"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”"
--Lee Atwater
Just because you don't directly say "nigger", doesn't mean the policies aren't directed towards african americans.
And we also know for a fact that cannabis was made illegal because "it would make blacks want white women". And, it was also easier to criminalize the peaceful actions of citizens they see as "undesirable" and then throw them in prison for a long time.
"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”"
-- Lee Atwater's Secret Decoder Ring for Conservative Doubletalk
> Lee Atwater, former chairman of the Republican National Party ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater ) literally said that the key to republicans winning in the south was couching racism in more palatable euphemisms.
What he literally said was this:
> You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
But think about what that is. It's a strategy for destroying racism by abstracting it into non-existence.
You have these racists who hate black people because they think they're inferior subhumans, and then a bunch of regular middle class people who don't care about race at all and just want their tax dollars to pay for their own kid's school instead of some stranger's kid, but they end up together in a majority coalition.
If you strip off the second group of people and give them what they want directly without any racial component then the first group loses all their political power. They go from 60% of people you can't ignore to 0.2% of people you can ignore.
And you can't pretend the outcome is the same either. A person can't change their skin color the same ways they can change their finances.
> Being required to, say, share drinking fountains or pools with people of another race should not be compared to this.
Indeed. And I didn't. I said "negro". Generations of people genuinely thought that was a neutral term. They were pissed as all fuck when all of a sudden it became a symbol of centuries of oppression. And they used language exactly like yours to express their exasperation. But the words changed anyway. And we all got over it, and civil society didn't dissolve.
And at the end of the process, most of us look back and think of it as largely a good thing that we went and, well, cancelled that old word as a symbol. The new one is better, simply because it was born out of the self-determinism of the oppressed.
Which is to say: get over yourself and declare your pronouns. (I'm a he/him, FWIW). Your grandkids will be ashamed that you fought it.
> I've noticed this trend of changing the meaning of words in recent decades.
I think you're referring to words with political meaning, so I won't rant about the word "literally".
There are people who insist that some words must change their meanings, and that other words must be entirely abandoned, because they see language as shaping how people think, and so by changing language, they hope to steer the way that people think. Steering the way that people think is indistinguishable from political campaigning, as far as I can see; so I see the blacklisting etc. of words as a kind of political campaigning by the back door.
I find these word-games offensive. I don't want to offend people, so I try not to use terms that are considered offensive. But they don't give up; "negroe" became "black" became "african-american" and so on. I've lost patience.
And I have a strong sense that these word-games are a substitute for persuading people; like, persuasion seems to have failed, so let's manipulate them by changing the language. I hate the sense that I'm being manipulated.
> real racists are bothered by not being able to espouse their usual rhetoric freely
I don't think they're particularly bothered; they espouse their rhetoric either way. And if you take away some words, they quickly find others. I haven't seen the changing of the language in the past 40 years to be particularly effective at stemming their racism or their ability to persuade. If anything, the US has become more racist in my lifetime, despite the many many iterations of politically correct revisionist speech. Again, it's a form of hubris and foolishness to believe that you can change thoughts by changing words.
> Words used for persuasion on a large enough scale become imbued with a default associated meaning.
This is the definition of a racist way of thinking. If you watched Hitler's speeches and heard him say that Jews are dirty enough times, would you believe it? Would you associate "Jew" with "dirt"? Because many people heard those words thousands of times and didn't believe it. If you're afraid you would believe it, then you are the problem, not the word "Jew" or the word "dirt".
> Exactly how Blacks can say the n-word and it's not offensive, they have their own sensibilities and customs, and are a subset of "the greater real world.
Unless all of the people saying "fag" are gay, then it's not "exactly" like this. In fact, it's nothing like it. It's just straight up homophobia (and racism).
"Fag" is a slur no matter what circular junior high logic you use to contort your views.
> It takes at least a generation of time for a word to evolve to that level of offense.
