your average Joe isn’t going to search that out
Sure, and your average Joe isn’t throwing around slurs by accident, or at least they’re not doing it intentionally.
But intolerant groups will create new terms, or co-opt existing terms. Look at “black pill” (from “red pill” from The Matrix), the “ok” hand signal (co-opted by white nationalists), or “woke” (pretty old, but “anti-woke” became a rallying call for the right). It can and does happen, and that’s not including all of the terms used behind the scenes that are likely going to come out to the public over the next 10 years or whatever.
The way I see it, there are a few types of people here:
- use it intentionally to hurt others for whatever reason - this group will come up with new terms
- people who use it on accident - this is your average joe, the quiet majority, who probably doesn’t know what the term means/implies
- people who actively avoid it/are hurt by it
Taking offense to terms benefits group 1, normalizing them benefits group 3, and in either case, group 2 is left largely confused. IMO, that doesn’t particularly help anyone, and the goal should instead be to get groups 2 and 3 to interact so it’s clear that group 2 isn’t intending to cause harm. That way it doesn’t particularly matter what group 1 does, group 3 will hopefully be able to distinguish honest mistakes from actual intended harm (i.e. distinguish between someone in groups 1 and 2).
In the case of this article, it would help for those in group 3 to understand that these kids have likely never met a black person. It would also help for those in group 2 to actually meet black people and understand the struggles they go through so they can appreciate why these terms are so hurtful. Unfortunately, a lot of people online and in person seem to jump to the conclusion that a given slur was used intentionally as hate speech, and that’s a failing IMO on both sides of that equation. Groups 2 and 3 both agree that group 1 sucks, yet groups 2 and 3 are frequently at odds with each other. That’s not particularly helpful.
Ah I think I see my issue with what you’re saying. I don’t think group 1 is homogeneous. I agree on the rest of that but you have to consider a sub group of group 1, let’s call it 1a, fit the description of “use those words hatefully but will not be easily educated and do not seek out hateful groups to form collectives”.
Whereas group 1b would be the actual people going to rallies and forming hate groups. And so I think that your statement is correct for group 1b but I actually think they’re in the far minority of this group. Their hateful messages may resonate with group 1a but they do not have easy communication and I almost view that messaging as in a critical stage of dying in modern culture.
Like obviously the hate groups have gone somewhat underground. Our politicians may give subtle nods to them or may invent stuff like the phrase “DEI” as a substitute, but that messaging is still lost on the average Joe that has racist sentiments.
If you were to somehow remove the words that group 1a uses and give them no power, they’d still hold their position but not have any way to update their language since it has been pushed to the fringes of society.
I view that group as much larger and more problematic in some ways since they’re more likely to spread a more casual form of hate or distaste than group 1b is. And they’re also more subtle about it.
Makes sense. I honestly don’t know the difference in sizes between groups 1 and 2 are, I’m just assuming 2 is a massive majority vs the other two. But maybe 1a is bigger than I thought.
It will largely depend on the area you’re in but if I can also point out that group 1a are the people that become group 2 or are parents to group 2 when exposed to a slight amount of education or meet someone that fits the group but don’t ultimately take the undertones of what they’re saying all that seriously. These people usually view group 3 as oversensitive.
So in fact I think that group 2 is rising which is somewhat a good thing but it’s also dangerous to be too critical of them because we’ve seen it push people back the other way. You get too hard with “word policing” and people will rebel against it and that’s much worse imo. Police language too much and you reconvert some portion of group 2 not back into 1a but into the more dangerous 1b.
I’m not saying we accept the language when it hurts people but we shouldn’t be going after people insanely hard for mostly harmless jokes.
