Have You Ever Used A Racial Epithet?

[phrenzy]

A lot of times when I am with close friends, and we engage in very strange bouts of tasteless humor we often put down our own 'race' with as many ridiculous stereotypes as possible. It's kind of like we're mocking the ridiculousness of racism in general. He calls me a lazy mexican and I call him a subhuman chinaman. We also engage in this kind of crass humor when it is aimed at other people.

The strange thing is, neither of us are actually 'racist' in that way. That is, we tend to have close friends of all races.. as long as they are twisted misfits like us I guess...

Do any other DUers ever engage in this? Should I feel guilty? Does saying tasteless things like this by definition make me a racist, even if those sentiments aren't truly in me?

That said, on a more serious note, I will admit to having racist thoughts that I am ashamed of to this day. It was when I watched Reginald Denny getting savagely beaten on a street in South Central LA by rioting black kids. It scared me that I felt that. Although, now that I think about it, I felt just as much disgust and rage when I first saw the white cops in the Rodney King video delivering their own savage beating...

[Recursion]

1. I grew up in Mississippi

As one of the white remnant in a 90% black county. If you think the N-bomb never escaped my lips, you're fooling yourself. It ended debates; it was cowardly of me. But for me to pretend I never said it would be beyond absurd, just like denying that I was ever called cracker ofay white trash would be absurd.

(How do you spell "ofay" anyways?)

[Redstone]

3. You spell ofay, "ofay." You got it right.

Redstone

[Recursion]

9. And let me clarify...

I wasn't the remnant of some carpetbagger or freedom-rider: half of the African Americans in that county shared my last name. It's rough. Rougher than you may think outside of the Deep South. I don't pretend I suffered the same that black people did, but philosophers are right that injustice and opression damage the master as well as the slave. I've met (but refused to shake hands with; I was in my Marine uniform at the time and couldn't bring myself to disgrace the uniform like that) my relatives who killed Emmett Till, or at least hid his killers (details are more sketchy than people think on that, frankly). That's why I honor Dr. King so much; I know very well he set me free as well as African Americans: free to know, love, work, worship, and fellowship with them. That was a freedom I would not have had without his courage and the courage of countless others at the same time. We were all enslaved, all of us, to the hateful heritage of the past; it took a courage beyond reckoning to break us out of that and I will never stop honoring him and those who walked with him for that courage.

[Redstone]

15. Damn good post. Damn good. Southerners are more honest about

this sort of thing than northerners.

At least, such has been my experience.

Redstone

[Redstone]

2. Yes, I have.

Redstone

[The Straight Story]

8. Same here, I have as well.

but then, I have a said a lot of crazy shit in my time :)

[MoseyWalker]

4. no..............n't

[MrSlayer]

5. Yes, I've used them all.

Both in the context you speak of and otherwise. However, the otherwise never happens anymore. I've come a long way from the other side.

[mike_c]

6. I was raised in the south, by racist parents and grandparents...

...during the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties, so I have UNDOUBTEDLY used racial epithets, and have certainly heard them used commonly in my presence. Oddly however, we were taught as children that while it might be OK to be racist, it was a sign of ignorance and "poor breeding" to use such expressions publicly. I kid you not. My utterly racist grandmother would probably have washed my mouth out for uttering the "n" word in public. The result is that while I was raised in a thoroughly racist atmosphere, I honestly do not ever remember using blunt racial epithets. I probably did so, once or twice, but the lesson stuck and I'm uncomfortable even discussing those words today, less because of what they represent than because they are simply not polite. That is part of my legacy as a child of the south.

[Recursion]

13. 100% agreed

My grandmother was about the most racist person I ever met, but damned if she wouldn't tan our hides for saying the N-word (or any curse word, or even "ain't") It was "low class".

As she said (with some earnestness; I think she thought it was enough); "they like to be called 'negros' now" (she said this as late as 1996; and she pronounced it 'nigra', so it was kind of an academic question. But damned if she wouldn't beat your ass for saying it wrong).

Mississippi is weird. There are lot of bad things to be in Mississsippi. The worst is to be black. After that, the worst is to be white new money. New money is despised. My grandmother would not accept that we would act like new money, even though our old money had disintegrated in 1865.

[mike_c]

17. LOL-- your grandmother sounds like my grandmother....

Her branch of the family lost it's money in the 'teens or thereabouts, largely because my great-grandmother decided to have some fun with her inheritance rather than be chained to the prosperity of her progeny. Grandmother NEVER forgave her for that. Anyway, she used to make us grandkids go out in the yard and pick the switches she'd use to whip us, always with the proviso that if the switch broke she'd go pick TWO herself and use them until they BOTH broke. That created a mighty dilemma. I can laugh about it now, but it wasn't funny then....

[Recursion]

18. LOL -- you're exactly right!

(and I had the exact same switch experience, with the exception that my grandmother raised bamboo... God damn bamboo!)

I know exactly what you mean -- looking back, I realize her heart was in the right place and that she did teach me a lot, and frankly, getting swatted with a bamboo stick wasn't even remotely bad. At the time, though? Sheer, mortal terror. I think it took Iraq to re-teach me what terror actually is. Ever since then, I've pretty much just smiled when I thought of those swattin' days.

[TomInTib]

7. Hell, yeah.

And with no apologies.

[enuffs_enuffs]

10. I call myself cracker all the time...

I just can't help it!

[Kingshakabobo]

11. I battle my inner Archie Bunker to this day. n/t

[tinfoil tiaras]

12. No

I'm afraid of even thinking about the n-word. Or reading it in books. When i do come across it in books I skip over it. Needless to say, I'm a bit paranoid...:crazy:

[Recursion]

16. Oh, the word itself isn't to blame

It's just a mispronunciation of the Portugese word for "black". The evil is the attitudes behind it.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

14. Yeah. Only joking around though.

[tnlefty]

19. Not in the way that you describe. I was young during the mid-60's and

I vividly remember seeing the footage of blacks being blasted with water cannons, and police dogs turned loose on them. I naturally asked my parents why the police thought that it was okay to do that, along with beating folks with batons, etc. The response that I got was, "cause they're "n"s". I then had to ask what that word meant so yes it passed my lips. I remember my parents yelling at me for continuing to ask the question and only receiving the above mentioned response because it made no sense to me. All that I saw was some hideous behavior with no clear cut answer for what I was witnessing.

I'll never forget those images, nor their repeated yelling at me for asking the questions. It apparently made perfect sense to them, but none at all to me. I don't use other words for Italians, Cubans, Hispanics, nor a longer listing.

[Igel]

20. Once.

In third grade I heard kids calling a black girl (the black girl) in my class the n-word.

I used it at home at dinner; dinner was promptly interrupted for a while. My father yelled at me and I got a spanking I'll never forget. I never heard him insult anyone by race or ethnicity.

My ma ... "dumb black" was enough of a racial epithet for blacks. Otherwise, it was ethnic slurs against mostly Catholic European groups. ("Jew" was a racial epithet in itself where I grew up.)

My father had apparently been a Sunday school teacher long before I was born; he was republican, I think. Ma was left democrat. Their language use continues to this day. Poles, Irish, Italians, Jews, blacks ... denigrated. But Latinos and Asians are simply hardworking.

[graywarrior]

21. In my 20's when I got drunk.

It was cultural where I grew up. I don't even think I knew I was doing it. If the present me heard myself back then, I'd slap myself.