words that have been successfully "reclaimed"

Rock 'n' roll originally referred to sexual intercourse as well.

Though it's only my post-pre-reclaimed punXor ethics that makes that an insult.

"white trash"
"loser" & "slacker" circa subpop's reign'o'terror.
"grrrl"
what about "chicks"? my mom's generation saw it as degrading, women I know use it laughingly. is that reclamation?

I have been told (by some not overwhelmingly feminist women) not to call women 'chicks'. so I have taken to asking others. no one ever seems to care. nb these have all been women around my age.

likewise, I can imagine a situation in which a reclaimed word is used derisively by someone in a position of power on someone in a lesser position of power; in such a case perhaps the reclamation would make it easier for the target of the word to shrug it off or something, but the power differential seems to always reinfuse the word with newfound power to hurt people. it seems to derive in part from the word's history, but I'm not sure whether to say it's just the history being recollected or revived, or whether the reclamation was not as successful as one might have hoped. perhaps just less stable. this makes me suspect that your definition above needs more.

but yeah, i think reclamation does include making the word inaccessible to people not part of the named group.

eg you don't get to say chicks, but chicks get to say chicks. that's part of the deal. I don't think the reclamation process meant to be 'ideal' for those outside the named group.

So I guess this doesn't rob you of the power of using "chicks" as a dismissive sexist term, but it does instantly situate you as a Neanderthal asshole if you do...

The point where the reclamation is complete is surely when the entire history of the word can be contained in it w/o detonating a toxic charge in the situation it's being used in (which I think is probably the case w.Tory, even despite the current v.dicy stage in the Irish Peace Process and also w.Enthusiast). But history continues to twist, so maybe there's never a "complete".

A couple of years later, by co-incidence, everyone was wearing the Pervert brand on T shirts, hats, etc.

Now I use the word kid and I never get any objections from children but I do feel a tad disrespectful for using it - but then child/ren has so many negative connotations that kid almost seems better.

I try very hard to refer to high school students as students rather than kids. Student is quite neutral whereas kid, teenager, children, adolescent, young person, young adult, young man, young lady all imply judgement or something.

Ah, virtue as the flight from judgement!

Yes; they pronounce it "gee-oh-pee." I don't believe it's ever been an insult among any mainstream groups.

"redneck" and "hillbilly" still count as insults around here though.

(Meant affectionately.)

(Meant that you are my illegitimate son.)

http://www.goodbastards.com/

Don't tease.

I don't think Doomie was ever an insult.

"She's a regular blood donor"

but yeah, I like "i'd like to buy her a donner".

And Winona Ryder was named for the town where she was born.

This is what makes Tim Westwood even more a cunt in my eyes. He feels honoured if one of his 'homies' calls him 'nigga'.
Next time he's shot at I hope it's fucking fatal.

i am interested in words that everyone has now *totally forgotten* were once insulting — i think it highly unlikely that any of these are going to be racial epiphets, as that is obviously still a live issue

I like it how some of the Italians I know call Sunday Wogday - because that's the day they got to Nonna's for pasta.

Okay, maybe I'm not.

doesn't 'squaw' - as in "me chief, you squaw" - mean 'cunt'?
an anthropologist friend told me that.

but it's only offensive to you cos yr not australian! we use it with affection.

I thought they were called SCOPE (which is a rubbish name).

Or maybe, as an Australian you're used to being 'top of the food chain', as it were, and the few (if any?) derogatory insults aimed at you are viewed as harmless? Honky? Does that have anyone shaking with rage? doubt it.

Being called 'wog' by a well meaning but hopeless person of ANY colour -- not least of all a white person presuming to tell me that it's not *really* a bad word -- would not evoke a favourable response. Trust me on this one.

If you count any black people as your friends (though I doubt you do, and from the sounds of things, if you have any they'd be the uncle-tom, happy-house-negro types like Andi Peters, Trevor McDonald, Ainsley Harriet etc) you might want to try this out.

You obviously have no idea how offensive that word and connected symbolism are in this country. Same goes for the charming 'nig-nog', 'darkie', 'spade' in ad nauseum.

It was probably a pretty offensive word in Australia at one point too but maybe enough good white people like yourself told the wogs it was okay so they believed it.

