Why are ethnic slurs considered worse than any other form of cruel speech?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know . . . I don't think they are just toss of comments. They are very painful to me. How can people be so certain that their pain is greater than mine?

PP, are people regularly saying these things to you? Calling you "stinky"? Are you 8 years old?

Racial slurs sting especially hard because they carry with them reminders of times when racial hatred was official policy. It was never illegal for a skinny person to marry a fat person. Marchers were never beaten and hosed for being fat. No one has ever systematically rounded up, imprisoned and gasses ugly people.

Please don't belittle me. You know very well that I am speaking of cruel speech in general. Are you not aware that everyone has some vulnerability that can be exploited in speech. Again, I ask, why would it be less offensive to know exactly where, why, and how an individual is vulnerable and to exploit that weakness, cutting the individual deep into their heart and to have that event somehow be less offensive than a racial or ethnic slur?

The design and purpose behind cruel and offensive speech is for the same purpose and that is to hurt the heart and soul of the individual. Cruel speech is equal in its design and purpose and the pain is the same regardless of how we categorize it.

No one is trying to belittle you. If you are also the poster of the "Goy/Goyim" question thread, your M.O. appears to be "I have an innocent question. Please help me understand the world. It's not my fault my oh-so-innocent question stirs up a lot bad feeling and ethnic and racial tension."

Your little game has run its course. Find another playground You're not a child and this isn't OZ.

Instead of making it personal, you could just answer the question. Maybe we need to change the status quo. We can change and you can help. Why is it so difficult for you to understand that people feel the same degree of pain regardless of ethnicity? Why is it that you would like compassion but you are unwilling to grant it to others?

[Anonymous]

She did answer your question. You might not like the answer (or perhaps she's correct that you're really just looking to stir the pot), but she did provide one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know . . . I don't think they are just toss of comments. They are very painful to me. How can people be so certain that their pain is greater than mine?

PP, are people regularly saying these things to you? Calling you "stinky"? Are you 8 years old?

Racial slurs sting especially hard because they carry with them reminders of times when racial hatred was official policy. It was never illegal for a skinny person to marry a fat person. Marchers were never beaten and hosed for being fat. No one has ever systematically rounded up, imprisoned and gasses ugly people.

Please don't belittle me. You know very well that I am speaking of cruel speech in general. Are you not aware that everyone has some vulnerability that can be exploited in speech. Again, I ask, why would it be less offensive to know exactly where, why, and how an individual is vulnerable and to exploit that weakness, cutting the individual deep into their heart and to have that event somehow be less offensive than a racial or ethnic slur?

The design and purpose behind cruel and offensive speech is for the same purpose and that is to hurt the heart and soul of the individual. Cruel speech is equal in its design and purpose and the pain is the same regardless of how we categorize it.

No one is trying to belittle you. If you are also the poster of the "Goy/Goyim" question thread, your M.O. appears to be "I have an innocent question. Please help me understand the world. It's not my fault my oh-so-innocent question stirs up a lot bad feeling and ethnic and racial tension."

Your little game has run its course. Find another playground You're not a child and this isn't OZ.

I agree with this poster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because there has never been genocide or "ethnic cleansing" of the stinky.

This is the best answer. Short and to the point.

Come on, OP. I admit I didn't pay too much attention in history class in K-12, but did you even [i]show up[u] for history class?

[Anonymous]

we should stop feeding the troll

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When someone uses an ethnic slur on me, it tells me that no matter what I try to do as an individual, some people will always see me in a disparaging way. Usuallly, they didn't bother to know me enough to hate me. They didn't bother to look beyond my race to notice whether I'm stupid or ugly. They concluded that I must be stupid and ugly because my background is not like theirs.

Other cruel speech usually is brought on by some event or interaction. When people use ethnic slurs on me, sometimes they come out of the blue, like if I'm walking down the street minding my own business. Since I have experienced the slurs before, it leads me to distrust other people for no reason, since I have been insulted without provocation.

Well put, pp.
Also there has been research done which shows that girls who are reminded of their gender before taking a math test do worse and African-American students who are reminded of their race before a standardized test also tend to do worse. That is, the researcher says something about African-American students as a class or girls as a class -- it's totally neutral, not even disparaging, and yet it appears to have an effect on performance compared to saying something that infers that the test taker belongs to the class of all students. So there is something particularly insidious about insulting someone based on their demographic identity when that identity is tied into a history of prejudice and discrimination.

That said, it's not so great to call people stupid or ugly. I'm certainly not endorsing that!

[Anonymous]

Racial slurs sting especially hard because they carry with them reminders of times when racial hatred was official policy. It was never illegal for a skinny person to marry a fat person. Marchers were never beaten and hosed for being fat. No one has ever systematically rounded up, imprisoned and gasses ugly people.

How many decades do you think need to pass in order to have a level playing field in state and federal penal codes WRT sentences for "hate" crimes vs. sentences for "love", I mean, "a different kind of hate" crimes?

Asking tongue-in-cheek but I'm serious. There was a time in the U.S. that the Irish, Italian and Chinese immigrants were just the worst of the stinking worst. And freely discriminated against. Now of course persons from each of these backgrounds has been a governor, run a Fortune 100 company, etc. They tend not to be protected under the language of various state hate crime laws the way a Nicaraguan-American would be, if he was murdered ostensibly because he was born in Nicaragua.

[Anonymous]

I guess to me, it's because of the systematic oppression (and even attempted annihilation) of members of groups based on ethnic or other group identities, such as women, gays, and the disabled. People don't usually go around trying to kill you because you're fat or pimply. The don't usually shout "you suck" before they gas entire neighborhoods or enslave a group.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
Asking tongue-in-cheek but I'm serious. There was a time in the U.S. that the Irish, Italian and Chinese immigrants were just the worst of the stinking worst. And freely discriminated against. Now of course persons from each of these backgrounds has been a governor, run a Fortune 100 company, etc. They tend not to be protected under the language of various state hate crime laws the way a Nicaraguan-American would be, if he was murdered ostensibly because he was born in Nicaragua.

