Is this knob really using Stacy McCain as back-up as to whether something is racist or not?
Oy.

(I know I shouldn’t do this pre-coffee…)

1) Yes.  Absolutely.

2) (Poor) Irish immigrants in the US, in the earlier 20th c, were also recipients of the slur “monkey.”  At least in some parts of the US.  Believe it or not.  And yes, I recognize that race and ethnicity are not identical categories.  But, consider it an additional factoid given in the spirit of accuracy that isn’t meant to take away from your very solid overall point.

(erm. ok.  think that came out ok.  *hopes*)

Comparing GWB to a chimp is offensive.. To the chimps.

Actually Jesse this also entails realizing that Aunt Jemima was solidly racist in the past.  And here we have a problem.

Something is racist/sexist/ablist/etc. when it is clearly designed to depict or put a person in their categorically determined SUBORDINATE place.

Showing a picture of a black porter or a cook is not racist.  Taking a presidential candidate and pasting their face in to that picture - as if that is all they could ever be because they are black, female, etc. - is putting them in *their place* of subordinate servitude.

Of course these losers would blow a gasket if we pasted Palin’s face into a cheerleader’s, or depicted her as barefoot, pregnant, with biscuits in the oven.  That would piss me off too, because it would be horridly sexist - for all the same reasons of proxy subordination.

This is yet another example of the audacity of whiteness.  That a white man thinks he can declare something non racist when members of the African American community have declared it so is not only an exercise in privilege it is silencing behavior.  What matters is how these images impact us.  Further placing his image on a waffle box with the history of what Aunt Jemima means is clearly an attack on POC.  I find the link to George Bush and monkeys dismissive.  To be clear George Bush as monkey is an attack on his personal intelligence; whereas black man as monkey is an attack on blacks as an inferior race of people.

Since every one of these “fine, upstanding” non-racist white Riechwingnuts claims to have a black friend, maybe they can consult that black friend before they prove once again that they are completely clueless racists.

They can’t do that, because even solidly Republican African-Americans like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell will come out in favor of Republican bugaboos like that ol’ debbil affirmative action.  Best not to bring it up so they don’t give you that incredulous stare like they did that one time when you did the Chris Rock routine for them.

What he fails to understand is that all insults are not created equal.

If the waffles were really just some benign joke, why weren’t they marketed when Kerry was running? They leveled the charges of flip flopping at him far more often than I’ve heard anyone leveling them at Obama OR Clinton.

Note to editorial cartoonists: If Obama is elected, you’ll have to endure four years of this crap.

Niiiiiiiiiiice.

If the waffles were really just some benign joke, why weren’t they marketed when Kerry was running? They leveled the charges of flip flopping at him far more often than I’ve heard anyone leveling them at Obama OR Clinton.

Is that the joke?  Because if so, why waffles, which do not flip, nor do they flop.  Wouldn’t pancakes have been funnier?  Ah, “waffling” I just looked at the box.  OK, I’ll give them the pun, then.  But that is certainly the worst characature of Obama I’ve ever seen.  They were clearly going for racist stereotypes over an actual comic drawing.

This is really tone-deaf.  Maybe they were “waffles” because Obama supposedly “waffles” on his positions, but that would have definitely been a better jab directed at John “for it before I was against it” Kerry.  If the makers of this thing were genuinely unaware of Aunt Jemima and backed into that by accident then they should have been more careful.  At the very best, it’s a bad joke in poor taste.

That said I don’t think it’s valid to cry “racism” every time someone makes fun of Obama.  Editorial and political cartoonists are pretty much an editorial-page staple, and they frequently portray all prominent politicians as grotesques. 

Obama will get the same treatment, and if it’s audaciously white to say that’s non-racist, well, tough shit.

The New Yorker cover, for example, was fine.

Ranylt, “niggardly” sounds bad, but isn’t itself racist.  But it can now be used in a race-baiting manner, so maybe it is racist in some ironic etymological fashion (like Uncle Tom, who, contrary to the nomenclature, wasn’t necessarily an actual “Uncle Tom”.)  Then again, I’m a white guy.  Word usage is a strange bird (is that sexist? can’t say really,) as a word like “hysterical” has an ungendered meaning today (“kookoo”, which probably makes me an anti-avianite) but a definitely sexist root.

