Are you racist?

[Melchiah]

You know Melch, you could just substitute ignorant instead of substituting cupcake, and it'd all make sense.

Ignorant is only the beginning. It's really more so willful ignorance and willful social irresponsibility. It's a conscious choice that a class of people make for themselves.

Using cupcake was just an attempt at proving what Darus was saying.

[Melchiah]

Darus: what's the point of watering down one racist term? It's not like racial slurs are going to go away before racism does, so you're basically trying to play musical chairs with slurs. Take the sting off nigger just so racists will start using coon instead? And then eventually rappers start using coon in their lyrics? And then dopey white kids on the internet and foreign hip-hoppers wanna use it too? And then you have people who don't hate black people, they just hate coons. Back to square one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism

That's basically what your asking for. We only have word's for that we know. If we stamp out the power of racial slurs one by one, in theory, we are slowly eroding away racism.

If we empower them, we only make it stronger.

This makes no sense to me. Who the hell's writing these linguistics books?

Makes perfect sense to me. Try looking at it from a different perspective from the victim mentality.

[Ryko]

Well that's obviously because all the assholes give it power.

[Darus Grey]

What part of not getting offended allows the word nigger to lose it's meaning. I'm not offended by the word 'asshole' but at the end of the day an "asshole" is always going to mean "asshole."

Every part of it. Thats how it works, really.

Honestly I understand this is a hard concept to wrap one's mind around(I mentioned eariler I always get student's who simply give up and sometimes will actually walk out because they think this is a stupid way of thinking). But historically we've seen this trend with thousands of insults.

Word's only have the meaning the listener attributes to them. 100% fact.

[sunb1ind]

Makes perfect sense to me. Try looking at it from a different perspective from the victim mentality.

No, it makes no sense to think that racism will disappear if you take away their words. Racism is practiced through much more than just words. That's a fantasy mindset to think removing the racism from a word will change anything.

[Melchiah]

Makes perfect sense to me. Try looking at it from a different perspective from the victim mentality.

No, it makes no sense to think that racism will disappear if you take away their words. Racism is practiced through much more than just words. That's a fantasy mindset to think removing the racism from a word will change anything.

Again, look at the experiment I proposed above. Would you be offended if I called you a cupcake? Or rather, would you be more offended over the connotation of cupcake meaning a sissy, or that I was using cupcake to replace nigger?

[Darus Grey]

Your thinking of it in a modern concept when it's a more future concept.

Example:

If there were no words for color, I can't call you a black man, I can only call you a man. When i call you a man, I'm recognizing something we have in common, and not something that differentiates us.

Thats a theoretical example of how language shapes thought in the sense of determinism.

[Venture]

I'll check Yes on this one.

Being a cynic means you assume the absolute worst of everything until proven wrong. So, all black people are cornbread-eating gang members. All white people are Southern-fried cracker trailer-trash. All Latinos are rabbit-bred wetbacks too lazy to learn English. Middle Eastern descent people i'd not want to insult, else they'd play the martyr card massive "I'm not a terrorist!" guilt trip that's just annoying to deal with.

I'd elaborate further upon other 'races', but I get the feeling that we're only discussing stereotypes common to the American TV sitcom here.

Yeah...I guess I don't even like my fellow American, either. Or anyone else, for that matter. Hate <3

[Deejay]

Word's only have the meaning the user attributes to them. 100% fact.

I call a girl a walking down the street a dime.

The listener think's i'm talking about 10 cents.

What the fuck do you think I meant?

Not getting offended by a word will have an adverse affect on it's power, but never will it affect the word's meaning. The only thing that will change the word is what we associate it with. As long as people continue to associate "nigger" with blacks, it will be a racist word. Regardless if it "hurts my feelings" or not.

[Darus Grey]

I'm sorry but your just wrong =/

If you were correct then we would never misinterpret anything.

The fact that we do is an example of the listener determining meaning, not the speaker.

Your confusing MEANING with INTENT.

[Melchiah]

Word's only have the meaning the user attributes to them. 100% fact.

I call a girl a walking down the street a dime.

The listener think's i'm talking about 10 cents.

What the fuck do you think I meant?

Not getting offended by a word will have an adverse affect on it's power, but never will it affect the word's meaning. The only thing that will change the word is what we associate it with. As long as people continue to associate "nigger" with blacks, it will be a racist word. Regardless if it "hurts my feelings" or not.

Your example just proved Darus' case. You realize that right?

