I have a friend who was selling drugs and got busted by a lady-cop. They started making out in her cop car and they both fell in love. Here's his dilemma: Either she takes him in and keeps his job or lets him go and gets fired. She left it up to him and only gave him a day to decide. What should he do?
It's just a word people get over it. It only has power if you give it power.
Well guess what dumbass? Society has given that word power.
they have?
odd I don't see white people using it very often and when it is uttered it has usually nothing to do with race...who uses it? black people do or at least a version of it they like to call their own.
where did I first hear the word? yep from a rap video.
So no society as a whole hasn't given it power, one group in that society has given it power.
I take it, as a white middle class male, you have never had racial epithet hurled at you. Even if you did the word "honkie" doesn't hold the three hundred year or so history that the word nigger has. What you're referring to when you say one "group" has given it power and you would be right. Racists have given it power. Black people use the word "nigga" like white people use "redneck". It is, in a way, to own that three hundred year history. I don't necessarily think it's right but I don't have that much control in my community.
When people say things like "They're just words," then they are missing the point of language. Language is supposed to carry weight. It's not something that is supposed to be looked on lightly. It's not something that is supposed to be brushed away and that word simply can't be. I'll leave you with something that the great Richard Pryor said "When they say it I don't even feel human."
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