But on the original subject, if it wasn’t racist then send John McCain a box and ask him to give an endorsement.  Maybe then we’ll know what the answer to that question is.

Sorry, mitchforth, but I think that McSame/Failin’ OWN the waffling AND flip-flopping definitions of this years election dictionary.
And in the background, of course, the bloated wood tick of a “human being” Karl Rove coaching everyone on how to lie even though you’ve stated a previous position on camera many, many times.

They are projecting with the “waffling” charge, plus I guess they figure that if it worked before they will use it again, no matter how much it doesn’t apply to Obama.

Aside from the obvious “Aunt Jemima” jokes they can make (and no, that’s not accidental).

When you start your defense with:

Aside from the bit about illegal aliens, there’s not much ammunition for the charge.

...you’ve already conceded that your argument is nothing more than racist apologia.  It is racist because it attacks BOTH black people and Muslims (who are always portrayed as brown-skinned). Taking one target out does not make it less racist.

FAIL.

Calling chimps “monkeys” is racist. Chimps are apes.

The worst part of the waffle gag is not the caricature of Obama, it’s “For better results, point toward Mecca.” Because it’s a lie. For that matter, so is the waffling charge. I haven’t been following the right-wing talking points closely enough, because I’m not sure what Obama supposedly waffled on. Except the stuff that alienated some Democrats, like FISA and offshore drilling.

The thing that gets me is, why is it so very important to these types to maintain the ‘right’ to continue using words or images that deeply bother other people?  Even if I didn’t really get why, say, the image of a noose is offensive, shouldn’t it be enough to recognize that it really does bother a heck of a lot of people, and simply because of that perhaps I should try to find a different way of expressing my idea?  ‘Gosh, it seems weird that so many people are taken aback by Obama waffles, but if it bugs them that much maybe I can come up with some other way of making my point.’

I guess my point is that their supposed free speech logic breaks down pretty quickly if you start examining it.  Any reasonable person would be perfectly comfortable finding an alternate way of expressing their point when he/she realized that a particular word, phrase, or image was really bothering someone.  The fact that certain people are so intent on defending the use of offensive terms and symbols simply demonstrates their commitment to racism, unfortunately. :(

In short, maybe we should be asking them outright, for example:  Why exactly is it so critical for you to say ‘nigger’?  What is it that you need to express with that term that wouldn’t be said just as well by ‘black,’ ‘African-American’ or some other more widely acceptable term?

Speaking of, where does Pandagon’s readership stand on the use of the (misunderstood) word “niggardly”?

niggardly in and of itself is not a racist term.  The problem is its association in the mind with nigger.  Personally with the myriad of ways we have to express ourselves I personally see no need to use that word because of the potential harm that it could cause.

The problem is its association in the mind with nigger.

Whose mind, though? Certainly not mine, because I know what the word means.

And there’s enough people - enough crazy people, say, or enough ignorant or mistaken people - that conceivably any word could be associated in someone’s mind with the word “n****r.”  So, how does the “association in the mind” rule actually tell us what speech is actually racist and what is not?

There’s much that is deplorable about a box of “waffle mix” with Obama dressed as a Muslim on them. I’m not convinced that racism is one of them, but I understand that I might fail to apprehend racism when it’s not targeted at my own race, and when I don’t necessarily have the same personal history with it that others might.

What I don’t understand is why the assumption that, if people like me can mistakenly apprehend the lack of racism, minorities can never mistakenly apprehend its presence. Certainly “niggardly” was an example of that. If the only explanation of the racism here is that “black people think its there”, then I think it’s necessary to consider the possibility that they are mistaken.

If there’s a reliable way to distinguish between racist emphasis of certain features of African Americans, and the exact same features being exaggerated because the depiction is a caricature, then I’d like to know what it is. I’m deeply suspicious when the defense against racism is that something just coincidentally sounds like, or looks like, a racist slur; but that may very well be the case, here.