Silly me. -----

Eskimo?

If I said to a woman "you are a cunt" I think she'd have every right to be insulted regardless of whether I thought it was derogatory or not, non?
Does that make it easier to relate to, torenko?

Under 'Redundant' it says 'See: 'Redundant''. All in the eye if the beholder, surely?

Cultural differences .. yes, I understand. Does it mean I have like them (or even tolerate them, bearing in mind I don't even live there) any more than I would .. oh, say Apartheid? Or maybe anymore than any woman here should really thingnk all that fuss about wearing burkas in Taleban controlled countries is overplayed. Silly me. What the fuck do I know about cultural relativism..?

Going too far? Political correctness gone mad? From your POV perhaps, certainly not from mine.

No harm done, I just hope none of you goes out on the street with the same attitude. If you do, good luck calling the next black person you meet 'wog'.
That's what makes the interweb such a grand place -- we're all safe to say whatever we feel like whenever we feel like it.

And that's what makes the world such a sad place. For people to SERIOUSLY think that wog is not offensive in 2002 should really be a surprise to me but sadly isn't...

We still have Jim Davidson on primetime telly afterall.

(Sorry, mark s -- don't want to hijack your thread!)

If you do, good luck calling the next black person you meet 'wog'.

They say they *WOULDN'T* use it to refer to black people. Whether it changes things that it's a term for Greek and Italian people instead might or might not make a difference, depending on how you look at things, but I don't understand why you keep going on the black thing.

Hypothetical example: what if by some coincidence, the word 'Brit' (a non-offensice term in this country, if a bit naff) was a racist term for a black person in say, Japan. On discovering this, should the word then not be used over here too?

Yes, I understand that they/you would not use it to address a black person, but, as much as terenko says "Android doesn't recognise cultural differences" I would say that, perhaps some of you are being slightly culturally insensitive.

On the day of the England/Sweden World cup match I was with some friends in a pub in Herts. One of the patrons made a racist remark about Emile Heskey. I didn't hear it but my white friend did so he assaulted the other man and almost started a bar brawl.
I would not have reacted as strongly as that but I admire his resolve to stick his neck out on a point of PRINCIPLE. He would have done it whether I'd been there or not because it was wrong. This is no have-a-go-hero. He's just an ordinary bloke with a few black mates.

To give you another example: when I was working in the city I would constantly have run-ins with white colleagues who would say "Paki-this" or "Paki-that".
Why? What's my problem? I'm not a 'Paki' so why should I care, right? Obviously, wrong.
Same goes if I hear "Yid-this" or "Kike-that". "Wop-this", "Spic-that". Wrong is wrong is wrong.

So you're basically saying it's okay for someone to use racist slurs and other insulting vernacular as long as it's not aimed directly at you? Please tell me I'm wrong.
If not, fair enough. More power to you. C'est la vie.

If I have to explain any further than this I think I'm wasting my time.
I'm not telling anyone here how to live there life, I'm just giving you a perspective which is apparently several degrees of seperation removed from your own. That's what understanding cultural difference is about.
I'm not having a direct dig at any one of you, but I do take serious issue with this idea that, because some white people in a white country (or, at least it is now but I won't even go there) think it's okay to use words like that around black people I should tow the line.

If my opinions aren't welcome, no problems.

As you were.

Wog has been reclaimed but Dago, which had the same meaning, hasn't to the same degree. I don't know why that is.

It apparently took a while for Anglo-Australians to adjust to Italian and Greek immigrants but it's a pretty harmonious relationship now.

It's hard in Australia to understand the type of racial hatred that reportedly exists in the UK and the US. For example, to me nigger is no worse a word than negro, African-American, black or whatever and I'm still a bit confused about why it is to other people - but I gather it's something to do with the fact that when blacks were slaves in America they were referred to as niggers and so it's got bad reminders.

If you're going to celebrate diversity, you have to recognise it and that involves having words for it. The choice of words is obviously important. Wog is a strange one because it's also used been used for having an upset tummy, which is a bit negative, but it's a hard word to say in a nasty way so maybe that's why it's been reclaimed. Queer is one that I don't like at all and now that gay also means stupid, boring, fucked, uncool, etc. it's going to be a lot of hard work to reclaim. Black, negro, nigger, African-American - they're descriptive so it's hard to see why one would be worse than another or why any of them would be worse than white, Anglo, caucasian - but that's where the history of the word comes in.

