As long as some people to continue to be offended by a word other people will continue to use it.

You can't legislate social conscience. All you can do is educate.

I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies. — Winston Churchill, British imperialist politician

In other words: "sticks and stones ..."

postpone progress? — GTTRPNK

As a Black man, I wonder what you mean by "progress" ... specifically "progress" of what and for whom?

God's teeth. Why even consider such questions?

Specifically, the progression of humanity towards a wider acceptance and less bigotry/racism/misogyny, etc. I do feel like society as a whole is generally on the right path, but could it be swifter?

My opinion is that no words are inherently bad or harmful,only bad actors. I agree with Churchill.

:up:

My opinion is that no words are inherently bad or harmful,only bad actors. — GTTRPNK

Bad actors who use the words, you mean?

My opinion is that no words are inherently bad or harmful,only bad actors. I agree with Churchill. — GTTRPNK

I’ll take that.

I am openly not straight and being insulted for it doesn’t bother me because I’m not ashamed.

I am openly not straight and being insulted for it doesn’t bother me because I’m not ashamed. — AmadeusD

A constant barrage from the same angle will wear anyone down. You will start to crack and it will become a weakness. Bullying tactics 101.

I am guessing you haven't been bullied enough to form cracks yet, or that you have an iron will. Or that you had inept bullies :rofl:

Shades of the Deep South, where I grew up. Sad.

I am guessing you haven't been bullied enough to form cracks yet, or that you have an iron will. — mentos987

Ooof. A lot to unpack here. Suffice to say: I have attempted my life several times.
But that has never been due to constant bullying which I have experienced up to and including several serious assaults. I just don’t care.

The things that hurt me are few and far between. Repetition of something that doesn’t hurt me isn’t one.

My read of (modern) history is that the pendulum, so to speak, swings back and forth from intolerance to tolerance, some times in faster-shorter cycles than most other times, and "social progress" is mostly a mirage because achievements in tolerance-inclusion tend to be quite fragile (e.g. in the US in recent decades, eviceration of civil & voting rights; increase in voter suppression policies, rise of virulent ethnonationalism and nonwhite immigrant scapegoating (à la MAGA-GOP politics); ahistorical expansion of 2nd Amendment & denial of women"s reproductive healthcare rights; rise in rate of hate crimes against LGBTIs Asians Muslims & Jews; etc). It seems axiomatic that while there is (mostly) "progress" in technosciences, struggle for dignity against injustice in social relations is an existential constant. IME, epithets, "reclaimed" or not, are almost entirely inconsequential.

I am openly not straight and being insulted for it doesn’t bother me because I’m not ashamed. — AmadeusD

:up:

Ooof. A lot to unpack here — AmadeusD

Oh, I am sorry if I seem personal here. I ment it more in general.

I believe you can be successfully bullied for just about anything. E.g. A girl with red hair can start a school loving her hair and graduate hating it, just from it being used as an avenue of attack for bullies.

You probably fall in my "iron will" category, but I am out of my depth here again, please don't hate me.

no issues with you whatsoever my friend :) we’re all just asking questions!

I'm not a fan of any word that identifies a race in America as something special or different, considering our long and crappy history with racism. I don't even like it when the community uses it itself. I feel it only reinforces separateness and differences.

I was a high school math teacher for five years in inner city schools. My student breakdown was often 40% hispanic and 60% black. I am a white man. I never let my students use the N word in class, despite me knowing it was only thoughtless slang. I always told them to respect yourself as part of the human race, and that every time you use the word there's some racist somewhere who's nodding their ahead and saying, "You bet you are."

Its unthoughtful, and only adds to stereotypes of blacks as thoughtless, ignorant, or primitive. I am here to say as one who has lived as the only white man in all black apartments for several years, that this could not be further from the truth. It might seems like an insignificant division from someone raised in the black community, but any educated black person should never use the word, and ask their community to do better.

I grew up when using the word was a concordance with the past and present danger of discrimination. My parents raised me to resist that, even if it caused me harm.
I sort of get how the use is a source of expression for new generations.
But it will always be a betrayal, to my ears, of what so many people fought so hard to resist.

Word usage has nothing to do with progress toward greater racial harmony. Meaning is use. When a white person uses the N word, he means, "hey guys, I'm a racist." When a black person uses it, it doesn't mean that.

If one day both blacks and whites could hold hands and mean the same thing when they use that word, that'd be interesting, but I don't think it would mean we were any closer to achieving MLK Jr.'s dream.

Let's aim higher.