Is there any way to decide beyond “some black people think it is”?

Ahh, but did you read James’ biography at the end of the article?

“He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.”

I live in Arlington, and I’m not familiar with any part of Alexandria that is outside the Beltway. I think that maybe that is some pretty stretching euphemism for saying he’s above all this Washington bullshit. Except… it’s factually wrong.

Unless he just lives in the boonies south of Alexandria and doesn’t want to admit it.

PS: Chet? Aunt Jemima isn’t a figure free of racist overtones, so once you’re comparing the black presidential candidate to her, you’re already in troubled waters.

On the waffle topic, it goes back further than Kerry.  GB Trudeau in Doonesbury used to draw Clinton as a waffle as a jab from the left:
http://images.ucomics.com/images/doonesbury/strip/retro/timeline/90s/icons/db940822.gif

Context is important, too.  The joke originates amongst hardline conservatives with a history of and taste for majoritist often racist humour.  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is probably a duck, but if it’s amongst a ton of other ducks then it’s pretty damned certainly a duck.

Re:  “niggardly” —I don’t think it’s an issue of the politics of feeling, so much as the possibility in some settings that someone’s actually used it for race-baiting, i.e. chosen the word so as to get away with saying those first two syllables in the presence of a black person.  At least, that was my interpretation of why that bureaucrat in DC complained about a colleague’s use of the word. 

I avoid the problem by putting the stress on the second syllable, rhyming it with “hardly.”

What would you prefer, Chet? A tribunal of appeal to adjudicate charges of racism? A definitive and exhaustive list of things that are and are not racist to be used in your defense when you are erroneously charged with racism?

It’s ridiculous. The best and only plausible means of determining whether you have said or done something that advances the existing system of cultural preference of whiteness is listening to the people who are getting the short end of the stick.

Because they’re people, they may not always agree and any one determination may not be “correct,” but they are a heck of a lot more likely to know what is and isn’t racist or racially offensive than the people who are offended and or subject to systemic oppression.

As for niggardly, with the exception of this kind of discussion, I don’t use it. There are other words that capture the meaning but don’t have the unfortunate near-homophone. Niggardly is not a good word because I know that I’m going to cause confusion and possibly offense by using it, thwarting any attempt to communicate.

And there’s the rub. People know that saying niggardly will make some people think they are mean to say something outrageously offensive…and they do it anyway, because they care more that they have the right definition than that they are hurting people. Less charitably, I think that people use the word because it feels like they are getting away with dropping an n-bomb without doing it, since they can always say, “Ah! But I was *really* saying something else!” There were always assholes who “accidentally” mispronounced “Niger” in school, too.

One thing’s for sure… I’m going to make sure I stick to miserly. I’m a “right definition” person who loves the nuances of the language. But languages are also living things, and when new nuances are created, it is being too nice(old usage) to ignore the new tones.

“As for niggardly, with the exception of this kind of discussion, I don’t use it. There are other words that capture the meaning but don’t have the unfortunate near-homophone.”

Also niggardly in writting I haven’t seen any books articles actually have characters use it unless the book was before the 1960s. It’s fallen out of usage as I expect Evening Constitutional will in a decade or two. Honestly why use a two word phrase instead of saying I took a walk around the neighborhood?

A “bunch of black people” consider its use provocative, if not outright racist.

Doesn’t “niggardly” just mean cheap, miserly, stingy, penny-pinching, etc?  It’s not really a matter of “gay” actually meaning “happy”, or “coon” actually being short for “racoon”.  It just means what it means and doesn’t have any historical association with racism (the etymology, btw, is not at all connected to the N word—it’s from the Old Norse word for stingy, while the former comes from the latin for black).  The controversy is that it’s a rarely used term, and a lot of people don’t know what it means. 

In fact the big controversy in the use of that word that I recall was completely outside any context with racial overtones—it was in a lecture on the Elgin Marbles.

I guess it might be a word to avoid in certain contexts, or with certain audiences.  But in and of itself, not racist in the least.

