This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm going down the list of slurs in my head, and can't think of a single one that says a specific negative thing about anybody. They're just another way if saying someone is black/Jewish/gay/etc.
Clearly. But he's the one making the argumetnt that you have to say something explicitly negative about a group for it to be considered offensive, so by his logic it should not be offensive.
More options
Context Copy link
? If they aren't negative, then what makes them slurs?
Since you demand that others point to a specific negative thing the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are saying about Catholics/Catholicism, the burden should be on you to point how these slurs say anything negative about each group.
The only thing that seems to make something a slur, is whether or not a particular group chooses to take offense. Black people constantly refer to each other with the word that is supposedly a slur, so it's clearly nothing inherent to the word itself.
No, "nigger" and "nigga" are not the same words. And if you think that terms like nigger, or kike, or mick, or wop, were not intended as slurs, we apparently live in different universes.
Please tell me, specifically, what negative thing each of these words are saying.
If "nigga" is a different word, that means no one will be offended when a white person uses it, right?
More options
Context Copy link
They're exactly the same word in rhotic or non-rhotic dialects. Most AAVE is non-rhotic so the version black people use is usually pronounced "nigga", but so did a lot of ordinary white racists using it with malice. Wikipedia thinks it was not originally a slur.
Kike (origin unknown), Mick (from the Irish name, though whether "Mc" or the first name is unknown) and wop (from "guappo", meaning "thug" in Neapolitan) were always slurs.
More options
Context Copy link
In what way are they not the same? If a white person publicly says the latter, in what way would the results be appreciably different than saying the former? Will people even recognize that they didn't say the former?
See discussion here
The theoretical model is not difficult to derive, but does not answer the question. I'm asking for your evidence that such a model possesses any connection to the social realities our society actually operates under, that the "a"-ending-word does not possess the same Deplorable Word effect as its hard-r progenitor.
I have personally witnessed non-black people using the a-variant in front of black people, who did not blink an eye.
https://level.medium.com/in-the-land-of-white-boys-who-use-the-n-word-70e34923c705
https://www.complex.com/style/when-white-people-say-nigga
https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/fall-2011/straight-talk-about-the-nword
I can believe that you've seen not-black people use the a-variant in front of black people without issue. My prior is that they were close friends.
Your first link opens with a number of statements about how the author views white people using the a-variant as strongly objectionable, even in the most innocent of contexts, even singing along to a song by themselves in private, with the reaction ranging from the instant souring of personal relationships to a prompt resort to physical violence, which the author views as appropriate. Their analysis repeatedly loops back to considerations of context, with no amount of context actually making the use innocuous in the author's view. Their conclusion is that the taboo is probably weakening in wider society, and they are deeply ambivalent about that.
Previously, you've linked to an example of a black person using the word in a public context, which caused significant controversy.
Your second link is paywalled, but from the blurb, it seems to be a story about how personal relationships with people allowed a level of intimacy where an otherwise-taboo interaction became something to bond over. Presuming that's a fair description, I don't think it supports your thesis.
The third article is attempting to engage with the obvious craziness of enforcing the taboo on a word the enforcers use constantly in extremely popular cultural products. It likewise contains numerous references to how, under current conditions, the taboo absolutely exists and is strongly enforced. This likewise does not seem to support your thesis, any more than it would to point to the "n-word pass" meme, where supposedly black kids sell white kids a promissory note for use of the word.
None of this changes the fact that if I have a positive interaction with a black stranger, and exclaim "my man!", nothing will happen, but if I exclaim "my ***a!", I have vastly increased my odds of having a very, very bad time, not least because, even if the event were video recorded, it's entirely possible for either the black stranger or subsequent viewers to perceive the hard-r anyway.
More generally, does this conversation seem productive from your end?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link