Is "black hole" a racially insensitive term?

:As you already know, the word includes a term made notorious via Caucasian usage against enslaved blacks. Why would anyone choose to use a word which includes such a reminder of abuse in the presence of a black person and then demand that it be accepted as merely an innocent choice by the speaker?
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You don't listen to the street-level talk -between- blacks.
It's a common term, much like "dude" is with the whites.
Between blacks, it is just a term of comradeship.
But a white dare not use it towards a black, without expecting some anger.
One of my Hispanic girl friends uses that word to all her black friends, male or female.
It's part of the street culture.
Such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson's statements on Obama, where he says "Barack is talking down to black people.... telling ******* how to behave."
 
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zenotter said:
Yeah okay, but I was thinking you were a bit confused with the "there are people with your identical heritage who are Hispanic." Sure, there can be completely Asian-American people in heritage but raised in a Hispanic culture...
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No confusion whatsoever. It seems your reluctance to admit that Hispanic is not a race is what's causing you the impression that there is confusion. The confusion, entails just that, the misconception that Hispanic is a race. If indeed Hispanic were a race then they would all be physically identifiable via sharing common physical traits, like the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etcetera. Or the blacks whom are usually identifiable by their hair, skin color, bone structure, and general features. In fact, anthropologists can identify race by teeth alone. You can't do that with Hispanics. Neither via skin color, hair terxture, facial characteristics or any other physical trait because Hispanics do not constitute a race. That's basic third-grade material which is dispensed but is conveniently forgotten in favor of the Brown- race BS.


and though I've lived and worked in Hispanic/Latino communities where Mexican Spanish is spoken as opposed to Spaniard Spanish, I still consider myself an Asian-American (a.k.a. "rice cracker") culturally speaking. If my love of hip-hop/rap could encourage people to think that I was culturally black, they still wouldn't see it (ETA: my inherent blackitude), methinks, due to my skin color
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Of course you don't become black merely by living among blacks. Nor do you become white merely by living among whites because these are racial terms. However if your culture is Hispanic then you are Hispanic because being Hispanic is cultural not racial as you seem to be insisting.


e, or has this thread gotten silly? I was just thinking, "Ooh, can't say black, what's the opposite of black? Anti-white? No, it's not. That has a completely different meaning. Dang, this is silly!"

- A Yellowish Menace
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No, you have begun making silly statements via comparing apples and oranges.

The thread is doing quite well.
 
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I Ratant said:
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You don't listen to the street-level talk -between- blacks.
It's a common term, much like "dude" is with the whites.
Between blacks, it is just a term of comradeship.
But a white dare not use it towards a black, without expecting some anger.
One of my Hispanic girl friends uses that word to all her black friends, male or female.
It's part of the street culture.
Such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson's statements on Obama, where he says "Barack is talking down to black people.... telling ******* how to behave."
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If they don't like to hear whites using it in their presence then why would a white insist on using it in their presence regardless of how they feel?

Here is an example from within the Latin American community. To Mexicans the word "Bicho" means insect. But to Puerto Ricans it is a vulgar way of referring to the penis. Why would a Mexican insist on using that word in front of a group of Puerto Rican women and their husbands in full knowledge of this cultural difference unless he were looking for trouble?

Do you see the point?

BTW

True, the word "Bicho" might be found in Spanish dictionaries as a term equivalent to "insecto" or insect does not in any way justify the usage in certain social circumstances in which certain persons might take offense. Especially when the alternative "insecto" is readily available and accepted by all Hispanic groups as OK.

Actually, its a matter of values. Is our need to use the word niggardly so crucial to our psychological well-being that we must use it regardless of feelings involved? Or are the feelings of certain people who are present of more value. To some the latter is of greater value. To others, it seems not.

Our insistance that the feelings are unjustified is irrelevant since trhey do exist and its how we respond to those feeling that determines the reaction we will provoke.
 
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Radrook said:
If they don't like to hear whites using it in their presence then why would a white insist on using it in their presence regardless of how they feel?
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Topic creep. The topic is not about words that are genuinely offensive - no sane person would argue that you should gratuitously offend anyone. The topic is about words or terms that sound like offensive ones, that ignorant people take offense to.

