Bringing back the P word?

I think that reclaiming a word is sometimes a necessary step on the way to understanding that words do not rule over us.

@delta214 maybe then you don’t really understand what empowerment is all about

Until I read that article, I had little idea that there even was such a thing as a P-word.

So, let’s see if I have it straight now. We are automatically expected to realize that the word Paki, being used as a shortened form of Pakistani, makes it automatically racist and demeaning regardless of the context in which it is used ?

Is that the essence of the question here?

And furthermore, the youth who are seeking to “reclaim” it, while ADMITTEDLY being unfamiliar with it’s historical significance, are now the arbiters of WHO is allowed to utter it ?

So if you aren’t on the APPROVED list of these self-appointed arbiters, then you are automatically consigned to being racist in your intent, even tho the art mind reading
has not yet been perfected?

Does that about sum it up adequately? I just want to be sure that my understanding of the parameters of this Gordian
Knot are adequate to what is apparently being expected of me and all the other clueless beings on the planet.

Just checking in…please do enlighten me.

@Buttonstc is it me or are you coming off as angry? this is not that difficult – you’re not automatically expected to know what words are offensive – but if you know one that is offensive to a group of people, try not to use it – that is if you want to be sensitive to the history you mention…also just because people are young doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t know historical significance of the word…sometimes it’s enough to feel that the word is thrown at you in a negative fashion…it doesn’t matter that they threw it at other generations, ours will be the one to reclaim it…reclamation of a word is about a shift in power…if I call myself queer (and I do) first and foremost, when you say ‘that fucking queer’ to me, it has less heat…

@buttonstc to clarify, in Britain particularly the word Paki has the same (if not worse) derogatory implication as nigger. So yes, applying the meaning of the latter you would be considered racist if used in certain contexts. I did provide a source for this, so don’t rant at me :)

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I agree that reclaiming a word will dilute its meaning and can sometimes be a good thing. However do you not think that words like ‘nigger’ or ‘fenian’ can lead to stereotyping?

” I resent you people using that word. That’s our word for making fun of you! We need it! ”

@Simone_De_Beauvoir so if i called you queer would you be offended?

One of the key problems with the use of the P word in Britain is it used to be aimed at Pakistanis and Indians. An all in racist term.

And any taxi driver / FE student who tries to tell you it isn’t racist just an abbreviation is either really stupid or just lying their arse off.

I don’t think ‘taking it back’ works as well as other forms of change.

The N-word, by saying it, doesn’t erase racism or change the people who use it. There are better ways to define that segment of the population. What great change has occurred from using that word?

I’m not sure how the P-word would be any different.

Queer, I feel, is different. It had a meaning all it’s own before it was used as an insult so I feel ‘taking it back’ had more merit. There was something to take it back from.

@delta214 as always depends on the context of the situation – I would know which way you intended it

@delta214 You should rethink that. If you say it, it’s just hate-speak.
There is a Joe Jackson song with the line: Don’t call me a faggot, unless you are a friend.

@delta214

”nigger is not like the word nigger”

@CakeOrDeath I don’t know what you mean by ‘lead to stereotype’
nor do I know what a ‘fenian’ means
can you tell me?

@delta214

Wow.

@filmfann so no matter what way i say it im a racist? Just because im white?

No, I am saying you don’t have the right to be offensive to others by using words that provoke them.
I am white, and straight. I have lots of friends of color, and lots of queer friends. With all that, I cannot use words like faggot or nigger without offending them. I accept that.

I’d just like to clarify that i do not use the words nigger nor faggot.
What I’m saying is, if i had friends who called themselves niggers. Then if i called them that, they shouldn’t be offended.

A person does not have the right not to be offended.

@beancrisp i believe they do.

@Simone

Not necessarily angry, but irked would be closer.

I have plenty of queer friends and fully understand the rationale behind it so that’s not a problem, so let’s leave that alone for the moment.

I taught for years in predominantly black schools and have talked to many many of my colleagues, friends, and parents of my kids regarding nomenclature and it’s ramifications.

There still temains rather wide disagreement in the black community itself on the use of the n word and the distinctions between “nigga” and “nigger”.

It’s not a simple situation and I understand why. When my third graders would hurl racial insults at each other, even tho they were all black and I wasn’t, I just refused to let it stand without comment.

Not every use of nigga or nigger is as benign as the rap community would like to like to brainwash us onto believing.

Yes, I know that sometimes they will affectionately utter phrases like “what’s up, my nigga” but it and other terms are also thrown around in anger, hate, and intended to demean.

Should two black kids get a pass on that when they’re slinging around stuff like “peas” ,“white boy” “lazy nigga” etc, etc.

Methinks not. Racially demeaning insults are still demeaning when uttered by someone with black skin. It’s a matter of self respect. This is at the core of the issue and this is the standpoint from which I approached it with them.

Their parents and the black teachers in the school were not willing to put up with this crap, so why would I? just because I’ve got white skin, I’m not allowed to weigh in on the subject? Ha ! Not hardly.

Rappers are promoting this racial self-hatred for one simple reason. Money, pure and simple. And statistically speaking, mostly coming from the pockets of white youth.

