The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. --Chinese Proverb
The problem today with racism, sexism, antisemitism, and all the other isms is not -- as the liberals allege -- that people are too insensitive, but rather that people are TOO SENSITIVE. The mental virus of Political Correctness has bathed in toxic acid the consciousness of every minority, every potential victim group, and in fact virtually every man, woman and child who watches to Tube or reads the Daily Birdcage Liner, with the result that almost everyone gets his back up when his race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, ageicity, bridge club or local football team is held up to criticism, ridicule, contempt or even just close examination. Needless to say, all victims are equal, but some are more equal than others, with Jews the first among equals, and blacks and feminists a very close second -- a ranking which puts white males, Christians and Germans in the back of the bus because, after all, there has to be a Devil to hate, and they are IT. But for all that, the PC crowd has done so good a job of inserting a victim meme into everyone's mind that even the Devils have been induced to step right up, Folks, and demand their slice of the Tea & Sympathy pie, dancing along to the tune of liberal victimology just like all the mangy minorities. This is not, of course, to deny that they are justified after a fashion; for after all, white males, Christians and Germans are the most victimized of all groups; but that is hardly justification for their swallowing the liberal line, since by doing so they have short-circuited their own arguments against victimology and oversensitivity and created a deadly silence where there should be a lively protest. --JBR Yant
People don't like to be referred to by terms that they don't select or agree upon themselves, and it is this fact that makes it offensive to call people 'names', including names which have no intrinsic offensiveness (altho sometimes people will accept an inoffensive name as a nickname.) An important subgroup of offensive names are slurs, ie, mispronunciations or variations of inoffensive names which are offensive by their failure to be 'completely correct'; and indeed, slur has become a synonym for 'name'. In my own writing I often use slurs of various kinds. My purpose is not generally to give offense (tho by my use of 'offensive' terms I demonstrate that I do not mind doing so), but instead is more often for reasons of humor and/or to undercut the status of a person or group which has been accorded undeserved reverence. I hardly need mention that the act of unstuffing people's shirts, smashing their icons or shattering their myths is offensive, even tho such things ought properly to be welcomed in the service of truth; and the fact that they are not welcomed merely demonstrates how little regard for the truth most people possess.
But I have done more than merely use slurs in the name of moral necessity and literary license. In particular, I have developed a whole raft of my own slurs which are distinguished for their pointedness, their humor, their shirt-unstuffing and icon-smashing capabilities, and of course their offensiveness. I delight in creating these terms, because I enjoy contemplating not only the apoplectic reaction which they will receive from the mangy minorities and (especially) their liberal lunatic defenders, but also because they avoid the crudity of common slurs and instead exhibit a literary panache which compels appreciation and even laughter for their quality even when arousing condemnation for their 'immorality'. In fact, it is the purpose of these slurs to be arguments-in-themselves, in which the force of their aptness and humor undercuts the call for their excision.
While I have not attempted to make an exhaustive list of the slurs I have used in my own writings, I have listed below a number of them which come to mind for the reason that I have used them often or because they seem so on the mark. These include, for blacks, Africoids, Africoid-Americoids, niagras, negroidals, people of off-color, discolored people and bone-in-nosers; for Jews, Foreskinners, Eupees (from the acronym UPs representing 'Uncriticizable People'), TYCCs (an acronym representing 'Those You Can't Criticize', and coming perilously close to the name of the bloodsuckers to whom Jews are so often compared), and Izzies (Israelis); for Indians, Loincloth-Americans and Tom-tommers; for male homosexuals, lavender loveboys; for the fat, gravitationally challenged; for Third-worlders, Turd-worlders; for the handicapped, cappers; for the wheelchair-bound, wheelers; and for the retarded, retards or re-tards. Some of these terms, it turns out, have been used by others -- Turd-worlders and cappers, for example -- so I cannot necessarily claim originality in creating them. I do, however, delight in a good slur, and always enjoy a new gem, whether of my own discovery or that of others.
Of the above slurs, only one is in any need of extensive explanation, namely, Foreskinners. This, as most will know, is based on the fact that Jews are distinguished by the practice of circumcision, in which the foreskin of the penis is removed shortly after birth. While this would seemingly suffice as an explanation, the slur also incorporates another concept by making an analogy to muleskinner, ie, a mule driver, who is so called because his whip skins (ie, removes small bits of skin from) the mules he drives. The latter is important, not merely as an analogy, but to counter the objection of certain friends of mine who thought it would be more appropriate to refer to Jews as 'foreskinless ones': Besides being awkward and sacrificing the analogy with muleskinners, 'foreskinless ones' fails to recognize that 'Foreskinner' can mean both one who skins the 'fore'" and also "one who has his 'fore' skinned" -- a dual meaning which is applicable to Jews but not present in 'foreskinless ones'.
In the present context, it is worthy of note that recently I came across an Internet webpage called the Racial Slur Database, which, in addition to listing all the racial and ethnic slurs which its author could think of, also requested the help of readers in cataloging others. For this reason I offered the list above; but interestingly enuf, the author failed to post any of the ones I had sent him. Perhaps this was because he intuited that my purpose -- contrary to his own -- was to celebrate slurs rather than to denounce them, and that the slurs I offered him were not merely a joyful noise unto the horde, but would have made his readers laugh rather than scowl. And laughter is the last thing liberal prudishness can afford -- like a Caruso singing to a wine glass, the result would be shattering.
