I like to take the sticks and stones approach.
Words hurt exactly as much as you care what whoever said them thinks of you. This leaves u with 2 cases.
Case 1: your friend whoes opinion u value is saying something hurtful, ask em to stop if they dont u dont have to be there friend or value their opinion.
Case 2: its some rando whoes opinion you dont value. The only reason u would care what they think is if your insecure.
So what is it? Words dont hurt? Your friends arnt actually ur friends? Or are u simply insecure?
You’re forgetting about words that come from society as a whole. Those are a hell of a lot harder to disregard than ones made by an individual.
You should work on your spelling and grammar before acting like an authority.
While that is a great approach when the words have no weight, ignoring systemic discrimination that perpetuates actual harm is counterproductive.
When a cop calls all black people thugs and criminals, it is something that shouldn’t be ignored. When a football team is named the Washington [slurs] it perpetuates racism against native americans in a way that has actual impacts on people. When schools are named after traitors it shows society is fine with elevating their views and ideals.
The importance of words depends on context and blowing off systemic racism permanently installed in public view because they are ‘just words’ ignores the real harm that those words have. Street signs with derogatory slurs against native people who were the victims of genocide is the equivalent of having slurs used hy the nazis on street signs.
There are words and then there are words backed by the state’s monopoly on violence. It’s harder to move forward when these old ugly names keep things rooted in the past.
Go ahead and remove or change one of these street signs without government approval, and you’ll find the violence real quick.
“sticks and stones may break my bones, but NAH NAH NAH NAH, I CAN’T HEAR YOU”
Ignoring racist tradition does nothing to improve society.
