The N Word

[CroakandDagger]

African American culture would likely drop the use of the word when White people in America collectively get their heads out of their asses when it comes to race and privilege but we're moving in the wrong direction on that one unfortunately.

Bullshit they would, nigger.

[brainbomb]

Alrighty then, thats probably gonna get ya silenced

[y2kjbk]

Why do you think that?

Look who the President is.

I meant why does he think there is a direct causal relationship between the behavior of White people and usage of the word in the African American community.

Because of the word's origin? I understand its use by African Americans as a way to express anger and frustration with the ever-prevalent white supremacy still teeming from our society. I get the solidarity that can bring about. It wouldn't be necessary if there was nothing to be angry or frustrated about if we really did live in a post-racial society like what made up MLK's famous dream.

[CroakandDagger]

Alrighty then, thats probably gonna get ya silenced

Why's that, if it's cool for black people to use it?

[brainbomb]

I dont think its cool for anyone to be saying that on here

[y2kjbk]

CroakandDagger, if you watch the video I posted, one of Coates' first lines is, "Words have no meaning without context." You should think that through a bit.

[BeauNanners]

from Penny Arcade's Tycho Brahe

"Literally all Ninja has to do to make eight million dollars this year is not say the N-word. Look, I’m a fancy pants; I love to talk about context. I can perform rhetorical miracles with that shit. That word is cultural plutonium, full stop. You can’t touch it with your bare hands. It’s not his, and it doesn’t even matter why. Again: I know the arguments. Have them with yourself. But… where’s the upside? It’s not worth using; the handle is the blade."

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/ ... new-record

[CroakandDagger]

Words absolutely do have meaning of their own - pretending that they're meaningless syllables without something to contextualise them is as ridiculous as suggesting there's no such thing as your hand in front of your face if you close your eyes.

[Randomizer]

I'm white and once when I was confront by two of them, I called them honkies which stunned them so much that I was able to walk away without being attacked.

Although honky never got as bad for connotations or in use as long as the N word. At the time in the 1970s it was considered equally bad as a term for a white person. If you can find it, Saturday Night Live had a sketch with Chevy Chase as a psychiatrist giving a word association test to Richard Pryor using those types of words.

[phil_a_s]

Hey remember how I said CroakandDagger routinely violates forum rules, and from what I understand, silences do nothing to dissuade him, just get rid of him until they expire, and make him even more antagonistic towards the mods and the community at large?

Well, he's using racial slurs in a thread that is accessible from the main page. I understand that perhaps caution needs to be applied when enforcing the rules, but this is unacceptable.

[CroakandDagger]

Calm down nigger you act like I kicked your puppy or something.

[y2kjbk]

A word in a vacuum has no conveyed meaning or significance, at least none directly. It needs to be in a phrase or sentence, or even an illustration around the word would suffice, to convey a direct thought, and then the author of the phrase/sentence/illustration matters in the whole context of that particular usage of the word, in ways the word alone can never convey. So in terms of your use of the n word here to explicitly antagonize people with your views on free speech, the context matters.

[CroakandDagger]

Offence isn't given, it's taken. If people want to tie themselves in knots over "The N word" then it will always be offensive.

If we let it be just another word, just another word will be all it will be.

[dargorygel]

Offence isn't given, it's taken. If people want to tie themselves in knots over "The N word" then it will always be offensive.

If we let it be just another word, just another word will be all it will be.

But it is not just another word. And common decency demands that when we KNOW a word is going to be offensive, we avoid using it.

In that sense, offense CAN be given... when you know the response that is forthcoming.

If this 'issue' were about your right to breathe air, you might have a point. But I can't believe that anyone 'needs' to say that word.

[phil_a_s]

To expand on what y2k said a bit, with a couple examples and such.