The best and only plausible means of determining whether you have said or done something that advances the existing system of cultural preference of whiteness is listening to the people who are getting the short end of the stick.

THIS.

I may just cut and paste this every time this question comes up, Thom.

The only racist bonifides required are the fact that Lou Dobbs bought a box for his wife.  The really is no need for discussion beyond that single fact.

The racist phoneme problem comes in quite frequently for me: I will, on occasion run the RPG “Call of Cthulhu”, in which the nature deity Shub-Niggurath features prominently. A brief study of HPL makes it pretty safe to say that the connection to the racial slur is intentional.

I have also frequently used the word ‘niggardly’, but see this as a problem similar to mine above. It’s a somewhat archaic word, and would give your speech a somewhat artificial, elevated cadence which oftimes tends to put people off.

Unless you *LIKE* to run around sounding like Doctor Doom.

“Note to editorial cartoonists: If Obama is elected, you’ll have to endure four years of this crap.”

I’m completely convinced that some of the racism-related resistance to Obama is purely because a) race and racism makes a lot of people uncomfortable and b) they really don’t want to have to revisit this uncomfortable subject again & again, which of course we will have to do if Obama is elected. Craven, yes, but there it is.

And…who on earth could say with a straight face that an Aunt Jemima/Obama caricature is not racist? Jesus fucking Christ. Oh yeah, all those people who are convinced that racism is Jim Crow and lynchings, and if they’re not levying an actual poll tax or getting out the rope they’re not really racist, and neither is the rest of the country. It’s a pretty goddamn high bar for some of these folks.

And I’ll also add that if the miracle occurs and Obama *is* elected, having this conversation again & again on a national basis might even do some goddamn good in the long run.

If you think “niggardly” is a slur, well, you were probably deprived of an education and need to understand that it is simply a sound-alike.  Just like I can’t get worked up when I hear the word “bunt” or “punter”. 

HOWEVER, if some people find it offensive, there are plenty of other words that can be used to similar effect that sound nothing like a word that is bad.  Grab a thesaurus and go to it.

“Niggardly” is not a slur, but when racist motherfuckers use it intentionally to needle people what the fuck do you think that is? You think it’s never been used with racist intent?

The best and only plausible means of determining whether you have said or done something that advances the existing system of cultural preference of whiteness is listening to the people who are getting the short end of the stick.

That’s a good rule of thumb, not least because it matters more whether someone is offended than whether they should be offended, but there are limits. If the folk etymology of “picnic” becomes more widely accepted I’ll have a hard time giving it up.

An Obama presidency will be a challenge for political cartoonists, especially shitty ones and conservatives. If you draw a grotesque caricature of a black man you will be accused of racism by someone and OTOH a lot of white people will see something like the waffle box and because it doesn’t look like Little Black Sambo or Tintin au Congo they won’t see it as racist.

I think it’s obvious that the waffle box has deeper problems than a shitty artist but it will be interesting to watch how cartoonists handle this over the next four years.

racist motherfuckers use it intentionally to needle people what the fuck do you think that is?

Can you give me an example of this?  I grew up in the south, extremely well aware of what is and isn’t likely to be used as a racial epithet.  Never heard it used as you describe, though I am aware of a few controversial instances where the word was used neutrally and caused an outcry. 

You think it’s never been used with racist intent?

It’s possible to use just about any word with racist intent.  But no, as I said, I grew up in a world where not only are most people racist, but most of them make no bones about it.  And I never heard anybody use the word “niggardly” with racist intent.  I’d guess it’s probably because most people who are so shamelessly racist as to say and do shit like that just don’t have the vocabulary.  They’d rather giggle about monkeys and watermelon and hoopdie cars, or just flat-out use the slur niggardly resembles so much.  Or another one.

The idea that white people go around saying ‘niggardly’ in front of black people just to needle them, while they’d say ‘cheap’ or ‘stingy’ around anyone else, is as silly as the idea that white women play with their hair all the time specifically to taunt black women.  If that happens, it’s something that I, as a white girl who grew up around plenty of specifically racist white girls, in a place where open racism is not taboo, never knew about.

