Inchpractice wrote:ARSHENAL wrote:ChVint22 wrote:If I'm honest, I don't really see how it can be offensive to someone. Didn't it come from the word Yiddish, which is the jewish language? So to shorten it to ***, I mean really, how bad can that really offend someone? I can understand the N word, because that originally meant "lazy", or something along those lines. But *** doesn't really mean anything.
People also say that about the shortening of the world Pakistani but the fact is that it has become such an offensive word because of the way it has been used in a derogatory manner. In this case the Y word has very strong conotations to the Nazi persecution and is now unaceptable just as the shorthand of Pakistani now also is because of its widespread use in an offensive way.
Exactly, it's nothing to do with the literal meaning of these words it's the years of vile abuse that's been associated with them.
You can't really compare any of these offensive words with being called a yank either because it's an anti-American word and America is not an ethnic minority.
I'm not saying it's therefore impossible for you to be offended but how hurt can you be when someone is insulting 300m people who more or less control the planet?
If you get angry you have an entire nation who'll jump at the chance to back you up, whereas if you're the only Muslim, ***, Asian in school it's an entirely different matter.
Yank really wasn't used to compare the two Inch, it was more used to show that its just a word, and to ask how offended can someone really be by a word. Its not really the word that offends, its the context in which someone uses it, and the emotion that is put with it when being used that offends people. And to be honest, I never heard of *** being used as a derogatory word for jews until I joined this forum. I've heard of other names for jews, but never that one.
And like you say, when someone says yank, they are insulting 300 million people, therefore, its really not that personal of an attack because they're talking about a whole nation. Same thing goes for they Y word, except, its a whole race. Point being, when insults get personal they hurt more. I'd rather someone call me a yank, or cracker, than someone say "hey you bald, stone cold steve austin lookalike snaggled tooth f**k". If you are proud of who you are, then why should a slang word desribing you be insulting if you're so proud about it? Its like when people over here call gays "fags". If you're proud to be gay, whats the big deal? I'd gladly let the gay community come up with a derogatory word for straight people.
I guess my whole point is, hatred is always going to be in the world, we'll never get rid of it, but if we can ignore the pettiness of a few slang words, then we'd be better off imo. The more we raise the issue about petty things, the more problems we seem to have and the more hate is brewed. People always seem to be so sensitive about race issues, they tip toe around it, becasue they don't want to offend anyone. They're so worried about being politely correct, that I think its actually hurting the issue. I use to live with a black family, and we talked about race alot, and made jokes about, and welcomed it. Its funny when a black comedian makes fun of the white race, and vice versa, because we are a bit different (all races), and thats the beatuy of it, but instead of hating our differences, lets all laugh at them. I ain't pretending to have the answer to end racism, but whatever is being done about it ain't working, its making it worse imo.