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by tptacek
2917 days ago
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I have really no idea what you're talking about with respect to water fountains and busses. Nobody cares who sits where on the bus, except don't take the handicap spots and don't give your bags their own seat. On the other hand, if you're a white dude and you casually use the N-word, people are going to draw conclusions about you. That's not a Hacker News argument; it is a simple statement of fact, obviously backed up by the article we are commenting on. You can not like that fact all you want, but again, be aware, in the same way that people will draw conclusions about you for using the word, they will also draw conclusions about you for how loudly you protest the injustice of the fact that you can't safely use the word. |
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Assuming good faith here. Let me try again.
The idea is that saying the n-word while not being black sends a signal of not caring about the word, not giving it enough weight, not caring about the plight of black people. Well, I'm saying that's not true. That information is not in the signal.
Suppose a young white person is sitting in a cafe. They raise a phone to their ear and uses the n-word the way that has become normal, to mean man/person: "hey, what up my (n-word)?"
If I overheard that, I wouldn't think anything of it. They're greeting a friend. I just don't have any notions about how only people of certain ethnicities are allowed to use certain words.
If you did have such notions, you might be offended. But that's in the machinery of your own mind, not the signal. The signal was just "how are you, man/person?"
Suppose you (Thomas) see a black man sitting near the front of a bus. What signal is he sending to you? Not much, right? He's just sitting there. Now, suppose it's the 50s, and it's Alabama, and the onlooker is an older white man. What signal do you suppose that guy gets? He might get a signal that an uppity negro thinks he's the equal of a white man. So, where is the problem? In the sitting, or in the looking?
Now, where is the problem in the situation we're talking about? In the speaking of a word that means man/person, or in the hearing of it?
I imagine there are a lot of black people who just loathe the n-word, and never want to hear it from anyone. This is actually the perspective that makes the most sense to me. But they have to concede that the meaning of the word has changed. The vast majority of the time, it just means man/person. Sorry. I would have preferred we just forget the word, but that's not what happened. Now it means man/person, and our squabble is about whether people who never had anything whatsoever to do with the racial persecution of anyone will be firewalled from certain parts of our language because of their perceived ethnic affiliation.
I'm saying no. It's unfair, and it's not a wise way forward, and just unacceptable to me personally.