I’ll also agree with Ms. Kate and say that it’s not a great choice of words, in general, because it’s so obscure, and there are so many perfectly good synonyms.

If the folk etymology of “picnic” becomes more widely accepted I’ll have a hard time giving it up.

http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/picnic.asp

Just sayin’.

This puts you in the position of declaring that the perception of racism in a particular thing is deliberately subject to a double standard, and saying that the speaker of anything is somehow responsible for all that has gone before him.

Let’s go through this very, very slowly, Dana:

There is a long history in both American and European culture of considering Africans to be sub-human or not human at all.  Some scientists considered them to be an entirely different species from Europeans, more closely related to gorillas and monkeys than they were to other human beings.

There is no long history of people of European descent being considered a sub-human species, especially not WASPs like George W. Bush.* 

Therefore, because there is not a long history of referring to WASPs as brutal animals, it’s okay to refer to Bush as a chimp.  Because there is a long history of referring to African-Americans as sub-human, it is not acceptable to refer to Obama as a chimp.

Of course, this has been explained to you over and over and over again and yet somehow you fail to understand this very simple concept every single time it is explained to you.  Which makes all of us assume that you’re arguing in bad faith since you’ve heard this explanation multiple times and still claim to be confused by it.

Clear now?

* You could probably argue that Jewish people have a long history of being referred to as sub-human, which is why it’s wrong to refer to Jewish people as chimps, too.  But somehow no one ever does that, do they?

“Some scientists considered them to be an entirely different species from Europeans, more closely related to gorillas and monkeys than they were to other human beings. “

Those scientists tended to take the Bible literally. It was a view among many literal Christians in the sciences that gorillas and monkeys were degenerate descendants of Adam and Eve with sin being the cause of degredation. With Darwin that view pretty much died out and many evolution deniers s are ignorant of the view their supposed Christian scientists expoused. There were scientists who were trying to classify African tribesman of certain tribes as being another species of gorilla hence no protections applied to them.

As for refering to Africans as monkeys, chimps, American gorillas it’s pretty ridiclous. Chimps, monkeys more closely resemble white people especially in body hair portions as well as skin tone. Football players either white, black, Asian do resemble Gorillias especially in posture.

Believe me, I am not confused by your explanations; I am pointing out what your explanations really mean.

What my explanations really mean is that you have to consider your audience, which is Basic Communication 101.  Why this concept is so very confusing to you, I have no idea.

Grendel!  My old friend!

Still seconds away from bursting a blood vessel I see.

Be sure to post it on youtube when you’re struck down by a rage heart-attack.

*huggles*

There is a long history in both American and European culture of considering Africans to be sub-human or not human at all.

There’s also a long history of Little Sambo eating fried chicken and watermelon, but does that make a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial racist if it’s about a black family? Or would people complain about racism of KFC showed everybody but black people enjoying their product?

I mean, how much of this is real racism and how much of this is the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t race card?

Is there a caricature-style cartoon of Barack Obama that somebody could point to that doesn’t racist-ly exaggerate his “black” features?

What my explanations really mean is that you have to consider your audience, which is Basic Communication 101.

Every act of artistic communication - writing, painting, what have you - has three components, three layers, of which the artist has influence over only two: the communication between the artist and the work, between the artist and the audience, and between the work and the audience.

If the racism is found in the third layer, then how can that be the artist’s fault? Or what if a work falls outside its intended audience? Certainly Pandagon.net was not the intended audience for these waffle boxes. If the artist knew the intended audience would not perceive racism, is he on the hook when an audience not of his choosing perceives it differently?

Or is every human being assumed, always, to be the audience? In which case, doesn’t that mean that artists have to know every single person on Earth, or at least on the internet, before they can create?

And isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, stupid?

Is there a caricature-style cartoon of Barack Obama that somebody could point to that doesn’t racist-ly exaggerate his “black” features?

Dozens of political cartoons have gone to press featuring images of Obama since the presidential race began.  None I can think of have been considered racist*, at least not to any publically controversial degree.

* Unless of course other racist markers were used—a political cartoon that featured a caricature of Obama praying to Mecca with a chicken leg in one hand, a slice of watermelon in the other, loaded down with bling, now that would of course be a different story.