No, but I take 'reclaiming' to mean the groups previously oppressed by the word using it themselves to take the sting out of it. But as with queer/nigger, it doesn't usually extend to other people being able to now use it as an 'OK' friendly term (tho, of course, see the Vice thread).

Android, you aren't the only black male on the board. At least one of the others is upthread.

You can't actually be saying that to abbreviate a nationality that has at some stage in some place been the underdog means that you are slurring against them, can you?

Crikey, everyone's been treated like shit at one time or another. I might as well start jumping up and down and saying "How dare you call me an Aussie!!"

Why can't an abbreviation be a slur? It's in the fucking way you use it. If 'paki' becomes the term of choice for those who daub 'Pakis out' etc. on people's houses (regardless, btw., of whether they came at some point from Pakistan, India or Bangladesh) then what the hell does it matter that the word is a contained within the word 'Pakistani'.

Maybe you'd have to live over here to realise what 'paki' means.

Paki is no different here to Brit (no doubt this is offensive to Scots, Welsh & Irish though), Aussie (offensive to NZer's wrongly labelled), Yank (let me guess, that's offensive too?), Jap/Nip (which Americans on this board have previously declared to be offensive over there), Lebo, Wog or Itai. It's just an abbreviation of Pakistani. I've never heard of any "Pakis out" movement in Australia though.

As for reclaimed terms, "geek" and "nerd."

There's no way to not offend at least some Aboriginals (not Aboriginies, N. - shame on you for being so un-PC) whenever you refer to them as a whole. Some take offence to Aboriginal and want to be called Kooris but some aren't Kooris and take offense to being called so, some are happy with blackfella and abo but others would take offense if they were called that. Some like native, others indigenous, others black. Aboriginal seems to be the safest but it's still not perfect.

So don't call people that aren't Kooris 'Kooris'. What is the problem? If it's that you can't tell the difference, then why the need for a blanket term anyway? Grouping people together by the way they look to you is generally dud.

All this 'calling the Irish British' or 'calling a Koori and Aboriginal' stuff is a different type of offensive, anyway. You might take offence, but it would just be in a 'I'm fed up of ignorant people not realising that there's a difference' way. It's patronising, maybe, but it's not like calling someone a paki or a nigger.

(Re Yank/Brit, are you saying wherever the word "pom" is used is a part of the world where British and Americans are hated? Or are you saying that some people who hate British and Americans happen to come from parts of the world where this phrase is used? I find it hard to believe Brit or Yank or Pom could be used as potently as "nigger" without being followed by "bastard" or some such word suggesting the nationality was linked to the insult. Mainly because of the weight of history behind the word "nigger".)

Read this immediately.

a: because the slave traders were spanish.

n-r means slave.

torenko -- how the fuck can you have the stones to say in public "you don't get it do you?" when I've been called "wog" many, many times as a racial slur? Would it matter whether I was sworn at in German or English? Nah, because the people who are saying it still want to kick several shades of shit out of me.

I'm not talking about Australia, I'm talking about England. Are you black? If yes, it's not a commonly held opinion against any of MY black friends that 'we' have 'reclaimed' the word 'wog'. Or 'nigger'. Or 'coon'. Or 'spear-chucker'. Or 'jungle-bunny'.
If you're not black, how the hell do you suppose you can tell someone who is that a racial slur is no longer offensive? That would be like me saying to someone in a wheelchair that calling them 'flid' is a harmless jocular remark. Nonesense.
I wonder, do you think it's a compliment to suggest a black man has a huge penis, can run really fast or dance really brilliantly? I dare not ask.

Y'see, torenko, I think I do get it but YOU obviously don't get it, even with your vast knowledge of cultural differences, just how sensitive a subject this is for black people. Yes, in the same way 'cunt' is for a lot of women and 'flid' might be for a disabled person.
Not just me. I would seriouly say most if not ALL black people feel this way.

How much do you think you know about race/gender? Think of a number and halve it.
There are sections within Black British communities (afro-Caribbean) who are negatively referred to as 'red' so it shows just how much you know, doesn't it? Fuck all to be precise.
Still "as ridiculous as calling them white or red or yellow"? Is it fuck.

