The Black/White people news thread for all news current, historical, or otherwise.

[Fireball]

Fireball:
I'm not a cat-lover, but I sure as hell don't go kicking them around.


How do you call yourself an atheist then?

I'm the exception to the rule. 

[no one]

I don't kick kittens.





They're already tender enough.

[Fake Messiah]

Linguist John McWhorter wrote an interesting article about the use of the n-word and the distinction between "use" and "mention"

Here's a part

To those who would object and say they just don’t want to hear the word, no matter what, the constructive response would be to point out that not so long ago, far fewer people felt that way about mention versus use of this word, and to await, engage and evaluate their response to that. Maybe one might even decide that their subsequent response is one we agree with. But acquaintance with the straightforward use/mention difference is, or should be, a badge of membership in a modern society. Anyone who’s willing to process Black people referring to one another with the N-word, as a term of endearment or a form of word empowerment (and many, including me, are, even if we don’t use it this way ourselves) understands that a spoken or written instance of the N-word can mean more than one thing. As such, they should be able to appreciate, if not embrace, that quoting a savory rap lyric or comedian’s routine that includes the word or just referring to the word to note its prior application are not the same thing as deploying it as an insult.

Our current nervous social contract on this word requires us to act as if there is no such difference. But all of us, Black, white and otherwise, can see past this. The sky won’t fall if we admit it. It’s time to stop putting people in the stocks for mentioning the N-word when they’ve done nothing history will judge as wrong.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/opini...ntion.html

[Ranjr]

But, just look all around. We've come so far since then.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

In 1854 - just over 100 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Mongomery bus - Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a Black schoolteacher, boarded a 'whites only' streetcar in New York City. After she was forcibly removed, her father, wealthy inventor Thomas A. Jennings, immediately filed a lawsuit on her behalf. The case was decided in Graham's favour the following year (her lawyer was future US President Chester A. Arthur).

The case is credited as helping fully desegregate NYC transit systems a decade later.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Linguist John McWhorter wrote an interesting article about the use of the n-word and the distinction between "use" and "mention"

Here's a part

To those who would object and say they just don’t want to hear the word, no matter what, the constructive response would be to point out that not so long ago, far fewer people felt that way about mention versus use of this word, and to await, engage and evaluate their response to that. Maybe one might even decide that their subsequent response is one we agree with. But acquaintance with the straightforward use/mention difference is, or should be, a badge of membership in a modern society. Anyone who’s willing to process Black people referring to one another with the N-word, as a term of endearment or a form of word empowerment (and many, including me, are, even if we don’t use it this way ourselves) understands that a spoken or written instance of the N-word can mean more than one thing. As such, they should be able to appreciate, if not embrace, that quoting a savory rap lyric or comedian’s routine that includes the word or just referring to the word to note its prior application are not the same thing as deploying it as an insult.

Our current nervous social contract on this word requires us to act as if there is no such difference. But all of us, Black, white and otherwise, can see past this. The sky won’t fall if we admit it. It’s time to stop putting people in the stocks for mentioning the N-word when they’ve done nothing history will judge as wrong.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/opini...ntion.html

That's always been my position. There is a difference between saying the word and using the word. I don't feel it makes me a racist to quote a passage from 'Huckleberry Finn' that contains the n-word.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

It a clever way to memory hole. Society bans the word, but not the predisposition that leads to it's use in the pejorative sense. In the process, it designates those using it in another context as ignorant, and, ofc, part of the problem. In this way society can maintain that it has improved, but those other poor n-word using fuckers have not. Especially The Blacks. Delicious irony.

[Fake Messiah]

Wow, what a racist POS