I read the newspaper. It was depressing. I hate reading or watching news because it is VERY subjective and it is never subjective parallel to my own point of view. There was one story about "the N word" and it was very offensive to me. It suggests that we should ban the word! If we ban that word, we'll have to ban other words and, really, words can not cause any harm of their own accord. It is ridiculous to assume, as the author of this particular article did, that "eradicating" the word is going to help the problem in any way. I think it is downright ignorant to blame a word for the terrible cultural norm that is racial discrimination. The word is used as an expression to express the hate that is the actual culprit. Sometimes, it is even used as a term of endearment. By her logic we should ban the word evil, and then evil things would cease to exist, right? And also banished should be words like lower-class, poor, unfortunate and why not middle-class too. Then, we would all be good and we would all be rich. In no way do I mean to suggest that the word is not offensive to some people, because that is obvious. I am just upset that the author blames the word for the problem and not the culture and people who use the word in a hate crime-type way. Words don't hate people; people hate people, and to address the word as the problem is stupid. We should, and DO, have a ban on hate crimes and racial discrimination, and I think we should focus on enforcing those bans rather than trying to ban the word itself. (Of course, I am biased because I like to call all my friends the "N" word as a term of endearment. How would you feel if you couldn't call your girlfriend,or boyfriend for the ladies, "baby"?)
Note: the ( )s separate a section of my blog that is controversial. It is meant to be ironic sarcasm. It is supposed to be sarcastically ironic because it is sort of serious but also whimsical. I can't explain it very well, but it was fun. I hope you can figure out what I meant, and I don't actually call my friends the "N" word.
Well, I must agree with you, following the news is just far too depressing, and seeing that point about the precedent it set reminded me of this excerpt from an article about Schwarzenegger v. EMA :
ReplyDelete"And by the way, Senator, the film industry works the same way as the games industry, and the MPAA bemoans the censorship films suffered before the industry succeeded in self-regulation. So maybe we should go back to submitting films to the government for approval, too? Books even? Oh, we could even burn the ones we don't like! Yeah, that's right, we're not above hyperbole and slippery slope arguments to make our point... we can play this politics game too."
That a boy Mitchell! I have to agree with you on the whole use of the "N" word, one word gets banned, soon others will be. The news in general is pretty stupid, even local news, it's all swayed one way or another by who-the-heck-ever the stations contributers are. Oh and you've never called me the "N" word. . . so. .. yeah. . .
ReplyDeleteWell the part about ME using it as a term of endearment was meant to be sarcastic. It was about 11 o'clock when I wrote it, leave me alone and "grow a pair" Thomas.
ReplyDeleteAmen, Mitchell, amen. That's why I don't allow political correctness on my blog...if you wanna use the N-word on my page go for it. Sadly, I believe that discrimination is something we will never completely eradicate, as human nature is imperfect. But did you know...the FBI doesn't consider something a "hate crime" if it's against a white guy. Cuz white men aren't officially considered a minority. Sometimes fairness is destroyed in the name of preserving fairness.
ReplyDeleteThat kind of ignorance is what leads to further problems. I think her heart is in the right place, but her head is not. Her idea of removing words from literature sounds an awful lot like some double-think ideology. Race relations has always been a touchy subject, but in my opinion I think people should just ignore the "N" word, drop the racial pride, and get to know people of a personal level.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a time when a church burned several thousand pokemon games because they "supported evolution."
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