I just don’t buy the whole “reclaiming” BS from the rap industry. If it were a grass-roots movement springing up organically (as I’d did for gays) from the black community, that’s a different scenario.

But the connection to money and the white power structure belies it’s so-called noble intentions.

IMO they are all too willing to sell their racial self respect to make huge amounts of money. And that opinion is shared by huge portions of the black community as a whole.

It’s one thing to affectionately refer to one another as “my nigga” within the context of your own community. It’s a whole different scenario to put it persistently into the entire popular culture on a worldwide basis.

Constantly portraying yourself with shallow status symbol luxuries, guns, booze
(and let’s not forget several half naked hos to denigrate) is not doing any favors to the rest of your hardworking community sharing the same color skin.

To portray this as reclaiming is disingenuous at best and exploitative at worst.

So, with that in mind, color me skeptic about all this “reclaiming” from every group under the sun.

and I hate to say this because I am the last person in the world to leap to the defense of George Bush :D

But when he unwittingly used the word Paki because he was as clueless about any racially demeaning inferences as I until half an hour ago, they’re all ready to jump down his throat and ASSUME the absolutely worst racist intentions. I mean, some State Dept. official or something had to go through a whole formal apology dog and pony show.

Give me a f*cking break here already. The guy was guilty of simple cluelessness.

But the self appointed PC
police had to excoriate him for mistakenly using a sort of cute sounding abbreviated form of Pakistani.

If the very young people being so insistent about all of this admit to their own lack of knowledge regarding its historical record ( read the article. They said it, I wasn’t making assumptions) then how can they possibly expect foreigners in other countries to be aware of not being allowed to use it. Hello?

I’m not the type of person to use any type of demeaning language for any group WHEN IM AWARE OF IT.

But these zealots are appointing themselves the arbiters and deciding that only THEY are allowed to use the word Paki. No one else is allowed to utter it without severe consequences of being labeled racist, even if they are so clueless to not even realize that it is racist. Let’s face it, it’s a pretty obscure racist term completely unknown to a rather large portion of folks from all over the rest of the world.

If the prime minister of the UK were foolish enough to casually use it, I could understand their ire as it’s well known there.

But George effin Bush? Mr. Dimwit himself, known worldwide for his ignorance and lack of sophistication? He was using this in a racist way? So you’re all mind readers now? I’m quite sure he was as clueless about the rather obscure (outside of the UK) racial implications as I was until just recently.

THAT IS what I find irksome. Assuming that everyone who doesn’t share your skin color or ethnicity must me racist.

THIS attitude and the money grubbing rap industry which wants to have it both ways.

If you want people to stop using the N word, then STOP constantly injecting it into pop culture and blame others for doing likewise. If you TRULY have racial pride and self respect STOP demeaning your own community for all the world to see.

Sorry for the length but the entire “reclaiming” thing is not a one-size-fits-all construct.

In some cases it is done with integrity. Other cases are a bit more suspect in origin.

And if you are undertaking to reclaim something, the very least you owe it is to educate youself on it’s history and how the rest of your community feels about the effort. It ain’t that hard to do.

What @Buttonstc said, only shorter.

@Buttonstc

I find a lot of things either wrong or disagreeable with what you’re saying.

Let’s be realistic here w/r/t the not-so-fundamental points of your post, viz. the rap community and/or industry.

Rappers aren’t promoting racial self-hate. If they’re using the word nigga/er then they’re using it (1) lyrically or poetically and (2) in a way that isn’t hateful. And they’re not trying to “brainwash” anybody or spread the obviously false notion that either variation of the n-word is always innocuous.

Your assertion that rappers promote such hatred or bigotry for “money” is also unfounded (and, frankly, insulting). People don’t go out and buy Jay-Z albums so they can hear him say nigga. Nor do people listen to rap because it con- or affirms their preexisting prejudices. More importantly, the use of the word nigga in rap and hip-hop contributes to such a minuscule fraction of the lyrics in toto as to be negligible. Yes, negligible.

Compare a white youth today who says nigga after listening to rap with a white youth who says nigger because his parents do. Both are said in ignorance, sure, but which is probably going to be more hateful? more common? You have to realize that the n-word, in its hateful invocations, is an expression/extension of racism, not the other way around. A word isn’t innately racist, after all; only we make it so when we use it in a harmful way. Rappers don’t use nigga in a harmful way, and their use of it has nothing to do with racism. Neither does it have anything to do with race, most of the time.

You’ve said this:
It’s one thing to affectionately refer to one another as “my nigga” within the context of your own community. It’s a whole different scenario to put it persistently into the entire popular culture on a worldwide basis.

So because it displeases your ears you’d sooner censor someone’s creative use of the word than hear it on the radio (where it would be censored, anyway)? Music is a form of self-expression, and nigga happens to be one (just one) of many words the “rap community” uses to express its collective self. (Which self you seem to have misunderstood, by the way, because no one really does the whole “guns, booze and hos” thing anymore, whether rapper or hip-hop artist, and in the bigger picture of rap’s evolution that whole phase was, thankfully, pretty short-lived.)