“I mean, how much of this is real racism and how much of this is the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t race card?”

You know what? It’s too bad, but there’s no way to draw that line with any certainty. Intent means something, to be sure, but people can be racist without meaning to - we live in a racist society, and people have all kinds of unacknowledged racism. There’s no easy way - it has to be hashed out at need, I think, and that might be a good thing.

Dana, I’m sorry, but not paying sufficient attention to see that there are racist caricatures in the interior artwork - Africans with spears and bones in noses, etc. - is a kind of racism. Amanda did right to apologize and change that artwork.

Is there a caricature-style cartoon of Barack Obama that somebody could point to that doesn’t racist-ly exaggerate his “black” features?

Yes, most caricatures poke fun at Obama’s large ears.  The caricature on the waffle box, on the other hand, depicted him with full lips, which he does not have.  Or have you not bothered to even look at the man?

“Oh, I agree that the history of racism is different for different groups, but that isn’t what I was saying.  I have asked our esteemed host if his position isn’t a deliberate double-standard and stating that it puts the determination of what is racist not on the speaker but on the audience; the speaker is automatically guilty, regardless of his actual intent, if the audience thinks he is guilty.”

What you’re saying is that you want a pass so that whenever you say some racist shit you can claim ignorance and state something imbecilic like your posts on this topic.  If you don’t know that associating the image of a monkey with an African American is racist and doing the same for a Caucasian is not, then you’re just ignorant from the get-go.

“Believe me, I am not confused by your explanations; I am pointing out what your explanations really mean.”

No, you’re being obtuse and trying to obscure the larger point, which is that the images on those boxes are racist as hell, the people that created them knew it, the people that bought them knew it also, and you know it.  Hell, we all know it, and you’re the only one pretending otherwise.

If you need further instruction, then here’s a simple thought experiment.  Picture the same type of artistic treatment given to John McCain and see if it would make any sense whatsoever given his race.  If it doesn’t make any sense, then it’s racist, pure and simple.

Example:

If John McCain lived in a foreign country that was predominantly Muslim as a child, do you think that people would be going around stating that he’s a closet Muslim because of this fact ?  If not, then why do you think this is the case with Obama ?

I can’t believe people are either so blinded by privilege or so dishonest they refuse to acknowledge that people use the word “niggardly” all the fucking time with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge “watch the ‘PC police’ freak out” tone and intent. Hell, I’d say 9-10 times I’ve heard the word used it’s been in that context, which is explicitly racists whining about how unfair it is that people object when they use the N-word.

grendel:

I can’t believe people are either so blinded by privilege or so dishonest they refuse to acknowledge that people use the word “niggardly” all the fucking time with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge “watch the ‘PC police’ freak out” tone and intent.

Actually, in all of my 31 years, I’ve never heard anyone use the term “niggardly” except in the context of discussing whether or not it’s a potentially racist term. As far as I’m concerned, it might as well be a word someone invented expressly for the purpose of sounding very similar to an actual racist term.

Just where do you live that you can find these people who use it “all the fucking time”?

While I’ve only heard spoken aloud it in the context of a Shakespeare class—one in which the professor prefaced the course with a short talk about Shakespeare’s use of the word—I come across it regularly on the Internet, used just the way grendel describes.

But debating how often people use an archaic term is really beside the point, I think. Suppose grendel is making it up, and only heard it once or twice, if that. I don’t see how that changes anything, least of all the problem of privileged people (such as Joyner) demanding to be the final arbiters of what is and is not a means of reinforcing their privilege. The sparring over niggardly is only an example of the privileged class demanding veto power over what evidences their privilege; it is not the entirety of the dispute itself. The waffles link provides plenty of others that make the same point.

I can’t believe people are either so blinded by privilege or so dishonest they refuse to acknowledge that people use the word “niggardly” all the fucking time with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge “watch the ‘PC police’ freak out” tone and intent.

Grendel, you keep saying this.  And then you keep not being able to come up with any examples.