Not true, maybe you are biased towards English words. Take Spanish or Portuguese, where the word “negro” (not to confuse w/ any English slur) really means “the color black” (etymologycally) and is thereby synonymous to black. It has always been used to show respect, in a less biased sense towards black people, because it really doesn’t carry any ideology in its semantics. But now, its use and meaning are changing towards similar slur words avoided in the US. It didn’t take a generation in such countries to change its meaning (politically), it is happening now, even though the word itself is the same, means the same, and had no problem at all a couple of years ago.
It sounds like he's also referencing the old and tired racist tactic of arguing that they don't hate black people, just the ones who are "acting like niggers", and turning that argument back on the people who use it.
(Also, the use of slurs isn't verboten period. It's still - so far as I can tell - within the bounds of publicly-acceptable discourse for people with the correct political views to refer to black people with the wrong, conservative views as "niggers" and every other slur. Possibly even whilst threatening violence against them.)
> Someone please explain to me how labeling the word 'black' as offensive represents some kind of social progress.
It isn't (though recognizing that using the term “black” in ways which actually evoke racial stereotypes is), but both hostile provocateurs (deliberately) and people who don't understand the actual issue but want to try to appear supportive because they see social advantage (out of ignorance) act in ways which associate a more general rejection of the word “black” with what people genuinely concerned about social progress are trying to do.
One way to think about it is that there's almost no context where it would be constructive for a non-Black person to use the word (including singing a song, for example). Why? Because there is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context.
That's why the n-word euphemism was created and is the norm. It provides an acceptable replacement. When someone violates this norm, it creates resentment, intense frustration, and great offense for a large group.
> A while back a Dutch coach was forced to resign after using the word because it was in a song: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/feb/18/fc-cincinna....
> The fact that you aren't even allowed to sing along with a song without muting yourself on certain words that the singer sings anyway... it's just mind boggling to me...
From the article (emphasis mine): "Jans is alleged to have used the slur while singing along to a track being played in the Cincinnati locker room. A player is understood to have told Jans, who is Dutch, about the significance of the n-word in America. Jans is also understood to have made an inappropriate remark about slavery during a team visit to memorials in Washington DC in October.
I do not know what the details are around "inappropriate remark about slavery", but if I was a player (esp. a black player), I would find it difficult to respect that coach.
> Why didn't they say "Bigots should be fired?". By inserting race or gender into the statement, you're singling out a group as being the only offenders.
IIRC, there's bit social justice ideology that essentially says that only white people can be bigots. I believe the typical formulation is "racism = power + prejudice." "Power" in this context is a function of your race and other identities, for instance white people axiomatically have "power" but black people don't. This assignment of "power" doesn't change based on context, so if your boss is black and you are white, you're still the one with "power." Therefore, by this "logic," a black person can't be racist because he lacks "power." An identical procedure is applied men an women with sexism.
There is another related social justice idea that you should "never punch down, always punch up." In this context "up" are those with "power" (again, assigned by fixed formula based on race, etc.). The act of "punching up," by the people who think this way, has connotations of "fighting for good," and "punching down" with "oppression."
Combining these ideas, "white men" are the most "powerful" and therefore can and should be "punched" in the name of social justice. This is one source of the gratuitous negative references to "white men," and associated hostility to them, that you see in social justice circles.
IMHO, these are pretty screwed up ideas, and they're a recipe for polarization (and bullying) and not progress. Unfortunately people do believe them and think this way.
> “I suggest the actual reason is that the vast majority of people continue to tacitly agree that it maintain its power.”
It still seems you really are committed to this point of view, that the word has power only because people continue to agree to a social convention of assigning power to the word. But I think this still continues to miss the point.
It’s not at all about whether enough people choose to assign power to the word so as to force everyone at large to deal with it as a social issue. That’s a selfish way to look at it, like your free speech is your lawn and some punk kids drove their n-word social convention onto your lawn, and you’re yelling “get off my lawn” (as in, make this convention about this word go away). Thinking about it this way, the focus seems to be your freedom to say certain syllables without having to acknowledge any broader historical context about them.