How old are you? where the fuck did you grow up?? (sorry, but I'm pissed off now whereas I was just trying to 'share' before).
I'm 32. I was born in East Dulwich, South London. My Secondary school was in Beckenham, Penge. Just so you know. Mixed areas.

Did you never see "WOGS OUT" scrawled on walls next to an NF (i.e. National Front) sign? This, of course is before the days of the cute and cuddly BNP as a 'national socialist' party.
Are you old enough to remember Enid Blyton getting into shit (for 'Andy Pandy' I think) because of the use of the gollyWOG character. Do you REALLY know what a gollyWOG looks like?

Here:
http://www.giftnut.com/images/doorstop_golly.jpg

Does that look like a fucking Italian, fucking Greek or fucking JAPANESE (not 'Jap' or 'Nip') person? DOES IT? WELL?? Where's your snappy rejoinder now, huh?
I've not known many Italians, Greeks or "Japs" to be described like this:

golliwog -- go'lliwog n. a black-faced grotesquely-dressed doll with fuzzy hair.
- The Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

Remember the problems Robinson's jam had? No? Here:
http://www.sterlingtimes.co.uk/golliwog.jpg

NOW do you get it?

Do you remember the black soldier who fought and was decorated in the Falklands War returning to England and STILL being forced to prove he was a British Citizen (otherwise face expulsion as every other 'new' commonwealth - i.e. black person) in Britain did? No?
Well I do because my parents and friend's parents all had to re-register as British citizens circa '81/'82, even though relatives may have fought for Britain in WWII. Can you imagine how that felt?
(Can't be arsed searching for examples otherwise I'll be here all fucking day.)

How fucking patronising and insulting that YOU suppose you can tell ME what 'real' racial abuse is. Un-be-fucking-lievable.
I. AM. BLACK. Are you? Just because YOU haven't heard it used as a racial slur (being, as I presume you are, white) does that mean it doesn't exist? Like the tree falling in the forrest that no-one sees? Did it really fall?
It's quite staggering to witness you displaying levels of ego-centrism that I'd normally expect to see in children aged under 4. There's a whole world of experience beyond your peer group.
And before you say, "ah, but you're not white", remember that I live in a predominately white society and am privvy to aspeacts of it which you cannot claim in the reverse (see my earlier comment regarding 'red' black people).

No, being black does NOT confer one absolute last say on the topic of racism -- anymore so than being female would apply to discussing feminist issues -- but I have anecdotal experience, and further experience shared through generations of family and friends, whilst you have .. what exactly?
Something you read in a broadsheet or heard in a lecture at Uni about racism or semiotics? 'Smug' doesn't do justice.

QUICK LESSON IN CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Q: What's the main difference between an 'ex-pat' and an 'imigrant'/'economic migrant'?
A: The first one is white the second one ... isn't.

How did you score?

To you it may just be like arguing whether 'Spangles' were better than 'Spacedust' but to millions of others, racial slurs and the immediate consequences can be a matter of life and fucking death. Just ask Stephen Lawrence. Or my friend's 60-odd year old mother who was put in hospital by a gang of grown men in front of several witnesses who did NOTHING. Why? Because she asked them not to piss in her garden, they called her all sorts and she stood up for herself.
Shame on you.

Holy fucking shit. As much as the racist thug who chants racial abuse at school children and stuffs burning newspapers through their letterboxes forcing them to upsticks and move home (as happened to my sister -- not too far from where Stepehn Lawrence was muredered) YOU, torenko, are the problem as much as they because you refuse to concede that anyone apart from whom you consider to be a peer can be right. Or so it appears. Still feeling smug?
(I'm probably way off the mark but I could give less of a fuck because you don't appear to have measured what you've said)

I don't agree with everything everyone here has said about race, gender and different 'reclaimed' words but you have managed to push every wrong button you possibly can. I'm not a spokesperson for the black community of anywhere but it's pretty obvious that I have a better handle on certain facts pertaining to issues of race than you.
You are the reason political correctness was invented, not me.
However you try to paint it, no matter on the derivation or intention of a word way-back-when, here and now, in this day and age, those terms are OFFENSIVE.