I’m a southern girl who moved north and got a degree from a marxist-leaning university where white students were a distinct minority and a POC-liberationist student political party ran the campus.  I have had to look a lot of privilege in the face.  I have had to rethink a lot of the ideas I grew up accepting.  I have had to reevaluate a lot of expressions and ways of speaking I once considered harmless

I’m still pretty sure I’ve never heard anyone use the word “niggardly” with a nudge and a wink.  I’ve heard a lot of other words used that way, even down to harmless pronoun constructions 90% of northerners would never find problematic.  Even down to beginning to understand what’s really being said when somebody in the rural south says that a part of town is “dangerous”, or that “nobody” goes there. 

If I can see the racism in a word like “nobody”, shouldn’t I also be able to see the racism in “niggardly”?

I’m not trying to be hostile about this.  If it’s common knowledge, then it’s common knowledge.  But I’d like you to be able to link or explain or cite something to this effect before I just agree that X, Y, and Z words are RACIST OHNOES!  Because all the research I’ve been able to do on this, down to thinking back REAL honestly in my own past and the things I’ve heard people say down south, indicates that the racist use of ‘niggardly’ is so rare as to be completely off any cultural radar I’m aware of.  And I’m aware of a lot of cultural radars.

Oh, and I have to say that the times I’ve ever heard the word used AT ALL are:

1. archaic old texts where the use predates the slur*, and the self-consciously archaic use of such a term with no obvious connection to racism. 

2. obscure academic sources where the writer/speaker is using high-falutin $5 words, with absotlutely NO connection to race.  For instance the famous example of its use in a lecture on the Elgin Marbles (and anyone who doesn’t know what the Elgin Marbles are and/or that they lack any connection whatsoever with racial issues should probably bow out of any conversation about obscure old words and their etymologies).

3. conversations about whether the word ‘niggardly’ is racist or not.

* See also the parts of Twelfth Night where the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe is recounted, including liberal use of the word “chink”.

The sparring over niggardly is only an example of the privileged class demanding veto power over what evidences their privilege

I actually disagree with this.

Mainly because my only contact with people who were concerned about the use of this particular word were white.  White people flipping out about inane levels of politically correct speech != the opinions of people referred to by a particular example of same.       

If a bunch of black people came up to me one day and said, “hey, there’s this obscure and archaic word which is very rarely used and has no historical connection whatsoever with racism.  It offends us, anyway.  Please don’t use it in any official capacity, ” I’d be supportive of that.  But it’s never happened, and I don’t have a habit of using the word anyway, and certainly don’t think that the hypothetical offending of someone is a good reason to strike it from Shakespeare or Tolkien.

“James, when a bunch of black people tell you something about black people is racist, it’s most likely racist.”

I generally agree, but what about when a bunch of Christians tell you something about Christians is anti-Christian?  Does that mean that is “most likely” anti-Christian bigotry?

Just FYI, doing a little research I think the “famous” incident is not the Elgin Marbles lecture (which was the first discussion of the term I heard, I think in a Christopher Hitchens piece), but someone giving a speech about local budgets and financing to fellow city employees.  Either way, it definitely goes into the category of “person using $5 words completely outside of a racial context”.

” generally agree, but what about when a bunch of Christians tell you something about Christians is anti-Christian? “

Well the first thing is to define what you mean by Christian. If you mean literalist then no those Christians are just being enraged about not being able to enforce their bigotry on others.

Grendel is right, and it’s weird to see how people must just pass over the trolls here (not that that’s a BAD thing!).

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen Jesse patiently explain to a troll that, yes, you used a cute word-that-isn’t-racist-but-the-PC-police-might-freak-out-amusingly, but YOU ARE USING IT WRONG, IDIOT, I’d have a lot of nickles.

Seriously, the trolls use it on Pandagon once a week. At least. Take it from a long-time lurker.

I don’t use the word because there’s really no need to. Sure, it’s “okay” to use it, but language is a living thing and as it moves on, so must we. Just my two cents.

For use of the word here on pandagon, check this thread:

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/mike_adams_pretty_sure_a_black_guy_did_it/