Look, I think we can all agree that segregating certain words to people of certain ethnic backgrounds will stop racism forever... Oh, wait, that's really fucking stupid...
I think we
can all agree JC is a blithering oaf with a staggering degree of incompetence with regards public image and general 'giving a shit', hence why he is much loved. Yeah, this was a pretty dumb move as far as PR goes, but in the grand scheme of things it is so far from being news worthy and so far from being offensive it's untrue. It was a quote from a children's song to start with, and he
didn't actually say the word in question.
This whole fucking issue pisses me off to no end and being to light two things:
A - Making the N-word a "blacks only"* word is probably enforcing more racism than anything else.
B - You don't even have to
say the word, just simply hint at is existence to cause issue/offence.
The whole world needs to take a step back and realise that words do not always mean the same thing. It's like when an English person moves to Scotland and is really shocked when they get called a "cunt" as part of a jovial greeting. The meaning of the word in certain social situations no longer has
any relation to it's historical definition, I live in an area where a little old lady will call you a "cunt" in the same way you might call somebody "silly", "och, ye daft wee cunt". In either case the insult has become multi-gendered anyway, it no longer refers only to women. Language changes, both over time and over geographical distance.
For example I just learned that the word "moron" can be considered offensive, yet I hear it all the time on TV and radio and nobody gives a solitary shit. Originally coming from a Greek word meaning "foolish", then becoming a medical term for somebody with "mild retardation" and now meaning somebody "stupid"... I'd wager that few people know it's historical usage at this point, so is the word still offensive? Potentially it could be, if used in the right context, but most likely not.
For as long as the "n-word" remains segregated there is no chance of it ever ceasing to be a racist word that causes aggravation and anger. Language as a whole relies on CONTEXT to work, but context is completely ignored when dealing with the N-word. It strikes me as being really, really backwards when a white guy saying "what up my nigga" is considered just as racist and insensitive as saying "fucking filthy niggers" and that the racism is vastly reduced in BOTH cases if the speaker was black. What if the person had no idea of the history of the word? If their only knowledge of it was as "something rappers call their pals", is it still racist if no racism is present in it's usage?!?
This whole "word claiming" thing as a whole stinks of fucking bullshit anyways, the ridiculous "social justice" movement on Tumblr is big on this. "Oooh, can't use the word retarded 'cause mentally disabled people", "Oooh, can't call somebody ginger 'cause discrimination", "Ooooh, can't call somebody dumb 'cause mute people". Fuck off. Load of self absorbed nonsense. It's worthless anyway because the world will just find new words to offend you. It is SO fucking redundant. Just the fact that this thread has pages and pages of discussion about a fat, white guy saying
a word while there are
actual problems of racism out there. Like people getting killed because of the colour of their skin, people not being able to get a proper education or a place of employment in the Western "developed" world and yet there is all this contention about a jumble of fucking letters in a particular order***.
In related
"news".
Oops, played a song with a bad word in it, don't want to remind people
that shit happened. It's almost like saying "oh, no we never did that, us whiteys never did anything bad, let's just forget it ever happened". No doubt the use in the song is pretty racist, implying black people are black cause they are constantly sun burnt, but banning the song isn't going to have stopped it from existing.
Y'know, I don't want to whitewash the word "nigger" out of existence, I don't want to segregate it or set it aside as a "special word" to be used with care. I want, in the future, perhaps 100 years from now, (provided we aren't all dead by that point) for it to be just a word with some innocuous meaning. Perhaps somebody looks it up in the dictionary one day and is like "hey, nigger used be a derogatory term for black people, that's fucking weird" and their mate will be like "man, people were just a bunch of Belgians back then".**
* Probably should say "blacks", but I don't know the PC term. "African American", not if you ain't American. "Coloured", everybody is coloured for fucks sake. "Negro", nope.
** Because we'll always find somebody to pick on, and why not the Belgians, with their pissing infant mascot, fucking Belgians...
*** I'm just as guilty writing this long ass post.
**** I stopped using the term "N-Word" halfway through typing this 'cause I realised it changes nothing, it's like typing "n*igger". You know what it means, it's still there. It's like when people in the Harry Potter books realised "Voldemort" and "You-Know-Who" were exactly the same thing and they all looked kind of silly.
TL;DR, I'm a racist. DAILY MAIL 4 LYFE. VOTE UKIP.