File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 708


Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 01:11:31 -0500
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: Re: M-TH: Bob on Racist Language (was brain-dead)


Nancy writes!
>
>Are racial epithets include in the dictionaries of ebonics? I don't know,
>but I doubt it.

Don't know but in my neigborhood there was a lot of what could be called 
racist language flying around. How about "Niggers", "Spicks", "Kikes", 
"Guineas", "Polacks" and a lot of other stuff. But a lot of us always wound 
up going to the Apollo theater in Harlem.. We all hated the cops. And most 
of us wound up in the same jails!
>
>As far as what constitutes racist language, I am certainly not an expert,
>but I did learn 50 years ago, as a child growing up in the Deep and Rural
>South, USA, in the midst of the era of Jim Crow (Emmitt Till was lynched in
>my home state of Mississippi the year I graduated from high school), that
>context is what defines whether language is racist, or not. That is, in
>conversation with one another, African-American people may use words that
>would be considered offensive when used by someone else.

Sounds like the fifties liberal refrain of I have nothing against the 
Negroes. Well, growing up in the slumps where I was these kind of divisions 
hardly existed. It was the cops who were the enemy..
>
>It is up to Bob what language he uses in what context, but I myself would
>never use racial epithets in any context, particularly one in which I have
>no knowledge of whether or not someone might be offended -- a simple
>courtesy requiring no education, only consideration.

Yes! I understand.. But we never had the same table manners..But even when I 
left the states I never had any problems in dealing with inter racial 
diologue or living together. In fact Lewisburg was a very good example of 
racial integration. In the laundry where I workerd their were blacks, 
Chicanos, Italians and all the rest.We got along fine..Much because we all 
new deep in our hearts that we were in the same boat..

In fact racial strive was none existence because prison provided the 
equalizer of equality just as the ghetto does..And everybody knew who the 
real enemy was! But had a bit of difference on why they were the enemy..

Warm regards
Bob Malecki



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