3 ms·

Thanks for your insights. In response to: > The N word continues to have power in the US because black Americans continue to be second class citizens in their

by Jedd 8y ago

Thanks for your insights. In response to: > The N word continues to have power in the US because black Americans continue to be second class citizens in their own country. I'd say a) for those of us not in the US we notice that the 'power' of the word infiltrates the rest of the word, and b) that's not the reason. I suggest the actual reason is that the vast majority of people continue to tacitly agree that it maintain its power. As noted above, I'm an outsider looking in, and I'm sure there's a lot of history and nuances that I'm oblivious to.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> “I suggest the actual reason is that the vast majority of people continue to tacitly agree that it maintain its power.” It still seems you really are committed to this point of view, that the word has power only because people continue to agree to a social convention of assigning power to the word. But I think this still continues to miss the point. It’s not at all about whether enough people choose to assign power to the word so as to force everyone at large to deal with it as a social issue. That’s a selfish way to look at it, like your free speech is your lawn and some punk kids drove their n-word social convention onto your lawn, and you’re yelling “get off my lawn” (as in, make this convention about this word go away). Thinking about it this way, the focus seems to be your freedom to say certain syllables without having to acknowledge any broader historical context about them. But instead consider that the word, apart from any chosen modern social agenda, does represent a huge and unsolved systemic discrimination and repression towards black people. It does so because of its historical meaning, the contexts within which it has been primarily used, and the clear usage as a racial slur spoken predominantly by white America towards black America. These are just the facts and context of the word, which we can look at and step back a second and say, well shit, a whole lot of those deviant racism problems are still going on today. And so maybe we ought to be sensitive and respectful and careful about its usage. This isn’t a social convention to give the word power. It’s not just held up by some stereotypes of progressivism just itching for something to be offended by. It’s an encoding that is highly related to racism problems that are still severe and still on-going and so treating that word, among a variety of types of hateful slurs, with sensitivity is a lot more about acknowledging that than it is about enshrining some syllables with a progressive agenda status. Overall, if this slightly limits your vocabulary or your ability to use it as a type of shock humor or something — well, that doesn’t seem that important by comparison. It’s not just some people agreeing “well word X is OK for crass humor, but word Y is off limits” ... rather it’s off limits because it commands a basic respect for certain on-going racist aspects of our reality. Maybe one day long after our current systemic racism has stopped, future people will look back at racial slurs of this era as silly words whose context they don’t understand, and are free to joke about. Sort of how we could look at British insults of the Shakespearean era, or insults of the American Revolutionary War (“turncoats”, “lobsterbacks”), and not feel the intense political charge and visceral hatefulness they evoked at the time of their origination. To us they are silly words. But that’s because the specific contextual meaning is not still going on, day to day, with visceral consequences for people in their daily lives. But for the racism contextualized by the n-word, it absolutely is still going on.
- Jedd 8y ago
  Fair enough. I think you're misrepresented a couple of my points, and inverted (my) causality suggestion on social convention -> word power, but here's the crux: > But instead consider that the word, apart from any chosen modern social agenda, does represent a huge and unsolved systemic discrimination and repression towards black people. Do you think that, for the nebulous entity that is 'America', resolution of this discrimination and repression problem is eased by offering racist people a very powerful language construct they can use to negative effect?
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    But nobody is offering it to them. It is just an aspect of reality. It would be like asking if the problem of breaking and entering is eased by describing the physics of throwing a rock through a window. The reality is just there, either to be respected or misused. I would say that any official attempt to delegitimize the claim that use of the n-word is offensive and generally grounds for punishment or reprimand, however, would possibly do huge damage, as it would essentially completely wipe out the meaningfulness of a major symbol of racism in the US. So trying to “take away” the word likely won’t hinder racists at all, yet it will communicate to black people that their suffering won’t be treated with legitimacy. It could even be basically a form of institutionally gaslighting black people at large. ... “It’s just the n-word. It can’t hurt you unless you let it hurt you.” Basically a nasty form of victim-blaming.
    - Jedd 8y ago
      Thank you again - it's always good to have insights from someone who's clearly intelligent and has thought about the subject at some length. As I noted, I'm outside-looking-in, haven't lived in the culture that's generated this situation, and (not noted, but relevant) have a somewhat optimistic / naive / rationalist view of how the world should be. Having said that, I feel we're talking past each other a bit here. You indicated my claim that this particular word has such weight was because everyone (in the US, lesser extent elsewhere) has agreed to treat it as a very powerful word, was wrong, and selfish. You suggest that it's a sensitive word because it represents a 'huge and unsolved systemic discrimination and repression towards black people' ... which I can start to understand (historically), but can't understand how the current attitude helps towards resolving that. I note you dodged my question in the last exchange, instead offering what my philosophy lecturers may have described as 'pithy aphorisms' such as 'it's just an aspect of reality'. Which is doubtless true. Pretty much everything we experience is an aspect of reality -- though that's not terribly helpful. The suggestion that the word is a major symbol of racism that we all need to agree to keep alive sounds perverse when worded in that way. Surely it'd be preferable to actually start to work on that whole actual resolution of racism. So my previous question was basically whether either is dependent on, or retarded by, the other.