One of the curious facts about slurs is that names which are not slurs tend to develop into slurs when those to whom they apply are regarded negatively. The best illustration of this phenomenon is the fact that blacks have had a series of names, but each has become a slur -- or if not quite that, has at least been abandoned for a new name, thus making the old name 'questionable'. First 'nigger' -- the Southernized version of 'negro' -- became a slur; then 'darkie' and 'colored'; then 'negro'; and now 'black' and 'Afro-American', which have given way to 'African' or 'African-American'. Clearly we have a major effort on the part of blacks and their media handlers to run away from the associations which the old names have picked up.
A second example of this phenomenon -- and one even more startling in its own way than the case of blacks -- is that of Jews. The Jews -- whether rightly or wrongly -- have acquired such a monstrous reputation among their host populations that the self-accepted term 'Jew' has now become a slur for all intents and purposes. Instead of this term, one is now required by Judaic law to use only the adjective 'Jewish', tho the plural of 'Jew' is acceptable when speaking of Jews collectively, as in 'the Jews'. But even 'Jewish' has of late become too hot a term, as we are beginning more and more often to hear the ridiculous phrase 'Jewish person' as a substitute for 'Jew' -- a phrase which is both so obvius in its timidity and so kowtowing in its attitude that one can virtually see the speaker's lips glued to the Jewish anus.
From the above two examples we may formulate Bryant's Run-'n'-Hide Law: You can run from yourself, but you sure as hell can't hide.
In conclusion, it is worthwhile to ask our reason for quoting the Chinese proverb which is found at the beginning of this essay. The reason is that, curiously enuf, slurs often come far closer to calling things by their right names than do their 'right names'. For example, the right name for blacks is far closer to 'nigger' than it is to the politically-correct 'African-American', and this for the simple reason that 'African-American' is a term which gives undue respect to a race whose ignorance, stupidity, criminality, laziness, drug-taking and personal irresponsibility shows that its members deserve all the 'prejudice' which whites have held against it, and more. And that is precisely why people get upset about slurs -- they just don't want to hear the ugly truth about themselves.
More On Slurs
The root meaning of the term 'slur' is a variant pronunciation of a name, and the extended meaning of that root meaning is the slurring of the name (in the root sense) such that it gives offense. This distinction between root and extended meaning is important, because names are often slurred in the root sense without the intent of slurring in the extended sense, but that when the slur in the root sense is found to produce irritation in the person or group named, the slur then becomes identified as a 'button' that can be 'pushed' simply for the enjoyment of observing the offense that it produces. (This, of course, does not change the fact that slurs in the root sense may sometimes come to be regarded as terms of endearment, as we see in the transition from Morris to Mo, or George to Georgie.)
An interesting illustration of a slur in the root sense becoming a slur in the extended sense is the term 'nigger'. The root sense slur was simply a product of the Southern drawl -- an accent which slurs virtually everything it comes into contact with -- applied to the term negro, whose Spanish root 'negros', meaning 'black', can be seen in the supermarkets on cans of Spanish-labeled black beans. Actually, the slur probably transited first thru the intermediate slur 'nigra', which some Southerners still use; but the point is that 'nigger' did not begin as an insult, but only became one when whites discovered that blacks -- perhaps with the 'help' of carpetbaggers or other unpleasant types -- began to take offense at the old term.
And thereby hangs a tale, because it is clear that the 'offensiveness' of 'nigger' or any other slur comes not from the user of the term, but from the fact that THE OFFENDED PARTY HAS CHOSEN TO BE OFFENDED. Thus while liberals want to turn blacks into victims by accusing whites of using slurs, the fact is that liberals and blacks are choosing to be offended, and thus choosing to be 'victims'. Against this, of course, it will be argued that whites have an 'obligation' to 'respect' blacks, and therefore an obligation to use the name that blacks (or, more properly, their liberal handlers) want used; but the fact remains that respect must be earned, and the way blacks have behaved since being 'liberated' has not generated any known tsunami of respect, at least as far as my extensive battery of satellite ocean observatories has been able to detect.
But while there is a lesson here for blacks and liberals, there is also a lesson of equal importance for whites. In particular, the history of racial dialogue in the last half-century has been a history of liberals yelling epithets such as 'racist', 'bigot' and 'antisemite' at whites, and of whites turning tail and cringing till they pee in their pants. But it is not just that liberals have found a way to push whites' buttons; it is that whites are responsible for being offended, and for ending up battered and deep-fried. This is why I have long advocated that -- rather than allowing themselves to cringe at the usual liberal accusations -- whites instead stand up and say, "Sure I'm a racist (or whatever), because racism (or whatever) is good", following which the accused makes his pitch for racial good sense. This, indeed, is exactly what I have done in my essay "Why I Am a White Racist" which is permanently posted in the Liberalism section. Or to put it another way, by accepting the liberal vocabulary and defending ourselves with the liberal terminology, we steal the liberals' thunder, and in the process we force them to confront the issues, rather than allowing them to get away with their mindless name-calling.
Back in the Old Days parents taught their kids a little ditty which I remember to this day, and which makes a point that we may ponder to our profit: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Unless, that is, we let them.
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