WaitingforRuffcorn wrote:
Tall Midget wrote:
WaitingforRuffcorn wrote:
Tall Midget wrote:
How fucking dumb and/or racist do you have to be to passionately defend your right to use the word "n----r"? This is the hill you choose to die on?
Did not read the thread I see.
Nah, I read it. I'm just not persuaded by your arguments about the seemingly pernicious effects of black people demonstrating a modicum of cultural power by redefining the meaning of and the terms under which a given racial epithet is to be used.
Language and power are inextricably linked, and you're mad because blacks have shown a little more power than whites in one instance.
It is interesting to note that such a view is possible only if one views racial politics as a zero-sum game, a flawed view that also makes it possible to hold blacks accountable for structural racial inequality when they are largely devoid of large-scale power within our society.
This is bullshit to the highest order. First of all a "modicum" of cultural power? Black people have been the drivers of American culture. Without American blacks you have no Jazz, Rock or Rap. To state that they have to small cultural footprint, and controlling this word is one of the few areas that they have power is simply absurd.
Individual black people have reached the highest political office of the United States, and have been leaders in science, medicine, entertainment and business. To state that there remains a conspiracy to hold them back is nihilism of the highest order.
Think about the basics on this debate. One group of people based on race are able to use a word, but others are not. To me this goes against the core ideal of an American melting pot, one that will soon make race very difficult to cleanly define. This seems like a very dated battle to fight. Particularly when a 20-something who is already enjoying national success, calling someone who lived through the Civil Rights Era, and was on the right side of history a "slave-master". I don't see how any of it is helpful other than to continue to push alienation.
Who said anything about a conspiracy? Do you even understand the concept of institutional racism? Take a look at the disparities between wealth, income, education, and incarceration rates based on race in the United States. Are those disparities a product or merit or something else? If the latter, what?
Of course exceptional blacks rise to the highest levels of American society. But the "talented tenth"--as DuBois might say--is hardly indicative of larger patterns within the social order. Your entire argument above is based on exceptions to the way society works, fails to grasp fundamental social conditions, and is thus entirely devoid of merit.
As for your argument about race as a social construct, you do realize that racial boundaries in the U.S. have been fluid at many key points throughout our history, correct? This is the point of many scholarly works published on American racial history over the past 20 years. Nevertheless, the fact that racial identity is socially constructed hardly mitigates the effects of racism within our society.
_________________
Antonio Gramsci wrote:
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
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