There are words so dehumanizing that we refer to them only by the first letter of the word, as to not cause offense to our fellow members of society.
/.../
Is there any potential current or future harm being done? — GTTRPNK

The problem is much broader: in that the issue is framed as a matter of "offending people or hurting their feelings", rather than as a matter of morality.

As soon as something is framed in terms of a matter of "offending people or hurting their feelings", it can easily be dismissed. For one, because it's a blamable weakness of character to feel hurt by words; for two, because then people can easily blackmail eachother over all kinds of nonsense (e.g. "I feel offended when you don't address me with "Your lordship").

The foundation for a proper, moral use of language should be much more substantial than merely a consideration of what might "hurt another person's feelings."

I'm old enough and grew up in a backward-enough culture where it was (officially) still believed that if one calls someone an idiot etc., this speaks badly about oneself. It was considered that one demeans oneself by using such language; one was supposed to consider it beneath one's dignity to use such language.

The foundation for a proper, moral use of language should be much more substantial than merely a consideration of what might "hurt another person's feelings." — baker

I agree. Words are not morals. I guess the issue here, though, is that substantial scholarly work indicates that the use of words (particularly protracted, claustrophic (i.e inescapable (parents, for instance))) can cause physical harm to the stasis of the brain via repeated reactions to the words changing hte wiring in the brain to fire off irrational responses despite best efforts on the subject's part. If so, "hurt feelings" may have a physical and substantially material component.

To what degree I personally subscribe to this, im unsure but just putting that out there. Where I live it's swung from "harden up" to "You are a bad person if you say anything to offends anyone ever, in any context, for any reason and if you defend yourself that's evidence you are the bad person you've been accused of being"

so my feathers ruffle at the initial conception.

I agree. The impact of words on people can be significant, so word choice can be a moral act. If we believe that morality is largely about trying to reduce harm or suffering, then being mindful of how words are experienced remains an important ethical consideration. The old joke is probably true: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words do permanent damage.

Exactly. Individuals are who they are regardless of their vocabulary. The n word, for example is often a semi-magical insight into the mindset of folks. If I'm conversing with someone out of earshot of anyone who appears Black, and they drop the n word, I consider it a beneficial opportunity to gain a perhaps otherwise unobtainable peek at some of the inner workings of the guy's worldview.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them. — LuckyR

I tend to think this is a veil for trusting your overwrought assumptions in most cases.

I tend to think this is a veil for trusting your overwrought assumptions in most cases.

I'm giving advice based on MY experience, but I acknowledge that your experience may be that your overwrought assumptions outweigh what others bring to the table.

I'm giving advice based on MY experience, but I acknowledge that your experience may be that your overwrought assumptions outweigh what others bring to the table. — LuckyR

When i said 'you', read it as the abstract use of 'one'. It was not aimed at you personally - And i do not carry assumptions of this kind (or, more accurate, i immediately, by way of years of habit-forming, jettison my assumptions upon meeting/interacting with someone). I wait until someone actually tells me something of substance, instead of reading into things.

When i said 'you', read it as the abstract use of 'one'. It was not aimed at you personally - And i do not carry assumptions of this kind (or, more accurate, i immediately, by way of years of habit-forming, jettison my assumptions upon meeting/interacting with someone). I wait until someone actually tells me something of substance, instead of reading into things. — AmadeusD

A quick story because everyone does love a story.

I live in Atlanta and visited my then wife's family in rural east Georgia. Their indiscriminate use of the N word was a bit shocking to my more urbane ears, so much so that I must have shown enough reaction that the family matriarch apologized to me and explained to me that they weren't racist, but that there were a lot of racial tensions in town, at that moment having to do with a dispute over whether certain white historical sites would be preserved by the majority black city counsel.

Word usage varies from bubble to bubble I understand, but I have to think they conveyed exactly what they meant to convey, probably thinking all "family," regardless of blood or not, shared similar views, so they were free to speak freely. The point being that some word usage doesn't leave much doubt as to where people stand, and you have to realize that the words you hear are probably modified to your sensibilities until the day you stumble into somewhere you've been misread.

You are right, though, to the extent maybe someone could live somewhere and not know the nuances of the language and suggest something with their word usage that was unintended. I think that happens here at PTF honestly and can recall a few instances where posters did not understand the incredibly complex world of American racial nuances and they said something that shouldn't have been said, at least if they were in my bubble.

Another story because everyone loves a story.