You really are fucking confused. And incredibly arrogant with it.
Playing 'Devil's's Advocate' is one thing but wanton displays of ignorance coupled with lack of shame and self-awareness is another entirely.

Having the stamps of many nations in one's passport is not an automatic assurance of 'worldliness'.

N.B. You can post here as much as you want to but I will not bore anyone else with, what appears to most REASONABLE people, the fucking obvious.
Of course, please feel free to post a response but send it in email to me offline or I will not respond.
Just want to save everyone from further tedium.

Cheers.
A

PS -- sincere apologies again to mark s ... it was a great idea for a thread .. but I hope you understand me not letting toraneko post unchecked.
PPS -- N ... totally agree with what you've been saying! Right-on! Always a pleasure to chat with someone who knows how to present a balanced argument. All the best. :)

On t'other hand, one doesn't need to live in a particular place to understand appreciate another person's POV.
Not one other person here has had/expressed a problem understanding how someone *could* see a term as offensive or not (not necessarily racist). Whether they themselves consider it racist is not the issue, imho, it's appreciating that others might.

Nuff said.
Cheers, Dan!
:o)

Oh, I completely agree with you on that front and I don't think your post was uncalled-for. It's just that you based the entire rant on an assumption that there would be a shared set of experiences that you could use as examples which, as far as I can tell, never made it out of the UK. (I never heard about Stephen Lawrence, for example, and I've never had to deal with National Front or Robertson's jam, and I would wager that most people in the US would not recognize "wog" as a term that applied to them. I certainly have never heard it applied against me. I have heard "jungle bunny", though, and really pissed off the person who used it by laughing at them for using such a dumb-ass comedy slur and ridiculing their imagination.)

(It was also very amusing seeing such a vehement rant coming from someone with a Hello Kitty email address.)

meeooooooww!

My Japanese friends think it's hilarious (not to mention incredibly camp) for a bloke to have a hello kitty email account but I just think it's kitch-y and cute.

And they give 5MB of free storage space. Which is nice...

I like you, Android. :-)

So the only way any real contextualization could occur would be to start calling people "nigga" or "nigger" or "faggot" or what-have-you when they're not black or gay or whatever else. This is what removes the power dynamic, even if the word still is meant as an insult: white people could call me nigger all they wanted if we lived in a world where I could call them niggers and they'd be equally hurt.

Main reason I've concluded this: the word "bitch," which isn't discussed much here, to my surprise. "Bitch" and a lot of its permutations are really losing their sex and gender specificity in the U.S. "Bitch" as a verb = complain, with hardly a shred of anything else attached to it. "Bitchy" = being difficult, being mean, and in most circumstances people wouldn't assume a sexist component to it unless you were doing something else to put it there. (Unfortunately, a lot of guys too easily run straight through "you are acting bitchy" to "you are a bitch," and they probably meant that from the beginning.) "Bitch" as a noun = I say this to men all the time, and I don't think you'd have to spend too much time watching 20-something North American males in any sort of competition to hear one of them laughingly call another a little bitch. "Bitch" in the servile prostitution sense -- i.e., "you are so totally his/her bitch" -- also used plenty by people of either sex, without the sexual insult meant at all.

The problem with these as "reclamations" is that even if they're used without any of the negative implications in anyone's mind, they're still drawing their meaning from those implications. Which is why I often feel odd about some of them, and why I especially don't use "bitch" in public. (This is specifically a term for any close male friend who has just killed me in any given first-person shooter video game.)

NB: "bitch" is now acceptable for prime-time network television. So should we here in the U.S. feel at all bad about that? What should we think about "bitchy" as adjective and "to bitch" as a verb, both of which men and women use constantly with no sex connotations in the latter and none necessarily in the former?

"Slav" was "reclaimed" since it also at one point meant "slave" when the balkans were sliced into other ppl's empires and they were subject peoples. This is true, though I forget the details and my eastern european history is too dodgy to get specific at the moment.

Whatever situation the balkans are in now, the slavic people are cetainly not a subject nation in the traditional sense. Hence word can be successfully reclaimed.

