how was this aired with the curse?

[SavageParrot Profile]

LoL I call my friends that all the time. Granted not so much the female friends but the blokes. Lets be honest people know when people are trying to be offensive and when they are not. That's what I never understood about political correctness either. I've heard some really sensible stuff branded racist because they have chosen the wrong word at the wrong time. By contrast I have heard some really offensive shit slip throught unaltered because they know what words to avoid. When are people going to learn to listen to what people say in it's entirity rather than getting bent up on particular phrases quoted out of context?

[=ender= Profile]

Though I tend to agree with most of what you've said in this thread, Parrot, I have to disagree on some level about words simply being words and are harmless. A gun is just a gun and IMHO is by its very nature, harmless. In the right hands, it can be a tool. In the wrong hands, it can become the very epitome of evil. Sure, at its core, it's still just a gun and it's the person wielding it that we should be questioning and not the tool in their hands, right?

Words are very much the same -- they can be very destructive tools in the wrong hands. I seriously doubt if you said, "what's up, nigger?" to a black man you've never met that he would think to himself, "I wonder in what context he speaks? Perhaps he's just being silly." No. You're getting your ass handed to you backwards and rightly so.

Words can and have had more strength behind them than a lot of people realize. It's not always the listener that necessarily takes the words out of context. Sometimes it's the speaker, out of ignorance perhaps, that doesn't realize their own potential for harm and needs to be more aware of the context in which he or she speaks.

All that said, I think the South Park episode where they used the word "shit" uncensored over 150 times is great, but mostly because Parker and Stone used it as a tool against the network censors and the American public that was so bent out of shape about the uncensored use of the word in Chicago Hope.

[SavageParrot Profile]

Originally posted by =ender=
Words are very much the same -- they can be very destructive tools in the wrong hands. I seriously doubt if you said, "what's up, nigger?" to a black man you've never met that he would think to himself, "I wonder in what context he speaks? Perhaps he's just being silly." No. You're getting your ass handed to you backwards and rightly so.

No you see you've swallowed this bunk whole. It's not rightly so. If I walked up to him in a friendly fashion and shook his hand saying '"what's up nigger" the 'right' as in reasonable thing for his to do if offended would be to tell me how offensive it is to him and ask me not to do it again. To be honest depending on what age he was he'd probably just think I was an idiot and laugh at me. I appreciate there's a question of tact in what you say and when but I don't agree that any word is of an in itself inherently wrong.

[PraiseA||ah Profile]

Any word has the potential to acquire a meaning that it was not intended to have when used in a new context. The meaning of words are always re-invented. There are some special cases though where words cannot ever be recycled back into the general lexicon. 'Hitler' and 'nigger' are cases in point.

I completely agree with Ender on this one Parrot. I think you're out of your bloody mind if you think you can get away with saying that word to a black man. Most especially a black man in a poor predominantly black neighborhood in America.

The word may not carry as much history in the UK as it does in the US. So I can see how you could make the mistake in underestimating it's weight.

[SavageParrot Profile]

I didn't say you could I said you should be able to, depending on context. There's a big difference.

There's a constant argument about relaiming the word used with reference especially to rap culture and my point is basically that if you want to reclaim the word then you have to make it acceptable for white people to use the word within the same context as a term of endearment: 'you are my nigga'. I wouldn't do it personally as it would make me look like a knob but the argument remains