@Piggy - I ain't gonna flame, and I appreciate your candor. I totally get what you're saying about slurs not always being empty - to tie it to the top of the thread, if all Paula Deen had done was use this slur in the context of the guy who robbed her, could she fairly be called out as a racist? We all have ugly thoughts, and we've all had 'em directed at us.
That being said, I do have two points for thought:
Which would at a minimum prevent people from misunderstanding you - I don't think it's wrong to have a handy collection of slurs, the funnier the better, for use among intimates to blow off frustration and describe what we see. I sure do. The problem with THAT WORD is, as this thread shows, the terrible baggage that goes with it. Most of that baggage SHOULD be allowed to die; it's not a choice between constantly opening old wounds (which that word does) and our being allowed to express our irritation with the jerks of the world of every racial stripe (which we are).
I basically AGREE with you that sentiments like "we shouldn't be judged on the color of our skin" are true but miss some underlying point, which is that we as people naturally spot trends and need to be able to comment on them, particularly among confederates (pun intended) without folks jumping down our throat. Note that I'm as blue as blue gets (or so I think) but I'm totally with you on this.
Now, all THAT being said, my second point is a critique: In your "white trash" example, the caricature you drew was a total trainwreck - everything they were doing was objectively bad, up and down the ladder. They deserve an epithet. But in your contrasting example, you drilled down to little more than fashion choice - the first target of your epithets poison the land and abuse animals. The second target is a vulgar crotch-grabber. Doesn't look equivalent to me.
You DID say that descriptions would be incendiary, so I'll grant that you may have just been holding back so as to not invite even more flaming, but those particular examples don't make your point as well as you could make it. When I see kids dressed like that, I think "stupid teenagers," not "******."
I don't know if the Gainesville blacks treat their dogs better or beat their kids less; I tend to think the numbers run about even. But while your POINT is a fair one, your EXAMPLE invites easy criticism - the criticism that in your book a black jaywalker gets a racial slur just the same as a white child abuser.
I don't assume that to be your feeling; I get where you were going there, I think. I guess my own point would be that we SHOULD be talking about what we think about race and what we see with our eyes; making it a taboo subject isn't helping in 2013. Because it's SO EASY to be misunderstood, however, we need to choose examples with care, not because of the p.c. police, but because folks of good cheer might give offense where none is intended.
Hope that isn't too flamey. I for one appreciate you bringing up the issue. I'm big, big into issues of race relations, but I sure don't deny the thoughts that I have in my own head, many of which are not kind and probably wouldn't help the "dialogue" if they were broadcast unfiltered.
No, that's not too flamey, and I see where you're coming from and I largely see things the same way.
One important clarification....
I did opt not to give a description of group/cultural behavior for the latter term, as I did for "white trash". I felt that would have just been prodding a hornets' nest.
So instead, I simply offered one example of a time when I recently encountered someone who, it seemed to me, was inviting the description.
That's why there was such a difference, the latter much more superficial than the former.
And in practice, I simply do not use the latter word, while I do at times use the term "white trash". In fact, I sometimes referred to a hypothetical Palin presidency as the "white trash White House". I don't believe that the Palins are, strictly speaking, white trash, but when you've got someone with national political aspirations who comes out with statements such as recommending that the president "grow a bigger stick", well, one can hardly resist the hyperbole.
Around here, there are areas which are highly integrated, but a large portion of this culture is still segregated, not just in terms of real estate, but in terms of the culture itself. So I'm not that disturbed by the idea of having separate terms.
When you consider my background, I think you'd have to say that I'm more enlightened than most who grew up when and where I did.
I was born on the Florida panhandle back before the resorts when there was nothing much there but shrimp boats. My mom dropped out of high school at 15, had her first child at 16, my dad was in various sorts of law enforcement.
Grew up in a red-clay milltown in Georgia in the '70s during the decline of the US textile industry.
The cultures were utterly separate.
And the word back then was not considered impolite in any company outside the pulpit. When we counted eeny-meeny-minie-moe, it wasn't a tiger we caught by the toe, for instance. That's just how I learned that rhyme.
And getting the end of a joint too wet wasn't referred to as "fish-lipping".
Some members of my family were not racist, but many were. I recall eating in a Dairy Queen in Valdosta with my grandmother when a local football team and their cheerleaders came in. An enormous teenager walked by our booth, and my grandmother said in a perfectly normal volume, "That's the biggest ****** I've ever seen," just as though she'd said it about a truck or a rabbit.
My step-father's mother had inherited some rental property from her husband, and she used to say, "Well, I gotta go down and collect the rent from my n*gras".
So that's where I come from.
I like to think I've come a long way from there, even if there is still here, and here is in too many ways still there.
ETA: Most people from other parts of the country/world are shocked when I tell them that the Klan had a float in our town's Christmas parade.
