Patrick McManus wrote:
> bit uncomfortable here we are talking about a term of abuse which may
> trouble some members--or am I coming accross to pc??
> where I work it would be unthinkable to use it-esp being a very mixed
> group-surely pots are aware of this
> oh well had my say-cheers patrickmc
I don't know about PC. On National Public Radio the other day someone
was being interviewed, author of a book on the power of forbidden words
as long as they're kept forbidden. See, I cannot even type out the
infamous word on which he focused: I am doing exactly what he said when
I call it "the N word" instead of writing it out. What I am doing is
giving it a mystique and sense of glamorous danger it loses when said
out loud. The same might apply to the equivalent word that is applied
to Jews: call it the "K word" if you like, I can't type that one out
either, but it doesn't mean "kosher." Black people will use the former
word to refer to one another and themselves, among themselves, but I
have never met the Jew who will refer to himself or herself by the latter.
I don't know about "wog." TO ME it smacks not of prejudice that is dead
(it surely is not) but of something so history-bound that all I can
think of is Sam Jaffe--a Jew--made up like an Indian, blowing a bugle
and calling Cary Grant "Sahib." Yes, it seems that distant. I suppose
the bigotry that we have encountered most often is the bigotry that
offends...or, God forbid...attracts us. So I could stand back from it a
bit and see it as stupid, twist it around in word play, acronymics,
whether or not it's successful is not my call. But even there...Empire
lived in the background, albeit at a distance.
Ken
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