...Seeking Clarity In A Murky World...

Great writing Nanette. How do you like that Willis had to show up at Wampum to prove your comments about him. I wonder if he really is that obtuse or if it is an act to be more acceptable to whites. I’ll give him some credit, he was able to figure out that racism comes in all political persuasions way before I did, and learn how to work it to his advantage.

I couldn’t figure out what people meant when they said that the n-word wasn’t always offensive. I assumed that historically it started out being equivalent to black or african american and that it was perverted by racists. Now I see what they mean, that it was ok for white people to say it right in front of grandma, or for grandma to say it right in front of them. It boggles the mind, what they are basically saying is that these words are only racist and shameful when whites say they are, it doesn’t matter what the offended group of people has to say.

I couldn’t figure out what people meant when they said that the n-word wasn’t always offensive.

I have a feeling that it is another reclamation argument.  Or a hip hop reference. 

all it takes is acknowledging that Native Americans are full, living, complete, complex, breathing, thinking persons in their own right, and not just pictures in a history book.

Or a fairy tale. 

And that within the definition of Indian or Native American fall many nations comprising a diversity of cultures, languages and political and religious customs.

“You know, at one time the “N” word wasn’t considered offensive.”

hrm, i’ve said the same myself.  it was acceptable to use the word.  and yes, “acceptance” seems to be derived by what the majority of society thinks. 

i do not believe that everyone who used that word, blacks included, used it with the intent of being “offensive” (or superior or whathaveyou) ...and i think intent means everything.

for me, the basic rule seems to be:

if you KNOW that something is offensive to someone and you use it anyway, then you are being purposely offensive.

if you do NOT know, then one need’s to take that into consideration.

a side note that has come up in recent conversations: in both cases, it is entirely possible to have used “the n word” without being a racist, as well, though that seems tough to swallow.  for me included.  take the case of michael richards, it’s entirely possible that the man is NOT racist and is instead just…a very, very offensive, mean person when angry.  i’ve known people like him.  white…and black…and asian…and <insert ethnicity here>.

Hi y’all!

Donna: lol, I just saw that Willis showed up there. I don’t know if he really is that obtuse or what… I do know that he is very reliably the one pointed to for “Look! Black person said…” by non Black bloggers/commenters in discussion of racist or boneheaded stuff.

Now I see what they mean, that it was ok for white people to say it right in front of grandma, or for grandma to say it right in front of them. It boggles the mind, what they are basically saying is that these words are only racist and shameful when whites say they are, it doesn’t matter what the offended group of people has to say.

Yes, exactly. And it’s the same today with the r*dsk*n term… “It doesn’t offend me and it’s blared from the rooftops, not to mention in livingrooms and casual conversations everywhere, so why does it matter that it’s offensive to a minority of the population?”

Sunrunner: I have a feeling that it is another reclamation argument.  Or a hip hop reference.

No. I am a little unclear in the post (I really need to do that “edited for clarity” thing, lol). But the conversations were pretty much about the relationship of words to society, when words considered profanities and unspeakable (or not really unspeakable, cuz people do speak them, but I guess looked about with disfavor by society - and the FCC)  today became so, when in times past they meant or were used in different ways and so on. So the conversations themselves were about the overall acceptability of words used in overall conversations, where they didn’t even cause someone to blink an eye, when they were not considered offensive at all. The “N” word was included in this category.

The entire hip hop/reclamation thing is a different story altogether (I am a reclamation skeptic).

Hi arin! (arin is the one that keeps HB up and humming, posting the articles, doing all the html and coding work and making sure things stay on track - she rarely peeks out from behind the scenes so I feel honored!)

I am not sure about the intent thing… will have to think about that for a bit. I think with words that are used to categorize (and generally demean) entire groups of human beings, there can be no other intent than to, if not be offensive (as these groups were generally not considered capable of being offended in some parts of society), the intent is still there to dehumanize, to separate and to “other”, so to speak.

