The NEW and IMPROVED utterly fucking pointless thread

[Julie]

Use of the word nigger is NEVER justified.

Anyone that says I called you a nigger but not because of the colour of your skin is a fucking liar.

I agree with you there - on both counts.

I grew up in a Caribbean family and we lived in NY in a mostly Caribbean neighborhood (We had some Italians in the neighborhood as well). Although I went to high school in Manhattan it wasn't until I got older and left home that I really began to get familiar with various aspects of American culture.

At first I did not understand exactly what the word NIGGER was all about and why people got so riled up about it. In my mother & father's culture there is no word which has that kind of zing. I mean, I knew it was an insult meant for a Black person, but I learned that to Black Americans it has a certain special meaning..As one lady explained to me: It's meant to dehumanize, wound, gouge, and destroy.

On my forum, if you try to type the word NIGGER, it will appear as "the n-bomb"...I set it up in the word filter. I had a member who liked to drop that term and two people stopped posting on the forum because of it. Others stopped responding to any thread this person spoke in. I figured the whole situation would die down but people hung onto the fact that this person used that word. Eventually the fact that she was being ignored & isolated on the forum was part of what caused her to leave. I regret that she left - I liked her. I also regret that the other folks wouldn't let it go. But seeing the dynamics as they played out really made me understand. Sometimes when a person uses that word, people don't hear any of the other words they say after that. Everyone gets all crazy.

All joking / mocking aside on this situation ...To me, a word is a word and it has no power...but I had to respect how embedded Americans feel about this word (I say embedded because I am 1^st generation)... I don't like censorship - changing folks' words - but I had to do something....so I thought re-mixing it as "the n-bomb" was a happy middle ground.

Now I understand that at Mock all bets are basically off; however, I see that Moose was banned...so maybe all bets are not exactly off. I mean how far would Douchess have to go with NIGGER, SPADE, and other similar things before she's banned too? Would she have to post pictures like Moose did? How much is too much?