The F word (6 letters not 4)

Homoslang is different, Miss Thing, and due to the number of total queens and art fags I know, used constantly (but I tend not to use 'faggot'). Also, I *do* work on fashion magazines and was the one who told THEM about Paris Is Burning, hello? When I say I'm reading someone, I do not mean Tolstoy, have even been known to do palare and one of the funniest things I have ever heard is a Glaswegian being forced to say 'turdburglar'. I just like having funny coded ways of saying things (*everyone else: 'tch, get HER'*)

Other stuff - white trash doesn't bother me as a saying, but if posh English person goes on about it a la Nathan Barley (oh, not him again...) I start talking about nursery food, bedwetting and playing Hit The Biscuit at boarding school. Anti-Irish stuff bad too from same mouths. Indian friends who are Punjabi have a whole repertoire but I only use it with them, eg Skipinder The Punjabi Kangaroo; it's basically heimlische humour, which I grew up with (my home town is famously Jewish, Dan P will back me up on this one). I do know my toches from my elbow in Yiddish because of...

Before anyone calls me anti-semetic, let me please point out 1) that I hate *all* people regardless of religion or race and 2) Semetic, as I understand it, is actually a blanket term for all people of a middle eastern racial original- both Jews and Arabs are Semetic peoples. So being pro-Palestine and anti-Semetic is a Semantic paradox.

It's anti-Semantic! Wa-hey.

I'm quite ignorant on this whole topic though, and no doubt I could be convinced to change my opinion.

Anyway, re slurs against my own tribe -- the term "Polack" isn't, in and of itself, an offensive slur. Its meaning in Polish is roughly equivalent to the Italian "paisan," and Poles and Polish-Americans tend to use the word the same way Italians and Italian-Americans use the word "paisan." However, calling someone a "dumb Polack" is bigoted.

Think again on that one -- I'll happily deny any religious / ethnic / racial group the right to a homeland. The idea of an Israeli state was philosophically problematic from the get-go in that it assumes individuals have a need and a right to segregate themselves from others based on religious history. As soon as you agree that Jews had a "right" to do this, you have very little argument against, say, white American racists claiming a "right" to a white American homeland. I see very little difference between the creation and expansion of Isreal, with regard to Palestinians, and the westward expansion of the United States, with regard to Native Americans.

Nick: I think the Apu steretypes are cut through by the fact that Apu has quite a bit more dignity than any of the shows other characters -- and also by the fact that the stereotypes tend to come from others more than from himself. Recall the episode where his religion was described as "miscellaneous" and he responded with "I am Hindu. There are 600 million of us."?

White Americans emigrated to a New World with little regard for its original inhabitants' rights to the land. Each and every one is descended from immigrants - as I am constantly reminding those family members of mine who moan about new waves of immigrants coming in and Hoovering up their valuable tax dollars. They could no more presume to found a homeland based on whiteness than Australians or New Zealanders.

Re Israel and Zionism: I think people are forgetting the background of the Zionist movement. It was founded and gained momentum after the Dreyfus trials and some of the worst outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence and pogroms (in Austria and Russia) in history; Herzl and others had concluded that even assimilated, secularized Jews would never be perfectly safe in Western Europe and needed their own homeland. That doesn't excuse the Israelis' treatment of the Palestinians, but it does add context as to why Jewish settlers came to Palestine in the first place.

You distinguish the situations by rightly pointing out that (a) the Jewish people have long-standing ties to the region, and (b) the levels of control exerted over Native Americans and Palestinians were not nearly the same. You are right on both counts. But with regard to (a) the idea of long-standing ties to a region does not equate to moral or political sovreignty over the region -- if it did, a good portion of Americans could claim a fundamental right to repatriation to Ireland or Germany or wherever. You do not own where your ancestors lived. With regard to (b), I'd posit that the level of oppression is hardly material.

None of this is to say that I don't completely understand and sympathize with the position of Israel, and none of this is to say that I put any moral support behind the methods Palestinians have used to correct these problems. But I do feel like many of us in the Western world like to boil the problem down to "Boy, those two groups of people really hate each other and can't get along." Very few people seem willing to admit that many of the actions of Israel, if undertaken by any other nation, would be clear and internationally scandalous violations of basic principles of human rights and the scope of political sovereignty.

Growing up in Minneapolis (highest urban NA population in entire US) I've seen great positive changes upon returning there periodically in terms of NA quality of life and opportunities to succeed on the same terms as others. Fifteen years ago the situation was dire in comparison. It's so hard to deal with the mistakes and plain evilness meted out by settler forbears in a sensible, modern way, ie. not feeling the need to say sorry every twenty seconds and actually being relevant about how people live today. A lot of people are working very hard, together, to make things more level.

Homoslang is different, Miss Thing

i call black people gays, gay people chinese, chinese people spanish, and spanish people i dont call cos i cant buy cell phones that speak mexican

Using slurs is a terrible, terrible vice of mine --tarden

i wish dom was alive to see this thread http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

my first thought when reading the thread title was ... "fenian"? lol west of scotland proddy schooled upbringing

Too bad frogbs isn't around for this bump right now.

Using slurs is a terrible, terrible vice of mine --tarden
― dave cool, Sunday, February 5, 2012 6:53 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a character in a Jerzy Kosinski book, dave.

thank you for enlightening me http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

fucker