Thus, while in general society it was acceptable to refer to people by the “n” word, or as a beaner or sp*c” or any of the other variations used for various groups, even if it wasn’t offensive to the general society, and even if the intent of the words wasn’t exactly to offend, the intent wasn’t to be inclusive or non demeaning either, I don’t think.

Regarding Michael Richards… I don’t think the just being mean thing works. I’ve heard people saying that as well… but I’ve known some *really* mean, insulting people or even those who just have hair trigger tempers and rant away - who do not at all go into racist tirades when they blow their tops.

I do agree tho, that if you *know* something is offensive, and you say it anyway, there really is no other option than that you meant to offend.

By definition I think that Richards must be racist, the first weapon in his arsenal when challenged by a black person is racist history and racist slurs. The only person who would get a pass on that is someone with tourettes or maybe a 5 yr old who has heard the word bandied about but only knows it is a angry word, not what it really means.

first, on intent:

yes, intent matters.  intent matters, environment matters, etc.  a 92 year old man saying ‘negro’, is not usually judged as being ‘offensive’, so much as ‘stuck in the past’.  (unless he’s actually *intending* to be offensive.) 

language is not constant.  it is fluid and ever changing.  to say that a word was ~always~ offensive is as gross a generalization as saying it ~never~ was.

as language does change, we all have to grow with the times; however it’s a slow process in many cases.  age, locale, etc will play a very big role.  and in such cases, intent is ~everything~.

as to michael richards:

i really am not intending to make any type of judgment as to whether or not he is or is not a racist, although my first inclination was to say, “omg, what a racist”, because those things are not there to say unless you feel them somewhat.

but that’s wrong.

those words aren’t reinvented every time someone says them.  the words exist and are known to be offensive and inciteful.

and yes.  there are people who become SO angry that they lose themselves.  they will use whatever weakness they judge you to have.  if they know you well, they’re going to use whatever they know of you.  if they don’t, they will use the obvious.

and when they’re done.  and the argument is over.  they never will have meant ~any~ of it.  they don’t think you’re too short, they don’t think you’re too fat, they have no problem with your skin colour, you’re not too old and your nose is fine.

it is the only way they know how to argue.  they’re in need of some serious counseling and anger management courses, for sure.

as to whether richards is or is not a racist, i really can’t say.  i can say he did an incredibly offensive thing.  it remains to be seen what type of person he is.  so far, i’m not impressed.

language is not constant.  it is fluid and ever changing.  to say that a word was ~always~ offensive is as gross a generalization as saying it ~never~ was.

I agree on this, in general, about language being fluid and changing. And also about perceptions of words, and their offensiveness or not, changing over time. That’s sort of what the original conversations were about, in a way.

I’ve been trying to think, though, of a time when the words used as demeaning terms for people or a group of people were not offensive to the people they were used against.

yes, intent matters.  intent matters, environment matters, etc.  a 92 year old man saying ‘negro’, is not usually judged as being ‘offensive’, so much as ‘stuck in the past’.  (unless he’s actually *intending* to be offensive.)

Well, terms such as Negro, like Oriental, Indian, so on were used as a general racial classification and changed over time due to whatever reasons… lobbying because they were in accurate, or wanting to choose their own descriptors, etc. When people (especially older ones) use the terms I don’t think they are so much considered offensive as they are out of date. This is my personal opinion of course, others may feel differently. And, indeed, there are those within the various groups who prefer the older terms to the newer ones, for whatever reason.

Those are all vastly different from the words used to demean, the “slurs and epithets”, which, even if they were not considered such at one time… and many of them weren’t, by general society, were always considered offensive by at least some measure of those that they were used against.

Indian is a very different thing from “r*dsk*in”, and Oriental from “ch*nk” and Negro from “n****r, and so on. I am not Jewish so I don’t know if “hebe” is as offensive as “k*ke”, but it seems to me that the last is what usually comes with all the verbal and physical violence attached.
Even the term “okie”, used to separate and condescend to those fleeing the dustbowl and such, was considered offensive by that particular group of people.