*we are not making this up - wog really has been successfully rehabilitated (here. we're not saying it's ok to use it anywhere else but here nobody will bat an eylid.) there was a hit movie a year or two ago called 'the wog boy' which was spawned from a series of stage shows and musicals, the first one being 'wogs out of work' (which in turn was spawned from a sitcom called 'acropolis now').

*wog's definition has been expanded to include eastern europeans and maybe even some western europeans (my hungarian piano teacher called herself a wog, and it wouldn't be totally out of place to use the word for a french or german person).it is attached more to a set of cultural values and aesthetics than to nationality.

*i myself could be called a wog. having austrian-jewish grandparents, dark hair and eyes and an olive complexion, people often incorrectly guess my 'nationality' as greek or italian. i would find it bemusing if someone tried to use it as a slur as would most 'true' wogs.

*maybe the reclamation of the word was made possible because of the australian sense of humour. the word is intended as a gentle dig in the ribs, just like pom or yank. it is truly no longer offensive in this context when used with sensitivity.

Especially because the Viking thing is so much more Scandanavian. I used to draw a certain strength from that image! ;^}

Bo-Johns, though? I dunno. It sounds like the middle brother in a rural Southern family.

I tend to over react to this one, it's just that sometimes English people seem to treat Scotland as a region of England and it really gets up my nose. We are part of Britain(that's a whole different argument)but we are a country in our own right. So yes I would be offended, as I've said before it's like referring to a Canadian as American or a French preson as Belgian.

I know this is kinda petty considering what's going on upthread but hey, I'm selfish and self absorbed...

Obviously different words have different meanings and connotations in different countries. That's why I previously said "Yes, I agree, it is the way you use it and I would have to live over there to realise what Paki means over there. Any term can be used offensively - woman is a classic example of that."

Also I thought I made the situation fairly clear when I said:
"It's hard in Australia to understand the type of racial hatred that reportedly exists in the UK and the US. For example, to me nigger is no worse a word than negro, African-American, black or whatever and I'm still a bit confused about why it is to other people - but I gather it's something to do with the fact that when blacks were slaves in America they were referred to as niggers and so it's got bad reminders."
and
"Black, negro, nigger, African-American - they're descriptive so it's hard to see why one would be worse than another or why any of them would be worse than white, Anglo, caucasian - but that's where the history of the word comes in."

I haven't said nigger is not offensive, I've said it's hard to understand why it's so offensive without knowing the whole history of the word. I don't have much knowledge of American history and America seems to be the country where the word is most potent.

So yes, because I'm not black and because I'm not American the word nigger does not raise my hackles at all.

I'm still interested to know whether negro and black are considered to be equal or different. In explaining why nigger is offensive, Sterling said
"q: why would the spanish term rather than the anglo/saxon term for black come into use for black people?

a: because the slave traders were spanish."

which sort of answers the question except that it ignores the fact that there have been/were many Africans, including black ones, in Spain for a long time - which might be the reason why a Spanish word is used by other parts of Europe and in English.

The majority of people thinking a word is uncontroversial != the word is inoffensive of course. I imagine that lots of (white) people in the UK in (say) the 70s ignorantly used the "gentle dig in the ribs" argument when actually a good deal of hurt was being caused.

I'm sure that there are Anglo-Australians who still have a real "us" and "them" way of thinking but most of the racial problems (gang fights etc.) seem to be between different groups of immigrants (which means that smug Anglos can see it as only a "them" problem, of course). Over-policing of "ethnic" young people does occur. Actually, over-policing of young people in general occurs - depending on where you hang out and what you get up to.

We're not all one big, happy, multicultural family but it's rare to see acts of racism - or maybe due to being white I'm just blind to it? I dunno, I'll ask some of non-anglo friends what their experience is.

One good thing about unbridled, unashamed racism is that it's much easier to know where you stand with someone. This is the main complaint I've heard from Southerners of all races about moving to New England; the racists don't tell you who they are, so it's much easier to get blind-sided by them.

For example, if a gay teacher is ostracised in the staff room, is it because they are gay or because they aren't a nice person.

If the police pay a lot of attention to a group of "ethnic" youths because there has been lots of opportunistic crime committed by groups of youths in that suburb, are they being racist or are they doing their job?

If a man instead of a woman is promoted to a managerial position, is it because he's a man or is it because he's fits the position better?