by Jedd 8y ago

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

> “I suggest the actual reason is that the vast majority of people continue to tacitly agree that it maintain its power.” It still seems you really are committed to this point of view, that the word has power only because people continue to agree to a social convention of assigning power to the word. But I think this still continues to miss the point. It’s not at all about whether enough people choose to assign power to the word so as to force everyone at large to deal with it as a social issue. That’s a selfish way to look at it, like your free speech is your lawn and some punk kids drove their n-word social convention onto your lawn, and you’re yelling “get off my lawn” (as in, make this convention about this word go away). Thinking about it this way, the focus seems to be your freedom to say certain syllables without having to acknowledge any broader historical context about them. But instead consider that the word, apart from any chosen modern social agenda, does represent a huge and unsolved systemic discrimination and repression towards black people. It does so because of its historical meaning, the contexts within which it has been primarily used, and the clear usage as a racial slur spoken predominantly by white America towards black America. These are just the facts and context of the word, which we can look at and step back a second and say, well shit, a whole lot of those deviant racism problems are still going on today. And so maybe we ought to be sensitive and respectful and careful about its usage. This isn’t a social convention to give the word power. It’s not just held up by some stereotypes of progressivism just itching for something to be offended by. It’s an encoding that is highly related to racism problems that are still severe and still on-going and so treating that word, among a variety of types of hateful slurs, with sensitivity is a lot more about acknowledging that than it is about enshrining some syllables with a progressive agenda status. Overall, if this slightly limits your vocabulary or your ability to use it as a type of shock humor or something — well, that doesn’t seem that important by comparison. It’s not just some people agreeing “well word X is OK for crass humor, but word Y is off limits” ... rather it’s off limits because it commands a basic respect for certain on-going racist aspects of our reality. Maybe one day long after our current systemic racism has stopped, future people will look back at racial slurs of this era as silly words whose context they don’t understand, and are free to joke about. Sort of how we could look at British insults of the Shakespearean era, or insults of the American Revolutionary War (“turncoats”, “lobsterbacks”), and not feel the intense political charge and visceral hatefulness they evoked at the time of their origination. To us they are silly words. But that’s because the specific contextual meaning is not still going on, day to day, with visceral consequences for people in their daily lives. But for the racism contextualized by the n-word, it absolutely is still going on.

Jedd 8y ago
Fair enough. I think you're misrepresented a couple of my points, and inverted (my) causality suggestion on social convention -> word power, but here's the crux: > But instead consider that the word, apart from any chosen modern social agenda, does represent a huge and unsolved systemic discrimination and repression towards black people. Do you think that, for the nebulous entity that is 'America', resolution of this discrimination and repression problem is eased by offering racist people a very powerful language construct they can use to negative effect?
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  But nobody is offering it to them. It is just an aspect of reality. It would be like asking if the problem of breaking and entering is eased by describing the physics of throwing a rock through a window. The reality is just there, either to be respected or misused. I would say that any official attempt to delegitimize the claim that use of the n-word is offensive and generally grounds for punishment or reprimand, however, would possibly do huge damage, as it would essentially completely wipe out the meaningfulness of a major symbol of racism in the US. So trying to “take away” the word likely won’t hinder racists at all, yet it will communicate to black people that their suffering won’t be treated with legitimacy. It could even be basically a form of institutionally gaslighting black people at large. ... “It’s just the n-word. It can’t hurt you unless you let it hurt you.” Basically a nasty form of victim-blaming.
  - Jedd 8y ago
    Thank you again - it's always good to have insights from someone who's clearly intelligent and has thought about the subject at some length. As I noted, I'm outside-looking-in, haven't lived in the culture that's generated this situation, and (not noted, but relevant) have a somewhat optimistic / naive / rationalist view of how the world should be. Having said that, I feel we're talking past each other a bit here. You indicated my claim that this particular word has such weight was because everyone (in the US, lesser extent elsewhere) has agreed to treat it as a very powerful word, was wrong, and selfish. You suggest that it's a sensitive word because it represents a 'huge and unsolved systemic discrimination and repression towards black people' ... which I can start to understand (historically), but can't understand how the current attitude helps towards resolving that. I note you dodged my question in the last exchange, instead offering what my philosophy lecturers may have described as 'pithy aphorisms' such as 'it's just an aspect of reality'. Which is doubtless true. Pretty much everything we experience is an aspect of reality -- though that's not terribly helpful. The suggestion that the word is a major symbol of racism that we all need to agree to keep alive sounds perverse when worded in that way. Surely it'd be preferable to actually start to work on that whole actual resolution of racism. So my previous question was basically whether either is dependent on, or retarded by, the other.