Racial Slurs Debate
Discussions center on the use and offensiveness of words with racist histories, such as the N-word, blacklist/whitelist, and similar terms, debating their connotations, reclamation, and appropriateness in contexts like Hacker News.
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Not the greatest word choice, those words have a lot of racist history.
The last word of your post is considered a slur by people other people historically used it to describe.Please don't use slurs here. There's no need for that.
You're using it in proper context. I've seen the racial slurs you're referring to but I think the word itself is fine.
There's a lot of connotations to that word related to racism. I have no problem with the original commenter calling out that it may not be the best word to use.
Words like that have a complicated past. They may be have been used with a veneer of friendliness but in truth they’re diminutive or derisive. The person I replied to here has used it repeatedly in a derisive way on HN. We wouldn’t tolerate equivalent words being used for Asian people or others of different origins. I haven’t heard the word used in ordinary conversation for decades, hence it’s jarring to see it here.
I really don't think you should be perpetuating derogatory and racially charged terms like this on HN.
Specifically this part : "Non-black Americans are not commonly accepted into this community"Also the fact people keep writing "the n word", "the word but with an a" feels like communicating with children. Just write nigger or nigga and be done. The sky won't fall. You can't analyze or criticize something you can't name. Especially when forbidden words change every 10 to 15 years because people will just start using other common ones as insults. A s
Ok, I wasn't saying it's a tired euphemism. I was saying it's a mean slur used by bigots. I don't totally understand your challenge to provide the latest term, honestly. Are you trying to cast me as the language police?
This is the point you can never get through to them.The word itself isn't negative. It's usage _may_ be negative, but if you think the word itself is negative then you're the racist one.
What do you have to lose by switching to a term that is more descriptive and less likely to be offensive to someone?"We've called it that for a long time" isn't really an argument to keep doing it.For non-native speakers, they have to be familiar with the idiom or it is a meaningless statement, and whether or not the original intent was for it to be related at all to skin color, it can feed in to people's unconscious biases and perceptions.There is zero downside