If an Aboriginal community is labelled 'lazy Abo scum with chips on their shoulders' is it because they are Aborigninal or because they are lazy scum with chips on their shoulders?

Of course, if they are the question is: Are they only lazy scum with chips on their shoulders due to decades of racism? - just as the question is: Does he only fit the position better because of the advantages he's had in career, education and personal life due to being male? and: Are groups of "ethnic" youths only committing crimes due to the frustrations of racism? and lastly: Is the gay teacher only a not nice person due to the emotional & social struggle of being gay in a hetero world?

It is a classic example of where the history of the word changes its connotations and I guess that's why we use "guys and girls" instead of "boys and girls".

I use the word black when talking about, well, black Americans. I think I use it because it is a word that I am familiar with - it's easy for me to say, I don't have to think about it. All the African type black people I know are African so if it's necessary to talk about their background then I would say Sudanese, Ghanan, Nigerian, black South African or whatever.

I don't use the word black for Indian Sub Continent people. I couldn't quite work out from the conversation above whether they are called black in Britain or not. I'd call them Indian (which a good 90% of the ones I know are) - unless I was corrected and they were Sri Lankan, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or whatever.

I'll probably offend some more friends by calling them Anglo-Saxon when in fact they're Slavic - I've done this before! But it's so confusing because Indians are Caucasian too and so the only umbrella term is white - but then on an International level that's not because Latinos aren't considered white in America.

I haven't said nigger is not offensive, I've said it's hard to understand why it's so offensive without knowing the whole history of the word. I don't have much knowledge of American history and America seems to be the country where the word is most potent.

So yes, because I'm not black and because I'm not American the word nigger does not raise my hackles at all

I just can't comprehend this at all, I mean isn't "nigger" the most high profile offensive word on the planet? Well?

There is a UK list:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/table/0,7493,409833,00.html

Here's the top 10:
Cunt
Motherfucker
Fuck
Wanker
Nigger
Bastard
Prick
Bollocks
Arsehole
Paki

If an Aboriginal community is labelled 'lazy Abo scum with chips on their shoulders' is it because they are Aborigninal or because they are lazy scum with chips on their shoulders?

Err toraneko.. I understand the distinction you are trying to make, but in practical terms I find it hard to think of a community being labelled thus without extremely racist beliefs underpinning it.

If the police pay a lot of attention to a group of "ethnic" youths because there has been lots of opportunistic crime committed by groups of youths in that suburb, are they being racist or are they doing their job?

If you mean a specific gang that is known to be offending then they're doing their job. If by 'group' you mean any youths of that ethnicity then yes, they're being racist as hell.

I can't find any very good terminology to differentiate between Americans whose ancestors were brought from Africa as slaves and Americans whose more immediate ancestors came from Africa of their own accord.

So if we've said that a lot of the power of words-against-blacks comes from those words being linked with action -- slavery, Jim Crow, etc. -- we can assume that if Nazi Germany had used particular widespread terms for Jews beyond the regular "Juden," those words would top quite a few "offensive words" lists. (Or is my history off here -- were there such words? And while "Juden" is still standard German usage, I imagine it would have very bad mental associations for non-German European Jews of a certain generation.)

And the point against calling women "girls" (which I, personally, don't mind), no matter how *nicely* it's being done, is that calling women "girls" infantilizes them and strips them of respect and their adult status which is somewhat equivalent to what calling men boys does, but as I acknowledged above it's the history of the word changes its connotations.

It could get more interesting though - because if female slaves were called "girl" in the same way that male slaves were called "boy" then it introduces either a whole nother level of predjudice (i.e. infantilising women is okay because they're infantile whereas infantilising men is not okay because you're denying their manhood and that's so much more of a travesty than denying a woman her womanhood, because womanhood means nothing, after all) OR it could mean that female slaves just aren't as important as male slaves because they're just women and so the word means nothing OR it's a good example of a word that has been very well reclaimed.

Err.. yeah - because single motherhood nothing to do with race.

I dunno, are there many man who use "girl" for all or the majority of women? I always thought that was more selectively applied.

Fauvism
Impressionism

and at least one other art movement I can't think of right now. Orignally insults by unimpressed critics, I believe.

The Preraphaelites?

Now I remember -- the "ash can" school.