it does your relationship to the person you are hurling the slur at when men bust balls amongst friends, aâla Walt Kowalski in Grand Torino.
I donât think words like âniggerâ should be used very often at all, which is why it isnât in my vocabulary other than discussing it like we are here, discussing history or quoting a person.
Some of my white friends called each other âniggaâ during the 1990âs. I thought it was just as dumb as it would be to call each other âspicâ, but the term was definitely rooted in an admiration for gangsta rap and black culture.
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