Can you point out a state hate crime law that protects those born in Nicaragua, but not those born in Ireland or Italy? Every law of that type of which I am aware protects against crimes based on "national origin". Under such laws, if you decided to kill someone because they were of Italian origin, it would be no different than killing someone because they were of Nicaraguan origin.

[Anonymous]

All hateful speech should be rejected. But, some is worse than others, because of what has accompanied that speech AND because of what underlies that speech.

"Fatso" is not a rejection of the essential being of that person sight unseen. Instead, it is a crude commentary on one aspect of that person. Is it hurtful? Yes. Is it wrong? Absolutely. Is it the same as the N-word? No. Plain and simple. And not because of PC-ness or laws. Because the N-word demonstrates a complete disregard for an entire group of people based solely on an immutable characteristic. I would extend this to any racial, ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, gender identification, socio-economic class, or sex-based slur.

Now, individuals are going to have their individual preferences. As is their right. But, in the aggregate, those types I outlined above (and a few others I'm sure I'm leaving out) come from a far more insidious place and, historically, have led to far greater acts of hate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we should stop feeding the troll

Why does someone always have to spoil the fun?

I like feeding the troll.

What would life be like w/o controversy? We'd all be sheep.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Asking tongue-in-cheek but I'm serious. There was a time in the U.S. that the Irish, Italian and Chinese immigrants were just the worst of the stinking worst. And freely discriminated against. Now of course persons from each of these backgrounds has been a governor, run a Fortune 100 company, etc. They tend not to be protected under the language of various state hate crime laws the way a Nicaraguan-American would be, if he was murdered ostensibly because he was born in Nicaragua.

Can you point out a state hate crime law that protects those born in Nicaragua, but not those born in Ireland or Italy? Every law of that type of which I am aware protects against crimes based on "national origin". Under such laws, if you decided to kill someone because they were of Italian origin, it would be no different than killing someone because they were of Nicaraguan origin.

Actually, I kind of get what the PP is saying. When I first entered teaching, I inquired about languages - specfically teaching Italian. Many systems told me that b/c the "Italians had assilimated so well" (direct quote from a large system), there wasn't this need to offer many courses. NIAF has also bene vocal in fighting against how we're depicted in the media, as it seems to be OK to think that we're all in the mafia or at home drying pasta on light fixtures.

[Anonymous]

Can you point out a state hate crime law that protects those born in Nicaragua, but not those born in Ireland or Italy? Every law of that type of which I am aware protects against crimes based on "national origin". Under such laws, if you decided to kill someone because they were of Italian origin, it would be no different than killing someone because they were of Nicaraguan origin.

This is true. It's likely more a question of implementation and prosecutorial discretion. In academic theory (only?), Swedish-Americans would be protected under state hate crime laws that punish more harshly crimes committed on the basis of 'national origin.' In my personal experience, no prosecutor or cop has ever asked me the question of whether we should be looking into a motive based on the fact that the decedent was born in Stockholm in 1956.

The question is more likely to come up internally (should we look more deeply into X evidence, re-interview ABC) if the decedent was not Caucasoid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Asking tongue-in-cheek but I'm serious. There was a time in the U.S. that the Irish, Italian and Chinese immigrants were just the worst of the stinking worst. And freely discriminated against. Now of course persons from each of these backgrounds has been a governor, run a Fortune 100 company, etc. They tend not to be protected under the language of various state hate crime laws the way a Nicaraguan-American would be, if he was murdered ostensibly because he was born in Nicaragua.

Can you point out a state hate crime law that protects those born in Nicaragua, but not those born in Ireland or Italy? Every law of that type of which I am aware protects against crimes based on "national origin". Under such laws, if you decided to kill someone because they were of Italian origin, it would be no different than killing someone because they were of Nicaraguan origin.

Actually, I kind of get what the PP is saying. When I first entered teaching, I inquired about languages - specfically teaching Italian. Many systems told me that b/c the "Italians had assilimated so well" (direct quote from a large system), there wasn't this need to offer many courses. NIAF has also bene vocal in fighting against how we're depicted in the media, as it seems to be OK to think that we're all in the mafia or at home drying pasta on light fixtures.

I don't see how you don't get the point. Schools normally teach languages that are most in demand. In the USA, Italian is not.

Languages commonly taught in schools are taught because there is a large population that speaks that language in America or because it is a good language for international business. Languages commonly taught in schools are Spanish (400+ million speakers worldwide, Spanish-speaking population in USA is rapidly growing, second most natively spoken language in the world), Chinese (Mandarin is the most natively spoken language in the world, great language for international business), Japanese (130 million speakers worldwide, plus kids think it's cool because of Japanese pop culture), and French (200 million speak the language natively and over 500 million speak it in total, spoken natively on several continents, official language of 29 countries).

Only 70 million people speak Italian natively. It is spoken natively in only six countries, all of them in Europe. It is not a great language for international business, there is not a huge population of people in the USA who only speak Italian, and people aren't interested in Italian pop culture that much.

It is what it is. And how on Earth does Italian not being commonly taught in schools fit into a discussion on hate crimes and ethnic discrimination?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And, why are ethnic slurs worse than misogynistic (sp?) slurs? Being called bitch, whore, pussy, or even just girl is meant to be derogatory but is accepted speech in our society. If I hear another coach say to his team that they play like a bunch of girls again I think I will scream.

Yep. I agree 100%.