Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
With all due respect, Richard, you do appear, at times, to use your circumstances as a "get out of jail" card.
That is not what I said.
I asked why you would use those terms in the forum (however they were used in past times) when it is generally accepted that they are not appropriate in polite company nowadays. You are extremely vociferous in being anti-discriminatory for disability issues (understandably so, according to your posts regarding your circumstances), but not as much when it comes to matters/words that could be construed as being racially discriminatory.
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My cognitive impairment causes me many problems, including thinking skills, so when you said i'd missed the point of what you were trying to say, I took another look at what you'd said in order to try and understand what you meant.
I honestly wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, I was just trying to understand what you actually wanted to convey to me.
I am against all types of discrimination, but don't think that glossing over certain words is always productive. You yourself were happy to use such terminology in another thread for various groups (apart from when using the N word phrase because you didn't think it appropriate) and I think I remember saying how curious this was at the time.
I think it really depends on the context; for someone to walk up to a black man and call him the aforementioned word would certainly be discriminatory, but in a discussion about historical events it serves no purpose to try and pretend otherwise (and for reasons I said earlier, I think it's counter productive).
If these unpleasant terms are glossed over (and not only the words associated with rsce or colour), people will forget about them over time and that's not good.
The new series of 'Roots' used the term, I presume to accurately explain how black people were spoken to. To not do so would be as bad as glossing over how Kunta Kinte was whipped for refusing to answer to the name Toby!
In the report by Ofcom about the complaint of a word said to be an acrynoym of the term 'Western Oriental Gentleman' in an old film, the word was cited- it had to be so that people knew what the complaint was about, even if seeing it in written form caused offence to some readers.
IMO it doesn't help when black people call each other by this term (I was in a bar some time ago and was taken aback when a group of young black men were calling each other the term). I was told by the landlord that it's fairly common for the young generation to refer to each other using this terminology and that they weren't actually saying the word I thought, but 'Nigga', though I don't know what the difference is supposed to be! I was told that it wouldn't be appropriate for someone outside their community to address them like this though.
It's the same with young gay people now who use the term 'queer'; they say that it gives them a sense of empowerment by reclaiming the word used to insult gay people in the past. This is why the acronyms LGBTQ+ is now used (the + being there to represent intersex, non binary, pansexual etc.) I'm not so sure that older gay men who were persecuted and routinely called this would agree though!