The main problem I see – which kind of segues into the fundamental issues I have with what you’re saying – is that you’re blaming the creative and innately harmless use of the n-word for its more caustic and ignorant (read: racist) incarnations. But the word was used way more widely and ignorantly by white people long before rappers came around to “reclaim” it and re-disseminate it with a new and – you must acknowledge – less harmful connotation. It was also used casually and harmlessly by black people before the rise of rap and hip-hop.

What I mean to say is that the music didn’t spread racist sentiment and it didn’t spread the use of the word nigga/er, either. If anything, it helped to redefine the word, repossess it, reclaim it – whatever you want to call it – so that the hate the word had carried on its own dissipated. Today the word no longer immediately signals hate or racism or ignorance, not even when a white person uses it, and I think that’s a good thing. It was such a charged word, after all. It still is, but less so, and now what matters most is how an individual chooses to use the word.

You even said so yourself:
Yes, I know that sometimes they will affectionately utter phrases like “what’s up, my nigga” but it and other terms are also thrown around in anger, hate, and intended to demean.

The anger, hate, and intention to demean come from the individual, not from the word itself, or the rap community, or black people, or otherwise genial uses of said word. (And, if we may be honest, the people who do use the word in its not-so-pleasant ways probably aren’t listening to rap music.)

You seem to think the reclamation of words is phony or uninformed, and I agree reclamation can be kind of a silly term sometimes. Mostly it describes the organic process of redefinition that already occurs with all words, although these cases (nigga/er, paki, etc.) are special because the redefinition is guided, has a direction provided by the reclaimers, or “arbiters” as you called them.

Regardless of the terms or stipulations, I think in the case of the n-word you’ve got it all wrong. The reclamation was largely a positive one and it certainly helped to diffuse (or defuse, if you prefer) the highly charged negativity that word carried for so many people. The same goes for queer, and I imagine the same might go for paki. Your so-called arbiters are only trying to update the very backwards connotations of these words. It’s a good thing. And anyway what else can you expect them to do? There isn’t really an alternative but to swallow the vitriol of these words and spit it back out and hope for something at least a little more diluted.

I think that if people would just be polite (or perhaps if they were raised to be polite?) this wouldn’t be an issue.

@Buttonstc I agree with most of your statements in terms of what the current rap culture represents and that it is completely different now than when it started in terms of symbolism, sticking it to the (white) man, etc. etc. The use of the word ‘nigger’ cuts my ears no matter who utters it and I don’t utter it not because I’m white but because I’m aware of the history of the word – teenagers (and I guess these are the ones you mean as not knowing history) who use it amongst themselves can’t provide any good reason for it because I certainly have asked them why. I also agree with you that the term queer has been reclaimed in a different fashion. I futher agree with you that George Bush is a clueless idiot but someone around him should have known better (though I say that about far more serious offences as well)...

You said ”...severe consequences of being labeled racist” and here’s where I’d like to pick a bone with you – I don’t think being labeled a racist is as severe as you think…when one is labeled a racist, mostly one denies it…talks about how they have this black friend and he’s totally cool with being called a nigger, faggot, redneck, paki, what have you…I don’t think anyone goes home crying for being called a racist…no more than when people are actually called the words I listed…

@absalom I find that you, too, have some great points – I don’t think anyone willingly promotes racial or gender self-hate but certain things that people do certainly contribute to internalized self-hate of a group even if they think they’re willingly doing this. Though it is very common to use nigga in rap songs and what have you and amongst certain people, I really don’t think its connotation when used by a white person towards a black person has been diffused. Secondly even if rappers don’t intend to use the word in a harmful way, the word, overall, still has a hamrful quality and I am still failing to see how that specific usage has done anything to fight racism (not that the present day rappers signal that they even want to do that…it’s all about flaunting status symbols these days, assimilating into a structure they used to hate). I further disagree with you that the ‘guns, hos, booze’ phase is out of rap music – we are still waiting for that to be over.

Finally, I stand someplace between you and @Buttonstc in terms of how I relate to the usage of the word nigga in rap music – it is not inherent racims and it is not inherent innocence – it really all depends. Same goes for queer and paki and dyke. I have no problem with youth reclaiming words. I’ve been there, I needed to do that, it’s part of identity politics for some and though I have gone beyond identity politics in my own life, I will still put certain labels on myself to be visible in a society that still values them or, however you want to look at it, devalues them.

@Nullo polite is different from understanding why certain words are historically offensive and why certain words are now accepted – these things you learn as you meander various communities – politeness to me is about generic manners and as long as politeness to you also means not repeating a word someone said is offensive to them then I agree with you

I was thinking of another P word altogether…

@stratman37 me too, initially

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
In what world is it polite to insult somebody?

@Nullo in a world where a person may not know they’re using an insult.

@delta214 So if I say something that offends someone I should be arrested and prosecuted?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir said:
“in a world where a person may not know they’re using an insult.”
“as long as politeness to you also means not repeating a word someone said is offensive to them”

We’ve established that the person would know. I can haz polite plz?

@Nullo why are we still discussing this?
yes if a person knows that a word is offensive to another, it is polite to not say it, yes.