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Comment by lactau | Hacker News Reader

I stopped caring about 'racism' long time ago. In the past race was about your color and physical features, now race is a 'big ethnicity'. Well, I can and do dislike different cultures and their cultural practices. I don't care about color. If you redefine race to something not connected to genetics, I am fine with being racist, perfectly fine. Because that's not the type of racists I hate.

If I see a black guy, I won't have any prejudices. If I see a black or white or green or whatever guy, who says that only black people can use the word 'nigger', I would consider him racist (in its old sense) and stupid.

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I've never understood this absurd n-word argument.

I have a brother. Due to circumstances, I can call him a "stupid idiot" and he will know that I'm not serious and I respect him. However if a stranger calls him the same thing, he will take offense. Is that an unfair double standard?

Similarly, the n-word is a derogatory racial slur. Black people are quite justified in taking offense when being called that by an non-black person. However, if called that by a black person, the listener can be reasonably sure that the speaker is not being racist, and also that no 3rd party listener would mistake it for that.

It's just an obvious fact of language that context matters, and the speaker matters.

>I have a brother. Due to circumstances, I can call him a "stupid idiot" and he will know that I'm not serious and I respect him. However if a stranger calls him the same thing, he will take offense. Is that an unfair double standard?

I wouldn't call my brother 'stupid idiot' in public (neither would I in private by the way). I don't care what you do in private. Though, that's another topic.

When black people call other black people nigga, they don't mean it ironically or as an exaggeration. It is just a word which means black person and which is used only by black people. That's like calling someone 'bro', that's not like calling someone 'stupid idiot'.

"Nigger" was coined by whites to denigrate blacks--just like "Boy" and a dozen other terms. Its use by blacks is ironic, its use by whites communicates hate. Willfully refusing to accept that a word intended to communicate white hate would strike blacks differently than it strikes white, well, yeah that is racist.

Yeah, you see. I am white. I didn't coin that word. I am not even American. There is basically nothing that connects me to black slavery except the color of my skin. My family roots go back to slaves too (like roots of >99% of people). I used to use this word ironically to demean pervasive hip hop pop culture. Thankfully, I am no longer in high school and don't have to talk to people who listen to songs about gangsters and fucking bitches.

> pervasive hip hop pop culture

So you used the word "nigger" to describe your distaste for "hip hop culture"? Nice. You sound like a real class act.

So basically, you are saying that you, and you alone, can judge people from different cultures and backgrounds on their practices because... hey, you are superior or something. Yeah, that sounds pretty racist.

I can damn well judge on FGM and other "primitive" practices as backward. Nothing is immune to criticism if the argument is valid. Granted there are many different types of cultural relativeism, but you decided by yourself to judge him as racist, I guess that means you are superior to him or something. Sounds like you're pretty racist.

No, I don't. I have no idea what part of my comment made you think so and what kind of mental jumps you've performed to come to this strange conclusion.

If you can't understand why words might mean something completely different to anyone who's got a completely different context built around it, you are either ignorant or too arrogant to care either way.

...and being racist has become okay on hacker news.

Not sure why you are being downvoted. I've seen a few comments in the last couple days that support your statement. My biggest fear about this election is the intolerant people in the country would get the wrong idea that being intolerant and bigoted is acceptable. Turns out, I might been right :/

Gp is being downvoted for more or less indiscriminately trying to tar everyone who voted for a certain candidate in democratic election.

If you check the comment history of gp you'll see.

Please note that I am not a fan of Trump, I just refuse to accept that 50% of Americans are dumb and evil.

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