trying not to engage

[maevele]

but a certain someone's insistence that he has n-word privileges is working my every nerve.

I've been around that word a lot, both from black people reclaiming it and from white people being assholes. I've had the particular phrase he thinks gives him that privilege addressed to me, not because of things my family had done, but from my family regarding things I had done, and it never for a second made me think I could say that word. Even when talking about that word, I avoid saying it, because you just DON'T SAY THAT WORD, WHITE PEOPLE. It is emotionally painful for many black people to hear those words from a white person, in any context, so it is an easy way to avoid inflicting pain on people who have already been hurt by this to just not FUCKING USE THAT WORD, JESUS. WHITE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT ASSHOLES DON'T USE THAT WORD. ESPECIALLY WHERE OTHER PEOPLE MAY HEAR THEM. I am fully aware that I just called my grandma and several other family members assholes. Possibly a majority of my family. I stand by that.

Comments

[rhivolution]

Even when talking about that word, I avoid saying it, because you just DON'T SAY THAT WORD, WHITE PEOPLE.

HEAR HEAR.

ETA: I just tried to go to the post via my anon browser? Yeah, no luck--because THE WORD USED IN THE DAMN FILE NAME IS AGAINST THEIR TOS.

[pantryslut]

Seconded. I mean.

[pantryslut]

I am particularly disgusted with the rationale that if we don't use the word, we can't talk or write about past historical racism. From a writer. Somehow, thousands of other people manage every day. In the original thread, everyone else switched to "house negro" without any loss of meaning or context. Only one lone white person who styles himself a maverick insists on the phrasing. Hmm.

[yeloson]

I speak the slur only when talking about what word people are using... or trying to say without saying it, and I say it once. I say it because I don't want to play the game that we mean another word, when we know what's on the table, and I say it and remind everyone this is the word people have been, ARE STILL NOW, murdered to.

That this word, like many others, is not just dehumanization, but, "I will kill you and everyone like you, because you never mattered", and it will always be shorthand for genocide.

We neither "get the right" (right? WTF.) to say such a thing casually, nor to forget what it means. The idea that one "gets the right" to say it casually as someone who doesn't walk past unmarked graveyards of uncles and aunts and grandparents past slain to that word, that's someone who never knew what it meant in the first place.

You don't get the right to reclaim the past of others, anymore than you get the right to control their bodies. Naturally, though, people in Massa Mindset will be the first to tell the "help" what they need to be doing with their lives.

[sophygurl]

WHITE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT ASSHOLES DON'T USE THAT WORD.

Word. I don't understand why white people think it's okay, either.