Those types of words don’t usually arise out of a sense of well meaning and beneficence toward the targets… thus, it’s not only the words that set the meaning (and offensiveness) but the actions that often accompany such terms. Environment, intent, so on don’t really matter in these instances, if you were the one on the receiving end of the words. Even if the person saying it has overt no intent to harm, I’d be hard put to believe anyone ever used these terms (towards, or about other people) without the intent to separate, demean, or to firmly put them in their place as “other” or less than.

So, unless I am missing one of the terms that started out as affectionate (and I could be… heck, I can’t even remember what all of them are) I would say that these particular types of words would actually qualify as having been *always* offensive. Just not to the general, mainstream society.

With Richards, I agree he needs help, for whatever it is that ails him, lol.

I still totally don’t get the essentialist thing (i.e. Richards “isn’t really” a racist).  Dude, if you walk like a racist and quack like a racist, to all intents and purposes—specifically, as far as the target of your venom is concerned, *which is all that matters*—you ARE a racist.  Or, being racist.  What you will.  Deal with it.  No one cares what’s in your squishy little heart of hearts, all right?  You’re better than that, you say?  Aren’t really like that?  Great.  Prove it.  Get cracking.  Meanwhile, quit bellyachin’: it’s not helping anything.

when words considered profanities and unspeakable (or not really unspeakable, cuz people do speak them, but I guess looked about with disfavor by society - and the FCC)

I come from a line of people who took language seriously.  And by that I don’t just mean the English language.  I think that I grew up on the borderline of a huge shift in the culture (I was born in 57—so my early schooling etc was pretty old fashioned) so there is a part of me that just can’t get my head around this business that words are just words.  Now I am not opposed to swearing, and as I was a (ahem) rebellious kid, I embraced the word f*ck (that * is in honor of spam-filters only!) early and enthusiastically.  And have never been able to shake it! (not that I really want to)

I was watching an interview by Bill Moyers of Margaret Atwood last night (its on the net at his Faith and Reason site) and she made a point that what is unique (or important?) about human beings is that we are fundamentally symbolic creatures, and of course language is all out symbolism.  Words do stand (think about the word “stand”—do words actually stand on something as we stand on the ground?) for something, and often they stand for several things. 

But throughout human history, words have always been associated with power.  Which brings me back to profanity.  Often that which is/was most unspeakable was that which was most holy or sacred.  Its that funny borderland between the profane and the sacred…as if what made a profanity a profanity was the fact that one was using a word which represents something very sacred in a mundane context.  Like, in Islam, there is the tradition of the 99 names for god, but really there are 100; the 100th is unspeakable, because it represents the part of the divine which is ultimately uknowable and therefore should not be spoken of—directly.  There is a similar tradition in Judaism.  In ancient Greek culture, often a particular god was not spoken of by name, by rather through a euphemism…ie, the “goddess of…”  However, in the context of rituals, particularly those which were secret, the actual name of the deity could be spoken.  And versions of this practice which are pretty universal; in many culture’s around the world, a child’s “real” name could never be spoken aloud, either by anyone or certain groups of people. 

This sort of attitude is very different than saying that a word is “not allowed” in the legal sense, rather such prohibitions were originally nods to the fact that the word itself is powerful (in that it stands for something which is powerful, whether that power is considered a good or bad thing) and needs to be used with respect. 

And words can be used as healing agents or as weapons.  I think that the idea behind reclamation was to try to de-potentize something which is quite poisonous (hatred) into something which is healing.  Sort of like an immunization (in which minute quantities of an illness is ingested to render the person immune to the actual disease)  but the problem is perhaps forgetting that the word represents something which is extremely toxic, and then using it in quantities which poison rather than stimulate an immune response.