Just the other day, I mentioned I was gonna whop someone upside the head, and my friend Luigi got all kinds of offended.

Bunch of us had a neighborhood barbecue the other day, and I was working the grill for a while. Fritz came up and said he wanted two hot dogs. "You want 'kraut with that?" I asked, and he got all huffy.

I went downtown last weekend to a modern art exhibition when I ran into my friend Stanislawski. "Where you going?" he asked. "Gonna see some Pollocks," I replied.

Sumbitch tried to punch my lights out. :boggled:
 
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BPSCG said:
Topic creep. The topic is not about words that are genuinely offensive - no sane person would argue that you should gratuitously offend anyone. The topic is about words or terms that sound like offensive ones, that ignorant people take offense to.

Just the other day, I mentioned I was gonna whop someone upside the head, and my friend Luigi got all kinds of offended.

Bunch of us had a neighborhood barbecue the other day, and I was working the grill for a while. Fritz came up and said he wanted two hot dogs. "You want 'kraut with that?" I asked, and he got all huffy.

I went downtown last weekend to a modern art exhibition when I ran into my friend Stanislawski. "Where you going?" he asked. "Gonna see some Pollocks," I replied.

Sumbitch tried to punch my lights out. :boggled:
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OK. If those are the givens then we should stay with the givens of ignorance and unjustifiable reactions. Certainly, there are occasions in which people take offense based on ignorance of word meaning as your examples illustrate.

The arguments presented here, however, express astonishment at the offense taken by such people and argue that if these people only knew the real meaning, they would not take offense.

That's where we disagree. If someone uses a word in my presence, word-definition might be totally irrelevant to how I react.

Tone of voice, body language, the person's race, the word's prefixes, suffixes, and how they are emphasized all come into the equation. So ignorance of meaning wouldn't be the source of the problem. Instead, the word itself, its sound, its connotations would trigger the response along with other social and historically-relevant things.

BTW
What is genuinely offensive doesn't depend on definition alone. So genuinely must take on a subjective meaning from your standpoint?
 
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BPSCG said:
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I went downtown last weekend to a modern art exhibition when I ran into my friend Stanislawski. "Where you going?" he asked. "Gonna see some Pollocks," I replied.

Sumbitch tried to punch my lights out. :boggled:
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It's not pronounced "Pole-locks".... but you knew that! :)
 
Radrook said:
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Do you see the point?
...
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I don't see -your- point.
The 'n-word' represents such a vile period of history, that for -anyone- to use it in any manner disturbs me.
For blacks to use it between blacks shows to me a great disconnect with what that word has come to be today.
And when these same people will use it among themselves (I've seen a black with it tatooed in 2 inch letters on his arm), yet bridle at "outsiders", i.e., non-blacks using it, indicates there's still some vestige of comprehension of the awful connotation that word stores in itself, yet they fail to honor their own history/culture by continuing to use it in normal speech.
It isn't even hypocrisy, it's stupidity that maintains a seperation between the colors that needn't exist at all!
Not a one of us chose our parents.
Not a one!
 
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I Ratant said:
The 'n-word' represents such a vile period of history, that for -anyone- to use it in any manner disturbs me.
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That's going to the opposite extreme.

Ignoramuses want The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned from schools because of its frequent use. They are completely unaware that Jim, while a slave, is a American literature's first fully-developed black character, a man who risks his life to rescue his wife and child. Twain uses the "n" word because that was the way people spoke then, and to call Jim a "negro," or "colored," or "black," or "African-American," or "a person of color" would have been as false as having "Dude, I smacked the sumbitch upside the head" come out of someone's mouth in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

People want to burn Huckleberry Finn because of their ignorance. They don't know that Jim is the noblest character in the book, that Huck learns from being with Jim that the way to judge a man is not by how you address him, nor by the color of his skin, but the content of his character. The pivotal point in the book is when Huck discovers that Jim is not just a runaway slave, but a runaway slave who is trying to steal his wife out of slavery - and Huck has a crisis of conscience:
And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a ****** to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven,whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's ****** that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you there that people that acts as I'd been acting about that ****** goes to everlasting fire."

