I mean, how is the case that people don't just use "racial slander" or something like that, and instead use what seems to be like kindergarden teacher expressions?
Is this phenomenon present in other languages/cultures?
>>At the time, our investigation identified a number of conflicting accusations and counter-accusations between several African-American and Hispanic individuals, alleging use of racial language, including the "nigger" and "wetback" towards each other and a threat of violence.<<
>> At the time, our investigation identified a number of conflicting accusations and counter-accusations between several African-American and Hispanic individuals, alleging use of racial slurs towards each other and a threat of violence.
Consider "colored" compared to "nigger". Colored will definitely be seen by some as a racial slur, but to others it may be the appropriate for the time, not necessarily racially charged, correct terminology they initially learned. For that matter, "nigger" was a fairly neutral term originally, but changed over time, as the circumstances of the people it referred to changed and they preferred a different, less loaded moniker.
I prefer the companies tell it how it is, and not to censor information.
At the risk of being equally pedantic...
Does that really matter? And is there a company on Earth that will tell you everything with radical honesty? Is there any value in that?
Does Tesla tell you how bad their batteries, plastics, or leathers are for the environment? No. They focus on the positive aspects of the product and the company. We prioritize and value what we need to know versus what we might like to know versus all of the other noise.
And there is a lot of noise. Far too much noise for almost any of it to be useful. In fact, this is a tactic that large law firms use against small ones -- they DoS attack the small firms with too much paperwork during discovery in hopes that the small firm can't use it effectively and exhaust client expenses just trying to read through the material.
I imagine it would just make it easier to build lawsuits against the radically honest companies and the only ones that survived would be the ones with the weasel words or diplomatic silence. Almost like a darwinism where the fitness function isn't relevant to any of the current economics that we observe or product features we care about.
I find similar arguments against "political correctness" similarly tiring and fruitless.
When there is a murder with a knife everyone says person A murdered person B with a knife, not "he m'd person B with a k-thing". How come people can cope with describing murder and violence and not slurs?
Racial slurs are a different category from "regular" profanity though. I think in this case they wanted to indicate it was two marginalized communities flinging racial slurs to each other?
You can argue about whether it's appropriate to use in different contexts, but pretending it's the same as the word "murder" or "knife" is a false equivocation.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinctio...
Then when you move to the USA, you start to see how much of an emotional reaction it gets there, especially in a place like the bay area. Thats why they used n-word. If they didn't you would get even more outrage machine generation. If elon musk put the word fuck every second sentence, not nearly as many people would care.
You could draw a parallel with how Nazi symbols cannot be depicted in Germany (for the most part). It is not just about not offending little PC snowflakes or something.. it’s a campaign of de-Nazification. So too with racism here.
I think it's high time that we stopped being afraid of these words. For example, I had to search for what the damn "w-word" was (I was thinking "wigger", but what do I know?)! African Americans can try and differentiate all they want between nigger and nigga, but they obviously stem from the same word so why pretend. It's a thing of power, I suppose. It's okay for one group to say it, but not another - a double standard and extremely hypocritical, but again, who am I to know.
EDIT: I am not focusing specifically on African Americans, as this is prominent behavior across many ethnic and racial groups. The group moves to restrict the usage of a word by bastardizing it in some way and making it normal in their group while shaming those outside who use it. This is what complicates race issues even more because non African Americans come away thinking "why is it okay for them to call each other this, and why would they?" Again, same goes for other races and ethnic groups.
In America, everything is weird. We're a conglomeration of nationalities and ways of thinking from across the world. Asking "is that an American thing to do?" to me is like asking "is the color Green in the rainbow?".
For example Trump got up and made a speech in front of a group of jews and made reference to how they were either good or tough negotiators. Certain jews called him out on that and were offended. Others thought it was great and a compliment. What gives the one group the right to decide it's defacto offensive and decide the political correctness? (I get paid for negotiation and I was like 'yeah!'.
When I was growing up it was common to refer to blacks as 'colored'. Nigger was derogatory. However now it's as if you can't even use it to refer to someone else saying it and many would take offense to either of us (as you did) even using it in a comment even historically. [1] I don't understand nor do I agree with that thinking.
[1] On the other hand if it was used in a play or a movie it would be seen entirely different.
There's a good talk on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa18UJVKr5s (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8ZJ_g59Bqg (Part 2)
It's about 12 minutes total.
[1] http://www.pitt.edu/~votruba/qsonhist/bearetymologyslovakeng...
I kinda get it. No "reasonable person" likes to use or even hear others use words like these. I think it's just "political correctness" that keeps us from using them under any circumstances whatsoever (although, personally, I think that is taking things a bit too far) -- such as in news articles.
What I (non-US) don't quite get is why putting the word "nigger" in quotes is not enough. I mean, I can think of some reasons, I just feel quotes should be enough to distance oneself from the usage of said word.
Then again, the Dutch tend to curse with diseases (which is relatively rare, I think Spanish does it too). But it's mostly "old" diseases like typhoid, tuberculosis, pocks or the plague. Recent generations also tend to use cancer, which is frowned upon because many people know someone who suffered it (then again, heart attacks or strokes are similarly frequent and usually no big deal at all--I think that's related to the terrible suffering of chemotherapy) . I personally like to adopt even newer diseases like H5N1 or ebola, just for the ridiculousness of it.
I know the feeling, in IRL conversation, I tend to speak such words at a somewhat lower volume :)
Sometimes one needs to be specific about the nature and severity of the slur used.
Forgive me if I sound argumentative, I'm genuinely interested and trying to understand.
It's like "sexual harassment." That phrase alone will have some people thinking "oh, the poor guy just said she looked nice today and she flipped out." If you say "he stuck his hand up her dress and told her to be at his apartment at 9pm," there's no space for that sort of misunderstanding.
And for those of you who haven't worked on the factory floor the behaviour there differs a lot from the nice and fluffy offices most of us are used to
"Roma" should be a pretty universal endonym, though. If I remember correctly, it basically means "people".