Comment by Denzel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Denzel | Hacker News Reader

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I agree, it's an interesting point. "Black" culture isn't nearly as uniform as some people would like to believe. As a mixed African-American raised around multiple different ethnicities, my brother and I have had many heated debates about the usage of the word. Even within our own community. In the end, it really doesn't matter much to either of us. It's just interesting.

For us, there is no stigma attached to non-blacks using the word. The problem is intent. Like any word, it can be used negatively or positively, and I prefer not to have to second guess whether you meant it one way or another. So I kindly ask people, that I don't know well, to refrain from using it around me.

One night I was having dinner with my ex-girlfriend, who was full-blooded Italian, and her family. Her mother absolutely loved me. Somehow we got around to the topic of how much better I was than her ex-boyfriend, and her mom blurted out, "He was such a n-er." When she realized what she said, she looked at me and said, "But you're not a n-er. You know...there's just certain people that are." I never directly responded, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it at the time. But it opened my eyes to the complexity of even attempting to define what the word means to different groups of people.

> "Black" culture isn't nearly as uniform as some people would like to believe.

I spent a few months in the US a few years ago, and one of the things that bothered me was that in the media, "black culture" and "gangsta culture" were synonymous - nothing to suggest that a black person might be an engineer or a manager or a wise elder or whatever. Whether it was talking heads on TV or a comedy set in a park, someone riffing on "black culture" would be doing gangsta stereotypes. The only time it seemed that blacks were allowed to be something other than "gangsta" in public discourse were if the conversation was specifically about race.

> nothing to suggest that a black person might be an engineer or a manager or a wise elder or whatever. Whether it was talking heads on TV or a comedy set in a park, someone riffing on "black culture" would be doing gangsta stereotypes.

The "wise elder" is actually quite a prevalent trope. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNegro

It's basically Morgan Freeman's whole career. Man played Nelson Mandela and God...

In Hollywood movies perhaps, but not in day-to-day media. Probably not the best example, agreed - I just lobbed it in there as an aspiration that wasn't a job :)

The use internal to african american culture aside, My dad, not known for his political correctness said to me when I was a little kid "n-er's come in all colors."

I use the more politically correct version "white trash comes in all colors."

Which in my European ears is still a huge disgrace and racist (the term "white trash").

But because it's about poor "non-sophisticated" people, and there's no middle-class guilt about it, nobody cares...

(British have a similar term, "chav", for younger working class people).

I don't consider it so, not as a white person. IMO however, being white trash is not about poverty, its about ignorance and a lack of a desire to know more about the world.

>I don't consider it so, not as a white person.

This is like someone saying "I am a man, and I don't find it offensive if they call some men faggots". That's just because while you're a man, you're not a homosexual man, so it doesn't affect you.

It's not to whites in general that the term "white trash" will be offensive. It's to the subset of whites that are labelled as such.

>IMO however, being white trash is not about poverty, its about ignorance and a lack of a desire to know more about the world.

Just like how blacks were considered "ignorant and lazy".

Wikipedia puts it like this:

>White trash is a derogatory American English racial slur referring to poor white people, especially in the rural South of the United States, suggesting lower social class and degraded standards of living.

Besides, being poor and working hand to mouth, or coming from a dysfunctional poor family, lessens your "desire to know more about the world" and your sophistication....

I prefer not to have to second guess whether you meant it one way or another.

Yes. Communication is hard enough as it is, without having to second guess more things.

But it opened my eyes to the complexity of even attempting to define what the word means to different groups of people.

I don't know in italian, but in spanish we don't have a word for n-er, we just have a word for the color black. That word (negro) is syntactically similar to n-er in english, which produces lots of misunderstandings with english speakers. So again, communication is really hard.

If I'm not mistaken, it's not "similar". It's literally the same word, just like the English "hound" and the German "hund". Meanings sometimes split, but the origin is the same.

It shares the same root, but it isn't the same word. "Negro" in spanish means the color black. It might or might not be used to refer to race, just like "black" might or might not be used to refer to race. To clarify, "black" usually translates as "negro". Meanwhile, "n-er" usually translates as "negro" followed by an offensive adjective.

I guess it apparently depends on what definition of the word "word" (which is quite overloaded) one uses, though. I'm not quite familiar with English linguistic terminology but I believe it's more about sharing a radix than a root.

That line of reasoning the mother used isn't uncommon. I can date it back to at least '96 and know that line of reasoning existed well before then. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4

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