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that ******'s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter -- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway ****** Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

HUCK FINN.


I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking -- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell" -- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.
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It's one of the greatest passages in American literature. And ignorant people want it censored because Huck Finn talks the way people talked in 1845.

:mad:
 
Radrook said:
....It seems your reluctance to admit that Hispanic is not a race is what's causing you the impression that there is confusion. The confusion, entails just that, the misconception that Hispanic is a race....
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There you go again ..
Where in this thread, has anyone besides you, suggested that ' Hispanic ' is a race ?
 
Why are you people arguing with Radrook and quoting his inane posts when you know I've got him on Ignore?

One more pet peeve - I really hate it when a non-white person - especially black person - says "I can't be racist; I'm ______."

Some of the most racist people I've known have pulled that crap.

It came up a lot when I taught at a black catholic university in New Orleans. The racism there was outrageous - and nearly all of it was by blacks.
 
I Ratant said:
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I don't see -your- point. The 'n-word' represents such a vile period of history, that for -anyone- to use it in any manner disturbs me. For blacks to use it between blacks shows to me a great disconnect with what that word has come to be today. And when these same people will use it among themselves (I've seen a black with it tatooed in 2 inch letters on his arm), yet bridle at "outsiders", i.e., non-blacks using it, indicates there's still some vestige of comprehension of the awful connotation that word stores in itself, yet they fail to honor their own history/culture by continuing to use it in normal speech. It isn't even hypocrisy, it's stupidity that maintains a seperation between the colors that needn't exist at all!
Not a one of us chose our parents.
Not a one!
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As you admit, it's the usage of the word by whites that's offensive and not the word itself as used by blacks toward blacks. Sure, we can go ahead and ignore such sensibilities. But we will not be able to justify our behavior ethically since the field of ethics tells us that we have a duty not to cause harm or unnecessary psychological or physical pain. The insistence on using a word perceived as offensive ignores that duty and tags the behavior as immoral. Whether or not the perception of the word is due to ignorance or not does not absolve us of that duty.

BTW

The reason I bring in ethics is because what really is at issue here is the rightness or wrongness of its usage in front of people who are offended by it. Now, if we limit it to literary usage, then the matter is one of choice since no one is forced to read such literature. However, I don't see why blacks are being required to feel OK when a literary work depicts whites using it toward slaves and being tagged as ignorant if they don't feel OK. It comes
across as a stay-in-your-place-and-like-it expectation. Or am I missing something here?
 
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BPSCG said:
That's going to the opposite extreme.

Ignoramuses want The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned from schools because of its frequent use. They are completely unaware that Jim, while a slave, is a American literature's first fully-developed black character, a man who risks his life to rescue his wife and child. Twain uses the "n" word because that was the way people spoke then, and to call Jim a "negro," or "colored," or "black," or "African-American," or "a person of color" would have been as false as having "Dude, I smacked the sumbitch upside the head" come out of someone's mouth in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

People want to burn Huckleberry Finn because of their ignorance. They don't know that Jim is the noblest character in the book, that Huck learns from being with Jim that the way to judge a man is not by how you address him, nor by the color of his skin, but the content of his character. The pivotal point in the book is when Huck discovers that Jim is not just a runaway slave, but a runaway slave who is trying to steal his wife out of slavery - and Huck has a crisis of conscience:
It's one of the greatest passages in American literature. And ignorant people want it censored because Huck Finn talks the way people talked in 1845.

:mad:
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I've always thunk so,
Since I read it o'er 50 years ago.
Similar to the Shakespeare lad,
Without the iambic pentameter.
 
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Diogenes said:
You're missing something ..

As has been shown; they are not offended by the word, they are offended by who is using it...

That's bigotry ...
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Not necessarily. Sometimes the meaning of a statement changes depending on who the speaker is. If a bunch of gay guys toss the word "fag" around, they know they don't mean it in the bad way. But if a straight guy uses that word, he may or may not mean it in the bad way. Presumably black people can use the "n word" because one can tell, at a glance, that they don't really hate black people and are therefore aren't using the word with animus behind it.

It's the hatred behind a word that counts, not the collection of syllables that make up the form of it.
 
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