Oh, re Willis.  It is worth remembering that he responded to the whole Clinton blogger incident by saying well, since HE was invited (though couldn’t attend), then there was no problem with the whole thing at all…

One more thing (I am pulling a belledame here!) regarding the word “Indian”—I live in NYC and it can be incredibly confusing if I refer to an American Indian as an Indian (there are so many Indians here from India) so if I know the person’s tribe, I will refer to them as Lakota or Hopi or whatever, and if I don’t, I default to Native American.  But when I am with American Indian’s who refer to themselves as Indian, I use the word Indian and if I happen to speak of an Asian Indian, I say “east Indian”. Its a little complicated, but I don’t mind because it keeps me conscious and thinking.

My parents still say Oriental when refering to Asians, and they can’t understand why Oriental is a derogatory term because they lived with it for so long. ... explaining “Orientalism” to them just leaves them scratching their heads.  I have spent a lot of time in England and Asian refers specifically to the sub-continent (India, Pakistan etc) and Oriental to Northern Asia (China, Korea, Japan etc).  My point is that context is always important, because language is fluid, and not fixed in stone, which again re-emphasizes the point that all language is symbolic at heart.

>I am pulling a belledame here!

ack! :P

and sure, context matters.  which is what i think confuses so many people, who would like everything to just be fixed and simple, bless ‘em.

ultimately though it IS simple: you call people what they want to be called.  whether it’s hyphenated-something or some old “reclaimed” term or Mary Sue.  it’s common courtesy.  insisting, “no, that’s too hard, I’ll just call you what I want to call you, okay?”

—I always think that should be met with, “Sure.  In that case I’ll just make up a name for you; I don’t like yours.  How about [Hortense]?  Hortense works for me.  So, Hortense…”

I still totally don’t get the essentialist thing (i.e. Richards “isn’t really” a racist). 

if we want to remain on a “walking like a duck, quacking like a duck” face value judgment level, then we are in dangerous territories.  people are not so simple as all that.

i only brought richards up because it was part of a discussion on race that i had recently and it’s a look at why people do the things they do, which is something i enjoy.

~shrug~

I do see where you are going with this arin, if the only reason Richards pulled that word out of his vocabulary is because he knew that is the one word that would hurt the hecklers, that would really infuriate them as much as he was infuriated, perhaps he isn’t racist. Sort of like, I had a roommate who was very self-conscious about bleaching her hair, she hoped that people didn’t know and thought it was natural. So if in anger I said that she is a bleach-blonde bimbo, especially in front of other people, it might be what you are talking about. I have nothing against people who bleach their hair, and thought she was a little silly for worrying about it, I also don’t think she’s a bimbo, but it would have been effective if I was just looking to hurt her. I would have been saying it not because I believed it is true, but because I wanted to press her buttons. You’re saying that Richards might have been doing the same, he isn’t really racist but he knows that word pushes buttons for black people. Possible, but I think unlikely. It takes a little thought to use words in that way, and I think his rant was spur of the moment, and that n***** was the first thing that came to mind in dealing with a black person who angers him.

I find that liberal racism generally takes the form of paternalism. They’re fine as long as we are all in agreement and you can’t tell they are racist, until you disagree or challenge them. Then you find out that they think of you more as pets and get figuratively smacked with the rolled up newspaper. I lean towards this view of Richards, he’s fine having POC friends, neighbors, etc so he assumes he isn’t racist. In the back of his mind he harbors this sense that whites are better than blacks though; he might not even be aware of it, because alot of them aren’t. So it only comes screaming out when a black person dares to get uppity with him.

Well said Nanette. How we EXPRESS the world helps determine how we CREATE our world, and if groups of people are separated into “others” then it becomes easier to treat them as “other”, as less than human.

This is painfully obvious, yet sadly a lesson people don’t learn.

Sunrunner, that is very interesting about the 99 words for god, and the 100th being unspeakable.