[Demosthenes11]

You're all fusty nuts with no kernels

[Deejay]

I'm sorry but your just wrong =/

Not getting offended by a word will have an adverse affect on it's power, but never will it affect the word's meaning. The only thing that will change the word is what we associate it with. As long as people continue to associate "nigger" with blacks, it will be a racist word. Regardless if it "hurts my feelings" or not.

Tell me what part of this statement is untrue.

[Beckwin]

Your thinking of it in a modern concept when it's a more future concept.

Example:

If there were no words for color, I can't call you a black man, I can only call you a man. When i call you a man, I'm recognizing something we have in common, and not something that differentiates us.

Thats a theoretical example of how language shapes thought in the sense of determinism.

Except we'd make words for color, especially if someone needed to differentiate based on it. Or, in your example, you'd call him big-lips or gorilla or porch monkey. You could call the yellow man chink, slant-eyes, nip, or gook.

nigger->negro->black. nip->nippon/ese->japanese. And then simple descriptions of physical attributes (big-lips, slant-eyes)? It'd be a hell of an effort to make the world as a whole forget the meanings behind words like that. You'd have better luck with the more abstract/figurative slurs like beaner or coon or camel jockey.

[Melchiah]

Cupcake now means a classless, willfully ignorant criminal scumbag. Nigger now means a delicious baked good covered in yummy chocolate frosting with sprinkles on top.

Now imagine if this had always been the case. You'd be hating the cupcakes in front of you in line at the bakery where you went to buy some niggers.

It's the listener who makes the choice to be offended. I don't know what the fuck you mean by calling that girl a dime, therefore I'm not offended.

Do you understand now?

[Correction]

I'm horribly racist. But that's because I drive in L.A.

I don't think it's possible to drive in this city without feeling at least one racist impulse daily.

[Beckwin]

Cupcake now means a black, classless, willfully ignorant criminal scumbag. Nigger now means a delicious baked good covered in yummy chocolate frosting with sprinkles on top.

Now imagine if this had always been the case. You'd be hating the cupcakes in front of you in line at the bakery where you went to buy some niggers.

Fixed for you.

Also I can't help but lol at the "buy some niggers" in your post where you try to deny that it implies black people.

[Darus Grey]

Tell me what part of this statement is untrue.

If a white man can't get a rise out of a black man calling him a nigger, he'll stop calling him a nigger.
(which leads back to deterimism)

Nothing will change that nigger was HISTORICALLY used as a racial slur, because that's factual.

But you'd be surprised how many common word's we used were once insults or slurs, and their accepted meaning in modern times has nothing to do with their historical use.

Eventually it won't be a racial slur in a modern context, and eventually, people will forget it's historical usage.

Assuming we don't remind them of it every chance we get.

Also I was referring to your edit that the user determines meaning as wrong, which it is.

[Deejay]

Word's only have the meaning the user attributes to them. 100% fact.

I call a girl a walking down the street a dime.

The listener think's i'm talking about 10 cents.

What the fuck do you think I meant?

Not getting offended by a word will have an adverse affect on it's power, but never will it affect the word's meaning. The only thing that will change the word is what we associate it with. As long as people continue to associate "nigger" with blacks, it will be a racist word. Regardless if it "hurts my feelings" or not.

Your example just proved Darus' case. You realize that right?

How the hell would I be proving Darus' case. Just because the person misinterpreted my sentence doesn't change the fact that me calling a girl a dime is synonymous to calling her a perfect 10. His point is that as long as we don't allow negative words to affect us that they'll some how change into words that aren't negative.

A perfect example of this is the word retard. 30 years ago this word wasn't considered negative, but now it is. Why? Because people started using/associating the word with negative characteristics. It only takes one person to use the word in a negative light for it to start to change it's interpretation.

Furthermore, the meaning of the word "retard" has never changed. It still means the same thing that it did 30 years ago, regardless of how people react to it.

Edited for clarity

[Demosthenes11]

Cupcake now means a classless, willfully ignorant criminal scumbag. Nigger now means a delicious baked good covered in yummy chocolate frosting with sprinkles on top.

Now imagine if this had always been the case. You'd be hating the cupcakes in front of you in line at the bakery where you went to buy some niggers.

It's the listener who makes the choice to be offended. I don't know what the fuck you mean by calling that girl a dime, therefore I'm not offended.

Do you understand now?

shut up, you don't know what you are talking about

I understand what Darus is saying, but only because my gf is a linguistics major and talks about it all the time (so much fun, I love hearing about it ). None of it really made sense to me the first few times I heard it, but it does now...just takes a little different thinking