Why can't white people call black people the n word

[scspkr99]

why would white people want to?

[Sirius]

better than cracker!!

!!chea

[Widowmaker]

no one should say it


also this is hilarious if you dont know about the wordfilter

******

[herbalicious]

Only accepted when quoting Rap lyrics.

I used to think this...then Mos Def told me otherwise.

Oh bugger.

[ThomasEll]

middle class

I have a friend who is black and always uses "your just being racist!" or "it's just cos I'm black" whenever he gets something wrong in class. He is joking around. Everyone else knows he's joking around. The teacher knows he's joking around. But if someone were to over here it, then it would probably cause problems. Who's being racist in this situation?

[scspkr99]

middle class

I have a friend who is black and always uses "your just being racist!" or "it's just cos I'm black" whenever he gets something wrong in class. He is joking around. Everyone else knows he's joking around. The teacher knows he's joking around. But if someone were to over here it, then it would probably cause problems. Who's being racist in this situation?

No one

[ThomasEll]

middle class

I have a friend who is black and always uses "your just being racist!" or "it's just cos I'm black" whenever he gets something wrong in class. He is joking around. Everyone else knows he's joking around. The teacher knows he's joking around. But if someone were to over here it, then it would probably cause problems. Who's being racist in this situation?

No one

I meant when someone makes a fuss about it. Or, more to the point is it just that the racism has just been accepted as being "funny"?

[scspkr99]

There's nothing inherently racist in the jokes he's making, it could be argued that they are foolish but not racist. If they were overheard and the person who overheard them attempted to act on them then he obviously has a responsibility to place them in context and failing to do so would be slanderous but again not racist.

[feral witchchild]

I wish MY name was Taufeeq Sangay.

Instead, I have the whitest name ever.

[butt jolokia]

I'm white with a black name.

[noam]

hmmmmm

hmmmmmmmmmm...

nope. not gettin into this.

[alphacat]

I've heard it explained (by a black man) this way: as a term of familiarity, it's like you calling your wife "the booty monster." Now, it's all fine and well for YOU to call your wife "the booty monster," but if another dude called her that, well - that's not cool.

That said -

It's an ugly word, and the cultural strategy of reclaiming epithets for the purpose of empowerment is a tricky proposition at best that's not always successful and sometimes backfires by legitimizing the wrong/negative aspect of the original meaning. Just ask gay people.

[seckle]

If your litmus test for whats racially abusive is defined by what rappers say....just bury your head in the sand right now.

Read wb dubois, marcus garvey, bell hooks, franz fanon, eldridge cleaver. People that see race from the complexity that it deserves.

[sigbowls]

i was thinking about this today to

[stappard]

I don't understand the condition "I can use it if they know I'm not a racist"

I would expect a black guy to assume I wasn't racist, until I call him a ******...

[ruckus49]

heres the question white people: would you want to say it, if you didn't hear it so much in rap music?


probably not nearly as much


I have heard many occasions of the white people who are legitimately friends with a lot of black ppl who are "allowed" to say it in front of them. But, most white people don't have multiple black friends, so this really doesn't apply.

[aftee]

I dislike the phrase "successful black man" for it's older meaning. Look into what some of the great original SBM initiated when Europeans appeared in search of gold

Also white people can't call black people the n word simply because it's fucking uncivilised (based on the way history unfolded), that's the only answer you need

EDIT: Also, use your fucking brain (and pass the message on to your dumb friends). Racism is about elevating one race above another (or more popularly, one race below another). How on earth can two people within the same race passionately forge this into conflict.

So if I use the term on another white man, it is not racist. Good to know son.

Nearly 90% of all black guys I've ever met get all pissy and moody whenever a white guy talks about it, but that same 90% have always used terms like 'honky' and 'cracker' and etc. and it seems to be socially acceptable that they can say that but not vice versa?

Then again most white people that I've known don't overreact and don't take offense to those words. (Those are just based on personal experience)

All I really have to say is that slavery happened a very long time ago and nobody alive today was a part of it.

[scspkr99]

Slavery may have ended a long time ago but you had Jim Crow in living memory, people killed for trying to get black people to register for the vote in living memory, you still have the social and political ramifications existing today. Cracker and honky don't carry anywhere near the same historical and social implications that the use of SBM does.

Given the way the language was / is used why would you ever want to be able to use the word and why fight / argue for the right to use language that the majority of the population finds offensive?

[scspkr99]

regarding using it on another white man it actually could be considered racist merely because considering an epithet associated with a certail community offenisive suggests that the person using it considers that community beneath them

In the same way calling a straight guy a cigarette displays a predisposition to homophobia

[ketamine]

This should clear it up for everybody.

0:49




/THREAD