The pattern of sounds or symbols known as a word does not have almost any internal meaning (I gather that some linguists think there is a relation between sound and meaning, which is why I say almost, though if I were pedantic, I could assert that the relation between sound and meaning is also a form of cultural context). If I were given a random word in Basque, I would not know what it represents. If I were given a word in Basque, and a sequence of letters designed to look like a Basque word, but carrying no meaning, I would probably not be able to pick out the real word. There has to be some sort of context.

There are a lot of contexts. An obvious one is language itself. A word is assigned a meaning (this meaning can change, is not exclusive, and is dependent on other contexts).

But a word exists in a sentence (even a sentence with one word is a sentence). Even just in the language context, a single word by itself carries relatively little to no meaning.
If you are given a text of unknown length, in which every part is smudged out except a single word, chosen at random, you have at most a hint of what the text may have possibly been about.
Most of the meaning is in the interactions of words in a sentence, or in the format. Somewhat like the Kuleshov effect, but with language instead of film, though this is the reverse of the way the analogy is generally used.

There are more layers of context to words/sentences, though.
In spoken language, volume, speed, pauses, even body language all give additional meaning to the word, meaning which may even be contradictory to the meaning of the word or sentence (sarcasm being the big one here).
There are ways to indicate this in written language (punctuation, emoji), and word order conventions can help convey meaning more precisely when selected well.
These also create meaning that was not present at the earlier layer. They can convey emotion or act as commentary, for example. A sentence in a sarcastic register inverts the original meaning entirely. A sentence in a humorous register establishes that the meaning is meant to be interpreted as funny. If you interpret language mechanically, taking only the direct meanings of words and their functions in a sentence, you will not understand people.

Another layer is that of the speaker and the audience. Every word/sentence is spoken by a speaker, and it is spoken to an audience. This is, arguably, the first layer, before any of the others.
The speaker in this case is me. In other cases, the identity of the speaker is unknown (ancient literature, anonymous Diplo). This isn't as harmful as it sounds. The identity is still concrete, and we can at least say that the author is the author (though we can't always say the author is singular).
The audience may or may not be unknown, and critically, may or may not be unknown to the speaker. Some things may be inferred (they are literate, they speak my language). Generally, though, speech has at least an intended audience, which can be as specific as the speaker likes.
The reason this is the first layer is that both a speaker and an audience are necessary for communication in the first place, but words are not (symbols and gestures can convey meaning too).
The simplest demonstration of the fact that a statement's meaning depends on speaker and audience is this: say a man who believes himself to be Napoleon, but is actually Colin, an accountant from Des Moines, gives a speech. This speech is a perfect mirror of a speech Napoleon once gave. The man says the same words, in the same order, with the same tone and body language. If we are generous, we allow him to say them in the same place. The speech is not the same, because the speaker is not the Emperor of the French. It is not the same, because his audience is a couple of bemused onlookers, and not a whole country. Colin's speech will not cause Russia to be invaded.

This is where we start to get to the point. In the US, everyone has some form of racial identity, because racial categories matter a lot. A racial identity, with respect to speech, is a rather important bit of context.
In the same way that Colin cannot get Russia invaded by giving Napoleon's speech, a black person using the n-word will not get black people falsely incriminated, it will not get black people refused for loans, it will not get black people barred from public life, and it will not get black people killed.
A white person using the n-word will, inevitably, be a reminder of the way the word is a supporting wall of white supremacy, and was used by other white people to dismiss and denounce black people, to justify slavery and Jim Crow in all its forms.

tl;dr
A black person using the word is defying white supremacy, by taking its tools away. A white person using the word is propping up white supremacy (the degree depends on how it is being used, but given the rarity of it being innocuous, best avoided entirely).

[CroakandDagger]

:Clapping_Hands_Emoji:

[Yoyoyozo]

As an African American, I’ve never been more impressed and proud of how this discussion was carried out

/s

[brainbomb]

So theres no disciplinary action for the words being used here? just asking so I know what the new forum rules are.

[Yoyoyozo]

Croak has already been silenced for calling another member a racially derogatory term.

People please follow common sense. I’m not even going to cite the rule he broke.

[brainbomb]

man this is some bitch ass shit