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July 14, 2005

"Nigger" bad, "Spic", not so much....

Author's Note: I went to cross-post this entry at TPM Cafe and ended up editing it substantially, so I'm posting the new version here.

Bernard Goldberg was on the Daily Show tonight, discussing the culture war and whether or not "just words" are offensive:

"Let's say there's a Bigot Channel, and on the Bigot Channel, Hispanics are spics, Jews are kikes, gays are faggots and black people are you-know-what"

Does anyone else find it a bit odd that he can't bring himself to say "nigger" as part of an example of biggoted language, but "spic", "kike" and "faggot" are ok?

I agree that the use of such terms as epithets is wrong - no arguement there at all. But when attempting to have a discussion about the use of such terms, then we should be able to be mature enough to actually use the words about which we are speaking. In the context of Goldberg's remarks, the word "nigger" shouldn't be considered any more controversial than his use of "spic", "kike" and "faggot". He's not calling calling people these things - he's making the point that doing so would be wrong.

Why make an issue of this? Well, by saying "spic", "kike" and "faggot" while substituting "you-know-what" for "nigger", Goldberg is assigning an offensiveness value to the terms, with "spic", "kike" and "faggot" ranking as less offensive than "nigger", and that's not the kind of message that anyone should be sending. It's especially ironic considering the book he's promoting is about how the decline in pop cultural ethics is "screwing up" America. I'd think someone like him, in particular, would want to avoid sending even the inadvertant message that some racial slurs are less offensive - less degrading to our culture as a whole - than others.

Posted by thorswitch at July 14, 2005 05:37 AM

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