But instead consider that the word, apart from any chosen modern social agenda, does represent a huge and unsolved systemic discrimination and repression towards black people. It does so because of its historical meaning, the contexts within which it has been primarily used, and the clear usage as a racial slur spoken predominantly by white America towards black America.
These are just the facts and context of the word, which we can look at and step back a second and say, well shit, a whole lot of those deviant racism problems are still going on today. And so maybe we ought to be sensitive and respectful and careful about its usage.
This isn’t a social convention to give the word power. It’s not just held up by some stereotypes of progressivism just itching for something to be offended by. It’s an encoding that is highly related to racism problems that are still severe and still on-going and so treating that word, among a variety of types of hateful slurs, with sensitivity is a lot more about acknowledging that than it is about enshrining some syllables with a progressive agenda status.
Overall, if this slightly limits your vocabulary or your ability to use it as a type of shock humor or something — well, that doesn’t seem that important by comparison. It’s not just some people agreeing “well word X is OK for crass humor, but word Y is off limits” ... rather it’s off limits because it commands a basic respect for certain on-going racist aspects of our reality.
Maybe one day long after our current systemic racism has stopped, future people will look back at racial slurs of this era as silly words whose context they don’t understand, and are free to joke about. Sort of how we could look at British insults of the Shakespearean era, or insults of the American Revolutionary War (“turncoats”, “lobsterbacks”), and not feel the intense political charge and visceral hatefulness they evoked at the time of their origination. To us they are silly words.
But that’s because the specific contextual meaning is not still going on, day to day, with visceral consequences for people in their daily lives. But for the racism contextualized by the n-word, it absolutely is still going on.
> It absolutely does work. A little bit, at first, when you have broad consensus backing you - but it does work. People will begrudgingly change their behavior for relatively minor things, and the change in the use rate of racial epithets in public reflects that.
The only change is that you now have a bunch of people who are afraid to use a handful of naughty words in public because they might lose their job over it. You haven't changed any minds or hearts, you've just moved the conversations into private rooms. You can't end racism by just shaming people for using the n-word. It's arguably just as bad now as it was during the Civil Rights era, but you can't easily see it anymore because it's mostly kept within "friendly" company.
> Why? Because we've given you more choices to express yourself?
1. Make up a new word 2. Give people the choice to use the new word 3. Destroy them if they choose not to.
Sure.
> Racism is still very much alive today
Try criticising the government in china and you will soon realise that censorship is also very much alive today. Not that this makes a difference in either case, of course.
> so I'm not sure how freedom of expression is much closer to you today than racism is for Blacks.
Second, black people exist outside of america, in case you didn't know. So mentioning them as just "blacks" already shows a rather narrow view of the world.
Freedom of expression is closer to me than racism. Racism is probably closer to many black Americans than freedom of expression. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't intentionally misunderstand that just to have a ridiculous strawman to argue against.
You mean, the yesterday's value-neutral racial descriptors that became today's racial slurs when used in the mouth of people with racial hate are no longer acceptable to people who don't share that hate -- but, of course, as has happened many times in the past, that just means that today's value-neutral descriptors will get used as slurs and become tomorrow's verbotten terms, and nothing will have changed.
Making words taboo that are used along with an unwelcome attitude is a particularly ineffective manner of eradicating the unwelcome attitude.
They are, but their usage is limited to linguistic segregation. Nothing better to keep people in check than enforcing a correlation between the words they are allowed to use and the color of their skin.
> whether you consider something racist or not has no actual impact on the usage of the term
Thats true
> for using common terminology in a way you don’t like.
When did it become common terminology? I am 47 years old and don't remember that term ever being used until the last presidential election as a means to vilify people of color.
Maybe I just wasn't paying attention the other 44 years?
--Lee Atwater
Just because you don't directly say "nigger", doesn't mean the policies aren't directed towards african americans.
And we also know for a fact that cannabis was made illegal because "it would make blacks want white women". And, it was also easier to criminalize the peaceful actions of citizens they see as "undesirable" and then throw them in prison for a long time.
So yeah, bigoted.
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