And words can be used as healing agents or as weapons.  I think that the idea behind reclamation was to try to de-potentize something which is quite poisonous (hatred) into something which is healing.  Sort of like an immunization (in which minute quantities of an illness is ingested to render the person immune to the actual disease) but the problem is perhaps forgetting that the word represents something which is extremely toxic, and then using it in quantities which poison rather than stimulate an immune response.

Yes, I think actually this is one of the reasons that I am a reclamation skeptic - except for the apparently successful reclamation of “queer” - a success I wonder if is partially due to the fact that there was already an alternate meaning of “queer” in the language. Also I have no idea how reclaimed it is outside of feminist or glbtq circles. Words like f*g have only one general meaning (in the US, anyway) and while that is also used by some within the gay communities, I think it’s a long way from being reclaimed.

Anyway, I am not sure how much the power of the words can change, until the power structure itself changes. I *suspect*, but have no direct knowledge, that the slurs for say, the Irish in earlier times (mick, and whatever else) or the Italians, so on, might have assumed less power and harm as these groups moved up and out of the “less than” status and into, for lack of a better term, “whiteness”. Once one becomes part of the power structure itself then, I imagine, what someone actually calls you no longer matters all that much, because there is (usually) no outsized power behind it.

Or something like that, lol. I think, by the way, that this theory falls down completely when speaking of Jews, relationships to power, being the power, and epithets because of the various histories there.

Donna… yep.

Hi Madman! And yes, that’s exactly it - How we EXPRESS the world helps determine how we CREATE our world - that’s a good part of where the power of language comes in.

Great writing, Nanette.

as to whether richards is or is not a racist, i really can’t say.  i can say he did an incredibly offensive thing.  it remains to be seen what type of person he is.  so far, i’m not impressed

He is a racist in that he used racist language to confront a person of color. He engaged in one form of racism.

Whether or not he practices other forms of racism and is only 5 percent racist, or 10 percent racist or 90 percent racist—this is something I cannot judge. But I have no doubt he was a racist in this instance and his response to his racist actions (denial) is not a very good sign for his future as an anti-racist.

Intent does matter, but it doesn’t matter in the way it has been used as a defense in so many of these internet debates. It’s the difference between these two statements:

1. I did something racist, although I did not intend to be racist, because I did not understand or believe my actions were racist.

2. I am not a racist, therefore the racist thing that I did cannot be a racist thing. You are not allowed to perceive my actions as racist because I do not believe myself to be a racist.

Number one allows for discussion, learnin growth.

Number two demands total control over my own behavior but also how you are allowed to react to my behavior.

Don’t be too sure that “n****r” was once acceptable in “polite” (i.e., white) society.  I addressed this point in a debate on Mark Twain’s Huck Finn.  As one source put it:

Even when Twain was writing his book, “n****r” was universally recognized as an insulting, demeaning word.

Hi Robert, thanks for commenting. I’ve put asterisks in your post, I’m afraid. I’m not at all fond of that word (being old(ish), I usually use the term “the N word” myself) and while, of course, it’s really up to the individual to determine their level of comfort for various things, I decided that on my own site I didn’t have to look at it. Hope you understand.

I don’t doubt that it was recognized as an insulting, demeaning word in Twain’s time - after all, that is usually the point of words such as that (or sp*c, k*ke, etc) in the first place - it was still an accepted one though. It wouldn’t get you ostracized or anything, in general. I’ve read any number of books from that time, as well as from the 20’s and 30’s and up, and have come across casual use of it in works as mainstream as Agatha Christie and others, even ones where no black people even make an appearance. She was British, but also among American authors.

Interesting conversation on that Twain page… I’ve not read it all yet (too early in the morning, lol), but will go back to it. Thanks.

raven, I somehow missed your commenting (I’m really bad at this blogging stuff). Excellent points brought up, but I think this one line is great and works in so many situations:

Number two demands total control over my own behavior but also how you are allowed to react to my behavior.

I think that’s the essence of what people are striving for when they are being “politically incorrect”. People have always had the right to say what they want, but what some also want is the right to not have anyone comment on or complain about what they are saying.