Warbler said:
Mrebo said:
As you admit later in your response, you never heard about the movements to reclaim or neuter certain epithets by using them. That is clearly what I am referring to. Sorry you haven't heard of that before, but it's not an obscure thing.
Maybe it isn't, but I had never heard of it before and the way you said it, made it seem as if one of us had said it was acceptable for black people to use that word.
How I said it was:
If it is okay for black people to use the word and he was using it in the same way, why should it be considered worse?
I was thinking about how it is said people are reclaiming a word (like the n-word or "queer") or taking away its power to hurt by using it. Perhaps it is the altered definition of the word (thanks to the adoption of many blacks) that Cooper was using. I hear young black guys using it constantly.
It is super obvious it is my thought based upon what I hear out in the world. No idea how you got the notion I was ascribing any statements to you or anyone else in the thread. The question - and you can "whatever" until the cows come home to where the sun doesn't shine - was obviously my own rhetorical question.
Mrebo said:
If I started calling my friends the n-word, that doesn't make me racist.
someone who isn't a racist, would not call his friends the n-word.
*sigh*
It would be like a calling a black person, a cracker.
Is is racist if I call you a cracker?
Mrebo said:
What matters is the context and intent.
not when we are talking about a white person using the n-word.
I won't bang my head against this brick horse.
yeah, I think you are wrong. Maybe 30 years ago it would be understandable for a white person to use that term due to its broad use in whatever community he lived/grew up in. But this is the year 2013, you have to be living under the biggest boulder in the history of the universe to not know that the word is unacceptable and ugly.
I do think you have it backward. 30 years ago it would have been unquestionably racist, however "understandable." Now, the usage in urban, largely black, communities has expanded the definition.