This was linked in a Chicago Tribune article (H/T AmRen) called 'Coded prejudice is cloaked dagger.' The premise of the typical template article is that those ever-devious White bigots are inventing new 'code words' with which to insult or ridicule the sainted victim groups.
Um, does the fact that there is a supposed 'code' involved, in other words, an attempt to camouflage the purported slurs, not indicate that Whitey is at least trying to be sparing of people's tender feelings? I suppose that doesn't occur to anyone. But the fact is, it is not proven fact that some of these 'slurs' are in fact slurs, anyway. For instance, the word 'reggin'.
When 'reggin' came up, I'd never heard that word but I knew it was negative. So I had this kind of nervous, shocked laugh," said Broussard, 31, who was awarded $44,000 in damages last year in a racial harassment lawsuit filed after she was fired from her job as a file clerk. "I didn't know whether it was illegal, but I knew it was not OK. It was humiliating."
So she knew it was 'negative' without ever having heard it before? I would have no clue as to what that word meant; I've been around this country quite a bit and heard many different slang terms in real life and on the Internet, and have never heard that one. Methinks Ms. Broussard must be a little oversuspicious or -- dare I say it?-- prejudiced herself to assume that Whitey is slandering her when she hears an unfamiliar word.
But one of the cardinal rules in Politically Correct etiquette is that Whitey is always wrong, always guilty, until proven innocent.
Many of the supposed 'code words' and 'slurs' are nothing more than slang terms for people of different ethnic groups, races, or regional origins. These kinds of colloquial or slang terms are certainly informal, often jocular in an innocent way, and sometimes slightly disparaging, but in less uptight times, these kinds of slang terms were traded back and forth without people becoming mortally offended or running to call a lawyer or some leftist race hustler. Many people of various ethnic groups refer to themselves by such nicknames, like Scandinavian people calling themselves 'squareheads'. But in our race-crazed age, everything is a potential 'fighting word' or an occasion for a lawsuit and demands for apologies and monetary damages.
Then, of course, this being a Chicago Tribune article, the obligatory mention of Barack Obama appears about halfway through the piece.
With Democratic Sen. Barack Obama as the first African-American to head a major-party ticket, political analysts predict race will become a central issue in the presidential election. Negative messages about race used in the campaigns and in the media could spill over into the general public, the analysts said, conjuring old stereotypes and stirring fears that create racial tension.
"Historically, when a political party is identified with African-Americans, the opposing party uses race as a way to peel off white support," said Michael Dawson, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. "You can't do that by invoking the Civil War anymore, so what we have seen is this way to tap into racial resentments of some white Americans by talking about issues that are perfectly acceptable but have, in some minds, linkage to blacks and Latinos."
Just as I said, Obama's candidacy has been the occasion of an all-out barrage of racial complaint articles. And we ain't seen nothin' yet. It's barely July and November is a long way away. We'd better steel ourselves for a lot more where this came from.
And you may be using a racial slur without even knowing it because there are all kinds of hidden signals between bigots, you see. So take care, lest you unwittingly use some secret code word and find yourself pursued by the PC vigilantes.
We hear code words all the time in talk radio. It's a constant drumbeat," said Rendall, who also co-hosts FAIR's national radio show, "CounterSpin." "Code word bigotry is a secret code, a secret handshake between the listening audience and the host.
"Either conscious or unconscious, there is sometimes a mispronunciation of [Obama's] name or dwelling on his middle name [Hussein], suggesting that he is some covert Muslim. It is not overt racism but it is xenophobic."
Since the first racial code word lawsuit in 1996, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has seen an influx of cases involving racially coded messages. In the earlier case, the federal appeals court in Philadelphia overturned a lower court ruling and found in favor of a credit manager who sued Cort Furniture Rental. Carol Aman said she and other black employees were referred to as "you people" and "that one in there."
If you are listening for 'secret codes' I suppose you are likely to find them everywhere, just as UFO enthusiasts tend to see flying saucers everywhere.
Read through the 'Racial Slur Database' and you will find many derogatory terms referring to Whites. For example: the term 'Tornado bait' defined as a term for whites
''Refering [sic] to trailer trash conmonly hit by tornadoes.''
I call that a racial slur.
Likewise, TPT, said to be a term for Whites ''short for trailer park trash.'
What? No other races live in trailer parks? Not all trailer park dwellers are White and not all are 'trash.'
Or how about this one:
Trisket - ''White trash so bad they are worse than a cracker.''
The site, by the way, is rife with spelling and grammar errors, as well as rather silly etymologies of some of the terms. And beware of the crude language in some of the definitions, but this is all to be expected considering the liberal/leftist slant of the site.
The distressing thing about nonsense like this is that we can assume that there is going to be an increasing scrutiny of every word we use, when we dare to talk about race at all, because the net is being cast wider in the search for 'offensive' language. And as the Chicago Trib article tells us, an unconscious 'slur' is no less a transgression just because the 'offender' is unaware of any hidden meaning. What does this say about our prospects for free speech and honest discussion of our besetting problems? It means we are being hemmed in even more, if we allow it.
The hundreds of comments following that Chicago Tribune article are an indication that feelings are running pretty high on this subject, and though I didn't read them all, there were a good number of anti-PC, pro-White comments following. I wonder, though, if those comments will be allowed to stand, or if, as often happens, all the politically incorrect entries will be expunged and only the PC drones' comments left?
If I were one of the journalists who grind out these pieces to order, first, I would be ashamed of myself. However, I don't think there is any such shame; the people who write these things are either people 'of color' themselves, filling those diversity quota slots, or true believers who are White.
But any honest journalist would feel some shame or embarrassment at having to crank out this rote drivel day after day. I would think, too, that an honest person would take the complaints to heart, and realize that there are a great many people out there who see through it, and who are actually being pushed to the limit by this PC barrage. Sooner or later, the PC crowd will have overplayed their hand. I think only inertia and apathy on the part of the majority has allowed things to regress to the present level. Sooner or later the pendulum has to swing back -- doesn't it?
