I agree. People can (and will) say what they want, but the words you choose have meaning and weight, and you must deal with the response other people have to the words you use. Here is my response.

It’s really hard to turn the tide on these words in the black community– youth enjoy the power these words have to shock and scare people for some it’s the only “power” they have. But they really are degrading and I think that we should support the movement that has been building up in the black community for ***years*** to make these words unacceptable.

I’m asking you now: Please stop tossing this ugly word around. It’s not funny. It’s insulting. It’s a bad way to make your point. Okay? Do you get it?

It’s not even that I don’t agree with the point you’re making about the uselessness of banning words. I do agree. What offends me is the way that you have chosen to make your point.

You’ve proved you have “freedom” with this post, but do you posses the responsibility and intelligence to use the freedom?

Thank goodness that my first visit to the site was to see this piece by “Mickey Z,” such an absurd parody of the entitlement issues, and poor critical thinking that attend them, of the white “progressive” community. If I had stumbled on to some less obviously satirical piece, I might have gotten my hopes up for a second that I had found a source for some real insight and critical analysis. Imagine the let down of discovering it was really all a cruel joke! No such danger now!

It’s admirable that you respond to well-reasoned comments with such flair and intelligence.

Bravo.

That is the sort of analogy you were making, right? Because gosh darn it, if we say you can’t call people racist slurs anymore, next thing you know, people won’t be able to go around talking about important social issues using words that aren’t demeaning! Oh no!

This sounds like xeroxed Rush Limbaugh. Why is this on a website called “Dissident Voices”? Is it a parody?

Why is anyone even excited? Dude didn’t even lay out some thrilling craszyass apocalyptic shit like the Xian right would in their bizarre, paranoid rantings. The “Don Imus treatment”? What, you scared “they” are gonna take away your radio show?

This is really the sort of thing I’d expect from one of those right-wing, libertarian websites. The ones that are always ranting about how affirmative action is discrimination against white-male and other backlash BS. But, hey, here it is on a self-proclaimed radical left website, an article by a white-male embracing and safeguarding his status as a member of that privileged group.

To me, the practical effect of this article is that the author is ensuring that white-males like him retain the authority to name Blacks and women. After all, white-males created niggers, bitches and hoes. These are their words. It is repugnant that Mickey Z would pen an article defending his use of these slurs.

Equally offensive, of course, are the three comments following the article. First, an attack on those Black organizations organizing resistance to the oppressive names assigned to them by the privilege group. Then, an obtuse comment that uses the term “backlash” in furtherance of true backlash, with some BS about “double standards.” And a third person who just can’t resist an opportunity to throw in a few more epithet.

The article and comments trivialize both racism and sexism. As if terms like “cracker” and “honky” have any real power. How easy it is for people with male bodies and white skin to refuse to listen to women and people of color. How hard it is for those same folks to give up their self-defined authority to name the “other.”

And, no, I’m not missing the point. Don’t give me that bullshit about freedom of speech and the First Amendment. We all know that shit never included women and people of color. This article’s real message is white-male supremacy.