I was on a work trip and we all piled into a cab from the airport and we had a driver with a thick Eastern European descent, likely a recent immigrant. We told him we were from Atlanta, and he told us he had been there and that it had so many black people he couldn't believe it. One of the women in the cab with us was married to a black man, which he, of course didn't know, so I took that opportunity to egg him on and ask him "what do you think of all those blacks," trying to keep up the awkward moment. The joke, of course, was that he already committed a faux pas, had no clue, and I was going to see how many more I could get him to make, all while my friend was forced to endure it. He, I do believe, was innocent and just making a remark, although had he been allowed to keep talking, who knows.

The first story, no innocence there.

The point being that some word usage doesn't leave much doubt as to where people stand, and you have to realize that the words you hear are probably modified to your sensibilities until the day you stumble into somewhere you've been misread. — Hanover

I agree with this, and refer to Bill Burr's old bit about the N word, and using it out of earshot of those whom you assume would take umbrage. He's not wrong - but that would be the substantive :)

We told him we were from Atlanta, and he told us he had been there and that it had so many black people he couldn't believe it. — Hanover

he already committed a faux pas — Hanover

I don't see a faux pas in pointing out a demographic unfamilar to you. Doesn't seem to contain any opinion on it - just that it was unusual for that guy. I think in this case, your friend/her husband aren't being reasonable - but this, I think goes to my point. Id want to hear more, in any situation.

P.S have spent some time in Georgia, near the coast. Lovely, flat, welcoming place but its super-creepy to drive past plantation after plantation

I don't see a faux pas in pointing out a demographic unfamilar to you. Doesn't seem to contain any opinion on it - just that it was unusual for that guy. I think in this case, your friend/her husband aren't being reasonable - but this, I think goes to my point. Id want to hear more, in any situation. — AmadeusD

I see you are from New Zealand? This is significant because the comment by the driver was in fact a faux pas where I am from. The husband was not in the car. We were all white. Had a black person been in the car, it would have been different. I have heard there are few things more complex than American racial interaction and humor related to it. I saw that happening and instead of changing the subject (which would probably been the tactful move), I entertained everyone by soliciting more faux pas.

If you said to me "my friend and I are coming over later" and I said "is he black?," and you were American, you'd look at me sideways, like, why does that matter? Or, you might say "fuck no!" which means you're either racist, or it could mean you're sarcastially calling me a racist by pretending to agree with my racism in an extreme way, which means you'd be asking me to clarify for you why it should matter..

That is, it's not supposed to matter what race people are, so if you ask about it, you're saying it matters, which means you now need to explain why it matters. That is, why did the cabbie register in his head that something different about Atlanta was that many of the people are black? Why was that important to him when it's normal to those who live there? The insinuation is that he thinks differently of black than whites. He didn't mention that everyone in Atlanta wears white tennis shoes and blue jeans and baseball caps (which they do like in the rest of America). He mentioned they were black.

What he meant really was, "Wow, back home everyone is white, and when I came over here I thought it'd be the same, but it's different, and that's unusual for me." And he likely meant no judgment either way. But here, there are judgments attached to those things.

Anyway, I don't make the rules.

This is significant because the comment by the driver was in fact a faux pas where I am from. — Hanover

I find this utterly preposterous, and a symptom of looking for enemies, unfortunately. Thems might be the rules, but they're ridiculous, if so.

P.S have spent some time in Georgia, near the coast. Lovely, flat, welcoming place but its super-creepy to drive past plantation after plantation — AmadeusD

Not sure of the plantations you speak of. There are some more inland that have fallen into disrepair, nothing like what has been maintained in Lousiana.

The coast itself has a storied past dating back to among the first European settlers and it then became a vacation area for the Pulitzers, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Goodyear, to name a few. The Jekyll Island resort was once owned by the Rockerfellers and it is now a hotel with adjoining cottages. It has a very Great Gatsby feel to it, in terms of the decor and description, although the book itself sucks as we've already concluded.

I find this utterly preposterous, and a symptom of looking for enemies, unfortunately. Thems might be the rules, but they're ridiculous, if so. — AmadeusD

It's not a symptom of looking for enemies though. The word usage is well understood. If the meaning you wish to convey is "I'd rather not black people be around me" there is no special way it ought be said. If that can be said by saying "I like rabbits," then that's the word usage. That people say it here as "there were a lot of black people there," just means it's said a different way.

That you might mean something different when you say it will likely be realized with your Aussie accent, but, I assure you, the harder the Southern twang used when it is said, the less likely you're going to convince someone your questions about the presence of black people was just an innocuous curiosity.

I agree with your advice, just differ (again based on my actual experience, not opinion) of what constitutes "something of substance".