Comments | sorakirei: random question for my friend list

sorakirei

random question for my friend list

Apr 02, 2008 17:05

There has been some noise on the pittsburgh community and I'm just curious how many of you are familiar with the following:

( Please take this poll )

poll

Comments 13

frakkinfabulous April 2 2008, 22:27:11 UTC

BTW, retrololi is my communities-only account. I just realized I was still logged into it. :)

snowpupgirl April 2 2008, 23:17:23 UTC

I know the meaning of the word since I was sort of dating a guy of Mexican parents. Living in a small town you hear all sorts of racial slurs, unfortunately, so I learned quite a few. He was born in the United States, so it was just a racial slur against him.

Also, since my definition was limited to a few characters, it is used as a slur against many people from Latin America, even those here illegally. Although it makes me happy to know that some people haven't even heard the word. I wish I had heard less racial slurs growing up :(

alethea79 April 3 2008, 00:49:20 UTC

I am very familiar with it, not only because I used to live in south Texas, but because the word was spoken in my own home. /sigh :/

mg4h April 3 2008, 02:31:41 UTC

I've heard this term as early as 1976 or so. It's been around far as I know a long time. It's not just the recent controversy that's created it.

sorakirei April 3 2008, 03:51:07 UTC

I'm quite certain the slur has been around for a while. I found my lack of familiarity with it interesting. And it gets me thinking about all sorts of language things like what could cause a word to fall out of existence? Will any racial slur ever disappear?

drlang April 4 2008, 01:35:28 UTC

Well the word "barbarian" has all but disappeared in its context as a racial slur. As has the word wop, which has been replaced mostly with dego (sp?). Racial slurs as a category will always exist until the human species has intermixed to the point of being virtually indistinguishable from one another as separate races. Racism will not die until then, because like nerds, women, gays, etc, they are an easy target for stereotyping and creating an enemy to blame problems on.

jythie April 4 2008, 20:00:21 UTC

I am not sure if even that will ill racism.

Personally I think the only thing that could really do it would be if you introduced something external to humanity for people to unite against.

Either that or some type of truely creepy 'everyone is exactly the same,variance has been completely removed from humanity', which is probably even worse.

maryadavies April 3 2008, 13:43:37 UTC

I didn't know; just after I took the poll, looked it up on Wikipedia.

Would you believe I've innocently messed up word wise quite a few times, but not that way? Like, "screwed up"...some say "screwed" has a sexual meaning that I didn't know about, and I've been saying "screwed up" for years!

linmayu April 3 2008, 16:05:10 UTC

While it is true that "screw" can be used to mean "fuck," it doesn't always mean that. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying "screwed up."

maryadavies April 3 2008, 16:06:20 UTC

Neither do I; but someone at a job I was at once said, "Don't say that" and why.

Some people are just really sensitive I guess.

sorakirei April 3 2008, 16:54:08 UTC

I've had to cease using certain words because they could be taken the wrong way.

When hair crimping was very popular I used to call it kinky because the hair was all bendy and sometimes little bends are called kinks. /sigh

I love breakfast foods including corned beef hash. While I'd rather just say "I like hash," thanks to pot smokers everywhere I can't. /annoyed

Thread 6