Re: CHAT: Ebonic Christmas

With all the crowds pelting Abrigon, I was longing to leap to his defence,
but could find no grounds to do so. How strange it feels, to belong a
community where one agrees with the majority.

Aidan Grey wrote:
> hoensch@SOFTHOME.NET wrote:
>
> >  If it is not offensive in their eyes, why is it
> > considered offensive at all?  If "niger" means "guy" (which
> > it does, at least to most Bronx minorities and a number of
> > black artists) why is it offensive coming from whites?
>
>     For the same reason that "fag" is offensive when used by anyone who
> isn't gay. The terms are only acceptable when used by the "inside"
> group, who have appropriated the term as a source of pride FOR
> THEMSELVES. Anyone "outside" the group who uses it, even if trying to
> use it in the same way as those in the group,  only recall,
> unintentionally or not, the original use and meaning of the term as
> derogatory.
That's certainly the way most people feel. On the other hand, one could
insist firstly that we should all enjoy the same linguistic rights (of
which words we are permitted to use) and secondly that we should have the
right to be judged independently of our gender, our sexuality, our ethnicity,
our pigmentation, etc. etc. For example, I would like to be able to use
"poof" [a British analogue of "fag"] in a reclamatory depejoritizing spirit
and for my addressees to recognize and accept this spirit as genuine and
legitimate without it being necessary to establish, or contingent on, details
of my sexuality.

> This list is a RESPECTFUL list, and such posts, while perhaps appropriate on
> other lists, are not appropriate here because of the lack of respect it
> shows.
Do such other lists exist? On *every* list I'm on, people keep saying how
it is much politer than other lists, so I wonder where these lists are.

> > Something does not become offensive just because TV says so.
>
>     No, but it certainly does become offensive when someone feels
> offended. That's all it takes. One person is enough for it to be
> offensive. And we have way more than that here - a majority, I would
> hazard.
I think "offensive" is too mild a word, or one that can too easily be
interpreted inappropriately. If I say "shit" on this list, then quite
possibly someone finds that offensive [maybe not shit, but definitely
"jesus" would offend a fair number of our list pals], but in some ways
that's their problem, and it would only be tact, courtesy, affection for the
offendee, and so on, that would stop me doing it. Abrigon's post, on the
other hand, was aggressive; it was victimizing -- it had victims (i.e. those
who suffer from reinforcement of the stereotype). It's the difference
between someone coming to dinner and, on the one hand, licking their
plate, and, on the other hand, deliberately spitting in my face.

I've read all the posts, and nobody seems to have been explicit about this
point, and I wonder whether Paul Bennett might have failed to perceive it.
It's not inherently wrong to laugh at a stereotype, but if the stereotype
is of welfare-scrounging criminals and this stereotype motivates proposals
for eugenic eradication of the so-called "underclass", the strategic
criminalization of drugs as a means of imprisoning the most potent members of
that class, widespread fear and contempt in society at large, and so on and
so on, then laughing at the stereotype doesn't put you on the side of the
angels.

> It seems to me that Abrigon, and yourself (if these are two
> separate people) definitely need to grow a maturity level or two, and do
> some serious thinking about posts at the same time.
If Abrigon (= Mike Adams?) & Roland Hoensch are really the same person
(& I admit there are similarities) then I suspect we would in fact have
a case of a wind-up perpetrated by someone of, deceptively, no little talent.
And if they turned out to be the same person as da Hiasl...! --Then we'd have
a subversive, an agent provocateur, of the highest order.

--And.